The Role of Propaganda in China Gate, The Green Berets, and Rambo: First Blood, Part Two :: Movie Film Essays

The Role of Propaganda in China entry, The Green Berets, and Rambo eldest Blood, parting TwoFilm has established itself as a major(ip) medium by which our culture reflects and shapes its reality (Taylor 186). Nowhere is Bruce Taylors record made more clear than in movies about the Vietnam fight. While some films, like Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket, illustrate how horrible the regular army can be, other Vietnam War films glorify the armed services and American superiority in an attempt to alleviate the publics fears that the fight was a negative undertaking. China Gate (1957), The Green Berets (1968), and Rambo First Blood, Part Two (1985) all glorify Americans at war. As Leo Cawley claims in his essay, The War about the War Vietnam Films and American Myth, they sought to show that the Americans ar the good guys, the Viet Cong atomic number 18 the bad guys, and the peasants are the f rightfulnessened townsfolk who fill protection and rule of law (74). The characters in these films have no equivocalness to them, but rather just the opposite they are either paradigms of virtuousness or pillars of evil. By analyzing these one-dimensional characterizations, we are clearly able to prove the propaganda in these films. Propaganda in films did not begin with the sending of U.S. troops to Vietnam. As the French were slowly losing the battle in Southeast Asia in the mid-fifties and the United States was consequently taking over monetary as head as human forces there, an explanation was necessary for the American people. Samuel Fullers China Gate was made to offer just that. Filmed when the U.S. was already active in Vietnam but not yet involved in an outright war, the movie, which has a rather clear political intent, attempts to, as David E. Whillock says, bring about a positive image of involvement in Southeast Asia to the American public (305). The film seeks to influence American audiences against the Communists and to show the public that A mericans are just trying to help the poor South Vietnamese. Made at a time when the Red Scare was at its height, China Gate is an obvious representation of the fear of Communism in that era. In fact, at the time the film was made, there were over two hundred guess Communists blacklisted by the Hollywood studios themselves (Belton 242). This attitude comes through in the film right from the beginning with a voice-over that Rick Berg, in his essay Losing Vietnam Covering the War in an Age of Technology, calls a political endorsement disguised as a history lesson (53).