The Role of Propaganda in China Gate, The Green Berets, and Rambo: First Blood, Part Two :: Movie Film Essays

The Role of Propaganda in China Gate, The Green Berets, and Rambo: First Blood, Part Two â€Å"Film has established itself as a major medium by which our culture reflects and shapes its reality† (Taylor 186). Nowhere is Bruce Taylor’s statement made more clear than in movies about the Vietnam War. While some films, like Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, illustrate how horrible the army can be, other Vietnam War films glorify the armed services and American superiority in an attempt to alleviate the public’s fears that the war was a negative undertaking. China Gate (1957), The Green Berets (1968), and Rambo: First Blood, Part Two (1985) all glorify Americans at war. As Leo Cawley claims in his essay, â€Å"The War about the War: Vietnam Films and American Myth,† they sought to show that â€Å"the Americans are the good guys, the Viet Cong are the bad guys, and the peasants are the frightened townsfolk who need protection and rule of law† (74). The characters in these films have no ambiguity to them, but rather just the opposite : they are either paradigms of goodness or pillars of evil. By analyzing these one-dimensional characterizations, we are clearly able to see the propaganda in these films. Propaganda in films did not begin with the sending of U.S. troops to Vietnam. As the French were slowly losing the battle in Southeast Asia in the 1950s and the United States was consequently taking over monetary as well as human forces there, an explanation was necessary for the American people. Samuel Fuller’s China Gate was made to offer just that. Filmed when the U.S. was already active in Vietnam but not yet involved in an outright war, the movie, which has â€Å"a rather clear political intent,† attempts to, as David E. Whillock says, â€Å"produce a positive image of involvement in Southeast Asia to the American public† (305). The film seeks to influence American audiences against the Communists and to show the public that Americans are just trying to help the poor South Vietnamese. Made at a time when the Red Scare was at its height, China Gate is an obvious representation of the fear of Communism in that era. In fact, at the time the film was ma de, there were over two hundred suspected Communists blacklisted by the Hollywood studios themselves (Belton 242). This attitude comes through in the film right from the beginning with a voice-over that Rick Berg, in his essay â€Å"Losing Vietnam: Covering the War in an Age of Technology,† calls a â€Å"political endorsement disguised as a history lesson† (53).