The Myth of the American Man in Nam - Jacob Dreyer
Apocalypse Now is a startling movie detailing the madness that accompanies war. Francis Ford Coppola made a gripping war film about the senselessness of war itself, a metaphorical decent into hell paralleled by Willard's journey up the river. While mainly showing the war and the myths that accompany it in an unfavorable light, some of the conventions of those myths are upheld in the film. In one of the film's most famous scene's the audience is shown the insanity of the American John Wayne myth, that of the man, the leader who could stand alone and charge any hill. Colonel Bill Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, is dressed both as a cowboy, with his hat, and a cavalry general akin to Custer. He is, however, quite crazy and orders a napalm strike, so he can surf the newly captured beach free from sniper fire. The depredation of the gung-ho American warrior shown here is quite explicit. This disparaging outlook is somewhat nullified by the actual plot of the film. Willard is one a solo mission to assassinate Kurtz. While he has companions for some of the journey, he is operating alone outside of a combat company. This only reinforces the "myth of the solitary combatant and lonesome cowboy" that Cawley describes. Cawley speaks of the war as only another expansion of the American frontier, once more American conflict is depicted as a fight between the righteous white man and the evil colored race. The depiction of Kilgore does much to dispel this image of the Rough Rider by showing how ludicrous it is. The film fails to completely disentangle itself from this myth, however, since its main character is on a mission that inherently fits within this myth.