My course on the history of the Vietnam War necessarily contains a great deal of visual media, most often in the form of newsreel footage and clips from documentaries. However, since the Vietnam War has inspired dozens of fictional Hollywood films, I also have students watch clips from several of the most canonical films on the subject. As any instructor knows, showing a “movie” in class has its advantages and pitfalls, the latter most often expressed in a sort of collective disengagement from an academic mindset, as students naturally fall into the more passive role of viewer. How do we break through that passivity and get students to engage critically when watching a form of media that they are accustomed to consuming as entertainment?
Oliver Stone‘s 1989 film Born on the Fourth of July often ends up being a critical text in my course, simply because the narrative (and the ways that director Oliver Stone presents that narrative) engages some of the war’s most fundamental historical issues. The film also, however, stars Tom Cruise, a celebrity with a considerable amount of pop cultural baggage whose name often elicits rounds of giggling from students. Since my goal is to avoid having them fall into the passive receiver role of pop culture consumers, I find it is useful to play along with the jokes for a bit before subtly steering the discussion into more “academic” areas. In a matter of five minutes, a joke about Cruise jumping on the couch on Oprah can become a conversation about American male celebrities, which leads us to John Wayne, which leads into issues of American masculinity and directly into the critical aspects of the film we are about to watch.
Despite these pre-watching efforts though, students often can’t help but get caught up in what they are watching, particularly when it takes the form, essentially, of an action film. This is why I think it is vital to avoid turning on the movie and letting it run for more than five minutes at a time. After all, if you are asking students to consume this text in a different way than they are used to, it is important that you present the text in a different way. One way that I found effective is to break the film up into tiny clips that are watched and then written about (or discussed) in low stakes exercises. This way, students are constantly forced out of the role of viewer and back into their role as critical thinkers approaching a text. Even if that text includes Tom Cruise and machine guns.
Here’s a quick clip from another Oliver Stone film, Platoon (1986), followed by an example of the kind of free writing prompt that I have found useful for stimulating discussion and leading into more complex writing assignments. By limiting the viewing experience to this short scene, one that has been selected carefully for its density of critical material, I hope to focus the students’ attention on just a few important elements. As you can see from watching the clip and reading the prompt below, assignments like this contain more than enough historical, sociological, and ethical issues to keep everyone busy and, more importantly, to demonstrate how to begin unpacking the complex mechanics underlying popular culture:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in_dNxlnFKA&feature=related[/youtube]
Exercise
The character Barnes is presented as the ultimate cynical warrior, immune even to death, and his character is contrasted with Taylor and Elias, who are ostensibly “good” warriors. What makes a soldier “good” or “bad” in the context of this scene?
Barnes’ statement “there’s the way things ought to be, and the way things are” seems to apply to the Vietnam War and history in general. Do you agree with his attitude? Why or why not?
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