Transcription
Much of the cultural landscape of the United States in the late 70s and 80s was shaped by the catastrophe of US interventionism in Vietnam in the 60s and early 70s. Popular culture in the United States typically portrayed Vietnam differently than it portrayed more victorious conflicts. Hollywood Vietnam films usually remain agnostic as to the underlying causes of the conflict or US justification for intervention, which is different from the more glorious portrayals of the US military in other films. It is an outlier, at least in that regard.
Films made in the U.S. about Vietnam focused on the consequences and trauma, but in these seemingly critical and skeptical depictions of the conflict, the consequences and trauma were predominantly that of the US military: their trauma, their consequences, not the trauma or consequences thrust onto the Vietnamese. These films, even satirical films, are still from the perspective of American recruits and draftees, not the Vietnamese. These films sometimes portray the effects of this moment in history negatively, but the vast majority of those portrayed as being negatively affected are Americans, the aggressors portrayed as the victims. Nevertheless, real litigation of Vietnam through popular culture is still more critical of the conflict than any other instance of U.S. interventionism.
One film series bucked that trend: Rambo. A film series that begins with trauma, albeit exclusively American trauma, and spirals out into revenge fantasy. The Rambo trilogy in the 1980s relitigates Vietnam and reframes the greatest failure. In truth, the greatest failure is that this intervention of choice did not need to happen, was built on a lie, and countless people needlessly perished. In Rambo, the greatest failure is only that the United States lost. This is codified in *First Blood* to *Rambo*, when the titular character asks the central question of the series and unambiguously positions its politics: "Do we get to win this time?" That is the Rambo series' restorative justice, but only for the aggressors of the conflict, the invading Americans.
In *First Blood*, often regarded as the best of the series, John Rambo is harassed by local police and due to his post-traumatic stress disorder, he reacts to their hostility with his own. He escapes, and the police begin to track him in a scenario not unlike Rambo's service in Vietnam. Critics sometimes look at *First Blood* through rose-colored glasses. This film is not as overtly jingoistic as later films, and Sylvester Stallone's performance, particularly his monologue at the end, paints the picture of a sympathetic veteran who was only doing what he was told. Unlike later films, *First Blood* remains agnostic on the justification for US intervention.
What these same critics fail to see is that *First Blood* does not throw stones at US interventionism; they throw stones at the peace movement. Rambo's monologue at the end brings up a common myth about the peace movement in the U.S. during that time: the myth that returning servicemen were spat upon. This has long been debunked by Jerry Lemke's book, *Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam*. Lemke himself, a Vietnam veteran, wrote: "If spitting on veterans had occurred all that frequently, surely some veteran or soldier would have called it to the attention of the press at the time. Indeed, we would imagine that news reporters would have been camping in the lobby of the San Francisco Airport, cameras in hand, just waiting for a chance to record the real thing, if that is they had any reason to believe that such incidents might occur."
Lemke's research actually found the opposite. The peace movement was the natural ally to the suffering servicemen who had been drafted into a conflict that never needed to happen. The peace movement usually did not protest individual servicemen; they had friends who had been drafted. The peace movement instead protested the conflict itself and President Richard Nixon. The spitting was an urban legend that had never, not once, been confirmed by a serviceman to have actually happened to them. It always happened to a friend of a friend somewhere. It's an urban legend, and *First Blood* helped popularize it.
This, combined with the demonizing portrayal of the North Vietnamese in Rambo's flashback, muddies the water about what *First Blood* is trying to communicate and who it blames for Rambo's trauma. Alex has of *Little White Lies* once wrote: "His climactic speech about returning veterans being spat on by maggot hippie protesters at the airport hinted at a conservative heart, and with Ronald Reagan having been just voted into the White House by a landslide, it was the latter that most struck a chord with the American psyche."
The U.S. never should have been involved in Vietnam in the first place. A brief history might be helpful. Vietnam had been colonized by the French since the 19th century. In 1940, Japan invaded Vietnam. To fight the Japanese, political leader Ho Chi Minh formed the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam. Following Japanese surrender to the Allied powers in 1945, French-educated Emperor Bao Dai was in charge of Vietnam. The Viet Minh didn't want an emperor, so they seized Hanoi and declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north. France backed Emperor Bao Dai because they wanted to one day take back control of the country. The two sides fought; the North won, and French rule and influence finally ended in Vietnam.
The two sides signed a treaty in Geneva in 1954, splitting the nation but setting up elections to unify Vietnam in 1956. However, anti-communist Ngo Dinh Diem of the South wasn't having any of that, and Ho Chi Minh remained president of North Vietnam. President Dwight Eisenhower committed the US toward backing South Vietnam, and the CIA meddled in foreign affairs to further the economic influence of the US because that's what the CIA does. Diem's anti-communist security forces cracked down on alleged northern sympathizers in the South, arresting roughly 100,000 people, many of whom were brutally interrogated and killed. The CIA helped this happen.
