Representing the Vietnamese: Race, culture, and the Vietnam War in American film and drama

My dissertation examines the ways in which the Vietnamese were represented in cinematic and theatrical recreations of the Vietnam War. This analysis will illuminate how the images and themes of such works either reinterpret, reinvent, or reinforce earlier depictions of race and culture as established within the film and stage combat genre. These fictional depictions of the Vietnamese will be situated in the larger context of previous cinematic and theatrical portrayals of non-white "enemies" or Others during and after America's wars (on both foreign and American soil). I will also argue that the Vietnamese presented a unique threat to our national identity and cultural mythology due to domestic and international perceptions of Vietnam as the first war ever "lost" by America. This ongoing tension and ambiguity impacted on the post-war discourse which attempted to "come to terms" with our military involvement in Vietnam and redefine our sense of "Americanness" in various representations of the war.;Indeed, the plays and films of the Vietnam War differ most clearly from those of earlier wars in their frequent portrayal of a divided America, with the fracturing of American cohesiveness in Vietnam mirroring the inflammatory milieu of our home front during the 1960s and early 1970s. Unlike many of the plays and films made about World War Two, the Vietnam War texts rarely depicted a unified American presence at war, nor hopes for victory or the preservation of democratic values. Consequently, an examination of how the portrayal of Americans of various cultural and racial backgrounds evolved in the combat genre is also relevant to the larger concerns of this study.;I believe that an analysis of the discourse which has represented the war and the Vietnamese on stage and screen can suggest a great deal about our own cultural myths and prejudices in the context of a larger political and historic framework. As a result, I hope this study will provide a fresh perspective on what remains a national obsession of sorts--the Vietnam War.