Some light reading!

Forgot to mention all of the books and movies that I have been reading to prepare me for the trip.. For my actual classes at HWS, I was assigned to read four different books covering the span of media influence on American understanding and conceptualization of the Vietnam War. These books were (in order): Vietnam and Other American Fantasies, The Things They Carried, How the War Was Remembered: Hollywood and Vietnam, and Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam. Each book touched on major issues surrounding the media's involvement in the war in Vietnam, and the final book created a very interesting juxtaposition of lessons from the war in Vietnam and their influence on our current conflict in Iraq. To give you the reader's digest version of how I felt about these books... ALKSDJFLAKJSDLKFJALSKDJ! I could not believe how much I didn't know about the war, how much a lot of us do not know about the war. The distortion of reality and truth still continues, even today, which is something we must all be aware of as we are currently involving ourselves in another imperialistic vendetta, teeming with similarities to our involvement in Vietnam.

The movies were great too. Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, John Wayne's The Green Berets, and Oliver Stone's Platoon all portrayed the war in very different facets. I had seen The Deer Hunter before, but setting it against Wayne's overly jingoistic and patriotic Green Berets definitely made me think of both movies as they would affect their audiences, not just as they portrayed the war. Jeeze John Wayne, propaganda piece much?? I thought Platoon above the other two represented the war in the most honest fashion. It was a plotless piece, which highlighted how disoriented and disconnected a soldier must have felt during the war. Charlie Sheen was great in it.

In terms of other reading, Mom bought me two non-fiction accounts of American women traveling in Vietnam in the early 90s. Good reads. Grandma- thanks for the DVDs of travel! And Paul, the book of photos is gorgeous. Now I have some ideas for photos of my own! Three days and counting...