Image Credit: Peter DavisPeter Davis' film, "Hearts and Minds", attempts to give multiple perspectives on the Vietnam War. He shows interviews with soldiers, common citizens, government officials, and the Vietnamese, while including excerpts from movies and presidential speeches. As I was watching, I noticed a direct parallel between "Hearts and Minds" and Bernie Cook's article, "Over My Dead Body: The Ideological Use of Dead Bodies in Network News Coverage of Vietnam". Throughout the movie, the Vietnamese were depicted as inferior to the Americans.
Many of the camera shots showed the Vietnamese in moments of weakness. For example, one camera shot showed a close-up of a wounded Vietnamese man on the floor, partially naked, with a group of American soldiers surrounding him, putting a gun to his chest. Never in the movie did Davis decide to depict the Americans in such a way. Instead, the Americans were shown either in body bags, or in a shot taken from such a distance that it was difficult to see the details of what was occurring.
Also, the shots of the common people in America and the common people in Vietnam contrasted sharply. The shots of the Vietnamese showed children that were missing limbs, had dysfunctional limbs, or had some other handicap. On the other hand, American children were shown playing football with their fully functioning bodies, and men and women were shown attending rallies to support the troops. This different depiction of the Vietnamese and the American common people further made the Vietnamese seem inferior.
Additionally, the interviews between the Americans and the Vietnamese were treated differently. Davis included multiple clips of the Vietnamese talking about how their homes were destroyed, how their families had been killed, and how they were left with nothing to eat, among other things. Both countries seemed to not understand why the war was being fought, but the interviews with Americans seemed to just show that the American people were relatively unaffected by the war and its atrocities. Davis' showing of the Vietnamese struggles and hardships made them appear weaker than the Americans who seemed unaffected.
Some other random thoughts:
I thought it was interesting how the interviews with the American soldiers were shot with a close-up head shots throughout the first part of the movie, but later the camera zoomed out to reveal the soldiers' handicaps acquired from the war.
I was a little shocked at the comments that Westmoreland was making during his interview at the end of the movie. He was mentioning how life was not valuable to the Orient and they did not really care about their life. I felt like that statement was appalling.
When I screened "Hearts and Minds" for myself, I felt like the film was shocking in the images and video clips included into the film. A part of me felt like I was overreacting to the film, maybe due to my naivety or my limited knowledge of the Vietnam War, but after discussing the film with the class, I felt as though my emotions were commonly felt among everybody.
ReplyDeleteAfter listening to the comments of my peers, I began to realize that when I screened this film, I was spending most of my time trying to identify an argument and then finding as much support as I could for the argument. I feel like this technique I was using might have caused me to watch the movie with a more narrow mindset than I would have otherwise viewed the film with.
After the class discussion, I feel like my identification of the argument might have been a little off. Instead of the film directly paralleling Bernie Cook's argument, I agree with my peers that Davis was attempting to argue that the war was atrocious and uncalled for. And much like my peers, I feel that the portrayal of the Vietnam War in this film reflected badly on the part of America.