The movie The Deer Hunter was released in 1978; three years after the end of
the Vietnam War. During the war, the American public had received censored
information by the mass media concerning the war. The American sense of
mission and patriotism hovered above and disguised uncomfortable topics such
as the cruelties inflicted on Vietnamese civilians by GIs or less palatable the
justifications for the U.S. intervention in the war. It therefore left no space for
any respect towards the Vietnamese as an individual being part of an ethnic
group with its own culture. Although stereotypes about the Vietnamese are
adopted and developed in The Deer Hunter so much so that even critics stood
up for the former “enemy” and condemned the depiction as “racist” – the
enemy is not, unlike in several other movies produced at that time, simply an
excuse for demonizing particularly the Vietnamese; it serves as a rather
symbolical threat to a community of “war buddies” and could be replaced by
any other enemy.
In this paper I will argue that labeling The Deer Hunter as “racist” is
misconceived, since the adoption of the Vietnamese as an enemy image has to
be reduced to the threat itself. The first two chapters will explain how the
attitude of the American public towards the Vietnamese as their “enemy” was
shaped and why the issue of Vietnam became a central to the plot. This will
show that the emphasis is laid on something else: human relationships within
the group and not, as it at first seems to be, on the enemy itself. Therefore, I
will explore the significance of community in this particular case and compare
the relationships within the group before, during and after the war. It will
become clear that the original hierarchy of the group dissolves when the group
is threatened. The group´s war experiences lead further to an inability to take
part in the social life at home. Since the original group is shattered, the new
group is challenged to refer to the former bonds that have always kept them
together in order to establish a new identity. Ironically, this new identity is
based on the patriotic phrase “God bless America”.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Vietnam Stereotyped
3 Why Vietnam?
4 The Community
4.1 The Characters
4.2 The Background
4.3 Breaking-up of the Group
4.4 Re-establishing
4.5 Reunification
5 Conclusion
List of Works Cited
1 Introduction
The movie The Deer Hunter was released in 1978; three years after the end of the Vietnam War. During the war, the American public had received censored information by the mass media concerning the war. The American sense of mission and patriotism hovered above and disguised uncomfortable topics such as the cruelties inflicted on Vietnamese civilians by GIs or less palatable the justifications for the U.S. intervention in the war. It therefore left no space for any respect towards the Vietnamese as an individual being part of an ethnic group with its own culture. Although stereotypes about the Vietnamese are adopted and developed in The Deer Hunter so much so that even critics stood up for the former “enemy” and condemned the depiction as “racist” – the enemy is not, unlike in several other movies produced at that time, simply an excuse for demonizing particularly the Vietnamese; it serves as a rather symbolical threat to a community of “war buddies” and could be replaced by any other enemy.
In this paper I will argue that labeling The Deer Hunter as “racist” is misconceived, since the adoption of the Vietnamese as an enemy image has to be reduced to the threat itself. The first two chapters will explain how the attitude of the American public towards the Vietnamese as their “enemy” was shaped and why the issue of Vietnam became a central to the plot. This will show that the emphasis is laid on something else: human relationships within the group and not , as it at first seems to be, on the enemy itself. Therefore, I will explore the significance of community in this particular case and compare the relationships within the group before, during and after the war. It will become clear that the original hierarchy of the group dissolves when the group is threatened. The group´s war experiences lead further to an inability to take part in the social life at home. Since the original group is shattered, the new group is challenged to refer to the former bonds that have always kept them together in order to establish a new identity. Ironically, this new identity is based on the patriotic phrase “God bless America”.
2 Vietnam Stereotyped
The “American Phase” of the Vietnam War lasted eleven years – from 1964 until the end of the war in 1975. The Americans left when their aim – victory over North Vietnam and the VC – proved to be unattainable. During these eleven years, the government controlled the public´s opinion concerning attitudes towards the “enemy” by means of the media; they oversimplified the image of the enemy to suit circumstances. Especially during the first years of the war, the reporting suited official wishes and therefore contributed to both a deep disappointment about the outcome of the war and additionally it created illusions about the war in general (cf. Wacker 94). Consequently, stereotypes about Vietnam were created right at the beginning of the war, and were not likely to be changed by events that could be made to promote to a more moderate view of the happenings in Vietnam. Both the students´ revolts and demonstrations, especially in Ohio – an answer to injustice inflicted on the Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers – did increase a belief in the injustice of the war, but all in all, the original stereotype was affected only slightly and at least its basic features persisted until the end of the war. During the last phase of the war, the pictures that were shown became somewhat more “real”: human victims were shown; but television, that could be switched off at any time, contributed to the feeling of great distance to the actual goings-on and, consequently, people did not feel really concerned by them (cf. Wacker 94). It is likely, therefore, that this depiction of “reality” confirmed, and even reinforced people’s attitudes. The startling outcome of such stereotyping was the belief that the whole population of Vietnam consisted uncultivated, uneducated, backward, treacherous and obscure farmers. According to Lippmann, an editorialist and sociologist, who was the first to conceptualize the process of stereotypization (cf. Miller 6), the labeling and pidgin-holing of another group, is typical: “We pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out is the form stereotyped for us by our culture” (Lippmann 55). Thus, the average American was actually not given a chance to create a more moderate view of the Vietnamese, since the News delivered pictures the government had constructed for them. Some socio-psychologists even argue that the American people are particularly susceptible to creating enemy images, if the USA is understood as a melting pot, a “rootless, anomic people” (Kennedy 342), continually attempting to discover its own identity: “[the] image of an enemy originates in the need of a group to have a sense of its own identity. A group can only achieve and sustain that identity by measuring itself against an “other” (Freud in Kennedy 340). By promoting, for example, a strong sense of patriotism, society create an “ingroup” – any nonmember of the group belongs to the outgroup. Stephan and Rosenfield, who have dealt with ethnic and racial stereotypes, are of the opinion that we consider “the ingroup as being superior to other groups. Thus, a positive ingroup identity is achieved at the cost of rejecting outgroups” (103). It must be taken into consideration that a stereotype should not only be seen as an inconsiderate opinion or a mere prejudice. Leyens remarks the necessity of stereotyping as “an intra-psychic process whose main function is to make sense of the world” (13). However, bravely trying to recognize reality is ultimately "exhausting, and among busy affairs practically out of the question” (Lippmann 59).
Thus we are able to comprehend the public’s reaction towards the enemy-image conveyed in The Deer Hunter . In this movie the images of the Vietnamese at least tended towards a direction the people expected. But the scriptwriters did not anticipate that this enemy image in combination with the Russian Roulette scene would be far too shocking. Since the media had been trying to prevent showing acts of brutality, people were not prepared to cope with it. Suid even mentions that “[p]eople were afraid of it. The Russian roulette scared the hell out of them” (Suid 354).
3 Why Vietnam?
The Deer Hunter was released one year after the Vietnam War ended. Interfering in a war that did not concern the US directly was a questionable decision and, especially after details about American warfare methods became public, the resistance movements in the USA started. These were reactions to events like the My Lay massacre, a war crime committed by American soldiers on Vietnamese civilians.
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