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Search and Destroy: The Drama of the Vietnam War

1990; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3207555

1086-332X

Toby Silverman Zinman,

Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

The Vietnam War is, once again, a media event. New films about the war thrive in movie theaters, old films about the war thrive in video shops, and the critical attention they have received both by the press and the academy amounts to a minor industry.' The sure sign that the Vietnam War has won the hearts and minds of America again is its reappearance on television-China Beach, Tour of Duty, and PBS documentaries revisiting My Lai. All this may well be a function of nostalgia rather than political conscience, but in all the resurgent interest there has been remarkably little performance of or discussion of Vietnam War drama. This omission seems to be not only a reflection of American society's preference for the staggeringly grisly special effects film can provide and for the quick sentimental fix TV can provide but also a tacit critical comment on the moral and artistic inadequacy of the plays themselves.