{"id":212328,"date":"2025-04-29T07:18:37","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T07:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-april-29-2025-ending-the-vietnam-war-first-blood\/"},"modified":"2025-04-29T07:18:37","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T07:18:37","slug":"americanstudies-april-29-2025-ending-the-vietnam-war-first-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=212328","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: April 29, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: First Blood"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[On April 30,
\n1975<\/a>, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace in
\nSaigon, a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. That
\nconclusion has been represented frequently & complicatedly in American
\nmedia, so this week for its 50th<\/sup> anniversary I\u2019ll AmericanStudy a
\nhandful of such representations!]<\/p>\n

On what an
\niconic film speech gets wrong about the end of the war, and what it gets very
\nright.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve
\nwritten a few times previously in
\nthis space<\/a> about First Blood<\/i> (1982), and specifically about John Rambo\u2019s final speech<\/a> to
\nhis Vietnam War Colonel about his experiences during and after that conflict. I\u2019d
\nask you to check out both that prior post and that clip of Rambo\u2019s speech (if
\nyou don\u2019t already know it), and then come on back for a couple more thoughts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Welcome
\nback! One frustrating part of Rambo\u2019s speech is his reference to the
\nmyth of spitting protesters<\/a>, which as I discuss at length in that
\nhyperlinked post (quoting Jerry Lembcke\u2019s excellent book The
\nSpitting Image<\/a><\/i>) <\/i>seems pretty clearly to have been invented long
\nafter the fact (around the time of First Blood<\/i>, in fact). But in terms
\nof the end of the war, I think his angry assertion that \u201cI did what I had to do
\nto win, but somebody wouldn\u2019t let us win!\u201d is equally inaccurate and dangerous.
\nI have to imagine that he\u2019s referring to ideas like that of the controversial General Curtis
\nLeMay<\/a>, who wanted to \u201cbomb [North Vietnam] back into the Stone Age.\u201d I don\u2019t
\nthink many (if any) military strategists or historians believe such actions
\nwould have \u201cwon\u201d the war, but rather would have just caused infinitely more
\ndeath and destruction while turning the Vietnamese people even more fully
\nagainst the United States. And in any case, to my mind the Vietnam War\u2019s trajectory
\nand ending weren\u2019t in the slightest about what \u201csomebody\u201d would or wouldn\u2019t \u201clet\u201d
\nthe U.S. forces do\u2014and defining the war as such both removes all agency from
\nthe Vietnamese and suggests that mass death and destruction would have been
\npreferable.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I don\u2019t
\nthink Rambo\u2019s final speech gets the end of the war right, and I think it likewise
\ngives into mythic us-vs.-them depictions of anti-war protesters. But one thing
\nthis scene (and certainly Stallone\u2019s excellent performance in it) captures
\nquite powerfully is
\nthe PTSD<\/a> that so many returning Vietnam vets suffered from, the impact of
\ntheir experiences and memories on their (already challenging and fraught) lives
\nback on the homefront. The speech\u2019s tearful final lines, including such phrases
\nas \u201cI can\u2019t get it out of my head,\u201d \u201csometimes I wake up and I dunno where I
\nam,\u201d and \u201cI dream of it every day for seven years,\u201d puts a profoundly human
\nface and voice to those veterans\u2019 issues\u2014and the fact that that face and voice
\nbelong to the badass physician specimen and warrior-type that was the young
\nSylvester Stallone only adds to our recognition that these challenges can and
\ndid happen to everyone. While the end of the Vietnam War meant many things, here
\nin the U.S. that\u2019s what it truly meant, what all these vets brought home with
\nthem\u2014and First Blood<\/i> gets that note very right. <\/span><\/p>\n

Next
\nportrayal tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What
\ndo you think? Representations of the war you\u2019d highlight? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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