American Politics & Pop Culture

I would say that this week's film is an anti-war film. I can definitely see how it may be seen as a pro-war film as well however. Perhaps as Cawley has stated in his article, "it is not even clear that any recent example of a 100 percent antimilitary, anti-imperialist film exists." Wars that had been fought in the past were seen positively because people believed there was just cause for the wars and that they served their respective purposes. However, in the case of the Vietnam War, this cannot really be said. The American people remember the war in a very negative way. There was destruction of not only Vietnam, but many Americans also lost their lives in the war. I would say that this film is in fact anti-war simply because of the way in which the war is depicted. American soldiers are seen killing innocent civilians among the many other realities of war that are shown in the film. It did not portray a sense of heroism at all and in fact made many Americans feel shame in that it was their country committing such atrocities. Perhaps the film attempted to reconcile "the country to its first defeat in war." This is poorly done however. For one, simply because defeat is never easy to accept, whether the first time around or the tenth. Secondly, it is not successful in reconciling the country to defeat because of how positively past wars had been seen by the American public; it was not going to be easy to accept defeat after having been the big shot winners in the world. Prior Hollywood war films had portrayed "war as an arena for the display of a man's ferocity, courage, capacity for sacrifice, altruism, and the like" (Cawley). Examples of this are Sahara and similar films which gained much popularity in their respective times. Apocalypse Now did not show this same display of war as a means of showing courage and proving oneself. Rather, war is seen negatively and the many cruelties of war are accurately portrayed.