By the 1960s, the US had begun helping South Vietnam even more, patrolling along the surrounding ocean. The US and North Vietnam had an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin that, depending on your perspective, was either instigated by the US being where it didn't belong or due to the actions of the North Vietnamese. Then, after things had settled, the US lied about there being a second attack. This was long suspected but only recently confirmed by declassified information and a report by an NSA historian. New documents and tapes revealed that there was no second attack on US Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in early August 1964. In fact, the evidence confirms the deliberate attempt by Secretary of Defense McNamara to distort what happened. These falsified reports misled Congress and was the pretext and justification for US putting boots on the ground in Vietnam.
The US had economic interests in having all of Vietnam commit to capitalism. They feared losing influence and that a domino effect would occur unless they forced Vietnam to succumb to their economic system, and that's why and how the US intervened in Vietnam.
*Rambo: First Blood Part II* traffics in a now-disproved conspiracy theory that following the end of US intervention in Vietnam, there were thousands of servicemen captured behind enemy lines and that for years, even decades after, they suffered as POWs. Prior to the Richard Nixon administration, the US armed forces used a different classification for servicemen who could not be accounted for: KIA/BNR. This classification reported the near certainty that if a serviceman's body could not be found, said serviceman was either a casualty or, in extremely rare cases, only missing.
President Nixon needed new propaganda to popularize an unpopular conflict. His administration spun the idea that since servicemen were missing, that meant they were almost certainly prisoners. During the conflict, some servicemen were taken prisoner, of course, but by changing the classification to POW/MIA, with POW "king top billing," the implication for the public was obvious. This implication remained in the consciousness even after US withdrawal and after all prisoners were released. According to Nathan Smith of *The Outline*, this transformed the war from a political issue into a humanitarian one, trading public support for sympathy. "It didn't matter why we were there in the first place. Our boys were there, and by God, we were going to do anything to get our boys home."
The reality is that following said withdrawal, no US servicemen have ever been confirmed to still be prisoners. Conspiracy theorists claim that roughly 2,000 servicemen were unaccounted for in Vietnam and associated theaters throughout Indochina, but that is not confirmation that they remain prisoners. Sadly, it means they were casualties. In truth, the vast majority of servicemen and missing in action during US military operations over the past century were simply casualties whose bodies could not be recovered or identified.
Here are some statistics cited from *M.I.A. or Myth-Making in America* by historian H. Bruce Franklin: In nearly all armed conflicts, servicemen are lost without being identified. More than 78,000 fighting the Axis powers alone, that constitutes roughly 19 percent of casualties. In Korea, bodies that could not be recovered or identified is a similar 15 percent of casualties. When POW/MIA conspiracy theorists list the 2,255 unaccounted for servicemen, they claim that that must mean they are imprisoned somewhere in Indochina, somehow even out of the reach of sophisticated satellites that can track everyone on the planet. They see this as a smoking gun, but in reality, that is a considerably smaller 4% of casualties. In all conflicts, servicemen are missing because their bodies could not be recovered or identified. Missing does not equal imprisoned. Without evidence, and there has simply been no evidence whatsoever.
From the same book: Years of espionage, interrogation, spy flights, satellite observation, and even raids on suspected sites have produced not one piece of tangible evidence of their existence. This last assertion might infuriate many believers because they are certain of overwhelming evidence. Some could immediately cite a specific example of tangible evidence, such as the "secret Fort Apache photograph," the existence of which can be denied only because of an elaborate government conspiracy that has been concealing it from the American public. This elaborate government conspiracy, in turn, has become another crucial component of the myth, and arguments about its existence lead in ever-widening spirals to the broadest significance of the myth itself.
In *First Blood Part II*, John Rambo and his superior officers discuss the conspiracy theory at length, but when they speak of these mysterious prisoners, they do so matter-of-factly, as if it were a foregone conclusion. By the time the film had been made, the conspiracy theory had already permeated throughout the nation, due in no small part to the changing classification of POW/MIA and other attempts to change the public image of armed forces. However, in a case of art imitating life and life in turn imitating art, this film and others like it helped maintain the conspiracy theory, keeping it alive throughout the eighties. The truth is, not one missing serviceman was ever confirmed to have remained a POW. US withdrawal, after decades of investigation, even cheerleaders for the cause in the US government were eventually resigned to admit that Vietnam really did return the POWs after all. Outside of the occasional disproved hoaxes, such as with the documentary *Unclaimed*, the theory has little lifeblood among those who have done even a cursory examination of the topic. Yet, the flag still waves, and some of that is almost certainly due to the fictional exploits of John Rambo.
In the film, Rambo is released by Colonel Trautman on the condition that he find evidence that POWs are still alive. Rambo is told not to rescue them himself, but nobody tells Rambo what to do, so he just does it anyway. His superior officer, Murdock, doesn't actually want to pressure a real rescue for political reasons. This feeds into the part of the conspiracy theory that, in addition to Vietnam hiding the truth about these secret POWs, the US government somehow is to accept when it's the entity that's pushing this theory in the first place. Of course, then they are trying to recover the POWs, except whether or not conspiracy theories without tangible evidence require the theorists to switch theories when one becomes inconvenient, but then come back to it when it is more convenient for our country to love us as much as we love it.
