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The Vietnam war on prime time television: Focus group aided rhetorical criticism of American myths in “Tour of Duty” and “China Beach”

Marshall, Scott Wayne, Ph.D.

The Ohio State University, 1993

Copyright ©1993 by Marshall, Scott Wayne. All rights reserved.

UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106

THE VIETNAM WAR ON PRIME TIME TELEVISION:

FOCUS GROUP AIDED RHETORICAL CRHICISM OF

AMERICAN MYTHS IN TOUR OF DUTY AND CHINA BEACH

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of the Ohio State University

By

Scott Wayne Marshall, B.A., M.A.

The Ohio State University 1993

Dissertation Committee: Approved by J. Dimmick

S.K. Foss

J. Darsey / Adviser Department of Communication Copyright by Scott W. Marshall 1993 VITA

June 29,1960...... Born - LaCrosse, Wisconsin

1982 ...... B.A., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

1985 ...... M.A., Communication Department, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1985 ...... Visiting Instructor Communication Department, Miami University of Ohio, Oxford, Ohio

1990 - Present...... Assistant Professor, Communication Program, Sangamon State University, Springfield, Illinois

PUBLICATIONS

Marshall, S.W. & J.P. Williams (1991). Yes, doctor; no, major: rhetorical analysis of a media-generated relationship. In C.Scodari & J.M. Thorpe, Eds., Media Criticism: Explorations in Interpretation, Kendall/Hunt: Dubuque, lA.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Communication

Studies in: Rhetorical Criticism, Mass Communication, Feminist Theory

11 TABLE OF CONTENTS

VITA ...... ii CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION...... 1

General Nature of the Topic ...... 2 Vietnam on Entertainment Television ...... 4 Vietnam Television Drama: Made for Television Movies ...... 10 The Metnam War and Series Television ...... 11 The Vietnam War on Prime Hme: Tv/o Television Series Emerge ... 15 Realism, Television Drama and Social Issues ...... 17 Storytelling and Television M yth...... 19 The Vietnam War: A Divisive American Issue ...... 21

H: REVIEW OF LITERATURE...... 24

Communication Research and the Vietnam War: General ...... 27 General Tlreoretical Perspective on M yth...... 34 Myth and Communication Scholarship ...... 38 Myth and Media Criticism...... 40 Television and M yth...... 46 Two Perspectives: Universal or Cultural M yth ...... 50 A Distinct American Mythos and Hero C ycle...... 51 Mythic Heroes as Gender Role M odels...... 61 American Myth and the Vietnam War...... 65 Gender Roles and the Vietnam W ar ...... 70 Summary: American Myth, Gender Roles and the Vietnam War on Network Entertainment Television ...... 72 Research Questions ...... 75

111 Ill: METHOD ...... 80

Critical Theory...... 82 Focus Groups ...... 89 Data Collection...... 94 Criteria for Selection of Focus Group Participants ...... 96 Recruitment of Focus Group Participants ...... 97 Focus Group Design ...... 100 Recording and Reporting of Focus Group Conversations ...... 102 Focus Group Protocol and Research Questions: Introduction ...... 103 The Focus Group Protocol: Facsimile ...... 104 Explanation of the Focus Group Protocol by Section...... 107 Organization and Analysis of Focus Group Results...... 112 Use of Focus Group D iscussions ...... 114 Focus Group Results and Final Criticism of the Series ...... 115

IV RESULTS...... 116

Preliminary Descriptive Criticism: Tour of D uty...... 116 Preliminary Descriptive Criticism: China Beach...... 122

Summary of Men's Focus Group Responses...... 127 II. Preliminary Questions...... 127 Regular Viewing and Why the Men Watched...... 127 III. Focus Group Questions: Men's Impression of the Series ...... 129 Men's General Impression of the Series and the Basis for I t ...... 130 Messages Men Associated with the Series ...... 132 Men's Memorable Qiaracters, Interactions & Conflicts ...... 133 Men's Memorable Conflicts: Resolutions & Omissions ...... 135 IV. Focus Group Questions Related to Research Question O ne ...... 141 Global Police Officer: Men's Beliefs Then and N o w ...... 141 Global Police Officer: Series vs. Men's E xperience ...... 146 V. Focus Group Questions Related to Research Question Two ...... 150 Men's Assessment of Gender Roles of Series Characters ...... 150 Men's Assessment of Gender Roles in Their Metnam Experience . . 153 Men's Discussion of Gender Roles and Modern Warfare...... 155 Men's Perception of Effect of Military on Gender R o le s...... 157 Men's Discussion of Series Portrayal of Military's Effect on Gender Roles...... 158 Men's Discussion of Series and Changes in Gender Roles ...... 160

Summary of Women's Focus Responses...... 163 II. Preliminary Questions...... 163 Regular Mewing and Why the Women Watched...... 164

i v III. Focus Group Questions: Women's Impression of Series ...... 165 Women's General Impression of the Series and Basis for I t ...... 166 Message Women Associated with the Series ...... 169 W omen's Memorable Characters, Interactions & Conflicts ...... 171 W omen's Memorable Conflicts; Resolutions & Omissions ...... 181 IV. Focus Group Questions Related to Research Question O n e ...... 185 Global Police Officer: Women's Beliefs Then & Now, Series and Reality...... 185 V. Focus Group Questions Related to Research Question Two ...... 191 W omen's Assessment of Gender Roles of Series Characters ...... 191 W omen's \^ew of Gender Roles in Their Vietnam Experience 193 W omen's Discussion of Gender Roles and Modern Warfare...... 194 Women's Perception of Effect of Military on Gender Roles...... 196 W omen's Discussion of Series Portrayal of Military's Effect on Gender Roles...... 198 Women's Discussion of Change in Gender Roles: Tlien and N ow ...... 202 Overall Focus Group Summary...... 207

V: ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSONS...... 210

Focus Groups and the Series ...... 208 Review of the Heroic M odels ...... 215 Tour of Duty's Series Narrative ...... 218 China Beach's Series Narrative ...... 244 The Global Police Officer Myth in Focus Groups and the Series ...... 258 Men and the Global Police Officer ...... 258 W omen and the Global Police Officer ...... 260 Tire Series and the Global Police Officer M y th ...... 261 Gender Roles in Focus Groups and the Series ...... 264 Men and Gender Roles...... 264 W omen and Gender R oles...... 267 Series and Gender R oles...... 272 Discussion and Implications...... 272

WORKS CITED...... 282

V CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This study begins and ends with a particularly American social issue. It

is a rather large one and cannot be dealt with in its entirety in any single

study. That social issue is the Vietnam war. Regardless of one's stand on the

war then or on those since, it is clear that all American military activities

abroad in the past generation lie in the shadow of this unique police action.

In general, Vietnam is thought of as a context for American military action

and American foreign policy. This study does not deal with military matters,

foreign policy debates or historical time lines except as they relate to

American perceptions of the war. This study is an analysis of prime time tele­

vision use of American myths of national purpose and gender in series de­ picting the the Vietnam war. How did the major television networks use myth within the series format to make sense of a controversial and divisive issue and to portray their male and female characters in doing so?

This chapter consists of eight sections. The first outlines the general meaning of "Vietnam" for most Americans as a divisive topic. The second section examines questions about the war and focuses on television's enter­ tainment responses to a less-than-entertaining subject. The third section out­ lines networks' dramatic renditions of the subject in the form of television movies while the fourth section examines the place the war and veterans oc­ cupied in series television. The fifth section concerns the emergence of the two series under study:Tour of Duty and China Beach. Given that these 1 series were to "recreate" this controversial war as serious drama, the concept of realism portrayal of social issues on television is covered in the sixth section. Because this is a mythic criticism, the connections between television, storytelling and myth are discussed in the seventh section. The eighth section concerns

portrayal of Vietnam war on television as an issue suitable for mythic analysis within American culture. This chapter introduces Vietnam on American network television drama as a communication topic to be explored further in the the review of literature.

GENERAL NATURE OF THE TOPIC

Much of this study is focused on perceptions and assumptions, and the American mythology that both engenders and challenges them in regard to the

portrayal of the Vietnam war. Behind our relationships with other nations lie

the assumptions we use to conduct those relationships, and those assumptions are based upon our perception of who we are and what our country's role in the

world is to be. Those assumptions are outlined in our culture's mythos, or the collection of myths that help us to navigate the uncertainty of raw experience. In addition to fueling heated political and social debate, the Vietnam war spawned a highly successful commercial television series, M*A*S*H, ostensibly about

Korea, but dedicated to showing American audiences that "war in general and the Vietnam war in particular" were simply wrong (Gelbart in Reiss, 1983, p 157).

Mythic analysis of the series' run revealed the model development of the character of Margaret Houlihan as a female hero (Marshall, 1985, pp. 108-236). What mythic patterns would series overtly about Vietnam reveal, especially when one was devoted to the topic of women in Vetnam? The purpose of this study is to examine how two recent commercial television entertainment series have portrayed this unique war and how that examination can be augmented by input from expert viewers: men and women who are familiar with the series and who served in Vietnam during the war.

" \^etnam" does not mean "a southeast Asian country" in the context of American culture; it means a war that was a national, political and social sore point for years. Americans may try to avoid memories of the war, may try to understand it, to forget it, to discover more about it and perhaps argue about it, but we do not dismiss it as unimportant. We seek to learn military, social, political and personal lessons from the war and the controversy surrounding it. We respond to "\^etnam" as a story that influences our interpretation of current events. As such it is an American story, but the Vietnam-war-as-story lacks closure in a way consistent with American perceptions of the world and our national notions of our place in it.

This dissertation will be an exploration of the collective meaning of network television series drama depicting American involvement in the

Vietnam war. Myth-based media criticism directed by focus group interviews will be the method of analyzing the impressions made by these television series. Consideration of the 'Wetnam war as a vehicle for entertainment raises some questions: why would the sensitive topic of the Vietnam war be cast as evening television entertainment? How is the war depicted? What important characters are used to anchor the storylines of the programs? Given that the war itself was depicted in some detail, how might Vietnam war veterans, people who experienced what is portrayed by these series, respond to these programs? How might men and women respond to Tour of D u ty, which was targeted to a male audience and to China Beach, targeted predominantly to women? What potential do these programs have to inform viewers about the war, given that many people know little about the war? How do these series portray the war via characters representing people dealing with extraordinary circumstances: those of war itself and that of an unsuccessfully prosecuted American war, a phenomenon new to American culture. This study involves discovering both the implicit and explicit messages of television entertainment series' visions of the Metnam war: how the war is characterized, how are the people who fought it represented, and what visions of post-Vietnam America are presented.

In order to begin to answer these general questions, two major research questions will frame the study. The first has to do with our perception of America as the global police officer, or "sheriff-marshal of the world" (Robertson,

1979. pp. 25-29). That role is intimately connected to the impetus for American intervention around the globe and to the widely held notion that the Vietnam war represents, for many Americans, a collective sense of lost national competence, and therefore, national pride. The second has to do with our construction and maintenance of gender roles for men and women. Views about global policing are most easily communicated in a television drama through its main characters who, through their actions and activities will convey a value based message about the less concrete "Global Police Officer." Thus the heroes represented in the series are intimately connected with the first question and will be evaluated through a range of models of the heroic journey that animate and structure much of our mass mediated entertainment (Lichtman 1991, Campbell 1973, Pearson 1981, and Jewett 1977, pp. 169). Mythic models of male heroism

provide a basis for the global interventions that have been considered a heritage

particularly American. Before examining the support for these questions in the review of literature, the connections between Vietnam and entertainment television will be explored, begirming with the war story genre and the seemingly

small potential of the Vetnam war as an entertainment vehicle. VIETNAM ON ENTERTAINMENT TELEVISION Although television entertainment programming is not, in and of itself, a particularly potent force for change in the world, it provides us with stories about ourselves that are less urgent and fragmented than the news and other non­ entertainment programming. The appearance of the Vietnam war as an element in or a subject of an entertainment program offers a chance to explain and re­ define the war in ways that may ultimately impact our notions of the war itself. This is especially relevant for a war, because the many of the experiences portrayed on television can, with some effort, be compared to actual three- dimensional interpersonal experiences of life, whereas warfare, even in times of war, is experienced by very few and cannot easily be "monitored" to facilitate comparisons between mediated and real experiences. Combat veterans of any war tend to be reticent about their experiences unless in the company of those who might be sympathetic. Therefore, most people do not find out much about wars directly from the participants. News reports reveal something about events, but even the most compelling of these often often fade away as the next timely topic emerges. Documentaries often play to small audiences who are especially interested in the topic. Entertainment television programs have the opportunity play to the largest audiences for long periods of time. The stories we tell through the dramatic depiction of the war on television inform us about the cultural salience of various events that happened there and

provide characters and storylines that explain what went on there to people who have no way of checking for themselves. The series literally paint a picture of what might have been through shared assumptions about the situation; if a series survives, these depictions continue on a weekly basis for years. The assumptions

used to tell the stories also tell us about ourselves: who we think we are, who our heroes should be and how they ought to act. War heroes are among the most ancient of all in the human storytelling tradition. War, as a genre, has been a staple in film production and the war story genre expanded easily to series television. Thus, an accepted genre of television storytelling with ancient roots was able to provide an entertainment context for the Vietnam war, which did not follow the traditional storytelling pattern of virtuous victory provided by both mainstream histories and mass media recreations of previous American wars.

The Revolutionary and Civil wars provided a basis for the American concept of war as a hellish but necessary evil for achieving just ends in the world, while World War I and especially World War H further strengthened this idea

(Robertson 1980, p. 324). Carpenter traces the influence of our concept of the frontier and the exploits of frontiersmen as the crucial animating metaphors in our understanding of American military actions from the American Revolution through Vietnam and on to the naming of American nuclear missiles as "Minuteman" or Peacekeeper" (1991, p. 3-17). For Carpenter, the metaphor crystallized with reports of Kentucky riflemen defeating crack British troops at the

Battle of New Orleans in 1815 (1991, p. 3). He makes it clear that this also set a precedent for American concepts of our role in global intervention in "taking our frontier abroad" to the Philippines, Cuba, Mexico, and later in Europe (Carpenter, 1991, p. 2-8). Connected to this concept of war on the frontier are the legends of the Old West and the images associated with the achievement of Manifest Destiny by white settlers across North America. Mainstream American stories of the "Indian wars" provide proof of the utility of the "good war" in the interest of progress: the cavalry "cleans up" the area for settlement, and the Sheriff then heroically maintains order until "civilization" enters from the East.

Robertson presents three elements of the American logic of war: "that war is an instrument of American progress", that it is "chaotic and destructive," and that it is a "parenthetical experience . . . outside and and removed from normal, peaceful, non-military and democratic lives" (p. 325). Reaching beyond the wars themselves, the memories of the wars as fostered by veterans' groups, commemorative holidays, and mass media recreations of events of the wars provided many young men and women with a highly idealized concept of the good war and American surety that was shattered by their actual experience of war in Vietnam. The experience Vietnam did not mesh well with the image of America fighting the "good fight" and winning because of our virtue, technology and divine inspiration. A long-held pattern of American intervention in world affairs culminating in victory was broken. For this study it matters less how or why the pattern was broken than the fact that Vietnam is, for Americans, a symbol of a break in pattern. Carpenter cites Platoon and Full Metal Jacket as

"compelling indices of frontier metaphors' deterioration" (1991, p. 13). He explains that "the future of this figurative analogy is uncertain" (Carpenter, 1991, p. 14).

Because of this "deterioration" of American war myth, it would seem unlikely that the Vietnam war would make for engaging entertainment fare, due both to the controversy during the war and to the eventual outcome of the war. The topic itself seems antithetical to the progressive myth of the American West that has animated successful and essentially optimistic television programs ranging from Westerns and police series to the three Star Trek series: the original

“Wagon Train to the stars," The Next Generation and the new Deep Space Nine. Yet the very divisiveness engendered by the topic of the Vietnam war is fertile ground for exploration in the form of television drama. Schell voices some enduring questions that address Americans' lack of consensus regarding the war: More than a decade after its end, the \^etnam war refuses to lie quiet in its historical grave. Its whys and wherefores roil the scholarly community, its passions continue to spill out in books and plays and movies, its legacy vexes and divides our policy-makers. Questions regarding the very nature of the war remain unresolved. . .. How did we get into the war? Were we reluctantly dragged into an Asian 'quagmire'? Or, on the contrary, did we care fully apply our power in accordance with theories of 'limited' war that had been worked out well in advance ?... And—perhaps the most baffling question of all—why did we lose? How did it happen that the self­ described mightiest power on earth could not prevail over forces mustered in tiny, poor, backward Vietnam? (1987,p. 3).

This study is concerned with the "spilling of passions" about the Vietnam war in the form of mass mediated memories via two network prime time television series: Tour of Duty (produced for the Columbia Broadcasting Service by Zev Braun Productions and New World Television between 1986 and 1989) and China Beach (produced for the American Broadcasting Company by Sacret,

Inc. from 1987 through 1991). In the autumn of 1986 and winter of 1987, these were the first prime-time network series to both concentrate all of their dramatic energy on the topic of the Vietnam war and survive beyond incarnation as a pilot.

No series set in Vietnam, or centrally concerned with the way Americans lived out the war, even got to pilot stage at the networks while the war was going on. The closest was M*A*S*H, a belated symbolic Vietnam set against the backdrop of Korea, a war on which strong American feelings had long since subsided. . . Nor did a single made-for-television movie touch it. Even Hollywood features ducked the war. Only John Wayne was at once ideologue enough to let his political commitment outrun his business sense, and bankable enough to raise the capital to make a Vetnam movie; but his Green Berets failed dismally. The war was like smog: simply there, taken for granted, outside the frame (Gitlin, 1985, p. 227).

After TV movies and feature films such as Apocalypse Nowand Platoon

found Vietnam to be a workable topic. Tour of D uty and China Beach brought their versions of the war to the center of the television screen: the war was again playing in our living rooms. Tour of Duty was conceived of by the producers as . .a frank and accurate portrayal of what life was like for the American foot soldier in Vietnam" (Pilot, 1987); it was described in 1987 as "a reality-based show"

(Televison's shifting . .. Oct. 12, p. 40). In addition to devoting most of their storylines to realistic fictionalized events of the war in Vietnam, a unique feature of these particular war programs was the large number of continuing, central women characters in each series. Feature films and made-for-TV movie producers had, since the late 1970’s, been making use of the topic of Vietnam as a sub-genre to with some success, but the emphasis was almost exclusively on men's experiences. The hour-long television drama was the appropriate entertainment vehicle for a "serious" exploration of the American experience in

Vietnam.

Michael Arlen christened Vetnam "the living room war" precisely because an unprecedented flow of pictures of the war were brought by television into American living rooms during the evening news (1982). The fictional portrayal of the Vetnam war on prime time television heralded the unexpected return of the controversial war to America's living rooms. This was due in part

to the popularity with diverse audiences of films like Platoon and Full Metal

Jacket, a CBS strategy of counterprogramming againstThe Cosby Show, an economic gamble by New World Pictures, and "pure flair and gut instinct" (Henry, 1987, p. 76).

