Graduation Semester and Year
Spring 2024
Language
English
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in History
Department
History
First Advisor
James Sandy
Second Advisor
Stephanie Cole
Third Advisor
Christopher Morris
Abstract
This project seeks to understand how American popular culture and Hollywood films represented American soldiers and veterans in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. war in Vietnam. America welcomed home its veterans in prior wars like WWII, but the U.S.'s war in Vietnam was different. Many Vietnam veterans were emotionally damaged and shunned from society because of the unpopularity of the war itself. Whether right or wrong, popular culture exposed this indifference. Popular culture is its own reality, but it portrayed Vietnam soldiers and veterans as losing their innocence, experiencing psychotic breaks, and becoming wounded due to their exposure to combat. Men were essentially unable to live up to pre-conceived notions of masculinity. These notions were promised to them by previous generations or shown to them in morally upstanding popular culture images of what an American soldier was supposed to represent.
Keywords
Hollywood's Vietnam
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Hamilton, Mary M., "And the enemy was in us: Vietnam War films and complicating visions of American Masculinity" (2024). History Theses. 1.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/history_theses/1