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Hollywood and the Culture of War
by Rod Oglesby
Having come of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I still find myself
having many of those famous Second Thoughts popularized by David
Horowitz (though I arrived at a different destination). To many of my
generation, this reconsideration is seen as anything from unnecessary to
bewildering. Most of the American public seems to share this attitude,
hence it's no wonder that the effects of bad foreign and economic policy
continue.
Congressman Charles Rangel (D, NY) recently proposed resurrecting the
military draft. It's a silly idea, but it reveals the current level of desperation
among pacifists to stop the fanatical war cabal in the White House. In 1968
I registered for the draft and waited for my birth date (August 31, 1950) to
be drawn for selection. August 31 drew number 11, and if it were not for
my 1-Y deferment (i.e., losing the use of my left arm to polio), I would have
been on my way to Southeast Asia. Many of my friends were "lucky"
enough to be selected, but I truly wanted to go. As the horrors and
futility of Vietnam now become more obvious with every passing year, what
was it that played a large part in convincing me that I wanted to go?
War and the Rise of Television
In the 1950s, World War II was still fresh in the public mind and television
was becoming an increasingly prominent part of everyday life. TV
programming in the 1950s was filled with Westerns and war movies balanced
with the occasional horror film at the local drive in. Westerns always had
good guys prevailing over bad guys by way of the gun. The adventures of
Wyatt Earp (Wyatt Earp), Johnny Uma (The Rebel), Paladin (Have Gun Will
Travel), Maverick (Maverick), Cheyenne (Cheyenne), and Marshall Dillon
(Gunsmoke) made the Western king. Virtually all Westerns centered on
bad guys committing a crime followed by good guys killing the bad guys for
their crime. This injected an atmosphere of self- righteous vigilantism into
the culture. Americans were inherently good people, could readily discern
good from evil, and therefore not only had the right to march around their
communities and cities like Robert Conrad with their chests puffed out,
but also march around the Western hemisphere or world and "put the
hurt" on people of whom they didn't approve.
During this time more literal enactments of war were of course found in
such conspicuous weekly TV dramas as 12 O’clock High and Combat. 12
O'clock was about the adventures of a squadron of B- 17s. Combat
documented the activities of a squad of American GIs in the European
theatre. When conducting their assigned patrol and encountering German
troops or winning over a German position, the small squad numbering 4–6
soldiers always implausibly survived the fierce fire fight while numerous
German soldiers were always killed. This military implausibility of Americans
winning just because they were good ol' Americans preceded the inane
Rambo series by decades. One can only wonder how the rest of the world
has marveled at our cultural arrogance as these movies and TV shows are
replayed overseas. One wonders what their appeal could be to the rest of
the world. My hunch is that some clever impresario has reclassified them
as comedies.
Military comedies continued the cultural dishonesty. Hogan’s Heroes and
McHale’s Navy seldom (if ever at all) showed hand-to-hand combat and
limited the human carnage and destruction of war to safely distant
explosions of bombs. The main characters were always heroes and rarely
did we see crew members suffer loss of life or limb or kill fellow soldiers in
agonizing incidents of friendly fire. In the interest of added realism, some
programs did allow some death. These "kill off" roles lasted for usually no
more than a few episodes. (It was truly a pity for any acting career to get
typecast into these roles.)
Movies could have been better at portraying the horror of war but were
only used to create a reason for a soldier to become a hero (e.g., to gladly
storm a position to become machine gun fodder). If killed, the soldier’s
sacrifice was always (unconvincingly) portrayed as leading to some
significant advance of Allied troops or the winning of a key battle. The
movie To Hell and Back (1955) was released as a dramatized autobiography
of the heroic achievements of Audie Murphy during the Second World
War. Awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, Audie was depicted as
willing to risk himself to save a position, a comrade, or the fate of a battle.
Much overlooked was the distinct possibility that there could have been
some not-so-admirable reasons for Audie's behavior. It's been said that
Audie’s attraction to heroic exploits was rooted in a psychological need to
"measure up" in terms of proving his manhood. His small stature caused him
to think that to be considered equal to other soldiers, he had to be
braver than they were, even to the point of recklessness.
In Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), John Wayne portrayed hardened Marine
sergeant John Stryker whose job was to eliminate individualism by training
recruits to "…move like one man and think like one man." The film
audience learns that good soldiers train harder than the enemy and do
what they are told. The actor John Agar played Conway, a cultured son of
a military hero who had an attitude of indifference ("I’m a civilian, not a
Marine. I’m strictly here for tradition."). Conway bucked against Stryker
and his tactics at every move. However, while daydreaming about his new
bride Conway is saved from injury from a grenade explosion by Stryker and
over time the anti-marine becomes Supermarine. So much so, in fact, that
near the end of the film with Stryker lying dead it is (surprise!) no one
other than Conway who effortlessly steps into Stryker's shoes telling the
other squad members, "Alright, saddle up. Let’s get back in the war!"
Sands, if anything, was excellent in selling the "adventure of war" to an
entire generation of innocent and impressionable young kids. The Marine
branch of the armed services viewed Sands as one of its best recruiting
films ever.
Children of the Baby Boom such as Ron Kovic grew up on a steady diet of
these war glorification films, and this primed them to be gun and bomb
fodder in Vietnam. Unfortunately for Mr. Kovic and many men like him, by
the time they learned the ugly real truth about war it was too late. In
retrospect, blind support for war was an objective Hollywood's producers
and directors accomplished with great success. It's too bad many of them
weren't sent to the front lines instead.
The small, blue-collar Midwest country town I was raised in was a place
where the VFW was dotingly honored and military service was
unquestioningly revered. In my teens the late 1960s presented me with the
Cold War, a time with which the current generation of young people is
increasingly unfamiliar. More so than today's background fear of terrorism
was the daily confrontation between the nuclear superpowers. Television
was a useful tool to drum a steady fear into the consciousness of America
about communism and Soviet expansion. Every move and countermove
between the superpowers was sensationalized nightly through the
reporting of Walter Cronkite. Nikita Khrushchev, then leader of the USSR,
was on television pounding his shoe on a podium telling the American
public, "We will bury you!"
Television thus played a role in centralizing the government's power. Fear
spread to small, local communities. In junior high school a course on
nuclear war and survival was offered. The feeling was pervasive that
nuclear destruction was imminent, so I eagerly took the course and
learned the proper way to build a fallout shelter, how long to remain in it
once the war started, what to stock it with, and where to find fresh water
and edible food during the first year or two after a nuclear attack. The
irony is that it was well known to the defense establishment that these
shelters would have been easily destroyed and hence useless in any large-
scale attack. Unless they had thick lead walls, they would have done little
to protect the occupants against dangerous gamma radiation. Yet the
defense establishment let the public engage in a ubiquitous survival-
planning charade for decades. "Duck and cover" bombing drills were
carried out with the same regularity as fire or storm drills, the latter
protecting children against much more plausible and survivable threats.
Civil Defense groups organized, provided guides for building and stocking
fallout shelters, and served as general organs propagating the Cold War
culture.
Most people of my generation have quickly forgotten the fear, paranoia,
and propaganda of this era through which we as young Americans
endured. Only in retrospect is it amazing that so many of us so
unquestioningly went along with it. We "knew" that war with the USSR
would lead to our annihilation and deterrence through a strong nuclear
arsenal was the only solution. It was known as MAD, mutually assured
destruction, and a mad season it was. Laughably, the cultural agitprop
insisted that the opportunity to be a traditional military hero was still alive.
Hero status was now said to be attainable through snitch behavior
designed to stop the Terrible Threat of Communism. Views of communism
like those of Murray Rothbard – that the Soviet menace, based as it was on
an incorrigibly flawed economy, was overblown – were seen as anything
from unpatriotic to loony. As time goes on, Rothbard seems to be
vindicated more and more. Nevertheless, the government used events in
Cuba to persuade us that the menace was very real: communism and
hostile missiles within 100 miles of a major US city. They were "coming to
get us" any day.