This study is limited to fictional television series because that kind of storytelling presents characters and stories over much longer periods of time than a film or single television program. This has the potential for generation of long­ term messages expressed by each series as a whole. Examination of these long 10 term stories will shed light on their degree of conformity to recognizable mythic patterns and reveal, through our stories, how Vietnam is incorporated into our cultural consciousness. Although both series under study are "reality-based" programs, they are likely to be less controversial than documentaries on the same topic because they are recognized as "only stories" by both the creators and the viewers. This allows the viewer to become involved in a program that might otherwise be rejected due to the inherent controversy of the subject matter. The limitation of this study to prime time series television allows access to the longest continual stories told to the largest potential audiences. Home Box Office's

Vietnam War Story differs from traditional network series in two ways: first as an anthology, it presents no continuing characters, and second, it was originally aired in two three-episode runs over two years and therefore more closely resembles a sporadic mini-series than a full-fledged continuing series. Even so, it lacks the over-arching storyline which holds a mini-series together. Vietnam

War Story, while being of critical interest on its own, will be excluded from this study of prime time broadcast network series addressing the Vietnam war.

Current highly controversial topics may be explored via talk shows, or tabloid news programs, but they are not usually drawn upon to create traditional network television series. Movies and mini-series are more likely to be based upon controversial issues, especially on cable. The topic of the Vietnam war debuted on television as a dramatic television movie.

VIETNAM TELEVISION DRAMA: MADE-FOR-TELEVISION MOVIES For the most part, fictional exploration of the American experience of Vietnam has been on film. The success of feature films in exploring issues associated with the Vietnam war partially explains why producers were able bring that subject to the more conservative world of series television. That success. 11 combined with the survival of two prime time network series devoted to the topic of the "Vietnam war suggests that these series would provide a fertile ground for analysis. Examination of these series and the images and issues the present would provide more current answers to Carpenter's question concerning the viability of our frontier metaphors (1991, p. 14).

Before full-fledged Vietnam war series were successfully aired on prime time television, made for television movies took up the topic. Produced sporadically since 1979, these films have dramatized issues and characters based on actual events, such as the inevitability of fatal military errors {Friendly Fire,

1979), agent orange exposure{Unnatural Causes, 1985; M y Father, M y Son, 1987) and the aftermath of depression and suicide as experienced by male combat veterans {Memorial Day, 1986). Intimate Strangers (1985) is the entirely fictional account of an Army nurse who returns home after a decade of confinement in a prisoner of war camp. This film, among all those produced for feature release or television, is the only one that deals with a woman veteran as the central character. The role of women in Vietnam and the war has been largely ignored by those writing and producing television series and films, until China Beach and

Tour of Duty. Many people were not aware that women were Vietnam veterans until the early 1980's when oral histories of women veterans began to be published. The concept of a female "Vietnam veteran was barely established by the time Tour of Duty and China Beach were on the air. The war itself had found its way into entertainment television much earlier. THE VIETNAM WAR AND SERIES TELEVISION The ’\detnam war first emerged on television entertainment programming as anti-war commentary on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967 with the scheduling of previously blacklisted Pete Seeger, who decided to sing Waist 12

Deep in the Big Muddy during his featured musical spot on the program. The controversy arising from this attempt at addressing the war in the forum of entertainment, especially in terms of possible meanings of the song, eventually led to the program's cancellation by CBS (Barnouw, 1982, p. 392-393).

Vietnam war veterans appeared as characters in various entertainment programs in the late 1960's. At least one episode of Dragnet addressed a case of police brutality involving a Vietnam veteran police officer, but it was not until the early 1970's that television series began to show integration of themes regarding the \^etnam war into some of its television entertainment programs.

Often, the martial skills possessed by combat veterans led to the characterization of them as potential criminals or crime-fighters. Heilbronn suggests that prior to 1980, the Vietnam veteran on television was a "one-shot character" whose role was "primarily negative," serving as an explanation of criminal behavior; she also indicates that positive Vietnam veteran roles were present before 1980 in television programs, but were rare (1985, p. 25). The inclusion of a Vietnam war background heightened the relevance of a cliaracter and therefore series of which he was a part. The controversy over the war could become a topic for debate among characters and provide dramatic tension within the series. It was rare for an entire program to directly address the war in dramatic form.

All in the Family used the war as a current event to foment interaction between the characters Ivhke Stivic and Archie Bunker. Although a Vietnam veteran was not a central character, Stivic regularly wore fatigue jackets, and the war was a topic of argument that defined the characters according to their positions on it. M*A*S*H was highly successful commercial series that made an anti-war and pro-doctor statement, but it did not depict the Vietnam war directly.

The dangerous city streets depicted in Kojak were searched for Vietnam veterans 13 in the course of murder investigations. Barney Miller included the reticent but lovable police sergeant Wojehowiez, whose Vietnam veteran status sometimes figured in the storylines.

The 1980s brought series such as Magnum P.L, Simon and Simon, and

Spenser for Hire, which provided traditional detective drama in which a title character is a Vietnam veteran. In Hill Street Blues, the commander of the

S.W.A.T. team was a trigger-happy, reactionary \^etnam vet, a softer version of the man in Apocalypse Now! who said "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." The A-Team made its cartoon-like heroes Vietnam war veterans, but brought them to America as neo-outlaws hunted by the U.S. government "for a crime they did not commit," a theme especially intriguing to American audiences and an interesting commentary on the Vietnam veteran. These programs brought the stereotypical veteran-as-criminal over to the side of law and order.

The veteran's defining characteristic is still military experience, but now, his destructive energies were directed at this week's "bad guys" rather than at society.

Trapper John, M.D. matched a primary M*A*S*H character with a Vetnam army surgeon during the present day, but the war was used primarily as a pretext to bring the character of John McIntyre into the present day. The series succeeded when it shifted from using superficial connections with M*A*S*H and adopted the approach of a more generic hospital drama. "[T]his program remains a replay of earlier mentor-young turk programs such as Ben Casey or Doctor Kildare"

(Heilbronn 1985, p. 26). Each of the 1980's series mentioned above either made references to Vietnam veterans in general or gave one or more central characters the status of Vietnam war veteran. This enabled the producers to create a realistic and up-to-date view of the world with which viewers were expected to engage. It was a television world where Vietnam war veterans actually existed, but 14 functioned as either extremely heroic or villainous characters. Heilbronn cites

Magnum, P.L, The A-Team, Riptide, Airwolf and Cover Up as series featuring Vietnam veterans as central rather than supporting characters, with martial skills directed toward protection of the "weak and defenseless who turn to them for help . . . These men are heroes; they are able to function heroically at home because of their military background" (1981, p. 26). The focus on these characters as heroes was a turning point in their portrayal on television. Still, in each of the series discussed above, topics regarding Vietnam and the war were subordinated to the topics dictated by each series' genre(s): situation comedy, detective/police show, doctor show, or action-adventure. Overall, the emphasis for a Vietnam veteran character in a television series tended to be on combat experience as an aid to either criminality or crime- fighting. Often, the portrayals of these characters featured reticence concerning

Vietnam, and sometimes featured "flashback"-like memories of the war. Other aspects of that character's experience with or feelings about the war were downplayed, and the war itself was never the continuing focus of the program.

Magnum P.L was the only series to spend any significant amount of screen time recreating the main character's experiences of the war. Although these episodes were subordinated to the larger story of his work as a detective, the war emerged as a potent force in the lives of this program's central characters: Thomas Magnum and his buddies T.C. and Rick (Anderson, 1987, p. 122). Newcomb characterizes Vietnam as "the submerged narrative topic always active in

[Magnum P.L's] text" (1988, p. 94). Portrayal of the war and the experiences of its veterans had yet to be the primary focus of a successful prime time series. The war itself shifted from being submerged to fully on the surface as a central narrative theme in American prime time television programming with Tour of 15

D uty in Autumn of 1986, but only after some unsuccessful attempts at programming three Vietnam war press-corps-black-comedy series mentioned below. THE VIETNAM WAR ON PRIME TIME: TWO TELEVISION SERIES EMERGE By early 1980, each of the three major networks had developed or shot pilots for half-hour black comedies based on Vietnam television journalism: CBS developed Bureau, NBC offered The 6:00 Follies and ABC was working on Fly

Away Home (Gitlin, 1985, p. 231, Dubrow, 1980, p. 10:B4). Gitlin explains that only NBC's The 6:00 Follies managed to hit the airwaves before it was quickly retired due to poor writing and production values, bad scores in audience testing and low ratings (1985, p. 231). It is clear that each of the three networks were attempting to produce a variation on M*A*S*H set in Vietnam, but it was apparently not yet time for Vietnam to be examined directly. Even if audience members were interested, the networks were not willing to take a chance on such a controversial and seemingly unpopular topic at that time. When The 6:00

Follies went under, the specific topic of "rambunctious reporters in Vetnam" faded from series television until 1988 s TV movie/pilot Shooter aired; it was not picked up as a series (Rich, 1988, p. 56:vC5; Keller, 1988, p. 3). Direct depiction of the Vietnam war and its associated issues came to American television screens as dramatic programming in the form of three series: Tour of Duty (CBS), China Beach (ABC) and Vietnam Vlar Story (HBO).

Tour of Duty was conceived before the feature film Platoon was a hit (Henry,

1987, p. 76 ). Even so. Tour of Duty began its run as essentially a Platoon on television: a one hour drama detailing the gritty, violent story of what it was "really like" in combat for one squad in a platoon of foot soldiers; first-season advertising for the series supports this interpretation, inviting the viewer to 16 discover the reality of the war (TV Guide, September 19, 1987, pp A150-151; TV

Guide, October 3, 1987, p. A136; TV Guide, September 26, 1987, p A154). Tour of

D uty is a series about men in the Vietnam war; it also provides images of women in the military context of a combat unit. The series began with an emphasis on verisimilitude, but the emphasis shifted over its three season on the air, partly in response to the relative ratings success of China Beach. Tour of Duty was canceled in 1990. A concluding episode was set in the hometowns of three of the central characters: two infantrymen and an Army helicopter pilot. The main theme of this episode was the reaction of civilians and Vietnam veterans to one another, based on the experiences of three familiar characters. This theme was to be the primary focus of the program if renewed for the fourth year, but CBS chose to cancel the series (1989, personal interview with Stephen Phillip Smith).

China Beach, also an hour long drama, is set in a recreational area and hospital complex beside the South China Sea, for which the series is named.

China Beach follows in M*A*S*H"s footsteps but deals with issues of the Vietnam war directly, rather than in the context of Korea as did its thematic forebear; this is especially important because the core of its ensemble of characters consists of a group of women volunteers and servicewomen stationed at the facility. Over the course of the series, male characters emerge as well. China Beach juxtaposes the questions of gender roles and America’s policing the world. Both men and women are portrayed interacting in the series, with an emphasis on the life of one Army nurse: Lieutenant Colleen McMurphy. China Beach went on hiatus in early 1991, disappearing as television news coverage of the Persian Gulf War heated up, but the critically acclaimed series returned long enough after the war to air several new episodes, including a special two-hour conclusion ('China Beach' tired of being on the rocks, April 10, 1991). Tour of 17

D uty is no longer on the air and is not in syndication; China Beach is stripped on the Lifetime cable channel.

Vietnam War Story was an anthology of nine half-hour dramatic programs explicitly recreating actual incidents and episodes in the lives of men and women who served in Vietnam. The overall character and structure of Vietnam War

Story is substantially different than either Tour of Duty or China Beach, primarily because of the explicitness of the episodes, due to the fact that Vietnam

War Story originally aired exclusively on cable but has since been aired by independent broadcast stations in overnight slots. REALISM, TEUEVISION DRAMA AND SOCIAL ISSUES

Television entertainment always includes social issues when it portrays its versions of world and the characters who populate it. Barker argues that while both cinema and television share the traditional "narrative structure of the nineteenth century novel, which . . . had been linked to the ascendancy of bourgeois literature of the eighteenth century" (1988, p. 44), television's segmented nature and the viewer's simultaneous lack of concentration on the whole of a particular program combined with a tendency to interpret what appears on the screen according to his/her own perspective leads to a degradation of the realistic quality of much television offerings (1988, p. 53-54). Barker then goes on to explain how Hill Street Blues presents both naturalistic codes and verisimilar codes, which enhance its overall verisimilitude when compared to more conventional series (1988, p. 56). Still, the base of this power comes from

Hill Street Blues' hour-long dramatic format. Of all television offerings, dramatic programs attempting to display a realistic and believable world match the traditions of realism used in the cinema. These types of programs express the general traditions of dramatic realism in the use of both film and television 18 through the creation of increasingly realistic visual entertainment artifacts. This does not apply to the bulk of television programming, but certainly has influenced the dramas aired in prime time, where television production techniques are usually used to create believably realistic dramatic programs. This leads to the viewer's impression of television dramas as "mirrors" of the aspects of society being dramatized. Yet the real-seeming images are rarely an accurate sociological portrait of the world because television dramas and melodramas are, by nature, exaggerations of real life. It is these exaggerations and oversimplifications (or clarifications and simplifications) that form the boundaries of characters, situations and settings of television drama and help to make them mythic. Formation of these boundaries offers cues to the meaning of the series within the culture. It is the tendency of offering real-seeming dramas that provides, in part, the audience member with an array of believable versions of the world to which they can be privy. The kinds of exaggerations made and the aspects of beliefs audiences are expected to entertain are built of the stuff of our cultural mythology. The differences between the way American television dramas tell stories and the actual circumstances of the stories they tell can provide an indication of

American social assumptions about the world (Jewett and Lawrence, 1977). These assumptions structure the programming from the series' particular genre to its characters and the storylines of individual episodes. For this study, the focus group participants will serve as a "reality-check" on the series.

Even in the case of different interpretations of a program's message, viewers involved with a program still connect with one another by disagreeing over the same issues. This reveals a dialogue between people who have no contact with one another other than their viewing of a particular program. For 19 example. All in the Family found loyal viewers who both detested and admired

Archie Bunker (Vidmar & Rokeach, 1974). Examination of the television drama itself and interviews with creators provide an idea of the society and audience they are programming for; audience interviews provide an evaluation of that programming and alternate interpretations of the world portrayed in the program. The "mirror" of realistic television drama is always distorted; the reflection of ourselves and our most pressing social issues seen in the mirror of the television screen is influenced by: 1. the economic / business systems under which producers and publishers operate, 2. the dominant culture under which individuals and institutions/organizations must operate, and 3. the dynamics of everyday work in media. A more apt metaphor may be a "lens" or filter that ideas and issues pass through in Hollywood and New York before they arrive on our screens. For purposes of this study, however, the focus will be on stories told about the Vietnam war, as filtered to us in the form of dramatic television series produced for television networks. Of these three influences, the one most important for this study is the dominant culture and myths which structure our national stories. STORYTELLING AND TELEVISION MYTH Storytellers always filter their stories, and myths are easily understood preformed filters that animate important characters, define the nature of the reality in which they operate, convey expected values and acceptable behaviors. A culture's myth system is a complex and powerful communication system which dictates belief, defines ritual, and acts as a chart of the social order," (Breen & Corcoran 1982, p. 128). The stories currently popular in a culture give indications of the latest version of the changing social order; social issues 20 explored in those stories often are presented as problems with culturally bound solutions. Stories that embrace a particularly divisive issue give an indication of the importance of that issue; and the resolution of the division helps to define that culture. Division or opposition, in a myth, is a set-up for the resolution of the story which provides a message that helps to define the anchors of a culture's social order (Malinowski 1962, p. 292, Lévi-Strauss 1963, p. 229). If the issue is so divisive that it cannot be resolved, then the function of the myth and the particular story embodying it is to provide a way of re-defining the issue in such a way that it either maintains the tension of the division in a fashion amenable to the culture, or redefines the division as an accepted boundary within the culture.

In any case, the division is mediated by the culture's myth.

The link between a living myth (Campbell, 1973, p. 249), that is, a myth that is taken for granted by the members of the society of which that myth is a part, and the fledgling myth that is a part of a current story is that the living myth was once a "mere" story and that a fledgling myth must draw upon and transform older myths to become stable and survive. Examination of television programming may not always shed light on universal or "inviolate" myths, such as those discussed by Campbell (1973) and Lévi-Strauss (1963): stories handed down across centuries, cultures and hemispheres. Examination of American television programming for themes related to divisive events in American culture can provide a great deal of insight into the current stories that may be on their way to becoming more permanent myths within American culture.

Especially relevant is that any depiction of a divisive issue via the financially conservative medium of prime time network television must be dealt with in ways that are amenable to the audiences it sells to advertisers. Jewett's 21

American monomyth is a documentation of one way of successfully altering stories to make the ideological match between the message of a story, the prevailing mainstream mythology and the financial needs of the network television.

Shaping the events of the past for audiences of the present involves the encapsulation and reorganizing of history to meet the demands of prime time television. In doing this, the creators and programmers of the series under study have provided a current view of how the Vietnam war can be interpreted by those in the audience today. That interpretation, if the program is to be successful, rests upon the currently functioning mythology of the culture. Thus, examination of the portrayal of the Vietnam war in prime time television can lead to insights about they ways our televised stories are treating controversial social issues. The issues associated with the Vietnam war are intensely American issues. They can tell the careful media critic a great deal about who we think we are today and how we try to understand our history. Thus while the subject of this study is dramatic portrayals of the Vetnam war on prime time television, it is a subject that remains within the context of whether and hew viewers recognize and respond to the programs' messages. THE VIETNAM WAR: A DIVISIVE AMERICAN ISSUE

The specific problem dealt with in this study is that of Americans' continuing struggle with the potential meanings and lessons of the Vietnam war. " Vetnam" currently functions as a warning; a metaphor for the potential danger of American military intervention into places such as Iran, Lebanon, Grenada,

Nicaragua, Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, and Somalia. Politicians, protest groups and government officials refer either to a "Vietnam syndrome" directly or indirectly so often that the sentiment behind the slogan "No more Vietnams" is instantly 22 clear to most Americans who hear it, whether they agree with the sentiment or not (Nixon, 1985). There is argument concerning why Vietnam was an unsuccessful intervention and who exactly was at fault; blame has been directed at returning veterans, at "the media," at unsupportive civilians, at the Pentagon, and at various levels of government. Still, the American myth system has come to equate "Vietnam" (meaning the American war conducted there) with military defeat and therefore national "tragedy" (Haines 1986, p. 2; 1987, p. 81). Robertson refers to this as an American "power failure," (1980, p. 278) as does Heilman (1986, p. 224); Wimmer calls it a "loss of innocence" 1991, p. 56) and Carpenter explains that Americans applied our frontiersman metaphor "tragically in Vietnam" (1991, p. 1).

