VISUAL MEDIA AND VIETNAM WAR

Visual Media and Vietnam War

Abstract

Nearly three decades have passed since the final US military casualties were suffered in Vietnam. The social and political turmoil that were the products of US involvement in Indochina have been the subject of a number of books and films that have appeared in the intervening years. But earnest efforts to comprehend and interpret the events that comprised the Vietnam War require access to a source that carefully documents the actual military hostilities and identifies its primary architects. Edwin E. Moise has brought scholarly energy and expertise to this task in his Historical Dictionary of the Vietnam War, the seventeenth title in Scarecrow's series of historical dictionaries that treat the topics of warfare and civil unrest.

Table Of Content

Abstract2

Table Of Content3

Chapter - 14

Introduction4

Background4

Media Coverage Uncensord5

The Turning Point6

Withdrawal from Vietnam9

Effect The Later War11

Chapter - 214

Literature Review14

Tet Offensive16

Visual Media and the Vietnam War28

Television28

Early Coverage30

Public Opinion32

Veteran Perspective32

Veterans' Pre-War Interpretations33

Experiences in Vietnam versus Portrayal on TV35

Overall View of Television Coverage38

The Vietnam Veteran's Image40

Vietnam Films43

Vietnam War Secrets45

Chapter - 349

Conclusion49

References50

Appendix61

Chapter - 1

Introduction

Background

This volume has much to offer those with research interests that include the political, military, and social history of Southeast Asia and the USA. Its introductory chronology reveals the author's meticulous efforts to present the story of the Vietnam conflict in all its complexity. Covering the period from 1954 to 2001, its entries describe a half-century of events that began with the political disarray that accompanied French withdrawal and ended with Vietnam's continuing hostilities with Cambodia as well as the most recent US efforts to normalize diplomatic relations and trade. The overview chapter which precedes the dictionary touches on the many aspects of the conflict which render it, according to Moise, particularly difficult to analyze even with the perspective gained by time and distance: its precise political origins, US bombing strategy, and the broad consequences of the manner in which the US media reported and portrayed the war.

There are just over 600 entries in the Dictionary. For the most part, they are concentrated on subjects that are directly related to the political and military prosecution of the war. These articles identify and describe in detail the military personnel and political entities that populated all sides of the conflict, as well as the major engagements, weaponry, rivers, and locations that were influential in determining its course. In keeping with the comprehensive nature of the coverage, Moise includes entries on key Laotian and Cambodian figures. The list of subjects is long and diverse enough to include US military slang such as “fragging”, which was an outgrowth of the low morale that eventually plagued the army and involved rolling a live hand grenade into a superior's tent. Entries range in length from a sentence or two to several pages for more complex topics. Highlighted terms within an entry indicate that the reader will find a separate article for that subject.

Media Coverage Uncensord

In spite of the immediate institution of censorship after the outbreak of World War II, the war represented the ...