Eli Brown. Mrs.Bartram. Hist:1014: 0006. 3/24/2017.

The sheer military power of the United States, and their appearance in the war, both had a major impact on the outcome of the war, striking fear into the opposing military forces. America was and has always been a very wealthy and large economy with an abundant supply of resources. This gave America the ability to mass-produce war machines such as planes and tanks to give them a large advantage over the Axis Powers. The US had an over-supply of war vehicles, which were later shared with Britain and France, providing a huge advantage over the Axis Powers. According to Historynotes, over “10 million American soldiers were ready to be deployed to help fight against the Axis Powers”. This statement clearly proves just how much military power America had over their opponents put together. German and Italian spies were reporting back to their country about the dramatic

     During their battles the squad sees that survival is not something that is taught but a matter of pure chance. They see their allies shooting allies. Their close friends in the war are killed and they must face the reality that getting out alive is luck. The goal of killing the enemy turns into just trying to stay alive yourself. And when their time is done they are faced with mourning for those who fell and bitter sweet relief that it is over.

The film makes the viewer feel patriotic because we should all feel proud, with all of the bad things happening during the war people wanted to go to America. Out of the countries they could have fled to they picked America. The viewers should also

In the 1940’s a series of propaganda films titled Why We Fight were produced for the purpose of defining the enemies of World War 2 to justify the necessity of America’s involvement in war. Hitler needed to be defeated, Nazism had to be destroyed, and tyranny had to be stopped for the sake of the American way of life by any means necessary. How could society argue against America’s role in the world war when freedom was being threatened? As Martin Luther King Jr. said “Injustice anywhere is a threat to everywhere.” No questions asked, Americans mobilized in the name of liberty and freedom. However the 2005 documentary film Why We Fight directed by Eugene Jarecki is not a sequel or war propaganda. The film informs the audience and questions America 's military industrial complex that has since dictated policy since the victory of World War 2. With the help of narration, soundbites, and credible speakers Jarecki shines light on the pernicious impact of the armed industry on our government, army, and citizens.

This paper will be discussing the two movies The Green Berets (1968) and Apocalypse Now (1978), and argue how The Green Berets is a propagandist pro-war film depicting the unrealities of the Vietnam War while Apocalypse Now is an ambiguous anti-war film that shows the social and political absurdities of the Vietnam War.

to engage in prior to their military involvement in the Second World War. I have no doubt that the conflict could have been shortened (and thus casualties reduced) had America chosen to intervene in the affairs of Germany during the 1930s, yet I fully acknowledge that I both benefit from a sense of hindsight and write with bias given that my home country was devastated by Nazi bombing

As a portrayal of history it reinforces some of the worst aspects of America's collective vision of the world and our understanding of military operations. For a target audience of males aged fifteen to thirty, Ridley Scott has produced a celebration of American courage and spirit without a serious explanation of why we were forced, in the end, to rely on those two very real American characteristics. Mark Bowden's complex tale of modern war has become a simple story about not leaving any man

the Germans in the war as the enemy. In the battle the enemy is shown

Epic war stories can be found in movies, books, and tv productions across the world, but many of the best wells of narrative mastery yet remain untapped by Hollywood film industry The Meridian Magazine article “Captain Moroni Epic Coming to Hollywood?” by Jonathan Decker uses parallelism and informative pathos to inspire funds for a kickstarter campaign which will generate funds necessary to pay for a period-action, war film-short that has the potential to reawaken a spirit of liberty and freedom across the world.

World War II films depict veterans as brave and honorable individuals and many times create love stories for the war heroes, for example Fred and Peggy and Homer and Wilma. But the basic story of World War II was victory over the forces of evil. Vietnam on the other hand, was about intense suffering for reasons that were unclear. Realism was in a sense the only response because there was no fantasy to turn the story into. Even though, The Best Years of Our Lives also touches on the subject of readjusting to life after the war and making sense of life again in the United States, films about the Vietnam War and its veterans focused on the internal suffering and guilt many veterans came home with because of what the war in Vietnam had done to them. Instead of focusing on American heroism and the devastating effects on Vietnam, US film focused on veterans personal dilemmas and internal conflicts in films like Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of

It is believed that both are powerful forms of entertainment as well as sources of information for a broad range of Americans, of different ages and backgrounds. For this reason, the mass media, which include movies, may have been used as tools by the American government and military to ‘sell’ a war that at first provoked mixed reactions, and which, in addition was carried out for illegitimate reasons, though they were initially concealed from the public.

However if the question is only talking about the “war movies” in general as American popular culture, Theodore Kornweibel, Jr. explained that the existence of ‘war movies’ is essential to unify the country under the same aims of war. The earlier movies mainly focused about telling the Americans on who was the enemy, why they fought, and why they had to be defeated. Thus it is intriguing when we see that there are so many “war movies” produced up until now and that they still has high demand among the audiences. Apparently, this phenomena emerged from the fact that even the people in 21st Century who watched the war genre could also feel these senses that the producers trying to share; how they are able to obtain lessons from the past and of course, learn the importance of patriotism.

The Vietnam film is a specific sub-genre of the conventional Hollywood war film that arose as a result of the 1960s counter culture. According to Elliot Stegall’s article Ideological, Dystopic, and Antimythopoetic Formations of Masculinity in the Vietnam War Film many American war films depicted the glorification of war and emphasized the concept of American masculinity (Stegall). Previous to the Vietnam period, Hollywood war films stuck to contemporary tropes. These films often re-enact the idea of good versus evil in which the male hero of the film triumphantly fights for their country against a vilified enemy; thus reinforcing the American ideology of conquering the frontier (Schweitzer 67). The hollywood war films are often enjoyable

After nearly fifteen years of troops committed to the conflict beginning in 1959 and withdrawal in 1975, a number of films were made about Vietnam (Goldfield, 2014). The Green Berets, the sole movie produced during the conflict, featured an image presented by John Wayne consistent with the heroic battles in Europe during World War II. Filmmakers emerged in greater numbers in the late 1970s and 1980s after considering that rather than focusing on the perception of losing the war, there were more important stories to tell about the conflict. Some of the notorious films about the Vietnam War are Born on the Fourth of July, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, We Were Soldiers, Rambo, Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, and Hamburger Hill. Vast differences between how and why the films were made and the background and inspiration for the directors who made the film were apparent. Within each director lay a unique interpretation of the conflict based on personal experience (Toplin, 1991). There were some films that attempted to counter the feeling that the U.S. had lost the war and explored a hypothetical favorable American outcome in unifying North and South Vietnam under democracy (Siskel, 1985). Movies like Full Metal Jacket explored new concepts such as how the press’ presence in Vietnam influenced public support for the war. Many of these films were popular because of their violent imagery. Scenes depicting

John Ford’s 1946 Western film My Darling Clementine played a great part in the construction of American national identity through its symbolic representation of the USA and of foreigners. Released a year after World War Two, the film acknowledges the anxieties America had faced towards foreign powers and attempts to put these anxieties at ease by portraying America as a hero-figure.