While it is difficult to reach consensus about who failed or exactly why this tragedy came about, it is clear, that Vietnam is connected with the failure of the

United States to carry out its mission of "policing" this area of the globe. This image of the entire nation as "sherrif-marshal" grew as the United States came to be a dominant nation and later "super-power" in the late nineteenth and over most of the twentieth century (Robertson 1980 p. 27) ; the potential for such an image came from the deeply mythic American notions of a frontier that needed to be tamed, even if we had to go abroad to do it (Carpenter 1991, p. 2-3). The right to define the frontier and to act as custodian of it and its inhabitants finds its base in the earlier Puritan notion, promoted by John VWnthrop, of America as a "City upon a Hill, which:

. . . implies that America is a moral example to the rest of the world, a world that will presumably keep its attention riveted on us. It means that we are a Chosen People, each of whom, because of God's favor and presence, can smite one hundred of our heathen enemies hip and thigh (Baritz 1985, p. 26). 23

The Global Police Officer myth is relevant because it was shaken but not eliminated by the withdrawal of the United States from Vietnam and the eventual fall of Saigon to the North. In order to explain these events, some people maintain that the war was not "lost" by the men and women who fought there; others will say it was lost as soon as the first adviser came ashore. Still, it is a part of American culture to define those who do not win, by default, as losers. Thus, the veteran of the Vietnam war became an icon for defeat, not because he or she did not serve well, but because a scapegoat was needed for the unmet expectation of certain victory, the seeming birthright of Americans throughout our short history. Vietnam, the longest and most costly war in that history, was a turning point for the American myth of superiority, no matter how benevolent we may have liked to have been and no matter the strategic confusion or tactical success of our military forces and political leaders. It was also the time of second wave feminism in America and it was, paradoxically, the patriarchal institution of a mostly-male military that provided some women of that time with the most meaningful work of their lives, in terms of working to one's potential, thus contradicting a gender role based on passivity, service and selflessness. It is the details of the depiction of these myths in transition that deserve more careful examination because these two elements of the \^etnam war continue to be important issues today, even after the successful prosecution of the recent war in Kuwait. In order to conduct such an examination in a consistent and organized fashion and to define more clearly basic terms such as myth, a review of the pertinent literature is required. CHAPTER n

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

The literature relevant to the study of the televised depiction of myths cen­ tral to the the Vietnam war falls into three categories. First are the communica­ tion studies related to the V ietnam war, regarding Presidents' attempts to manage its image during the war, examining war memorials which characterize it after­ ward and media representations depicting it during both time periods. Second are works examining myth, developing theories concerning it, and the application of them to to appropriate areas of society including mass mediated entertainment.

The theories include the general nature and function of myth and core aspects of

American myth in particular, while the applications include mythic criticism of media artifacts, especially those depicting the Vietnam war. Third are studies of gender roles as social constructions or myths, given that gender is often essential to organizing warfare as a province for definition of male power in many human cultures and that the television programs under study depict both men and women experiencing the Vietnam war.

Rhetoricians examining Presidential rhetoric during the war ;reveal that the creation of the Green Beret soldier as a species of frontier hero by Kennedy was popularly accepted (Gustainis, 1989), but succeeding Presidents were plagued by the war as a socio-political issue when that mythic hero did not deliver a quick victory (Cherwitz 1978, Logue and Patton 1982, Vartabedian 1985, Turner 1986).

The rhetorical analyses of \detnam memorials (Foss, 1986; Haines, 1986; Carlson and Hocking, 1988; Ehrenhaus, 1988; Blair, Jeppson and Pucci, 1991) underscore the 24 25 necessity of ambiguity in cultural constructions attempting to make sense of the war. Studies of mass media and the war have been often been concerned with fea­ ture films and television news (Hallin 1986, Sherman 1987, Ivie 1990, and Wander and Kane 1990), or entertainment television programming during the war years

(MacDonald 1985).

The second category is the literature pertaining to myth theory, which estab­ lishes myth as an essential communication structure found in the practice of sto­ rytelling for the purpose of coping with ambiguity and establishing social order, often through the use of heroes who present ideals which function to reconcile social conflicts and establish a society's truths (McLuhan 1959, Malinowski 1962, Lévi-Strauss 1963, Campbell 1973, Carey 1988, Silverstone 1988, Thorburn 1988, Barthes 1990). The increasing practice of rhetorical criticism based on myth in the literature over last fifteen years signals growing interest in the concept by commu­ nication scholars and reveals that the subject of such criticism is routinely applied to film and television productions to assess the social function of the stories they present (Zynda 1988, Frentz and Hale, 1983, Frentz and Rushing 1978, Rushing and Frentz 1978, 1989; Rushing 1985,1986a, 1986b, 1989). Although some argue that essential mythic truths cannot be found in fictional programming (Rowland 1990) and the exact nature of "myth" continues to be debated by critics, it is often useful as a critical tool for analyzing the prominent aspects of a society through its

entertainment (Solomon 1979, 1990; Osborn 1990, Brummet 1990, Rushing 1990). Critical analyses of film depictions of the Vietnam war reveal that removal of pol­ itics from such depictions could promote a warrior state (Rushing and Frentz

1980) and that such films can act to subvert war myths (Rasmussen & Downey,

1991). Studies of American myth find qualities of a frontiersman-turned-police- man as a central part of American identity and cultural heroes (Robertson 1980 26

Jewett and Lawrence 1977) that have been tragically applied in to combatants in theis century (Carpenter 1991). Studies of the relationship of American myth and Vietnam explain the mainstream perception of the war as exceedingly problematic in American society because Vietnam was perceived to be a failure of American power and will over a troublesome frontier region where order was supposed to be easily restored by a Global Police Officer (Robertson 1980, Baritz 1985, Heilman 1986, Carpenter 1990).

The pertinent literature regarding gender roles in general presents them as a social construction (Waisberg and Page 1988, Epstein 1988, Bem 1984, Spencer 1984, Davis 1980) with mythic qualities and functions (Janeway 1971). Study of the gender of mythic heroes shows that although the hero cycles that structure much of human storytelling follow a pattern of beneficial change instigated by a hero, the gender of the here affects the nature of his or her relationship to the so­ ciety and thus the lesson her role model provides (Campbell 1973, Lichtman 1991,

Jewett and Lawrence 1977, Pearson & Pope, 1981). This relationship can become so altered that a popular female hero can function to undermine that which she ap­ pears to represent (Rushing, 1989). Television representations of gender seem to continue to reinforce traditional concepts of gender (Davis 1990, Butsch 1992,

Vande Berg and Streckfuss 1992, Harper, 1986, Seidman 1992, p. 209). Examination of gender in relation to the Vietnam war and its media depictions reinforces that idea due to the restrictive effect of increased acceptance war and warriors on gen­ der roles (Jeffords, 1989,1990).

Studies in these three categories provide a basis for examination of the rela­ tionship of the American monomythic hero cycle as promulgated in American popular culture, the gender roles that are set up as models by monomythic heroes and Vietnam as a frontier to be tamed by military frontiersmen and women. This 27 is a basis for the research questions discussed at the end of this chapter regarding both the American myth of the Global Police Officer and gender roles as they func­ tion in Tour of Duty and China Beach. COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AND THE VIETNAM WAR: GENERAL

Although communication scholars have devoted some of their energy to exploring the topic of the Vietnam war, little research has been conducted con­ cerning the recent televised portrayals of the war in prime time television. One type of communication study associated with the Vietnam war falls under the cat­ egory of Presidential rhetoric. Cherwitz examined Lyndon Johnson's rhetorical transformation of of the Tonkin Gulf "crisis" into a justification of war (1978). Logue and Patton addressed the shift of President Johnson's rhetorical symbols concerning the war from initial ambiguity to eventual dogmatism (1982, p. 310).

Turner assessed President Johnson's "dual war" at home and abroad and conclud­ ed that Johnson became a tragic figure due to the pressure from the press and the public over the war (1986, p. 253). Turner explains that this was due, in part, to the inability of past rhetorical strategies to serve the Johnson Presidency in repairing both his image and that of the war, consequently uniting the nation; she allows that no one could have fared much better, "given the constraints of the rhetoric of a limited war and presidential press relations" with those who actively protested against the war and with the general public (1986, pp. 253-254). Vartabedian exam­ ines President Nixon's Vietnam rhetoric as "a case study of apologia as general paradox" (1985, p. 365). These studies represent both the divisiveness and power of "Vietnam" as a social issue and the degree to which political rhetoric was inca­ pable of resolving the crisis. .

Gustainis' analysis of President Kennedy's "rhetorical use of the hero myth" in the formation and maintenance of the Green Berets explains the 28

rhetorical function of the hero as an inspirational example on which individuals can rely in order to accomplish a task (1989, p. 42). He argues that the implemen­

tation of the Green Berets combined with carefully managed press manipulation and speech-making served just such an inspirational function in the establish­ ment and funding of counter-insurgency units to be used in the early years of

American intervention in Vietnam (1989, p. 50). Gustainis establishes the politi­ cal exigency and rhetorical response for the promotion of an American hero in the form of the Green Beret soldier. This particular hero is as representative of the Vietnam war for Americans as is the military helicopter; it finds its way direct­ ly and indirectly into bothChina Beach and Tour of Duty. Television series about significant events in history serve as a kind of memorialization of those events. The analysis of more conventional Vietnam memorials in the United States focuses on ambiguity. Blair, Jeppson and Pucci an­ alyzed the architecture of the Vietnam veterans memorial; they see it as prototypi­ cal for "public memorializing" in the postmodern era because of its unique design and the multiplicity of uses to which it is put by its visitors (1991, p. 263-288). Foss emphasizes "ambiguity" of the monument, heightened by the reflectiveness of the Wall's polished granite surface in which visitors cannot help but see them­ selves superimposed over the names of the dead; she suggests that this ambiguity can help the monument serve as a locus for future anti-war protests (1986, p. 326- 340). Haines emphasizes this ambiguity as a focus of political struggle between veterans and a government bent on redefining and forgetting the war as well as "a locus of self-annihilation for disturbed veterans" (1986, p. 6). Ehrenhaus (1988, p. 54) further emphasizes this ambiguity, labeling the Wall an "invitation to argu­ ment" and Carlson and Hocking focus on "strategies of redemption" at the Wall (1988, p. 203). Braithwaite argues that Vietnam veterans are a speech community 29 whose shared experiences of the war through stories told to one another became the basis for overcoming deep differences of opinion over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1990, pp. 168-169). The ambiguity of the memorial represents the am­ biguous place the war occupies in American social memory because of division over the war; the mythic response of each television series would be either to ameliorate or emphasize that ambiguity. Several authors emphasize the split in American society surrounding the war; the characteristics of division and opposition associated with the issue of the Vietnam war demonstrate that it is, at base, inherently mythic in nature. Haines discusses the power Americans’ memories of the Vietnam war exert in the pre­ sent day, using the case of Vice President Dan Quay le (1987, p. 81). His argument emphasizes that opposing visions of our nation interfere with the presumed goal of "getting beyond the war" and the tragedy we associate with Vietnam. This asso­ ciated tragedy, cognizance of opposing visions of it, and the definition of Vetnam as a particular war that must be "gotten beyond" constitute basic assumptions about the way the Vietnam war has been perceived in American minds, especially from the later years of the war to the present day. Tliis "getting beyond the war" is reflected in a letter to the editor written by the President of Americans for

Vietnam Veterans that emphasizes his opinion that the U.S. presidency, the Congress, the military and the American people have already "recognized and ex­ orcised the ghosts of Vietnam" (Berger, April 2,1991, A 12). The divisive nature of the topic and lack of agreement over its resolution is clear.

Edelman supports the idea of continued conflict over the war with his defi­ nition of Vetnam as a "condensation symbol epitomizing sets of conflicting val­ ues that polarize late twentieth century America" . . . [which] continues to express itself in virtually every aspect of American culture." (1990, p. 6). Ehrenhaus found 30 that among the lessons Americans have gleaned from the war (usually "cast in terms of geopolitics and ideologies ..." and mostly concerned with exerting more caution before conducting future military interventions), the P.O.W. issue re­ mains as the prime lesson about the "human realities" of the war (1990, p. 9). Ivie examined the right wing group Accuracy in Media's concern over what they con­ sidered to be unflattering portrayals of American heroes in P.B.S.'s Vietnam: A

Television History and A.I.M.'s revisionist "counter-documentary," based on an American post-Vietnam "Cold War rhetorical orthodoxy" (1990, p. 33). A.I.M. is clearly concerned with the potential tarnishing of American heroes. Wander and

Kane also examine the A.I.M.-P.B.S. battle and focus on the transformation of Vietnam from a historical event to an American political policy issue (1990, p. 39). Again, the power and divisiveness of the war as an issue is established but the struggle over the meaning of the mass media representations of the war has itself moved to the airwaves.

Studies of both news and entertainment media representations of the war have been conducted, but have examined either television news or film enter­ tainment. Rollins examined the "visual language" of television's news coverage of the Vietnam war (1981, p. 114) and Suid found Hollywood's treatment of the

Vietnam war to be romantic and superficial (1981, p. 136). Hallin explored New

York Times' and television news coverage of the Vetnam war and found no basis for the popular belief that its "uncensored" nature was responsible for the eventu­ al outcome of the war (1986). Cathcart applauds Hailin's analysis of print news, but finds the content analysis of the video coverage weak because of Hallin's fail­ ure to treat the television coverage as other than a video newspaper (1987, p. 397).

MacDonald examined television news programs and entertainment series from the 1940 through the 1960's on various hot- and cold-war themes depicting "the 31

Red menace;" he explains that watching television series of the war, spy and sci­ ence fiction genres of the era played a role in "development of a national mentali­ ty able to accept without much questioning a bloody and inefficient conflict in the Asian jungle" (1985, pp. vi-vii). Cheney finds the historical detail impressive and thorough regarding the series, but finds MacDonald's "narrow" view of television as an industry directly concerned with intentional manipulation and shaping of people's ideology a major limitation to the study (1987, p. 395).

Relatively few studies in the communication literature address the topic of recent fictional depictions of the Vietnam war on film; fewer still address televi­ sion. Rasmussen and Downey build on previous work concerning symbols of di­ alectical change in film (Rushing, 1983; Frentz and Rushing, 1978) in their exploration of "dialectical disorientation" in Vietnam war films (1991, p. 176).

They conclude that Vietnam war films depicting a reenactment of the war {Tlie

Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket ) present a subver­ sion of the mythology of war because"... by challenging core American beliefs and rituals, they expose and reflect the American crisis of conscience about

Vietnam" (Rasmussen & Downey 1991, p. 176).

This study examines television depictions of the Vietnam war that have been sparsely addressed by media critics in the communication literature, because while Vietnam films have occupied the attention of critics, too little attention has been paid to their close relative, dramatic prime time television series depicting the war. Haines has examined Magnum P.L and Rambo in the context of a cycle of "return trip" portrayals of the Vetnam war and concluded that although their function was attempting to show that American pride could be regained by revis­ iting modern Vetnam in fiction, they leave the combat veteran "submerged in images of former wars" that serve only the general public's interest in providing 32

closure to the war (1990, p. 120). After the stories of revisiting within films and television series, came a wholesale recreation of late 1960's \^etnam available for weekly consumption: Tour of Duty and China Beach. Scholarly analyses of these series are few, for a topic that looms so large in

American consciousness revisited on a such a ubiquitous medium. Rasmussen and Downey merely mention these series in discussing Vietnam war media arti­ facts that address restoration of dignity to the individual. This is the complete text of their analyses of these television series:

And China Beach and Tour of Duty portray men and women confronting self, others, and social issues within the context of the war (1991, p. 192).

A small number of critics engage in superficial analyses of the series. Haines refers loosely to an episode ofTour of Duty he sees echoing a sequence from

Rambo (1990, p. 114-115). Jeffords acknowledges the existence of both Tour of

D uty and China Beach (1989, p. 2), listsTour of Duty among a number of televi­ sion series depicting war narratives (1989, p. 184) and cites "birth" episodes from both series in her discussion of the suppression of the topic of reproduction in most Vietnam war narratives and the ramifications this has for gender role main­ tenance (1989, p. 93-94). Mechling and Mechling simply mentionChina Beach in the context of questioning women's and men's responses to Vietnam as a "puz­ zle" to be solved (1990, p. 192). Only two studies address these series directly and in any depth.

In the first, Hanson examines the interactions and screen time allotted to the female characters in China Beach and concludes that the images of the women are nothing more than recycled stereotypes convenient for use by the entertain­ ment machine; viewers who believe "that the show gives voice to feminist perspectives on the experiences of women in Vietnam ha[ve] bought into a fiction 33 as illusory as the peaceful white sands of China Beach" (1990, p. 163). This is far from the exploration of self and social issues mentioned by Rasmussen and Downey above. In the second, Collins compares the function of humor in the narrative structures of Tour of Duty and China Beach in the context of humor in televised war narratives ranging in seriousness from Hogan's Heroes to Rat

Patrol (1989, p. 1-2). The difference between Tour of Duty and China Beach is, ac­ cording to Collins, that:

As much as Tour of Duty relies on combat to provide the key to a 'grunt's-eye-view' of the war, China Beach relies on humor to entice us to share the personalization of war by a unit of support personnel (1989, p. 11- 12 ).

Unfortunately, Collins' analysis is based on a few episodes and gives no indication of her assessment of the overall tenor of the series; likewise, Hanson bases her conclusions on information from the pilot episode alone.

So far, Hanson and Collins are the only communication scholars to give their full attention to Tour of Duty and China Beach. No comprehensive assess­ ment of these unique series exists in the literature. This study addresses that gap in the critical literature of media representations of the Vietnam war. The fairly intense exploration of issues related to Vietnam in both film and television depic­ tions of the war, and the various perspectives, methods used and conclusions drawn lead to the conclusion that these programs are worthy of continued exami­ nation. As the first network offerings to depict the war on a continuing basis, these series are worth more critical attention than they have so far received from communication scholars. Although neither program has been spectacularly suc­ cessful or exceptionally long-lived, each program was successful enough to pro­ vide potential syndication possibilities for their production companies, who produced them at a time when television networks were steadily losing market 34 share to cable and VCR options for viewers (Broadcasting, Oct. 12 1987, p. 42).

Together, the series serve as the extension of an audiovisual argument begun by

M*A*S*H. They explore Vietnam in places that M*A*S*H did not in two ways;

Tour of Duty takes the viewer away from the hospital and into the fighting, while

China Beach shifts the primary emphasis from male doctors to women "support personnel." The mythic implications of theses series on their own and as re­ sponses to M*A*S*H have yet to be explored. These two network television programs addressed overtly what had been a taboo subject for television entertainment up to that time: recreation of the dying, maiming and healing, both physical and emotional, that went on during the fighting of the Vietnam war. Theories of myth provide an appropriate context for interpreting such seemingly daring televisual storytelling; ultimately they can help to evaluate how the issue of Vietnam is dealt with by network television sto­ rytellers and how daring those decisions really were. GENERAL THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE ON MYTH

The basis of theory concerning myth is found in fields of study ranging among anthropology, psychology, linguistics, history, art and religion. Works by Vico (1968), Campbell (1973), Eliade (1953), Malinowski (1962), Barthes (1990) and

Lévi-Strauss (1963) are concerned with the complex interrelationships of the indi­ vidual and his/her culture via myth, dream and ritual. The pioneer in understanding myth as a concept useful for understanding human activity is Giambattista Vico, who argued in 1725 that myth-making is fundamental to all human activities, including those of logic and science (1968, p. 51). In the same vein, Barthes understands myth to be a system of signs that is a meta-language wherein language itself is abstracted, or "robbed" to create addi­ tional meanings ( 1990, p. 131). Barthes focuses on the transformation of "petit 33

bourgeois culture into a universal nature/ or the universalization of middle class

values (1990, p. 9). Jung's emphasis on the "collective unconscious/ and on archetypes that are ultimate universals with seemingly eternally fixed meanings provides a basis for both Campbell's analysis of the heroic monomyth and much of Rushing's mythic media criticism. Jung can be seen, in this context, as a start­ ing point for the connection between the individual's dreams and the waking so­ cial dreams that are presented through human storytelling on film and television. Campbell emphasizes this connection in his exploration of hero myths from around the world (1973, p. 3-25). Thus, while hero myths are one reliable way to examine the cultural dreams that television fiction represents, there is a tendency for such dreams to embody mainstream values.

Lévi-Strauss took up the task of trying to discover the basic constituent structures in the myths so-called primitive peoples used to organize their lives and ultimately uncovered what seem to be human structural "universals" in the storytelling of many cultures around the world (1963, p. 206-231). Lévi-Strauss ad­ dresses the abstract nature of myth with its substance in story as follows; "Myth is language, functioning on an especially high level where meaning succeeds practi­ cally at 'taking off' from the linguistic ground on which it keeps rolling" (1963, p.

210). He maintains that that the principal characters in myth always stand in ini­ tial opposition to one another (1963, xiv). Myth provides the structures and assumptions about the world that are revealed in the story of how this conflict is resolved. Robertson strengthens the emphasis on opposites as crucial to myth when he defines it as :

"the mechanism by which people believe contradictory things simultaneously; they are also the mechanism by which those contradictions are (as people believe) resolved—or at least held in tension which is not uncomfortable to believers. . . . They are the means by which the non-rational elements in all human thought and action are effectively combined with the rational; the means by which visions 36

and ideals are combined with reality (1980, p. 346).

Frentz and Rushing offer the terms "dialectical opposition" (1978 p. 66), "transfor­ mation" and "synthesis" (1978, p. 70) as one way of discussing symbolic opposition in their "social value model of criticism." Lévi-Strauss emphasizes social value in myth when he points out that they are told in a linear manner, word by word, image by image, but it is onlyunderstood when the relationships between the components of the myth are already understood (1963, p. 214). For a myth unique to a culture, the culture itself is part of the key to understanding the myth.

Malinowski emphasizes the essential function of myth in a culture as a co­ ordinating backdrop for "ideas, ritualised activities, moral rules [which] do not lead, in any culture, an isolated existence in watertight compartments..." (1962, p. 250). He makes it clear that myth is a "mixture of incompatible extremes" (1962, p.

289) and that "no myth, no part of folklore can ever be understood except as a liv­ ing force in culture" (1962, p. 292). The study of the characters, conflicts and issues portrayed in a television series provides a greater understanding of how televi­ sion portrayals of what is imagined to be can relate to important contemporary is­ sues. Televised stories are sustained by such living forces in modern society. Heilman, not unlike Vico, emphasizes the social function of myth as he de­ fines it:

By myth I mean the stories containing a people’s image of themselves in history. Extreme simplifications, myths may always be debunked as falsifications of reality. But simplification is their strength, since only by ignoring the great mass of infinite data can we identify essential order. A people cannot coherently function with­ out myth. The narrative structures of myths articulate salient pat­ terns that we see in our past and hold as our present value and pur­ pose. A myth is our explanation of history that can also serve as a compelling idea for our future. Since these patterns originate from ideals and aspirations as much as from actual experience, they form stories that usually tran­ scend logic and facts. Myths enable a nation to cohere by reconciling. 37

in the ambiguous relations of narrative, conflicts that its people can­ not solve in the sharply delineated realm of analytic thought. Myths may often distort or conceal, but these stories are nevertheless always true in the sense that they express deeply held beliefs (Heilman, 1986, p. ix).

Thus, social conflicts are made manageable by myth, often in the context of determining what should be remembered as history. Vietnam is just the sort of locus of such activity and television programs depicting it will provide their ver­ sions of conflict resolution offered up as believable to members of the society.

Belief is crucial for the successful function of any myth; the most universal at­ tribute of myth is that it is a true story. Whether "true" is taken literally or metaphorically provides a basis for continuing argument by mythic critics; it re­ mains, however, that a myth no longer believed is no longer "a living force" in its society and is therefore no longer true.

Thus myths, functioning to mediate tensions within a society through the integration or reinforcement of oppositions is the essential framework for human beings' constitution of agreed-upon realities and communication with one anoth­ er about and within those realities. It is the fundamental context for communica­ tion because all discourse is organized according to one mythic belief system or an­ other, ranging from culture-bound myths to myths as human universals, from the practical use of myth to structure everyday society to the most abstract meta­ physical conceptions of our most highly abstract beliefs. Vico emphasized that the operation of myth in so-called "civilized" cultures is just as important if not more so, than in various so-called "primitive" societies; human beings create myth, which then structures institutions which tell people what it is to be human (1968, p. 34). The term has been applied in more specific ways in the context of commu­ nication scholarship. 38

MYTH IN COMMUNICATION SCHOLARSHIP

During the last twenty years, the term myth and the concepts associated with it have been explored in growing depth by communication scholars. Early articles explored the concept of myth and established it as a useful one for com­ munication scholars, especially in regard to rhetorical criticism of mass media, which was itself a relatively new idea at the time. McLuhan was one of the first authors in the field to use the term seriously, providing this expansive explana­ tion of myth's fundamental nature:

Myth is the instant vision of a complex process that ordinarily extends over a long period. Myth is contraction or implosion of any process and the instant speed of electricity confers the mythic dimension on ordinary industrial and social action today. Welive mythically but continue to think fragmentarily and on single planes [italics McLuhan's] (1964, p. 38-39).

Sykes argued in 1970 that "myth is a concept that is useful in the analysis of per­ ception and communication" (p. 31). He defined it as:

a story about a particular incident which is put forward as containing or suggesting some general truth... a generalisation put forward in a particular and concrete form (1970, p. 17-18).

In addition, Sykes describes myth as conveying the perception of a whole entity about which rational description can only describe the parts, that myth is concise, flexibly imprecise, emotive use of language that is "universal and easily under­ stood" (1970, pp. 18-20). He recognized McLuhan's broad use use of the term myth but set his own definition apart as more particular, specific and therefore more useful to the critic of "hovv^ everyday myths are used in our society" (pp. 31-32).

Braden discussed the "nature of social myth and . . . how its persuasion works in oral discourse," thus connecting myth to this aspect of rhetoric (1975, p. 115). Thus the mythic critic must look within an object of criticism for the truths by which people live or by which the society is constructed; such a process is inherently 39

rhetorical in that it acts to persuade individuals of the reality and necessity of their society.

In the intervening years, the concept of myth has been employed by com­ munication scholars in a variety of ways. Real examined the "mythic spectacle" provided by the Super Bowl; he found that its simple "diversionary entertain­ ment" functioned as a vehicle "strengthening and developing the [nation's] larger social structure" (1975, p. 43). For Bennett, myths are "the basic models of society" or "the truths about society that are taken for granted" and rituals are "the social routines through which [myths] are applied" (1980, p. 167). He explains that a great deal of political discourse can be explained through analysis of American myths about politics "that link private experience, ongoing reality and public his­ tory into powerful frameworks of understanding" (Bennett, 1980, p. 169). At the same time, Entman and Paletz assessed various news organizations' coverage of the general political climate and found that "the media" tended to portray that cli­ mate as growing more conservative during the 1970's "despite insubstantial evidence for the claim" (1980, p. 154). Myths then, are also taken-for granted, link our daily activity to the past and are found both in the diversionary as well as the serious. Television drama, especially that depicting historical events, is the most serious of our entertainments.

Corcoran conducted "a longitudinal myth analysis of American news mag­ azine reports on the USSR" and found "image-clusters" that endured throughout the Cold War that reinforce the essentially evil and animalistic qualities of America's potential enemy (1983, p. 305) and concluded that:

The consistent reduction of Russians to unidimensional stereotypes of uncivilized savages reflects a shared ideology between news media and the wider culture, rather than a colossal invention by these magazines (1983, p. 319). 40

Corcoran sees myth as fundamental to the wider concept of ideology, which:

. . .usually remains hidden until revealed by controversy. It appears as the natural order, requiring no conscious statement or naming. TTiis is what Barthes refers to as the "ex-nominating" process that operates in ideology. The constituitive images and myths of an ideology are read as facts instead of as culturally-constructed symbols (1983, p. 318). This supports the earlier conception of a myth as a true story about the natural

order of things; yet even if it can be demonstrated to be "false," it is never an in­ tentionally orchestrated deception, except as socialization into a particular culture could be defined as such. Corcoran also discussed television as a narrative ideo­ logical apparatus wielding power through the provision of pleasure and laid out a

methodological choice for critical theorists:

... it remains to be seen whether critical theory must establish a rapprochement with myth analysis ... or take the more travelled path of uses and gratifications theory (1984, p. 143).

In communication research, myth is a social construction involving resolu­ tion of oppositions that is treated as though it were a fact. Links between the indi­ vidual and the society are established and maintained via that society's myths. Myths, by telling us what our society's reality is, inform us of our needs and reveal the ways in which they can be met; as such they are concerned with uses and and gratifications on the level of society, rather than that of the individual needs met through the traditional media uses and gratifications. The most detailed articulations of myth concerning social needs as represented by characters have been in the criticism of media artifacts.

MYTH AND MEDIA CRITICISM

Mythic criticism in the field of communication is, for the most part, a sub­ set of rhetorical criticism. By far the most prevalent use of mythic criticism has been in the criticism of mass media and contemporary culture. For the most part 41

that has meant close examination of current films for mythic themes relevant to a variety of issues, often focusing on the main characters as symbolic or heroic rep­ resentations of the important themes of the film.

Rushing and Frentz constructed a hybrid critical model to examine the

controversial film The Deer Hunter, connecting the Jungian role of dreams in dealing with the unconscious and Eliade’s perspective on the mythic function of ritual: Myths give archetypal form to widely shared values, providing principles for conduct, while rituals provide expressions of the human desire to imitate the gods-or heroes, who become what they are by imitation of the gods an represent the hopes and aspirations of their people (1980, p. 394). Jung emphasizes myths as one possible way to reveal the unconscious (Segal, 1990, p. x), while Eliade emphasizes ritual and the religious dimensions of myth, which is often neglected by rhetorical scholars investigating myth (1961, p. 101). Rushing and Frentz connect the two in a psychological/ritual model that makes clear the parallel relationship between the role of film for a society and the role of dreams for the individual. In their analysis of The Deer Hunter, they examine both the psyches of the four main characters and the rituals de­ picted to conclude that the film is only superficially about the Vietnam war, that it: . . . offers a complex rhetorical stance on war. It is not undeniably clear whether the film is rabidly antiwar, whether it merely portrays what war does to people under both sacred and profane experiences and proclaims nothing, or whether it implicitly advocates personal and societal transcendence through killing. . . . Ironically in bypassing the politics of Vietnam, the film may have unwittingly allied itself with a heinous political ideology [Fascism] (Rushing and Frentz 1980, p. 405). Rushing has explored a number of films that present variations on the American myth of the frontier (1983,1986a, 1989) and those, such as , E.T. (1985)

and the Alien (1989) films, that deal with mythic transcendence "in the sense that 42 they symbolize a new stage in the evolution of cultural consciousness, in which technology is recontextualized as part of a greater whole" (1990, p. 144). Rushing established the frontier as a key element of the rhetoric of the American west­ ern myth that operates both in popular films and in political rhetoric, (1983). She details the cultural consequences of extending the physical frontier from land and water to space, based on frontier images prevalent in a number of sig­ nificant science fiction films and America’s space program (Rushing 1986a). Foremost among these consequences are the rhetorical implications of the “egoic” hero’s conquering of the unconscious, which sets the pattern for the new ego-conscious hero’s relation to ego-consciousness itself (1986a, p. 272). The hero moves on with a new task:

The heroic task is now , however, transcendent rather than dialectical. .. the hero does not attempt to conquer this enemy, but to “contextualize” it. Thus, the hero is one who develops the whole self by integrating the unconscious, no longer considered evil; the rational ego, hero of a past age; and transconsciousness, the knowledge of ultimate oneness with creation (1986a, p. 272).

Rushing addresses Ronald Reagan’s attempts to transcend the frontier myth in her analysis of his “Star Wars’’ addresses; she finds implicit in his approach the “showdown” mentality of the sheriff facing down the outlaw (Rushing, 1986b). This supports Carpenter’s assessment that when Americans go abroad to fight, they take a dialectical frontier perspective with them and apply it to the situations they find there (Carpenter 1991). The portrayal of humanity’s potentially dark relationship to technology along the new frontier is investigated in what Rushing & Frentz call “the Frankenstein myth” in three films; Rocky IV, Blade Runner and The

Term inator (1989). They use Jung’s concept of the shadow to examine technolo­ gy as “the perfection of agency” in machine-like humans and human like machines to uncover a vision of technology that has at its end human 43 obsolescence (1989, p. 65). They conclude that for this end to be obviated “the cul­ ture must reintegrate feminine values into its consciousness, thereby activating an oppositional entelechial motive to reidentify agent with agency,” as opposed to maintaining the separation between what machines do and those who invent and use them (1989, p. 61). This one way of accomplishing the transcendent task of the non-egoic hero.

In her analysis ofA lien and Aliens, Rushing continues to examine the portrayal of the “new frontier” in mass mediated rhetoric and the role of femi­ nine values; in this case the central female character who seems to be a radical role model emerges a recycled stereotype of the traditional hero through “patri­ archal co-optation of the feminine archetype” (Rushing, 1989, p. 1). She points out that the strong female character, Ripley, is actually a model for traditional male violence toward the repressed shadow half of the of the Great Goddess or Devouring Mother: Rather than assist her co-combatants in accepting the Bad Mother as a part of us all-as the mythic counterpart of herself in dire need of re- integration-she perpetuates the division ... By allowing herself to be co­ opted, Alien/s' heroine helps male consciousness to fight off its fear of absorption in the Devouring Mother of the unconscious (1989, p. 19). Thus, Ripley, the female hero, acts as would the male hero and is thereby co-opted into fighting a very traditional patriarchal fight. This is analogous to the strictures of femininity the female gender role provides for women: ostensi­ ble “good” behavior models, goals and directions that actually undercut their own power as women. In either case, winning is losing and it may correspond to the expanded role some women are afforded in wartime: personal progress is made in service to a system that eventually will redefine that progress.

Gordon examined the film Star Wars using Campbell's theory as a guide; he found it to match the monomythic hero cycle precisely; more than that, he fixed the context for the film, the same context in which Tour of Duty and China 44

Beach operate:

The fact is that each generation must create its own myths and its own heroes, or else regenerate those of the past. We are in a period now when the heroes have been cast down through such national catastrophes as Vietnam and Watergate, when the lines between good and evil grow cloudy, and when sexual identities have been redefined by the Women's Movement. Meanwhile, we have created a machine world for ourselves, a world which seems drained of spiritual values, a world in which we feel impotent and alien. We desperately need a renewal of faith in ourselves as Americans, as good guys on the world scene, as men and women, as human beings who count, and so we return temporarily to the simpler patterns of the past. The old superheroes rise again—Wonder Woman and Superman—and we get old fashioned genre films like Rocky and Star Wars. Such fantasies give voice to our deepest longings, and speak to our hopes about the future of our society and ourselves (1978, p. 324-325).

Gordon sees renewal in myth, on both personal and social levels; he implicitly de­ fines myth as the journey of the hero and addresses directly the American malaise connected to Watergate and Vietnam. He also sees, in myth, the potential of change for the better in the future. Thus, examination of main characters as heroes is essential to the process of mythic criticism, but only as representations of the values inherent in myth directed toward maintenance of the social fabric.

Carey approaches myth as a part of language that helps us to create human cultures (popular as well as "high" culture), which then allow human beings to interpret the world around them:

To grasp hold of the popular arts with terms like myth, ritual, pilgrimage, liminality, story, narrative, chronicle—to state but a select por­ tion of the list—is to see in a miraculously discontinuous world persistent practices by which that world is sedimented and held together. It is to en large the human conversation while deepening self-understanding (1988, p. 15).

In order to take the analysis beyond what he calls "pseudoutopian" beliefs, Carey points that "culture refers to some set of construable signs and symbols, some system of meanings—culture is always situated and specific" (1988, p. 16). 45

Even though it brings societies together, "... consensus narrative is always about

something: in fact, it is about itself—the continuous reweaving of given patterns of action and signification (Carey 1988, p. 16). Silverstone argues that myth: ". . .mediates between the sacred and the profane .. . common sense and the arcane .. .the individual and the social. Myth is a form of speech, distinct in its character, marked by definable narratives, familiar, accepting, reassuring to their host culture. Myths are stories. Some are heroic. Most are formulaic. They are the public dreams, the product of an oral culture dreaming about itself... Myths are associated with ritual, as with belief to action, both together defining a transcendent and liminal space and time for a people in their otherwise mundane reality. Myths are logical; they are emotional" (1988, p. 23).

Thorburn, in his search for an "aesthetic anthropology" of television, de­

scribes television stories as "consensus narratives" in which "the deepest values

and contradictions of of society are articulated and, sometimes, understood" (1988, p. 60-61). This supports the idea that myths deal with contradiction at some of the deepest levels of a society and that myth is clearly in operation in popular culture and fiction in that they illustrate beliefs about the world held by that society:

Zynda explored the mythic aspects ofThe Mary Tyler Moore Show, and found its optimistic, idealistic presentation of the lives Mary Richards and her work "family" at WJM similar to Socialist Realist painting in the Soviet Union both in form and function (1988, p. 142). He thus highlights the mythic nature of both intended (Soviet) and accidental (MTM) propaganda and the idea that both myth and propaganda function best when they are not recognized as such. In this conclusion, Zynda reinforces Barthes' and Corcoran’s' concept of ideology or myth that is not overtly recognized as such. Thus, while myth must be believed to function in a society, it must also be forgotten as a myth; from this perspective, myth is truth. 46

There is controversy over definitions of myth and the "appropriate" way to engage in meaningful criticism. As a critic, Rowland argues that myth must be a true story, but requires that the truth be clear, objective, and obvious; therefore many abstract and obviously fictional stories fall short of being classified as myth by him (1990, p. 105-108). \^co would suggest that myth is at the heart of all per­ ception and abstraction (1968, p. 352). Solomon, Osborn, Brummett and Rushing have criticized Rowland's limited definition of myth because it fails to apprehend the truth inherent in even blatantly fictional accounts and "fun" stories (1990, pp. 117-149). Rushing puts it succinctly:

His definition of myth is logically contradictory and unnecessarily exclusive, his readings of others' critiques are often careless and incomplete, and his implications for the doing of criticism privilege strict observation over creative interpretation. . . . I wonder whether his attempt to limit mythic criticism by a "narrow" definition of myth and a conservative set of admonitions for its critique implies a fear that something will get out of control... I would argue that the real danger lies in reducing this infinitely rich field of study to a unidimensional one, and in confining critical insight to what is empirically verifiable (Rushing 1990, p. 147).

