119 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 55 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 12/19/14

Voices From The Ghosts of Vietnam Are Being Heard Again: Which Should We Listen To?

By       (Page 1 of 3 pages)   No comments

Danny Schechter
Message Danny Schechter

New York, New York: It's been nearly 40 years since what the American media called "The Fall of Saigon" and the Vietnamese referred to as the Liberation. I saw it then as the Fall of Washington.

The ghosts of Vietnam are back, thanks to two filmmakers with very different takes. The first is Rory Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy's youngest daughter. Her one-sided account has already been nominated for an Oscar. The second is Tiana, an American of South Vietnamese origin, who made the film, From Hollywood To Hanoi, years ago to promote reconciliation between our two countries.

Tiana is finishing a movie called The General and Me, on her unlikely conversations (for someone from a virulently anti-communist family) with North Vietnam's legendary and late General Vo Nguyen Giap, a.k.a the "Red Napoleon," a.k.a the man whose military doctrines defeated the French Army and later the Pentagon's brutal Vietnamization strategy.

Giap created the Vietnamese resistance Army at Ho Chi Minh's request in l944, and without training, became a military genius. Tiana has two other self-promoted US "geniuses" in her movie too: pathetic walk-ons by former US General William Westmoreland, and an arrogant ex-Defense Secretary, Robert MacNamara, who could not conceal his contempt for her.

Rory's highly-hyped and well-funded movie depicts footage we have seen before of the hurried evacuation of US soldiers and some of their Vietnamese conscripts in a long and bloody war that was lost almost from its earliest days.

Rather than look at the reasons for that loss, Rory has, with support from HBO and PBS's American Experience series, tried to present a heroic picture of Americans in their last days in Saigon, coping with a Mad Ambassador and in some cases rebelling against US policy.

(I have loved some of Rory's work before, but this had ideological agenda written all over it.)

These two films, all these years later, mirror the cultural and political divides of the times with one film, in effect, rationalizing the war, and portraying the American military as compassionate, and the other, for one of the first times, offering views from the other side that Americans never heard.

Even if her Uncle JFK did escalate the war, despite his back and forth doubts, a member of the Kennedy Family is still treated as a cultural icon in a culture that can't remember details of what happened yesterday, much less forty year ago. Rory's work has been acclaimed; Tiana's has not yet been seen. She labels the forgetting deliberate, what she calls, "Nam-Nesia."

Gerald Perry writes in Arts Fuse: "The mushy reviews of Last Days in Vietnam (a 94% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating) are extraordinarily similar. They praise filmmaker Rory Kennedy for documenting a forgotten moment of American history, the chaotic days in 1975 when the US raced to leave Saigon and South Vietnam steps ahead of the advancing North Vietnamese Army. And the critics are pumped up with pride at the stories Kennedy has uncovered of brave and noble American soldiers and a few anti-establishment American diplomats who helped evacuate many South Vietnamese--by boat, plane, and helicopter--who presumably would be enslaved or murdered by the Communist North Vietnamese.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Rate It | View Ratings

Danny Schechter Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

News Dissector Danny Schechter is blogger in chief at Mediachannel.Org He is the author of PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books) available at Amazon.com. See Newsdisssector.org/store.htm.
Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Israel Gives All Jews A Bad Name

Is There A Threat of Fascism in the USA?

Free Marketers Going After Occupy Wall Street --Danny Schechter

WHO OWNS OUR MEDIA AND WHY IT MATTERS

COG OR COA: WHY IS OBAMA MORPHING INTO BUSH 2?

WERE THE BANKS TOO BIG TO FAIL OR THE BANKERS TOO BIG TO JAIL?

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend