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Vietnam

The People vs. Agent Orange

March 5, 2021 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

“[It] doesn’t go away. It goes away politically/”

Most of us associate Agent Orange with the Vietnam War. The defoliant was used extensively in that war, both to eliminate the cover of jungle and to destroy crops. It also became a major veterans’ issue, when many veterans contracted cancers. But The People vs. Agent Orange, a documentary from Alan Adelson and Kate Taverna, show us the ways Agent Orange continues to affect life, both in Vietnam and the US.

The film touches on the use of the chemicals in the war, and briefly on the veterans’ issues involves. But a good part of the film focuses on the use of Agent Orange by the timber industry in Oregon. After clear cutting, in order to replant whole hillsides, the logging companies would spray with Agent Orange before replanting. For the wildlife and the people who lived in that area, serious health and reproductive problems followed. People organized and sought to end it, only to face intimidation. But eventually the courts ordered a stop to the use of one of the two chemicals that made up Agent Orange.

The film also focuses on the price that is still being paid in Vietnam. Because dioxin, part of Agent Orange, does not go away—either in the land or the body—Vietnam continues to have a very high rate of serious birth defects. As a result, Tran To Nga, a Vietnamese woman, is suing the manufacturers in a French court, in order to seek accountability. (The U.S. courts have not allowed such a suit.)

This film is a look at a very important issue, but it failed to create a significant emotional response in me. In part that is because so much of the film seems to be ancient history. The events in Oregon took place forty or more years ago. There are still effects, and one of the key components is still being used there, but the film doesn’t really bring the problem to the present, except with the children with deformities in Vietnam.

The film also fails to provide all the links needed to fully make its case. For example, the chemical that includes dioxin is not longer used in Oregon, but the film fails to provide sufficient evidence that the remaining chemical being used is also damaging to the environment. (I don’t doubt it is, but the film doesn’t prove it.)

Because it is so much based in the past, the film can’t really serve as a call to arms against an injustice. Nga’s attempt to hold companies accountable is a noble effort, but it’s not really something we can get behind. The real problem, which the film doesn’t really get into, is an overall inability to hold companies liable for the harm they do. This is really a political issue as much as a legal one. That is an area that people can seek change. But that’s not where the film leads us.

The People vs. Agent Orange is available via virtual cinema through local theaters.

Filed Under: Featured, Film, Reviews Tagged With: birth defects, documentary, independent lens, legal issues, Oregon, PBS, pesticides, Vietnam

M*A*S*H – Showing the Folly of the Times

January 5, 2018 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

“This isn’t a hospital; it’s an insane asylum!”

I was in college, of prime draft age, when M*A*S*H hit the theaters in 1970. That probably says a lot about what I found so appealing about that film when I first saw it. It also explains why when it played at AFI Fest as part of a Robert Altman retrospective that I felt compelled to see it again and compare it to that first encounter.

The film was somewhat eclipsed by the TV series starring Alan Alda. And it is good to keep the two versions separate. The film version has an entirely different cast (except for Gary Burghoff who played “Radar” O’Reilly in both versions) and a very different tone and outlook than the more lighthearted (though often very poignant) TV series. The film is often described as antiwar (especially since it came out in the midst of the Vietnam War), but it really says less about war per se than about the iconoclasm of that particular time in American history. Even though the film is set in the Korean War, it was almost a given that viewers would read this as commentary on Vietnam.

The film synopsizes itself in a PA announcement at the end of the film:

Attention. Tonight’s movie has been “M*A*S*H.” Follow the zany antics of our combat surgeons as they cut and stitch their way along the front lines, operating as bombs — operating as bombs and bullets burst around them; snatching laughs and love between amputations and penicillin. Follow Hawkeye, Trapper, Duke, Dago Red, Painless, Radar, Hot Lips, Dish and Staff Sergeant Vollmer as they put our boys back together again.

Altman often put together ensembles that were more about the collected talent than any one person being the star. That is certainly true in M*A*S*H. The cast included Donald Sutherland (Hawkeye), Elliot Gould (Trapper John), Tom Skerritt (Duke), Robert Duvall (Frank Burns), Sally Kellerman (“Hot Lips” Houlihan), John Schuck (“Painless” Waldowski), Rene Auberjonoir (Father Mulcahy, aka Dago Red), and many others.

I think what made this film so appealing to a 19-year-old college student was the utter disdain the film had for all institutions. Altman had a reputation for being a maverick or subversive in his films. The military was the main butt of jokes in the film. The doctors were all draftees. All of the regular army officers were pompous and out of touch. They were more concerned with regulations than saving lives. Those who try to do things the Army way are constantly made to look foolish and impotent. At a time when many in this country were becoming increasingly anti-military in response to the war, that resonated strongly.

The film also skewered religion. Religion comes into play in various ways. Frank Burns is a zealot. When Hawkeye and Duke show up as new surgeons they are put into a tent with Burns. He is teaching a local boy to read using the Bible. He prays fervently only to be ridiculed by the other. In time he is shown to be a hypocrite. Father Mulcahy is treated more kindly, but only because he is seen as innocuous. His efforts as a priest are really ineffectual and impotent. It is almost as if he is seen by the doctors as a child. The height of the mocking of religion is the “Last Supper” scene which many may consider as bordering on sacrilege. In it the characters eat a final meal before Painless’s planned suicide. As they gather at a table in a tent, they are positioned exactly like Jesus and the Twelve in DaVinci’s painting.

The film’s anti-religious sentiment was also very much a part of the zeitgeist. Even though I attended a Christian college, this way of seeing religion reflected my own views of the institution of religion. In those days, we wanted to find a simpler expression of faith. This was also the time of the hippy-like Jesus People, and musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, all of which reflected attempts at new ways of understanding Christianity.

But all of these things I expected when I watched the film at AFI Fest. What struck me after nearly fifty years was the extent to which this film objectified women. The women served as the focus of lust. Even those who exhibited some kind of competence (Major Houlihan, Lieutenant “Dish”) all served to make life better for the men in the film. This was especially noteworthy since the day before the screening at AFI Fest, women gathered at Hollywood and Highland for a protest march about sexual harassment in the film industry. I expect that this attitude was also very much in line with the times. Women’s liberation existed only in a nascent form. This film would be criticized today for this treatment of the women characters.

In some ways this film may seem a bit anachronistic. After all the draft has been gone for over forty years. The all-volunteer armed forces are much different than the Vietnam and Korean War versions. And my generation has become a part of many of the institutions that we so wanted to tear down. (Hopefully, we’ve managed to change them more than they have changed us.)

But M*A*S*H still represents an attitude that needs to be a part of our culture. It looks at the foolishness that is nearly always found in things (like war) that demands to be taken seriously. It’s not a bad idea to step back from time to time and make note of the folly around us. And since I’m no longer that young would-be rebel, I (and my generation) may be in line to be the focus of the satire.

Filed Under: #tbt, Film, Reviews Tagged With: AFIFest, Donald Sutherland, draft, Elliot Gould, Gary Burghoff, Korean War, National Film Regisrty, Rene Auberjonois, Robert Altman, Robert Duvall, Sally Kellerman, satire, Vietnam, war

Quarry Season One: Welcome Home, Veterans

December 6, 2016 by Jacob Sahms Leave a Comment

quarry

Quarry, the latest Cinemax original series, details the life and times of Mac Conway, a Vietnam vet who returns home to a less-than-happy homecoming in 1972. Set in Memphis, the show pulls back any curtain of glamorized war, showing the rough welcome that the Marine receives – and the way he struggles to re-enter the society he left behind.

Logan Marshall-Green plays the show’s ‘hero,’ Conway, adding to his resume that includes Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and a Marvel Universe villain in Spiderman: Homecoming. He’s joined by Jodi Balfour as Conway’s wife, Jodi, and a host of other characters who flesh out both sides of the law. See, when Mac can’t settle in, he gets a job as a hitman – crossing over the line from war abroad to violence at home.

quarry2Max Allan Collins’ series is on its way – and there are a total of twelve novels, so there’s even more information than those guys over at HBO have to work out George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. [At least the Quarry novels are in the bag!] But it goes beyond entertainment – there are some real questions here about how veterans are received and perceived, and what we think about acceptable forms of violence. Similar in some regards to recent arguments about NFL players and their off field violent instincts, Quarry wrestles with it even if it never completely unpacks the process.

Will it entertain you? Most likely. Will it make you think? If you’re willing to let it. Either way, I don’t think that the close of the eighth episode is the last we’ve seen of Mr. Conway.

Filed Under: DVD, Reviews, SmallFish, Television Tagged With: Cinemax, Quarry, Vietnam

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