Dramatic films and television series are obviously fictional. By Rowland's account, these are mere entertainments, devoid by definition of mythic structure and function (1990, p. 107-109). Yet, as discussed above, if a myth is recognized as such, it would no longer be functioning for a society. Rushing's work demon­ strates that films can have mythic qualities and functions; it is reasonable to as­ sume that television programs are mythic as well. The research on television myth supports this assumption.

TELEVISION AND MYTH

A commercial television series is, simultaneously, a work of popular art and a cultural artifact being manufactured within the context of the television in­ dustry. The strictures of the television industry put limits on the issues and ideas 47 that are customarily dealt with in prime time entertainment programming.

Every program has a purpose other than to get its message across; if it is to be suc­ cessful, it must attract viewers and hold their attention at regular intervals for months or years. Given that a television production is an artifact of the specific culture producing it and that it has to appeal to a particular audience, close exami­ nation of a single program or series can yield important information about the so­ ciety in which it was created.

Tyrrell explains the relationship between myth and television:

Myths define an image of the world within and without and relate it to us emotionally. Myths put in narrative form the unconscious assumptions that constitute the spirit of a culture. . . .Television is the medium of immediate, personal communication. No willed suspension of disbelief occurs; television speaks not to [the] intelligence or to its pilot, the will. It works through the emotions on a non-reasoning level and is thus the medium best suited to the emotional word, mythos (1977, p. 712).

Tyrrell chose to examineStar Trek because he felt it addressed a crisis of values in the 1960's with which the counterculture could not cope: STAR TREK (sic) revitalizes American myths by displacing them into a futuristic, quasi-scientific setting.... It gives us our past as our fu­ ture, while making our present the past which, like any historical event for the future-oriented American, is safely over and forgotten (1977, p. 712- 713).

Jewett and Lawrence also explored this American cultural phenomenon, indicat­ ing a great deal of structural and functional similarity between Star Trek (an activ­ ities and bona fide religion; they do this as a way of emphasizing the degree to which a nation's popular culture is rooted in its myth (1977, p. 1-39). Breen and Corcoran have synthesized some of the most prominent theo­ ries of myth and have solidly connected the function of myth in a society to the functions of of television in our society (1982). This explanation holds for televi­ sion in particular and communication in general and supports the idea that myth 48

structures human experiences of reality, including the versions of reality related via story. The concept of a discourse between viewer and content in television and its relationship to myth is an important framework to consider when touch­ ing upon any important social issue in contemporary society. While the issue it­ self may be part of a mythic process in the culture, television can portray that issue in ways that may conflict or agree with the culture's ways of grappling with the problem.

The medium of television provides a source of stories that can fulfill many of the same functions that myths do in maintaining a culture: 1. providing a per­ ceptual system, or worldview, 2. providing exemplary models for a culture, 3. pre­ senting conflicts and mediating them, and 4. the reification of culture, or the re­ duction of the randomness of human experience into understandable patterns that are perceived as real (Breen & Corcoran, 1982, p. 128-132). The television viewer, no longer in the captivating presence of a shaman, grandparent or other wise teller of stories, is unable to identify directly with the storyteller interperson- ally. The now-invisible team of producers and writers who spin modern tales work diligently to provide the viewer with a collection of real-seeming people, places, things and events that, as discussed above, fall into the tradition of theatri­ cal and cinematic realism. This would suggest that television is inherently myth­ ic.

Each of these functions of myth is readily applicable to the portrayal of Vietnam on television. First, our fundamental notions of the character of the world itself rest on what our myth system allows us to define as existing in the universe in the first place, as well as what emphases and relationships are given to them, similar to the psychological concepts of selective perception and atten­ tion (as initially addressed in relation to myth by Sykes in 1970, p. 17). "Vietnam" 49

exists in American myth as a challenge to traditional American ways of defining

the world. Second, the characters in television stories provide role models to demonstrate what is good and bad behavior, regardless of official policies or assur­ ances to the contrary. Third, our myth system defines our important questions and dilemmas wherein two or more "realities" clearly conflict with one another.

Much of America's definition of \^etnam as a concept, a place, and a war fits into this category. Fourth, our behavior, including both formal and informal rituals, helps to reinforce our perceived realities and assure us that our view of the world

as we perceive it through our mythic system, is indeed the correct one. Television

depictions of the war, as ritual devices, help to redefine the confusion of

" Vietnam" into a more intelligible aspect of our history.

Events or situations occur that test the mythic system of a culture. The

stress and controversy associated with the Vietnam war indicate that it was, on a

large scale, such a stressor. In the last generation, Americans have been trying to come to terms with the war. It may be that the story told by Vietnam war televi­

sion series like Tour of Duty and China Beach may point to how we, as a nation, have resolved redefined or intensified the tensions associated with the war that continue today.

If myth somehow fails to make sense of raw experience for the society, ei­ ther our memory of the experience or the myth itself must give way because of

the conflict between them. Either the experience itself is discounted or redefined as non-experience (similar to the "self forgetting" noted by Haines, 1986, p. 2), or the myth itself is seen as non-functional or "broken." If the myth cannot be ad­

justed to cope with raw experience, it is then revealed to be a "mere" story, out of touch with the reality of human experience. If the experience of a group of people

is at variance with the dominant culture and myth system, the surviving myth 50 provides a "truth" that members of such a group must somehow reconcile with their experience on an individual level. Women and Vietnam veterans are ex­ amples of such groups.

TWO PERSPECTIVES: UNIVERSAL OR CULTURAL MYTH

In general, the multiple perspectives on myth discussed above can be un­ derstood through the use of two categories of approaches to the study of myth. The first approach to myth is to treat it as a manifestation of universal human sto­ ries, stories which are found, with some variations, in nearly every society in the world; both Campbell's work on the hero (1973) and Levi-Strauss’s work on the Oedipus story (1963, p. 213-218) come to this conclusion. The emphasis here is not only on the similarly of function of myth in general, but on the necessity of cer­ tain stories to be told in similar patterns because they are basic human stories, re­ gardless of differences in culture. These scholars look for the similarities in myth from culture to culture, based on the storytelling patterns common to all human beings. For example, Jung's work on dreams and archetypes and Lévi-Strauss' de­ lineation of myths around the world, both of which associate strikingly similar stories emerging from cultures around the world, favor the idea of a myth as a human universal, beyond culture and connecting us to the unconscious. These approaches to myth-as-universal are important in understanding connections be­ tween the way human beings use stories to communicate, both to construe a com­ mon social life and to express individual reactions to that world. This approach emphasizes similarities and common mythic roots among cultures. Although myth can be concerned with human universals, this study is con­ cerned with cultural universals as defined by American myth that are so in­ grained as to be perceived by those brought up in that culture as human univer­ sals. This second general category of approaches to myth also emphasizes myths 51 as stories fundamental to the culture, but emphasizes the differences between cul­ tures and the myths that distinguish one society from another. While certain sto­ ries or categories of stories may be universal, it is the particular stories common to a given culture that provides insight into the unique expression of its worldview. In this case, the importance of storytelling or myth-making rests less on universal ways in which human societies function in general than on how a specific society uses their own variations of myth to solve the problems that they define as par­ ticularly pressing or perplexing. This second general category of myth is a subset of the first and overlaps conceptually in terms of defining myth as stories that are fundamental to a society.

Stories about the Vietnam war continue to be fundamental to American so­ ciety. Therefore, given that the general topic of this study is the portrayal on television of American involvement in the \^etnam war, it is American mythol­ ogy associated with the war that must be examined. Any culture's mythology cre­ ates boundaries for its social reality that, through enactment in both formal rituals and everyday routines of life, are the context for placing limits on the psychologi­ cal experience of reality for individuals in that culture. It is my contention that the \^etnam war was a large-scale enactment of American myth that has had and continues to have significant impact on Americans' perception of themselves and their place in the world. How we are dealing with that impact is revealed in the stories we tell about the war; American popular cultural storytelling often fits a distinctive pattern called the American monomyth. A DISTINCT AMERICAN MYTHOS AND HERO CYCLE

Robertson lays out a distinct American mythos that depends in part on pieces of the early history of the nation (1980, p. 25-126) and in part on adaptation to more recent developments such as the urban environment and the automobile 52

(1980, p. 127-263). As addressed above he also comments on the American per­ spective on war, hot or cold, as a necessary evil that brings ultimate good; he cites the Vietnam war as an exception to that perspective; By the mid-1960's, the Vietnam War was being televised in the United States. The horror and holocaust, the actual hell of war, which Americans had come to disregard—except for vague fears of the bomb-in the affluence and success of the Cold War, were literally brought home to many . .. .[T]he war and the protests against it revived the vivid images the hellish destructive chaos of war which had once been part of American mythology. Americans began to see war, once again, as damaging to their ideals and potentially destructive of the fabric of society (Robertson, 1980, pp. 340-341).

The frontier in Vietnam had not yielded to our "civilizing" influences. Our com­ batants had indeed taken a version of the frontier with them to the war, but they brought back, with the aid of news reporters, an adjusted version of what that frontier was like and how the cavalry was faring.

Rushing's version of the new (and renewable) frontier and how Americans relate to it is important to this study because our heroic models function in the context of implicit frontiers much of the time. Carpenter’s revelation of the con­ nections between the end of the physical frontier near the end of the 19th centu­ ry, America's continuation of the abstract concept of the frontier and the wars fought on foreign soil from that time on establishes the mythic basis behind these wars that was brought to the surface in ^detnam and Vietnam films (1990). He concludes that two elements that he calls “vectors of cultural force” continue to have an impact on the behavior of Americans: first, a fascination with the frontier which permeates American life and media artifacts; the second, “more ominous” vector is “our predilection for violence” (Carpenter, 1990, p. 14-15). Jewett and Lawrence address both of these vectors in their exploration of American myth as manifest in popular culture. They have have developed what 53 they call the "American monomyth," a distinct collection of stories and beliefs that constitute an over-arching American myth that seem to typify the way our popular culture displays American attitudes toward the world, and American ap­ proaches to problem solving in the world. This also includes defining those prob­ lems and choice of potential solutions in the first place. Jewett and Lawrence focus on male and female heroes as presented in popular culture artifacts such as historical and dime-novel accounts of Buffalo Bill Cody, Walt Disney's Mickey and

Minnie Mouse, Playboy's images of men and women, films such as Heidi,

Walking Tall, Jaws and Death Wish, and the television series Little House on the Prairie (1977). The pertinent aspects of American myth as reflected in Jewett and Lawrence's analysis of these popular culture artifacts are related to Americans' views of our purpose in the world and the heroes who further that purpose. The first of these is a male hero who reluctantly takes up arms but who then emerges as a dedicated and violent hero who takes out his retribution on those who are clearly labeled "evil." The second is a female hero whose most important accou­ trement is her verbal ability, administering " tongue-lashings" that shake the cyni­ cal and mean-spirited back onto the path of upright behavior. Although Rushing and Carpenter each emphasize the frontier as essential to American conceptions of the world, Jewett and Lawrence provide clear portraits of a typical American male and female heroes and relate a distinctly American version of the hero's journey. These heroes, their journey and the uniqueness of the American mono­ myth are best understood in the context of three other recognized hero cycles for men and women that will provide comparative models for the analysis of charac­ ters in the series.

The first of these is the pre-patriarchal hero cycle as discussed by Lichtman which represents an ancient ideal of women's personal development (1990). This 54

is the basis for development of later hero cycles, and consists of three repeatable stages representing three aspects of a woman's life, those of Virgin, Mother and Crone ( 1990). The Virgin represents not the truncated stereotype currently active in modern society but an independent person who is "one in herself" and an­ swers the call of separation to become a mature individual: In defining the virgin status as her own, the idea of choice becomes predominant. It become her choice to accept the adventure of maturation, to celebrate her own inner depths in defining herself as a woman. .. . [WJoman herself becomes severely limited when her body, no longer her own, becomes the goal or prize for the adventuring male hero (1991, p. 31). The second phase of this hero cycle is that of Mother, which Lichtman de­ fines as:

. . .more psychological than biological, more a state of mind than a state of physicahty, and hence, equally a state of culture and a state of nature, and more a condition of empowerment than a condition of weak­ ness .. .any and all women can give birth: to ideas, to art, to politics, to new social orders, to revolutions in politics and culture, to children, to codes of ethics and behavior (Lichtman 1991, p. 53).

Lichtman sees this role in the pre-patriarchal hero cycle as being "concerned with

the context between individual and collective" and therefore striving to strike a balance between individual autonomy and social responsibility (1991, p. 58). While the virgin represents potentiality, the mother brings it to fruition through action work and endurance (Lichtman 1991, p. 60)

The final phase of the pre-patriarchal hero cycle is that of Crone, which is marked by wisdom, power, death and ultimate transformation: [T]his passage marks the accumulation of time, experience, and knowledge. In the hero's journey, the crone marks the return to the top of the yonic circle, the reconnection to the value of female heritage, the fulfillment of the search, and the acceptance of self-actualization. She has been one-in-herself, she has been part of the social context; now she can bestow wisdom, experience, and history to the generations who follow after her (1991, p. 64-65). 55

But the pre-patriarchal hero cycle is not finished. The wisdom of the crone leads her to face death with understanding; her death is a birth which takes her into the first phase again. In general the hero's relation to the community is one defined by connection and responsibility, especially during the last two phases. The hero's growth serves both herself and the community.

The second hero cycle is that put forth by Campbell in Hero with a

Thousand Faces (1973). Campbell's approach is based in Jungian psychology but is confirmed through the analysis of hero myths from around the world (1973). The

cycle typically begins with a refused call to adventure, continues via the assistance of various helpers, magical and wise, proceeds to the threshold of another world where the hero uses his accoutrements to kill dragons or demons and then to sub­ due the goddess figure, ultimately returning, changed, with a boon to benefit his

society (Campbell, 1973, p. 245-246). The emphasis on possession or defeat of the goddess figure clearly argues for an interpretation of the model as that of the male hero, even though Campbell initially explains that the hero can be of either gen­ der (1973, p. 19). The similarity of this cycle to the previous one, is due to a shared

emphasis on the changing of the hero that results in his ability to survive the un­ derworld and ultimately return "home" with a boon. The differences inherent in a shift from the pre-patriarchal hero to Campbell's monomythic hero are that the

hero is now overwhelmingly male, and that part of his task is to slay or subdue the goddess figure. His relation to the community is one of change, but in a much more linear fashion than in the first cycle. In the pre-patriarchal hero cycle, the

heroic journey integrates the hero with her society to the benefit of both. In

Campbell's monomyth, the hero is changed by his journey in order to benefit the community; that change forever separates him from his community. 56

The third hero cycle was put forward by Pearson and Pope in response to their assessment of Campbell's overwhelmingly male hero. From American and British literature, they culled a hero pattern unique to women characters; they named this recurring pattern the female hero to differentiate from the less active role of "heroine” (1981, p. 60). The celebrated role of heroine is recognized through four culturally endorsed misconceptions about women that must be rec­ ognized and overcome before the female hero can begin her journey: "A W Oman's Place" is one in which she must deny herself to be affirmed by others

(1981, p. 17); "The Good Angel” sets up perfection as the norm for a "good” woman (1981, p. 27); "All for Love" posits that women must be rescued by a hero from problems, thus objectifying them (1981, p. 35); and "The Giving Tree" is the mask of the all-sacrificing heroine, which is applied when internal feelings of self­ neglect conflict with the demands of the culture (1981, p. 60). Pearson and Pope explain that the result of such a dichotomy is either a denial of self or a heroic woman, and the culture, for women, prefers the denial of self (1981, p. 60). The male hero simply has the choice of answering or ignoring his call. Thus, the fe­ male hero must recognize that she is discouraged by her culture from aspiring to be heroic from the start (Pearson and Pope, 1981, p. 17). The female hero who has recognized and refused these four misconceptions has begun the first step of her heroic "Exit [from] the Garden"; she must then recognize her current "guides" as captors and slay the dragon of the "virginity myth," which forces her to choose be­ tween servile and "good" or independent and "bad" (1982, p. 69). While the male hero must combat dragons "beyond the threshold," the female hero must combat them on this side of the threshold.

The second step of the female hero is "The Emperor's New Clothes,” wherein she recognizes that all of the qualities of the male hero reside within her 57

as well; she encounters a powerful seducer, discovers him to be yet another captor,

and slays the dragon of romantic love as a tool for limiting her potential (Pearson

and Pope, 1981, p. 68). The third step in the female hero cycle is "A Woman is Her Mother," wherein the hero locates a female context by journeying to her ancestral home, searching for her father as a heroic model, finding such an image in her

mother, and then freeing herself from the misconception of female inferiority, thus establishing a "viable female tradition (Pearson and Pope, 1981, p. 68). The Return consists of the two final steps of the female hero cycle: The New Family, where both the hero and her society are united in community and wholeness

(Pearson and Pope, 1981, p. 223); "The Kingdom Transfigured" provides utopian visions of a better world (Pearson and Pope, 1981, p. 260). Thus, although the journey clearly changes both the female hero and her society for the better, they are united with rather than separated from one another. The female hero cycle was found to match almost exactly the growth of the character of Margaret

Houlihan over the run of the popular television series M*A*S*H (Marshall, 1985).

The differences in the above hero cycles reflect a change in the way in which heroes are interpreted. While it is safe to say that Campbell's model is still applicable to many interpretations of many mythic heroes, the non-male hero cy­ cles of both recent and ancient vintage point to a transformation of the notion of hero as discussed earlier by Rushing (1989). Before examining the American monomythic hero cycle, two foundations of American myth must be emphasized. There are two particular aspects of American stories about ourselves and our purpose in the world that help to constitute an American mythos different from those which have gone before. The first of these aspects, addressed briefly in chapter one, is the concept of America as "A City upon a Hill," wherein Puritan 58

America is thought to receive divine guidance and favor and is therefore to be an example to all the world; Baritz calls this "the oldest and most powerful myth about America ..(1 9 8 5 , p. 26). This assessment is supported specifically by

Mechling and Mechling (1990, p. 173), Heilman (1986, pp. 5-6) and Jewett and

Lawrence (1977, p. 179) and in general by V\Timmer (1990, p. 57) and Robertson (1980, p. 44-52). Such a notion has clear implications for America's role in the world as Global Police Officer; it is a short step from leader by example to leader by force and intervention. Second, the notion of frontier as described above provides a definition of the space we occupy and points again to potential roles to be played in that context such as "tamers" of the "wild" and "settlers" of the "uninhabited." Heilman describes the American mythic landscape as the regenerated, metaphorical "new frontier" explained by F. J. Turner and used by Kennedy; he says that was this space into which the first Green Berets ("new frontiersmen") were sent into when they went to South Vietnam in 1961 (1986, p. 35-38).