The litmus test of my generation's patriotism was Vietnam. Some of my
friends were drafted, others volunteered and went off to combat. I
received letters from one friend complaining not about the validity of the
war or the atrocities being committed by the likes of John Kerry, but
about not receiving letters from girls. Not getting letters from girls!
Imagine that. Here was someone who bought into the nonsense that
women were going to fawn all over him now that he was in the Army. After
all, they fawned all over John Wayne because he played soldier on the Big
Screen. Why wouldn't they fawn even more over the real McCoy?
Gil Stevens Wilfong (1950–1969)
The letters I most eagerly awaited were from my friend Gil. We grew up
together attending the same schools and church and becoming good
friends. He was a wonderful hunting, fishing, and camping companion. In
one of his letters sent to me from Nam, he revealed his desire to be a
helicopter door gunner. The Gil I knew could make it through anything,
but this concerned me. Helicopter door gunner was one of the most
perilous positions in the war. The only appeal it had to young,
impressionable guys like Gil was the glory of braving extreme danger to
protect comrades and "kill gooks." Gil swore me to strict confidence about
his desire for this dangerous position, imploring me not to tell his parents.
I tried to dissuade him, but my efforts were in vain. As I reflect on it now,
his impetuous desire to put himself in harm's way was exactly what the
fictional Stryker, Conway, and Thomas would have done. It is what I tried
to do but was prevented.
While my deferment kept me home, I counted the days until Gil's return. I
looked forward to us returning to afternoons of fishing at the lake, nights
sitting around the campfire joking, telling stories, and lying about girls. I
missed our trips rabbit hunting in the winter and our debates about which
brands of shotguns was the best.
I'll never forget the beautiful Sunday morning I walked to church and heard
the last thing I'd ever hear about Gil. As I approached the small building, an
ominous dark-colored car almost silently floated by me on the narrow,
gravel road on which I was walking. Like the Devil's hearse, the car came to
a quiet halt in the small white gravel church parking lot. Two men in crisp
officer uniforms got out of the vehicle and stiffly walked toward the
building with grave expressions on their faces. I got a sick feeling in the pit
of my stomach. As our paths toward the church sanctuary door
converged, their eyes met mine. I asked them if they needed any help.
One of them asked for directions to the church office. I accompanied
them to the office feeling sicker with every step. As I turned to walk away
from the office I overheard their request to see Mr. and Mrs. Wilfong, an
indescribable feeling of loss overcame me. All the beautiful aspects of
nature on that resplendent country morning suddenly seemed tenuous,
fleeting, and futile.
Late that afternoon, under a swollen and fading orange sun, I entered Gil's
home to offer my condolences to his parents. The living room of their small
home was crowded but subdued and somber. Immediately his mother saw
me and quietly approached. "Oh Rodney… we lost him," she gasped, tears
streaming down her face. Gil's father sat next to her in catatonic despair,
not even able to raise his eyes from the floor, never mind face anyone in
the room.
As I returned home in the late-summer twilight along that quiet road Gil
and I had so often traveled, it finally sunk in that he was gone forever.
Gone forever were our future night visits to the local drive in, future
afternoons watching baseball games, and our plans to live and raise families
near each other. The only thing left to fill his lively presence was a
deafening emptiness.
Send in the Clowns
It's a paradox that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Stryker and the rest of Hollywood's band of fictional war heroes from
yesteryear were just as deceptive as today's bloodthirsty
neoconservatives. War for world domination doesn't create heroes or
winners, just empty spaces where warm friends, dear family members, and
fond memories once stood. The Northeastern neocon elite doesn’t care
about this because their sons and daughters won't be the ones killing and
dying on the front lines of Dubya's war. In light of this, a revision of Charlie
Rangel's recent proposal just might be the answer: draft the neocons.
January 28, 2003
Rod Oglesby, PhD, CPA [send him mail], teaches accounting in Missouri. He
is treasurer of the Polk County Libertarian Party and the newest
contributor to AgainstTheCrowd.com.
Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com
Find this article at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/oglesby1.html
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