*First Blood Part II* is a beloved film among conservatives, rewriting Vietnam not as a conflict to maintain US hegemony but as a battle between the goodies and the baddies, and the baddies were the ones holding the goodies hostage. In Hollywood's Vietnam, the Vietnamese are not the victims; only the Americans are victims. "You must know the truth. You must know that your ideals are within realistic grasp, and then pursue them with a vengeance." That was a character that can represent a certain section of the American consciousness, and through the entertainment, also be educational, and that's why I think this movie is quite pertinent in that fact and has a lot of validity.
*Rambo III* picks up three years after the previous film left off. Rambo is now living in Thailand, and he apparently spent all his time getting swole. Colonel Trautman visits Rambo and gives him a new assignment: help the Mujahideen in Afghanistan fend off the Soviet Union. Much like *First Blood Part II*, *Rambo III* takes some facts from real-world politics and cleans them up to make the US look better. Jacob Knight once wrote: "*First Blood Part II* becomes the quintessential representation of American foreign policy during the Reagan years. Perhaps this is why *Rambo III* full-on literalized Reagan's ideology, as it takes down a filmic Cold War representation of the evil empire."
In *First Blood Part II*, the imprisonment is maintained with the help of the Soviet Union, but in *Rambo III*, the Soviet Union is in the center. Some background may be necessary. Russia had a long-standing relationship with Afghanistan dating back to 1919. Following the Russian Revolution, in 1947, the Soviet Union began giving large amounts of aid, economic assistance, and military hardware to Afghanistan. A military alliance began on a regular basis in 1956 and strengthened throughout the 70s. The United States, concerned about their loss of influence in the region, began supplying rebels in Afghanistan who were opposed to Soviet influence. For this reason and others, tensions rose. In 1979, the Soviet Union took greater control of Afghanistan, effectively an invasion, and the US began an even greater effort towards supplying the rebels, the Mujahideen, with arms. Enter *Rambo III*. The film presents US interventionism as the cure for communism. Years later, the US would be the invaders in Afghanistan, making this moment some unfortunate, unintentional foreshadowing.
"You sure don't want to stay? You'll find good foreign tourists, maybe next time." Yikes. *Rambo III* once again tries to relitigate Vietnam while barely referencing it. If the film had any self-awareness, it would recognize that the Soviets invading Afghanistan and the Mujahideen fighting back is akin to the US invading Vietnam and the Communists fighting back. But *Rambo III* does not see it that way. Instead, it frames the Soviets as the North Vietnamese (since they are both communists), the Mujahideen as the Southern Vietnamese, and the US as, well, the US valiantly fighting for the South. Much like in *First Blood Part II*, John Rambo allows the US to win Vietnam at this time, just on different soil. By the end of the second movie, the prisoners are brought home, and by the end of the third movie, history is rewritten, and the conflict in Vietnam is symbolically won in another country.
Galen Stutler and David Deser, in an article from *Scraps from the Loft*, once wrote: "The pain of history, its delimiting effect on action, is often seen a political, a cultural, and national liability. Therefore, contemporary history has been the subject of an ideological battle which seeks to rewrite, to rehabilitate controversial and ambiguous events through the use of symbols. One arena of ongoing cultural concern in the United States is our involvement in Vietnam. It seems clear that reconstituting an image, a memory of Vietnam under the impetus of Reaganism appears to fulfill a specific ideological mission. The right-wing films, especially Rambo, most clearly demonstrate the strategy of mythic substitution or displacement. Rambo demonstrates a cultural parallel, a luxury aiding in the symptoms of a desperate ideological repression manifested in the inability to speak of or remember the painful past, a cultural hysteria in which violence must substitute for understanding, victimization for responsibility, the personal for the political."
"We'll walk out of this film being entertained, and if you can make a statement and also entertain, that's the most important thing for me. It should be noted that throughout the second and third movie, Rambo's post-traumatic stress disorder has seemingly vanished. God, he's the weary, broken man who fought for his country under false pretenses. Now Rambo is a one-man slaughter machine." The US military loved this. Army recruiters were reported to have put up Rambo posters to encourage young people to enlist. Rambo rewrote military history but also furthered the US military contemporaneously.
President Ronald Reagan, in a comment just before he addressed the nation in the Oval Office, was caught on a hot microphone saying, "Boy, after seeing Rambo last night, I know what to do the next time this happens." Reagan loved Rambo, referencing it again when promoting his tax plan. In fact, "When I think of all the good people who've pleaded with the federal government for years to clean up our tax structure, I am reminded of a recent very popular movie. And in the spirit of Rambo, let me tell you, we're going to win this time. We're going to win this time." That's what John Rambo says he wants at the beginning of *First Blood Part II*, and that's the Rambo series: the victimization of the US military while taking no responsibility for its victimization of others. The idea that the tragedy of Vietnam was not that it happened, but only that the United States lost. A misunderstanding of that moment in history and an attempt to obfuscate and rewrite that history. And we're trying to make this as realistic as possible, so to do this has been a difficult affair.
Troutman is taken hostage in Afghanistan, and it's interesting because no other reason on earth kicks Rambo to move to go after the one person who listened to him more than anyone else.