Referring to the book The Ugly American, Heilman also describes Indochina as a setting in which Americans could achieve an ideal balance between the superfi­ ciality of the city and the primitiveness of the country, thus recreating the mythic landscape of preindustrial America:

In effect it is a projection of American fantasy, a painting of Indochina with a lovely future that is really a wished-for American past (1986, p. 32). This view of America's perspective on Asia is remarkably similar to the worldview, discussed above, behind the original Star Trek series (Tyrrell, 1977, p. 713). Clearly the American myth of the frontier animates books, television pro­ grams, as well as political interventions. The American monomythic hero is at the heart of modern versions of the frontier myth. 59

"The American monomyth begins and ends in Eden" (Jewett and Lawrence, 1977, p. 167). The American monomythic hero's task—echoed in the American view of a future Asia—is to restore a corrupted Eden through violent extermination of the disrupting force and set an example for those who would ig­ nore or support that force (Jewett and Lawrence, 1977, p. 40-41,174). His essential qualities are laid out in Jewett and Lawrence's description of the 1930's Lone Ranger: "selfless, sexless, and benignly violent in dispensing justice. [He] ... unerringly deterred enemies without harming them (1977, p. 193). Clint

Eastwood's character "the stranger" in Leone's spaghetti Westerns is another vivid example of the monomythic hero; other examples are comic book superheroes such as the Flash and Superman, cited as secular redeemers:

They cut Gordian knots, lift the siege of evil, and restore the Edenic state of perfect faith and perfect peace. It is a millennial, religious expectation, at least in origin, fulfilled by secular agencies. The discrepancy, of course, is that superhuman powers have to be projected onto ordinary citizens . . . Moreover, total power must be pictured as totally benign, transmuting lawless vigilantism into a perfect embodiment of law enforcement (Jewett and Lawrence, 1977, p. 194).

Although there are no particular general stages that the monomythic hero fol­ lows, a specific heroic pattern has come to be portrayed in mass mediated fiction. Jewett and Lawrence describe it in precise detail:

In retrospect, the monomythic superhero is distinguished by disguised origins, pure motivations, a redemptive task, and extraordinary powers. He originates outside the community he is called to save, and in those exceptional instances when he is a resident therein, the superhero plays the role of idealistic loner. His identity is secret,... his motivation a selfless zeal for justice. By elaborate conventions of restraint, his desire for revenge is purified. Patient in the face of provocations, he seeks noth­ ing for himself and withstands all temptations. Sexual fulfillment is renounced for the duration of the mission. The purity of his motivations ensures moral infallibility in judging persons and situations. When threatened by violent adversaries, vigilantism is the answer, restoring justice and thus lifting the siege of paradise. To accomplish this mission without incurring blame or causing undue injury to others, superhuman 60

powers are required. The aim of the superhero is unerring, his fists irre­ sistible and his body incapable of suffering fatal injury. In the most dangerous trials he remains utterly cool and thus divinely competent. (1977, p. 195-196). In this case, change takes place in the community, not the hero, who is already complete. This hero cycle is similar to earlier models for heroic behavior to the extent that there is a pattern of movement by the hero and a resolution due to the hero's action. The focus on the male hero as dominant is matches Campbell's hero alone; the degree to which the hero is unchanged by the experiences of his journey and the degree to which violent retribution is necessary to solve the problem set the American monomyth apart from the hero cycles discussed above.

The female counterpart of this American vigilante hero is a combination of two of the roles Pearson and Pope's female hero seeks to avoid. The first is that of an admiring, uninhibited, insatiable sexual siren role which emphasizes sexual availability to men who are nonaggressive and whose only desire is to "help" these women out (Jewett and Lawrence 1977, p. 69). This is the "bad girl" side of the "Perfect Angel" trap from the female hero cycle. The second is essentially the Perfect Angel stereotype itself, a pure and morally superiority woman as exempli­ fied by Heidi and television's Laura Ingalls of Little House on the Prairie: When confronted by insoluble personality conflicts within the community, non-violent manipulation is employed. With wisdom and coolness equal to the vigilante counterpart, the Heidi-redeemer brings happiness to a desperate Eden (1977, p. 195-196). This presents a sharp contrast with pre-patriarchal and female hero models dis­ cussed above and outlines the restricted options of the genders rather clearly: the man's role is to wreak benign vengeance (only those who really deserve it get hurt) while the woman's role is to chastise and manipulate verbally. The pre-patriarchal hero model posits an initiation of the hero into society and a balance between herself and society as she attains self-actualization in the 61

roles of virgin, mother and crone. Both Campbell's heroic monomyth and the fe­ male hero cycle posit thresholds to be crossed, dragons to be slain and changes in both hero and society; the traditional hero cycle emphasizes changes wrought upon society by the hero and creates a separation between hero and society, while

the female hero emphasizes changes wrought upon the hero and an integration with a better society. The American monomyth stands out among these because the hero, for the most part, does not change but does wreak change upon the com­ munities he/she encounters, crossing frontiers to find and transform new com­

munities to meet Edenic standards.

The American monomyth provides highly distinct gender roles for its heroes. The differences between the essentially inwardly-directed pre-patriarchal and female hero cycles that balance between individual and society, and the more

outwardly directed ones explained by Campbell and Jewett suggest clear differ­ ences in the models by which men and women are to have directed their lives. Jewett and Lawrence show that the American monomyth reinforces the rigidly structured gender roles of American culture through emphasis of these roles in

much of American popular culture. Dominant American myth supports both the idea of rigidly structured gender roles and that of heroes displaying "correct" gen­ der role behavior; these stereotypical versions of the roles that house cultural ex­ pectations about men and women will, for this study, be approached as mythic constructs. MYTHIC HEROES AS GENDER ROLE MODELS Gender roles are definitions of behavior and activity that are seen to be, by

the society, as "socially and culturally appropriate" for members of each gender. For purposes of this study, gender is considered a mythic construction of a society; it is believed as truth and not recognized as a social construction. For this study. 62

gender role models will be considered to heroes fulfilling the second function of myth discussed by Breen and Corcoran: providing role models. The hero cycles above provide ample evidence for such an interpretation; the American mono­ myth and Campbell's monomyth provide a basis for the strong, active qualities

usually associated with the male gender role. Each reinforces the female gender role's secondary status. Lichtman's Goddess cycle provides an original basis for all heroic myth cycles, while Pearson and Pope look at ways in which strong models for heroic women have persisted even though displaced in the mainstream by the

male-centered hero cycles. From the perspectives of these cycles, female gender is either not a block to heroism (Lichtman) or is a precursor to a heroic journey specific to women because of the way they are defined by society as deficient (Pearson and Pope).

Gilligan questioned Kholberg's male oriented model of moral development a decade ago precisely because it tended to produce classifications of women as moral deficient or underdeveloped compared to men (1982, p. 19-23). In that time, her work has been both praised (Johnson 1983, Ruddick 1983, Benjamin 1983, VanGelder 1984) as ground-breaking and criticized for being too static, a model that can be used to produce oversimplified portraits of men as incurably legalistic and women as overly dependent (Sells 1991, Oliver 1991). While it is indeed true that women can reason perfectly well and that men are capable of taking human relationships into account in moral decision making, our American mythology of conquest and perfection, combined with socialization into strict gender roles, me­ diates against wide acceptance of assertive, logical women and nonaggressive, re­ flective men. The power relationship inherent in our stereotypes of standard gender roles—the strong, silent, physically assertive man and the beautiful, articu­ late, submissive yet manipulating woman—is reinforced in the images of male 63

and female characters we see on the television screen because role models provid­ ed by commercial television have changed very little over the last thirty years

(Davis, 1990, p. 12; Butsch 1992, p. 397; Vande Berg and Streckfuss 1992, p. 196) while public television does not offer a more diverse alternative (Harper, 1986, p. 19). Music television provides a small shift, but only toward the "bad girl" stereo­ type in terms of appearance and initiation of sexual advances (which could be in­

terpreted as the power and choice of the pre-patriarchal virgin), while retaining the stereotypical feminine characteristics of being "more affectionate, dependent, nurturing, and fearful than males" (Seidman 1992, p. 209). At the same time, males were portrayed as being "more adventuresome, domineering, aggressive,

violent, and victimized than female characters" (Seidman 1992, p. 209, italics mine).

These stereotypes promoted in dominant American culture often involve a dichotomy between reason and emotion that is connected to our perceptions of gender roles. Reason and logic are still often thought of as "masculine" qualities

perceived to reside in the public sphere, defined as the preserve of the male and emotion is a "feminine" territory, the private sphere where hearth and heart are

one and the rationality of a woman who tries to gainsay a powerful man is a po­ tentially open question. The 1991 confrontation between Professor Anita Hill and

Judge Clarence Thomas (Marshall, 1992) and studies of clinician's evaluation of patients who deviated from "expected" gender roles (Waisberg and Page, 1988) support this contention. Spencer explains that "femininity" is defined primarily

as pertaining to weakness and passivity and that "masculine" pertains primarily to positive qualities; ultimately, she concludes that while these terms are often used, they are especially hard to measure empirically without taking into account individual perceptions of gender identity as well as cultural concepts of gender 64

roles and sex roles as well (1984, p. 90). While Bern's exploration of androgyny

and gender schema theory notes the power of our preconceived notions of gender, she finds that gender and individual masculine and feminine qualities cannot re­ liably be linked and offers the prescription " ... not that the individual be androgy­ nous, but that society be gender a-schematic" (1984, p. 322). Epstein points out the

degree to which gender roles are ingrained as "reality" and therefore influence the way in which even the scientific exploration of gender roles takes its direction, a

way which until recently was heavily biased against women (1988). Thus, gender roles are social constructions rather than innate qualities; as such they are a part of

American myths of how to properly be male or female.

Janeway's examined gender roles in her study of social mythology and ex­ plains them in terms of "women's place," which constitutes traditional gender roles for women:

... our society still takes for granted that one not only does, but should, exist. "Woman's place" is a shorthand phrase which sums up a whole set of traits and attitudes and presenting themselves which we think proper to women, along with the obligations and restrictions that it implies (1971, p. 9).

She sees the gender roles of man's world and woman's place in the home as "so built into our minds and our cultural background that it still produces an illusion of inevitability and revealed truth" (1971, p. 27). The depth of belief in this rela­ tionship between men and women as "reality" constitutes a "social mythology" which preserves the order of the world and is accepted as a living force (1971, p.

41-42). The generally subservient role assigned to women as helpers (mothers, spouses, handmaidens, etc.) "puts her at odds not only with the American ethos, but with the whole long trend of Western civilization toward individual freedom and individual responsibility (1971, p. 99). Janeway explains that myth embodies tensions that myth as myth cannot resolve; she sees both science and art as ways 65 of resolving the tensions (1971 p. 30-33). In this case television—the most popular art—is one mechanism for getting at the mythic tensions connected with the changing roles of women as depicted by the network Metnam series. AMERICAN MYTH AND THE VIETNAM WAR Heilman describes the powerful role myth plays in society because of the kind of truth they represent; he recognizes that such power can be for good or ill, both between and among societies (1986, p. ix-x). His work on Vietnam and American myth is based on mediated tales from many sources, but:

.. .because they are all American narratives in some way relat­ ed to Vietnam, show us an intersection of that subject—whether as naive dream, bitter nightmare, or complex reflection—with American cultural values and assumptions. Through these narra­ tives we can detect the relation of American myth to the Vietnam ex­ perience. These texts do not simply "reflect" the consciousness of their authors and audience. Narrative is a duplicitous form of communi­ cation, and I have therefore sought to uncover the deep psychologi­ cal, even unconscious, messages underlying the surface ones. The empirical relation of literary and even popular texts to the people at large is murky, indirect, and partial. Nevertheless, the materials pre­ sented here should be sufficiently abundant to demonstrate that their shared themes and motifs must have emerged from forces alive in the culture. This book thus analyzes a wide assemblage of texts to re­ veal the key elements and patterns of a deeper story in which they converge. In that story we may find the shaping legacy of Vietnam. And in that legacy America's political and cultural leaders will have to find their symbols if they are eventually to persuade the nation that Vietnam, like the Civil War and the Great Depression, is part of an intelligible past from which the nation must proceed improved (1986, p. x-xi).

Heilman concludes that although America's myth of the naive and reluctant hero has been exposed through Vietnam, that exposure was being denied; therefore, the fantasies portrayed in the Star Wars trilogy of films may point to a changing and renewing of American myths and our heroes (1986, pp. 205-224). That denial has been in the form of the revisionist history discussed below. 66

Baritz endeavored to explain the war in terms of American culture and his­ tory; he severely indicts built-in American hubris and suggests that Americans were utterly trapped by a monolithic vision of ourselves (1985, p. 8). Addressing a similar point, Robertson simply asks: "Has America's errand into the wilderness been destroyed by the Vietnam war?" (1980, p. 350). Whether trapped from the be­ ginning or simply waylaid, the Vietnam war represents a change in how Americans think about themselves.

Wimmer examined Vietnam in terms of the ideal of American national­ ism (1990, pp. 67-69, 71, 76). He focused on the a rhetorical tradition of conceptual­ izing America as a "Redeemer Nation" (Wimmer 1990, p.58-59), emphasizing the

"melting pot" as a source of common identity and a common belief system ( Wimmer 1990, p. 61). Like Gustainis, he considered the Green Berets to be part of a " ... a subdivision of the great American myth" and potent symbols of the

Vietnam war (1990 p. 64-65). In that light,he examined poetic responses to the war, noting that Vietnam became a "non-topic" soon after the war ended and that ex­ amination of:

... the role of a collective unconscious trying to salvage a badly dent­ ed notion of America the Redeemer Nation has not been attempted so far (Wimmer, 1990, p. 71, italics Wimmer's). Mechling and Mechling place the Vietnam war and the conflict surround­ ing it in a context that dwarfs it: The Second Inner Revolution is such a powerful force in American culture that the Vietnam War was a mere blip, an historical hiccup in its flow through American history (Mechling and Mechling, 1990, p. 172) The first inner revolution in the American character was a transition from inner directed Puritan individualism to the "organization man" or "other-directed man" in the early part of this century due to the influence of the sciences in tearing down once-cherished absolutes (Cochran in Mechling and Mechling, 1990, 67 p. 171). Mechling and Mechling posit a second shift occurred after World War n from the "organization man" to an individualism independent of the context of community controls;

The tendencies of American individualism born in the First Inner Revolution accelerated and became increasingly pathological with the simultaneous loss of strong communal contexts for that individualism (1990, p. 171-172).

They emphasize that although the Vietnam war seems to loom large in the American consciousness, that there are other, more pressing circumstances to at­ tend to:

Vietnam is a significant text in this new public debate [optimism versus pessimism about the future of America], to be sure, but it is an expendable text and should not distract the cultural critic from the real drama unfolding as Americans attempt to cope with the consequences of the Second Inner Revolution (Mechling and Mechling, 1990, p. 196).

At the same time, they recognize the power of "Vetnam" in American cul­ ture: "The enduring legacy of the Vietnam war is not that it changed anything in American culture, but that it provided a condensed version of our most troubling contradictions" (Mechling and Mechling, 1990, p. 172). The condensing and em­ phasizing the contradictions of the "institutionally grounded self" versus a "new individualism unfettered by institutional controls," is just the sort of function myth performs. Although Mechling and Mechling comment briefly on Jewett's American monomyth and the "City upon a Hill" myth, suggesting that they are merely tools in a new class struggle between these two groups of individualists, they mean myth to function as a barrier to "raised consciousness" (1990, p. 192). They rightly question the importance of Vietnam as a "puzzle" for those who are not white, male, middle class or younger than the "baby boom" generation (1990, p. 192-193,195). Yet they ignore the fact that the stories structured around this new individualism provide heroic models for all because the myths of the dominant 68

culture operate (to varying degrees) in the minds of all who have grown up in a society. The individual heroes in those myths and their changing characteristics are worthy of careful examination because they "live" with us all. The classic American hero is supposed to be uninvolved—to be available when he is needed and then fade away (into the sunset) or move on until another crisis occurs and he is again needed. He is an oddity in everyday life but is supposed to emerge in time of crisis to violently and decisively solve the problem, then disappear to leave "normal" (non-heroic) people to go about their own busi­ ness. As discussed above, this is a pattern formed by Puritan ideals and heroes of the Revolution which continued to be reinforced in the myths of the old West. Probably the most well known mass mediated hero reflecting this myth that has been connected to the Metnam war is that represented by almost any of John

W ayne's film characters (Wimmer 1990, p. 67; Carpenter, 1990; Haines 1990, p. 112). The relation of this myth to the Vietnam war is that American heroes were to "take care of business" by "cleaning up" Vietnam and then come home to assume their "regular guy" identities. Superman and other comic book heroes are exam­ ples of the American heroic archetype; these are distinctly American heroes who reveal their "true identities" only when they are called or see that they are needed. Men's Vietnam experience belied that version of the hero myth. Because military action did not produce a decisive WWn type of victory in Vietnam, those serving were not initially considered to be heroes; the parade-through-Paris "proof" was absent. Yet they were all still expected to remain the person they were before the war—to assume regular, "Clark Kent" status—in order to blend in and be ignored,

and that is what happened; initially, Vetnam veterans were ignored so the nation could ignore the war itself (Haines 1986, p. 2). The emergence of a "revisionist," or monomythic history of the war has been facilitated, in large part, by mass 69

media depictions of the war (Wimmer, 1990, p. 67, Haines 1990, p. 112). The battle

over historical definition of the war points to the crisis that the war represents to Americans.

Heilman describes how Vietnam represented a was a crisis of confidence, not only in the American government and its military forces, but in our previous concepts of "America" itself: Vietnam is an experience that has severely called into question American myth. Americans entered Vetnam with certain expecta­ tions that a story, a distinctly American story, would unfold. When the story of America in Vietnam turned into something unexpected, the true nature of the larger story of America itself became the subject of intense cultural dispute. To understand the relation of the American story to our perception of Vietnam, and of the ensuing ex­ perience to the American story, we may look at the many separate stories Americans have set in Southeast Asia" ( 1986, p. x).

