Brian Andreen Apocalypse Now and the Vietnam Era
The video Apocalypse Now did and excellent job portraying the actuality of the war in Vietnam. The American troops were not portrayed as being heroic or patriotic, but instead as desperate and rather savage. American forces were shown attacking places without regard to the safety of the citizens living in them and without proper prior planning. Also the American troops did not seem like the types of people I would expect to be fighting in the war. Instead they were cooks and surfers who seemed to have been just thrust into the war. These soldiers were under trained. As was shown with the stopping of the Vietnamese boat the soldiers were jumpy and inexperienced. They did not have the training to interact with the Vietnamese people in a way that would prevent conflict.
The thing I found most shocking about the video was how the leadership of the American forces were portrayed. The movie portrayed the American military leadership as incompetent, as well as insecure and spiteful. The American leadership was following tactics that were simply not working. Despite this they continued to follow these strategies regardless of their ineffectiveness. If any leader followed different tactics, even if they were successful, they were frowned upon and pressure was placed on them to return to the old ineffective strategies. When this failed the commanders not following the “assigned” strategies continued doing as they wished they were discredited or removed.
The psychological effects of the Vietnam War were also an important factor of this film. The American people did not understand what was going on in the lives of those who were suffering post traumatic stress syndrome. This video in a way showed what was going on in the lives of the returned soldiers, allowing people to see why the soldiers were so affected by the war.
This film was against the war in Vietnam. It showed troops fighting without proper planning and without a well laid out battle plan. It also portrayed the American leadership as incompetent, following a strategy for making Vietnam a democracy that was inadequate. It showed how Vietnam had been occupied many times before, and how this to them was just another in a long line of foreign occupations they had to fight against. The people of the time knew that the Vietnam people did not want to be occupied and that the more troops we sent to help them, the more unhappy they became.