Difference between revisions of "329--Week 13 Questions/Comments"
From McClurken Wiki
(→5 Other movies/questions of style/framing/storyline) |
(→2 Film's relationship to current scholarship or to primary sources from the time) |
||
| Line 126: | Line 126: | ||
"Most American soldiers in Vietnam--at least the ones I knew--could not be divided into good men and bad. Each possessed roughly equal measures of both qualities." These words from ''Rumor of War'' were perhaps the most telling of all, in regards to the movie. Despite a complete emotional transformation, Ron Kovic was never a good guy and he was never a bad guy. No one knew quite how to react to him, or any of the other veterans because as Caputo says, "the American soldier was a reflection of themselves." -Cash Nelson | "Most American soldiers in Vietnam--at least the ones I knew--could not be divided into good men and bad. Each possessed roughly equal measures of both qualities." These words from ''Rumor of War'' were perhaps the most telling of all, in regards to the movie. Despite a complete emotional transformation, Ron Kovic was never a good guy and he was never a bad guy. No one knew quite how to react to him, or any of the other veterans because as Caputo says, "the American soldier was a reflection of themselves." -Cash Nelson | ||
| + | |||
| + | I have never read Kovic's autobiographical account, but Born on the Fourth of July (great title btw) is very closely related to "A Rumor of War" as the above post mention. Not only is this a personal account from a soldier who served for a long time in Vietnam, but I have heard many other accounts, analyses, etc. that say generally the same thing about soldier mentality and conditions. The short scene of war in the film must have been quite the sparknotes of Kovic's actual experiences, but it was able to show a great deal, in a short bit of time, of what a soldier might have experienced. What we didn't get out of the actual flashbacks and such, we could interpret from the scenes when Cruise interacts with other vets, like off-his-rocker Wilem Dafoe. "A Rumor of War" provides ample defense for the crimes of P.C.s fellow soldiers because of the bond felt between him and the only other people who could understand what he had went through, but simultaneously the describes the growing feeling (especially through the influence of the emerging society) to protest those pulling the strings and being the cause of all the suffering, as the author himself turned toward the protest movement. --Jackie Reed | ||
== 3 Movie as primary source about makers/time/setting/genre == | == 3 Movie as primary source about makers/time/setting/genre == | ||