Lifton examined the connections between individual experiences of the

Vietnam war and our myths about war that provoked re-examination of the war: [Veterans' discussion of their] concrete experience in Vetnam provides a very special opportunity to examine our changing nation­ al relationship to what could be called the 'psychopathology of war- making.' To grasp that opportunity, however, we have to get beneath most of what is said about the war and open ourselves, in ways that few Americans have as yet been willing to do, to its special human actualities (Lifton, 1973, p. 18).

This sort of information can only be gained by talking to Vetnam veterans, in the context of larger myths concerning the war.

Clearly, the Vetnam war has been and continues to be a source of conflict for Americans, the sort of confusing raw experience myth functions to organize. It was a divisive and confusing time for many Americans; much of the confusion regarding the war has remained long after the war's end. For Americans, person­ al confusion was generated by the trauma of our longest war, by the abrupt transi­ tion to peace that followed it, and by the demonstrations and counterculture that 70

opposed it. Over the years, individuals experiencing strong confusion connected with the war have found various ways to cope with it. Many Americans find the era confusing still.

The televised stories about such a divisive era contain information about an American vision of the unfamiliar becoming familiarized in the years which have passed since the ending of the war. The unfamiliar, in this case, is the

experiences of those who fought and opposed the war which contributed to the di­ visiveness of the times. The familiarization is, in this case, the portrayal and

treatment of the Vietnam war in various forms of television entertainment pro­ gramming, as discussed above. As a nation, the experience of the Vietnam war

was traumatic, yet it was something that was not often discussed in the years after the war. Part of that familiarization for national television audiences, has been

the re-presentation of the war in prime time drama. One of the fundamental dif­ ferences between television's portrayal of Metnam as compared to film is the rela­ tively large number of women characters in Tour of Duty and China Beach. GENDER ROLES AND THE VIETNAM WAR

Gender roles are historically connected to conceptions of war in Western culture. The ancient symbol used to signify "male" ( c/*) also represents Mars, the Roman god of war. The symbol for female (? ) is that of Venus, the Roman god­ dess of love and beauty. Our concept of "woman" is connected with mothering, nurturance, antiwar/pro-peace and cooperation instead of aggression even if it is clear that women can be excellent soldiers, political leaders, athletes and business executives (professions which require a good deal of aggression, competition, and other warlike "male" skills). War, in American culture, is a traditional experience which is supposed to "make men" out of the boys who survive it; the "Vietnam war was no exception. 71

Because of the focus on women in China Beach and the strategic infusion of women characters in Tour of Duty's second season, it will be important to es­ tablish the roles they play in each series. Women Vietnam veterans were not rec­ ognized, many times even to themselves, until the early 1980's (VanDevanter, 1983; Saywell, 1985; Walker, 1985; Freedman and Rhoads, 1987; K. Marshall, 1987; Norman 1990). Part ofChina Beach's reason for being was to provide some recognition that women served in Vietnam during the war.

Jeffords has recently examined the role popular media representations of the Vietnam war have played in the "Remasculinization of America" (1989, p. 168-86). She concludes that much of the mass media storytelling about Vietnam and the newfound respect for Vietnam veterans is actually a reaffirmation of tra­ ditional gender roles in response to women's somewhat improved status in this country:

Isolated from American culture and saved from its deterioration and feminization (Jeffords, 1986), veterans are characterized as sources of value [s], able to revitalize an American society that has lost or corrupted its own (1989, p. 127).

Certainly, gender roles are related to the delegation of tasks in an American war effort. Men are expected to be hyper-masculine, to be potential soldiers, while women contribute to the war effort by being hyper-feminine "for the boys."

Soldiers fight to protect "women back home," and some women are able to assist in this venture; the recent and continuing controversy over women in combat continually orbits this distinction, because the traditional American female gen­ der role does not permit a woman to fight for herself; neither do regulations excluding women from combat, which excluded women in Vetnam from the emotional release and power that men found in being able to fire back at attackers.

The concept of "nurse" is directly connected to aspects of the traditional female 72 gender role such as; soothing, mothering, picking-up-after, etc.; as a job category, it is a professionalization of the roles of helpmate (to the doctor) and mother/nurse­ maid (to the patient). The goal of nursing was to be helpful:

"You're good help, Lynda." It was one of the highest compliments a surgeon could pay a nurse (VanDevanter, 1983, p. 116).

At the same time, "helping" in the context of wartime medicine often meant that nurses had much more authority and responsibility than they would in a hospital in the U.S. (Walker, 1985, p. 5-6,18). For many young women, nursing or other military duties, working with the Red Cross, entertaining with the U.S.O. or even working as a civilian employee of the government was a big step in personal inde­ pendence that could not happen in the United States; thus while the war was a "proving ground" for masculinity, working in Vietnam during the war was si­ multaneously an affirmation and a challenge to traditional female gender roles.

SUMMARY: AMERICAN MYTH, GENDER ROLES AND THE VIETNAM WAR ON NETWORK ENTERTAINMENT TELEVISION

The wide variety of conceptualizations of myth can be understood in terms of two interconnected categories of approaching myth. The first of these is demonstrably universal myth, based on cross-cultural analysis of important sto­ ries. The second is culturally specific myth, which presents a perspective that seem to be universal, but is tied directly to a particular society's view of the world. The definition of myth for this study will be cultural in nature because Wetnam was directly linked to American visions of that country's role in the world. For purposes of this study, a myth will mean an emotionally true story, based on belief and convention that employs the device of hero cycles to represent ideal role

models, with the realization that some myths often contribute to the oppression of those who are marginalized by the dominant culture; thus the delineation of both male and female hero cycles to evaluate the series. Given that the purpose of 73

myth is to sustain and stabilize a society, the myths of American culture, as de­

rived from the Vietnam dramas Tour of D uty and China Beach will be used to evaluate the way in which television is used to sustain or amend two relevant myths within American culture: the Global Police Officer and heroic models of

gender. This will provide insight into the way in which television narratives are used to deal with significant cultural tensions. Television functions in our culture in a mythic fashion; the controversy over the Vietnam war is enacted in a series of tensions that are inherently mythic.

Televised depiction of the Vietnam war would then be especially amenable to a mythic criticism. Yet, the topic has been only superficially addressed in the com­ munication literature. Exploration of both the Global Police Officer myth and gender-based heroic myths will be the focus of this mythic criticism. Each is an important aspect of American myth associated directly with the Vietnam war and the dramatic network television depictions of i t . They connect to the Vetnam war not only because the nation's role as Global Police Officer is a variation on the

American monomythic male hero, but because the Vietnam war helped to expose this myth as myth.

To summarize, that the exploration of the topic of the Vietnam war is prevalent in the literature, but that there is comparatively little research on the

Vietnam war as it is depicted in prime time television series, especially regarding

Tour of Duty and China Beach. At the same time, aspects of myth-based media criticism are clearly in standard use in the field of communication; some of this

analysis has been directed to the Vietnam war, usually as depicted on film. A

thorough mythic analysis has yet to conducted forTour of D uty and China Beach.

Myth-based criticism and the communication theory behind it are the ground from which this analysis of two prime time television series springs: there 74

is a reciprocal relationship between human storytelling and our view of the world; each structures the other. Although various approaches to such media crit­ icism are possible, it is clear that the stories we tell of the Vietnam war lead to a focus on inherently American mythology as a guide to understanding the most recent depictions of the Vietnam war in prime time television series. Of the many stories that help to define what Americans are, it seems that those most universally applied to American warfare and applicable to analyzing stories about Vietnam is that of the frontiersman who "transforms" the wilderness and then patrols it as a "peacekeeper" or police officer; in this case, the world is thought of as a version of the Wild West, and this encourages behavior attendant to that con­ text.

The literature indicates that a central part of American myth is based both on Wnthrop's exemplary "City upon a Hill" and on a "frontier" so essential to our character that it is preserved and taken to war abroad long after the actual frontier has disappeared. The most currently salient aspect of that depicts us as a Global Police Officer who, in American popular culture is transformed into exem­ plary hero in the form of a reluctant but masterful vigilante turned sherrif-mar- shal. This image, shifted from the national character to the individual characters of film and television, constitutes an exaggerated version of the male gender role in American culture. Our perceptions of gender roles that guide and structure much of daily life are thus directly connected to this overall view of our nation's role in world affairs. The current research on myth theory, American myth, and the mythic criti­ cism of media depictions of the Vietnam war, especially on television leads to four concepts upon which this study is based. First is that television functions as mod­ em storyteller, which can fulfill social needs for providing heroic role models 75 understanding unfamiliar experiences, thus helping to maintain the society's structure. The nature of television storytelling as practiced in the American net­ work system has the potential to tap into the myths that structure reality for American culture as much as do the films often examined by rhetorical critics.

The second is that the American monomyth combined with female heroic myths can provide categories to shed light on tensions surrounding issues related to the Vietnam war. Both Rushing and Jeffords have made significant connections be­ tween myth, war narrative and the transformation of hero myth and gender roles.

The Vietnam war provided new information for American culture that shook the previous mythic conception of our nation's role in the world and thus provides a context for examination of this transformation. The third is that dramatic televi­ sual depiction of the \^etnam war has, so far, been ignored by communication scholars. This leads, logically to the closer examination of both gender roles and hero myth, which can be best addressed through exploration of the distinctly American Global Police Officer myth and gender role myths as portrayed in televi­ sion series about \^etnam. Fourth, because it is becoming increasingly apparent that audience input can enhance media criticism, input from viewers will be used to inform this criticism. That criticism will focus on possible connections, via liv­ ing myth, between the dramatic portrayal of the Vietnam war on series television and impressions veterans of that time have of its portrayal, providing a base from which to examine potential transformations in these two core myths. RESEARCH QUESTIONS The Vietnam war continues to be a source of division within American culture. It is a focus for tensions between individual and group as manifested in the pro-war and anti-war factions of our culture. That tension is still deeply felt, and is internally divisive to people as well. Therefore, Vietnam has become a 76 symbol of a "shattered" mythology concerning our role in the world. Scapegoats for the confusion caused by that fracturing have been the government, the press, the anti-war movement and the individual veteran at various times. Televised entertainment depictions of those tensions can show us what, as a culture, how we are addressing these tensions in the non-threatening form of stories.

Vietnam, even when restricted to its televised entertainment versions, can only be studied within a limited context. The research questions of this study serve to provide a context and get at the core issues concerning the Vietnam war as presented by Tour of Duty and China Beach.

Two main questions will be posed in this study. The first addresses the current state of tension in and/or resolution of the long standing national myth of the United States as a Global Police Officer. The second question concerns gender specific myths that serve to provide models of how men and women de­ fine themselves individually as compared to how American culture defines the concepts of "man" and "woman." What are the tensions and/or resolutions in these intensely personal images which are dynamically inter-related to one anoth­ er and to the Global Police Officer myth? War, the method of intervention often used by the United States to keep peace, is intrinsically related to male identity; at the same time the female gender role, as reflected in American myth is that of helpmate, lover and companion.

That the mythic function of providing role models and conflict resolutions will guide the use of myth as a critical tool in the analysis of television series is the basis for this study. Discussion of the specifically American myth of this na­ tion's role as a model for tand protector of the world provides the theoretical basis for the global police officer myth referred to in Question One. The discussion of the construction of gender in society as different from women's experience as 77 individuals and the myths of female power depicted in American media dis­ cussed above provides theoretical background for Question Two, regarding percep­ tions of gender roles as portrayed in the television series under study.

Understanding the mythic systems that are a part of the way Americans view themselves and the world about them helps us to understand why we com­ municate with one another in the ways we do; the enduring myths of a culture guide an individual's daily choices as well as the government's national and in­ ternational actions. Both the Global Police Officer myth and the American gender role myths endure; this study will examine how they endure and in what ways they are propagated by series television, therefore it is expected that this mythic analysis ofTour of Duty and China Beach will reveal more about who American television storytellers think Americans are now because the series are current de­ pictions of a continuing controversy. Given that, what does the depiction of the Vietnam war on prime time television tell us about the current viability of American myth, especially that of America as the Global Police Officer? What do these stories have to tell us about the tensions inherent in American gender myths and to what degree are they portrayed as resolved? The latter question is especially important in light of the controversy over whether full participation in professional military combat is considered by some to be a step to equality for women in the United States. In the context of a Vietnam-like war, the stereotypes of men as essentially aggressive and warlike versus women who are essentially nurturing and peaceful were challenged by the heroic portrayal of Margaret

Houlihan in the successful series M*A*S*H (S. Marshall 1985, S. Marshall and

Williams, 1991). How do these new series respond to the same topic in terms of heroic and gender role models? 78

This study concentrates on American myth under stress, which can yield information about the nature of American myth. The source of that information is the storytelling of Tour of Duty and China Beach and the impressions of the ex­ pert viewers. Examination of television's recreation of a controversial war as por­ trayed in these series helps establish connections between the actual past, stories about the past, and the present world in which we live and with which we must cope everyday. This is especially important given that the target audiences' ages include those of many of the people who were involved in that controversy. To summarize, the two major questions relevant to this study of the televi­ sion portrayal of American men and women in the Vietnam war are subsets of American myth directly relevant to the depiction of gender roles under stress and the Global Police Officer myth under stress: 1. the propagation or negation of myth of America as the Global Police Officer and 2. the propagation or negation of myths of standard gender roles in the television portrayal of women working in or near a war zone. The recollections of the veterans will provide a context for the perspectives on the Global Police Officer presented in the series narratives. Gender role myths will be addressed in two ways: first, through the comparison of the portrayal of gender roles in the series to the expectations and remembered ex­ periences of those who served in Vetnam and second, by comparing the behavior of male and female heroes to the expectations set out in the hero myths. In conclusion, though a number of works on various topics have been pub­ lished on various aspects of the Vietnam war, as well as on using myth as a basis for analysis, communication research on the depiction of the myths surrounding the Vetnam war on television is scarce. The literature in communication and re­ lated fields of study regarding study of the communication about the Vietnam war of myth reveals that although the subjects of myth, Vetnam, and television 79 programming have been touched on, the specific topic of recent mythic analysis of network entertainment television programming directly addressing the Metnam war has not yet been fully explored. American myth, the Vietnam war, and the is­ sues surrounding them are important enough to be explored by communication scholars; similarly, the uses made of American myth in depicting the Vietnam war in the latest prime time television programming are due critical examination.

It is this void in the research that this study will attempt to fill by examining

Tour of Duty and China Beach in light of their mythic content and structure. That examination will be aided by focus group interviews of "expert" viewers: men and women Vietnam veterans who are familiar with the series and whose concrete experiences during the war provide the necessary connection between the everyday quality of the war and the televisual stories told about it. CHAPTER m

METHOD

Most mythic critics must rely on their judgment within the context of well-articulated critical frameworks in order to carry out the analyses. Taking this approach, the media critic must serve as a surrogate viewer, making reasonable judgements about audience expectations or reactions to the artifact under study. A logical next step is to expand the breadth of the criticism by obtaining information directly from viewers of the series in question. This is the basis for reception studies, which emphasize viewer interpretation over any dominant interpretation based on the intentions of those crafting the message. Viewer interpretation is important, and ought to be productively incorporated into research conducted by mythic critics. Frentz and Hale used such an approach when investigating the values children found in the film.

The Empire Strikes Back, using "inferential model criticism," wherein impressions from a sample of the critics' estimation of the film's intended audience are used to structure the final criticism (1983, p. 278). In this case

Frentz and Hale felt the intended audience of the film was children; they conducted in-depth interviews with a small sample of children aged eight to eleven (1983, p. 279) to generate "value rules" from which clustered around three "encounter contexts:" "form of life," "mastery of environment" and

"social relationships" (1983, p. 284). Some of the value rules uncovered by the 80 81 authors conflicted, presenting paradoxes: "[r]ather than offering a resolution, then, the film invites children to resolve some paradoxes on their own"

(Frentz and Hale, 1983, p. 287). This augmentation of rhetorical criticism using qualitative research techniques was demonstrated to be a viable way for

"the critic to analyze rhetorical phenomena in terms of audiences who do not necessarily share his or her values" (Frentz and Hale, 1983, p. 287). A shift of the critic's position from that of a viewer surrogate to an interpreter of actual viewer reactions provides enhanced perspectives on a body of work that would otherwise be largely unavailable to the critic alone. Such combinations of method hold the potential of providing a richer base of information which assists the critic in producing a more comprehensive analysis than do the application of any single method.

This study combines focus group interviews with mythic media criticism because focus groups allow the expression of intense feelings about a topic which can help to evaluate the deep mythic structures proposed by the critic. Because mythic structures, as discussed above, are essentially emotional and analogical, rather than strictly logical and rational, the teaming of focus group interviews and mythic criticism seems especially beneficial for the media critic.

A general outline of the method for this study follows. A initial criticism of the program led to creation of a summary tape for the two series and to the recording of participants' recollections of their viewing of the series as a basis for discussion. That discussion was directed to the major questions of this study through the use of a focus group protocol. The results of the focus group interviews provided a context for evaluating the potential 82 meanings of the texts provided by the series as well as both the salience and power of mythic structures and themes in the texts of the two television series, leading to the final criticism and discussion in chapter five. This combination of methods provided access to the evaluations of expert viewers which allowed a more thorough examination of these series than would an analysis based on critical theory alone. Nevertheless, critical theory of myth

and television is the context for the study as a whole.

CRITICAL THEORY

As discussed in chapter two, television provides a setting for modern mythmaking that is unique and yet connected to the culture of those doing the video storytelling. Of the many formats used in television programming, the weekly series provides one which is arguably conducive to the formation or reiteration of myth because the recurring characters and situations provide opportunities for both repetition and accumulation of detail that cannot be effectively executed within the time spans generally allotted to TV movies, feature films, specials or even miniseries. The repetitive nature of the weekly series has a ritualistic quality that is conducive to the perpetuation of myth.

A great deal of mythic criticism has been applied to films, in part because a film provides natural time and plot complexity limitations for the film's story, making the critic's job easier. As well, gross box office figures are fairly easy to obtain as a measure of a film's popular success. Television series, on the other hand, are rarely examined as narrative wholes due to the large amouiit of material generated by even a marginally successful series.

Quantitative approaches such as content analysis often focus on a genre, or 83 are applied to a particular issue such as the way in which women are portrayed in work situations on television dramas. While these are clearly viable and interesting studies, none of these approaches, by itself, gets at the ways in which a particular television series or set of series function as artifacts of the current culture. The application of mythic criticism to television series of import does so. Deciding which series are important enough to merit criticism becomes a primary task. One easy solution is to focus on highly successful or innovative series, such as M*A*S*H, Magnum P.I., Dallas,

Monday Night Football, The Mary Tyler Moore Show or The Cosby Show.

Another solution to the problem of what to select for critical evaluation is to examine programs that seem to address issues of cultural importance, such as television series depicting the Vietnam war.

In general, methods of mythic criticism focus on the elements in the text such as character and situation and make use of particular theories of myth in order to discover insights into the way(s) a mass mediated text functions in the culture. As in Rushing's analysis of Alien and A lien s, a close reading of the films allows a peek at both surface and deep messages which may contradict one another (1989, p. 21). Rhetorical myths, according to Frentz and Rushing, provide meaning for cultural life, are expressed in symbolic acts such as films or television programming, have as a primary audience the cultural psyche, evolve toward an entelechial or ultimate end and can serve any of the following functions: to reaffirm values of a subset of the culture, "repress evils a culture does not wish to face," reveal culturally repressed knowledge or "advocate transformative social change" (1988, p. 1). 84

Because mythic analysis is about the relationships between elements in a story, what those elements present to the audience and the larger meanings and utilities those relationships have for the real world as much as about the elements themselves, the hero of a mythic story in relation to his/her context can reveal much about current tensions in a society and potential ways of dealing with those tensions. Given this large sense of myth and the degree to which a culture's myths provide the structure of that culture's particular notions of reality, Rowland's precise and clear definition of myth is one which excludes too much to be useful to the critic interested in the potential implications a mythic story may have (1990, p. 105-108). Myth exists in between gossip, story, song, poetry, dreams and religion; it touches on all of them but does not wholly reside in any of them. Therefore, Rushing’s less strict and more inclusive definition of myth is the one which has the most utility for the critic who wishes to conduct a fruitful examination of a culture's mass mediated messages and their roots in that culture's mythos.

The hero models presented Lichtman, Pearson and Pope, Campbell and

Jewett and Lawrence have one thing in common; the validity of a heroic journey based on common themes in traditional stories (as in Campbell), in a body of literature or other media products (Pearson and Pope and Jewett and

Lawrence) or with the earliest available stories (Lichtman). Part of this study involves determining how well (if at all) the narratives presented by Tour of

D uty and China Beach match the narrative patterns presented by these four hero cycles. If they match, doesChina Beach fit the models of the female hero and Tour of Duty fit the male hero cycles? In addition, how do male

and female Vietnam veterans who watch these series respond to them? After 85 the basic components of each series are outlined in the initial criticism, the focus group responses will be examined in light of the two main research questions. The Global Police Officer myth is essentially a hero myth expanded from individual behavior to that of a nation. The myths of gender roles, while they affect everyone on a very personal basis, also operate on a large scale throughout the culture. The degree to which any of the hero models match the series narratives will be examined in light of these two more overarching components of American heroism; in part, hero models serve either to reinforce or challenge existing gender roles. Upon beginning this study, it seemed likely that some potential relationships between participants, series, and hero myths might emerge: first, that women would prefer China

Beach and men would prefer Tour of Duty, second, that the female hero myths would apply more directly toChina Beach and the male hero myths to

Tour of Duty; third, that the American monomyth would influence both series strongly. Correspondence of series' narratives to mythic cycles are used to assess the degree to which the series are mythic in structure; the focus group interviews are used to assess the degree to which the series are mythic in function. The two main research questions help to limit the assessment of mythic structure and function to two issues that seem to be mythical for

Americans: the Global Police Officer, which is at the crux of an American view of the Vietnam war and gender roles which relate to the featured main characters in each series.

Other scholars' work in American mythology reveals a clear connection between American notions of frontier, the American role as an international police force and prosecution of the Vietnam war. Previous 86 discussion of hero myths and gender role stereotypes provide the basis for exploration of role models in the series as exemplary models. The relationships of the main characters to one another and to the war itself will provide a sense of the heroic model they most closely represent, winch then gives a sense of the contribution each series makes to the culture's myth system regarding gender roles in American culture and America's role in the world. Is the most traditional mytliic system challenged or reinforced? What are the ways in which the myths undergirding the series are true as well as false? (Rushing, 1988, p. 8-10). The methods employed in the this study serve to more deeply and clearly explore the potential that dramatic television programming has for dealing with extremely divisive issues of historical and cultural importance.

Mythic criticism usually proceeds by defining the important characters and events of a text and then examining those events and characters using appropriate elements gleaned from theories of myth. Rushing clearly favors

Jungian elements and frontier myth in her examination of various American films, as discussed in chapter two. Wliile a Jungian approach is not essential to mythic criticism, some theory of myth must be the basis for the analysis; in this case, the four hero models, along with the Global Police Officer myth and the mythic nature of gender roles provide the critical base. From the perspective of Brock and Scott, mythic criticism could be classified as

"experiential criticism," taking on elements of both eclectic and social reality approaches (1980, pp. 133-264). According to Swanson's "requirements of critical justification," this study would be a second order criticism within the critical rather than the m undane stance (1973, pp. 311-31). 87

While rhetorical criticism of films and/or television series in order to explore mythic elements of American culture regarding difficult national issues is a constructive critical endeavor, the next logical step is to obtain information directly from viewers of the series in question. A shift of the critic's position from viewer surrogate to facilitator of viewer discussion will provide multiple perspectives on the same body of work. Properly done, this combination of methods will provide a richer base of information, giving the critic a chance to do even more fruitful analysis because it allows the critic's attention to focus on elements of the text that seem to resonate and are important to the structure of the series, while simultaneously forcing the critic's attention to elements that viewers who are experts in the world being portrayed by the series deem important. While this inevitably draws the critic away from a neatly packaged analysis within the context of any one critical theory, it provides illumination from many angles that is vital in the process of interpreting stories from with one's own myth system.

In order to get at the mythic themes of the series in question, this study is based, in general, on the critical work of Rushing, Frentz and Hale.

Attention to mythic rhetoric in mass mediated artifacts comes from Rushing and Frentz, while combining a critical framework with the use of data from viewers is inspired by Frentz and Hale. Rhetorical criticism can be used to discover crucial information about and patterns in a given piece of discourse, as well as provide an idea of the potential effect that discourse could have on a given audience because of the deep meanings found within that discourse.

In turn, focus groups can be used to find out how viewers are responding to a television series. Although the number of participants is small, the depth of 88 the interview helps to get at some of the myths that people apply to their world. In essence, the purpose of the analysis of particular television series is to look at patterns in viewer reaction to what they see as the essence of the series in order to discover the potential myths that may be operating as a part of the text of that slice of the television discourse. The focus groups will get at some of the working myths Americans use to process the lasting impact of the Vietnam war. Within the context of the two main research questions, the topics of the focus groups were: 1. general discussion of television series and the Vietnam war, 2. accuracy of portrayal of men zmd women in the series and 3. any significant situations or problems the participants think the series addressed or failed to address.

Based on theory concerning myth discussed previously, it is clear that myth functions in part, to mitigate social tensions, often by providing heroic role models for emulation in a variety of ways. The important social tensions in Tour of Duty and China Beach can be explored via a critical method that accommodates viewer responses to the series. One traditional method for assessing audience reaction to television program content is the focus group interview. Focus group interviews have been used in conjunction with

Bormann's rhetorical vision theory in an internal marketing study also

utilizing Q-sort (Cragan, Shields and Nichols, 1981, p. 271-307), in description

of "dramatistic focus groups" (Shields, 1981, p. 313-319), and in external

marketing studies (Shields, 1981, p. 321-333, 335-349). Bormann's symbolic convergence theory has also been used by Shields as a basis for evaluating focus group interviews. Application of the focus group interview to areas beyond marketing and advertising such as mythic criticism is discussed below. 89

FOCUS GROUPS

The focus group interview is one traditional method used to evaluate audience response to aspects of various mass media productions such as feature film plots, television pilot episodes and advertisements. The focus group was first used in combination with the Lazarsfeld-Stanton Program analyzer to interpret audience response to radio programs in 1941 (Stewart and Shamdasani, 1990, p. 9). M organ suggests that the first social science application of focus groups as confirmed by accompanying publications was by

M erton in 1946, and involved effectiveness of World War II propaganda

(1988, p. 11). Byers and Wilcox describe focus groups as "a relatively new method of research for the communication scientist" and stress theoretical underpinnings for the use of focus group interviews in communication research (1986, p. 3). Krueger defines a focus group as "a carefully planned discussion designed to obtain perceptions on a defined area of interest in a perm issive, non-threatening environm ent" (1988, p. 18).

Opinion on the correct size for a focus group varies; groups can consist of eight (Shields, 1988), six (Stewart and Shamdasani, 1990, p. 57) or four to twelve (Krueger, 1988, p. 27) participants. Typical groups usually number seven to ten participants. The size must be small enough to allow all present to participate fully; for purposes of this study, four to twelve was considered the appropriate number of people for one focus group. Also, the number of groups to be run also varies with the purpose of the study. In this case, the research questions suggest at least two groups, one of men and one of women; because any one group may be anomalous, an additional group of each type w as run. 90

Focus group interview sessions are conducted in a quiet place where

the respondents feel comfortable and which facilitates audio taping of the

discussion. It is essential that participants feel relaxed enough to express their

opinions readily. Given that both myths and focus groups deal with

emotional concepts, focus groups are especially appropriate and effective for

getting deep information about viewers' perceptions and evaluation of

entertainment programs featuring the \^etnam war as their context.

A focus group interview is a zero-history group of people who have

characteristics in common related to the research question; a focus group "...

allows for group interaction and greater insight into why certain opinions are held" (Krueger, 1988, p. 15). Krueger further defines a focus group as

"... a carefully planned discussion designed to obtain perceptions on a carefully defined area of interest in a permissive, non-threatening environment. It is conducted with approximately six to ten people by a skilled interviewer. The discussion is relaxed, comfortable, and often enjoyable for participants as they share their ideas and perceptions. Group members influence each other by responding to ideas and comments in the discussion" (1988, p. 18).

As a qualitative method used for other than marketing purposes,

Morgan suggests that focus groups are preferable to participant observation because they offer "the opportunity to observe a large amount of interaction on a topic in a limited amount of time" (1988, pp. 15-16); compared to individual interviews, they allow interaction to be observed ( 1988, p. 17).

Morgan summarizes their strength: "What focus groups do best is produce an opportunity to collect data from groups discussing topics of interest to the researcher" (1988, p. 21). From the perspective of the mythic critic, focus groups allow for input from viewers that cannot otherwise be easily 91 apprehended.

Tlie elements of a focus group interview—the small size of the group, the time spent together and the comfortable atmosphere—are designed to relax participants by putting them into a group of people with whom they can identify and in whose presence they are willing to disclose more information than might other kinds of data gathering techniques such as personal interviews, paper-and-pencil questionnaires or telephone surveys. The topic of this project was somewhat controversial, but separation of individual participants into groups by gender helped to isolate answers by gender as well as provide a comfortable atmosphere in which they could express their opinions about issues on which they are, by virtue of their life experiences, experts. The focus group protocol explains, in more detail, how the organization of questions will both get the participants used to talking about the topic and gradually bring them to focus upon issues related to the questions regarding gender role myths and the Global Police Officer myth.

The method of evaluating the series began with an initial criticism which resulted in a representative summary tape to provide a basis for group discussion. This initial review resulted in a set of recurring issues which seem to be present in each of the series, and the use of focus groups would allow the importance of specific issues that emerge from the focus group interviews to provide a context for assessment of the programs in the final criticism. The final criticism provides a comparison of the critic's perspective of the programs with experts' responses to the programs and the issues of

American myth of global intervention as well as that of gender roles. The story told by each television series and the focus group responses to each 92 series, in the context of Vietnam as an important social issue in American culture, provide the parameters for the final analysis of American myths of intervention and gender roles in this study. The core characters and what they seem to represent, along with the focus group participants' responses to the programs as directed by the protocol are the basis for the results of this study. The particular episodes, characters and events most memorable to the critic and the focus group participants can be critically compared in light of the four hero myths to provide a final interpretation of the series. In this way, the perceptions of the veterans will be factored into the criticism of the series.

The issues raised by men and women \^etnam veterans who are already familiar with at least one of the series under study, provide a framework for a better understanding of the connections between the screen media product and the social issues it carries to or reinforces in the viewer. Even divergent interpretations can provide information regarding the degree to which the mythic symbols are being used to address the tensions are themselves in the process of being negotiated as valid or invalid.

Each focus group session began with small talk which occurred until all group members arrived. The introduction to each focus group meeting was a welcome to all participants, a general explanation that the topic was television series and the Vietnam war, and reminder that each person's view was important. To provide a reminder of the series and help to initiate discussion, discussion, a summary tape consisting of a twenty minute representation of each television series was played. Although various topics came up, discussion was confined to the two major questions relevant to this study: the myths of America as a Global Police Officer and gender role 93 expectations in the context of the group's experiences serving in Vietnam.

For each focus group session, the goal was to get participants to freely

discuss their personal evaluation of the television series in question they have watched and/or continue to watch. The group setting and process of

discussion in an atmosphere that reinforces the idea that each group

member's opinion or impression of the series is important is calculated to get

the respondents to express their genuine feelings and ideas about the war

then and now and about the two series. The values and perspectives that are

a part of such frank discussion provide a basis for examining the theory of

American mythology as it appears to be reflected in the series; this in turn

provides a more finely tuned examination of how Americans structure their world. The divisive nature of the war and the uniquely American aspects of

the attendant controversy provide a rich background for examining

American myth.

The American conflict over the nature, scope and morality of the war

provides an insight into American tensions and therefore myths over an

American issue—whether to intervene militarily in another nation's affairs,

as well as conflict over the role of women in either supporting or opposing

such intervention. The examination of the conflict over the \Tetnam war

gets to the heart of one aspect of American myth: the country's role as the

Global Police Officer. The portrayal of women as a part of these stories is,

however, an important aspect of the video recreation of Vietnam that has

been largely ignored; examination of this part of American mythology lets us

see how our television programming of today is retelling some of women's

history that took place during this country's women's movement of the 94

1960’s and 1970's.

In examining the direct expression of issues surrounding the Vietnam war in prime time dramatic television programming, focus group interviews of Vietnam veterans familiar with Tour of Duty and China Beach w ere conducted in order to get at the meanings these series can hold for viewers, the reasons either or both of the programs were watched, as well as reasons why one series was preferred. Also important was the degree to which viewers remembered particular characters, character interactions, or situations presented by the series.

DATA COLLECTION

Data for this study come from two distinct sources; the episodes of the two television series and the transcripts of the focus group interviews.

Episodes of Tour of Duty and China Beach were taped off the air between

September 1987 and June 1990. An overview of episodes from the first three seasons of eacli series were used to assess the series for the initial criticism in chapter four.

Focus group sessions were recorded on audio tape, with microphones clearly in evidence so that the group could become inoculated to their presence. Tire taped responses of the focus groups were transcribed and then evaluated for prominent themes that emerged in regard to the three main question categories: 1. viewing information of the participants, 2. questions regarding Research Question One and 3. questions regarding Research

Question Two. The most important ideas and themes within group discussions are found in the results chapter, organized by gender and according to the focus group question protocol which is, in turn, based upon 95

the initial research questions. The dominant themes from the focus groups

provide a supplementary viewer's text that will direct the final mythic

criticism of the text of the two series.

To summarize, a short description or synopsis of each of the series

under study was completed by the critic, based on initial viewing of the series.

The purpose of these synopses was to fairly ascertain the main themes and characters and potential patterns of mythic opposition or contradiction. This provided the basis for a summary tape played for each group before it began

discussion, which in turn provided information to be used in combination with the hero myths in assessing the mythic structure of the full run of each series. Because mythic themes that emerge over years of viewing are under consideration in this study and due to time considerations, no single episode of each series was included in the summary tape in its entirety. Instead, a composite summary of each series was constructed based on the initial criticism discussed above. Each summary began with the series' signature, ran for approximately twenty minutes and ended with an ending signature/credit roll to provide familiar beginning and ending cues to the participants. Main events, themes, and characters were represented, giving the viewer a feel for the extended story that each series represents. Viewers were asked to discuss their reaction to and interpretation of Tour of Duty and

China Beach based upon the summary tape they saw as well as their own viewing experience with these series. After the series synopsis and the summary tape were created, group participants were selected, groups were run and the discussions resulting from them transcribed The main themes representing the gist of each focus group's replies to each protocol question 96 were then culled from the transcripts of that group.

CRITERIA FOR SELECTION OF FOCUS GROUP PARTICIPANTS

Establishing initial criteria for focus groups participants was based on the content of the programs and the characters depicted. It was logical to look to Vietnam veterans and Vietnam war protesters as experts on the times and issues the television series depict because they were active participants in similar events at that time. The Global Police Officer question also points to combatants, and the gender role question provides inclusion of both women and men.

Krueger suggests that focus groups are, by definition, homogeneous, but with "sufficient variation among participants to allow for contrasting opinions" (1988, p. 92). Participants were selected based on three criteria: 1. service in the armed forces (or related services such as the Red Cross) in

Vietnam at the time of the war, 2. familiarity with either or both of the two series under study and 3. willingness to attend one focus group meeting.

The first of these of the group selection criteria was originally designed to include both Metnam war Veterans and war protesters and was described as having an active interest in issues surrounding the Vietnam war during the Vietnam Era, 1955-1975, either in the form of being a U.S. armed forces employee or as a protester back in the United States (some people may have qualified for both, such as members of the group Vetnam Veterans Against the War). Due to extreme difficulties in finding either male or female protesters of the period who met criterion two, the war protester groups were abandoned. The second criterion was to be that the person meeting criterion one be a regular or even avid viewer of one or both of the television series in 97 question. Again, due to difficulty in finding participants, this criterion was adjusted to simple familiarity with one of the series. Potential participants meeting the first two criteria were willing to participate in general were then asked about their availability to attend a group that would last no longer than three hours and would be a one-time event. The groups were formed based on that availability.

Far more men served in Vietnam than did women, to the extent that women have often gone unrecognized as veterans, especially of the Vietnam war. It was originally thought and indeed was the case that it would be be easier to find male participants because of the nature and number of the combat soldier characters in the two series and especially Tour of Duty's emphasis on portraying men's experiences in the field, combat veterans were preferred as participants. Given that women were then prohibited from combat military occupational specializations, the large ratio of men to women in the military, and because of the kinds of characters presented in the series, women who served in Vietnam under the auspices of various organizations such as the American Red Cross, the U.S.O., and civilian branches of the

United States Government were considered as participants in addition to those women who served in the military in Vietnam.

RECRUITMENT OF FOCUS GROUP PARTICIPANTS

No remuneration or enticement was given to induce participation; participants were voluntary and the time cost was fairly high at three consecutive hours. Although this might be considered a drawback, the people willing to participate without inducement provides some indication of sincerity and some interest in the general topic. It was expected that 98 recruiting the groups would be difficult because, for example, many people who qualify as participants might simply not want to discuss these issues.

Secondly, any potential participant was required to be a verifiable Vietnam veteran (or Red Cross worker, government employee, etc.), who was familiar w ith Tour of Duty and China Beach. Verification was provided through the recruitment process, given that proper identification would have been necessary for acceptance into the various established veterans' groups originally identified as potential sources of participants. Asking for verification of veteran status through presentation of discharge papers (DD-

214) threatened to destroy the trust necessary for participation in the study.

An ideal participant would have been a veteran who was also a fan of both of the programs because he/she would have been able to discuss the series in great detail while retaining his/her experience in the country during the war. However, it seemed unlikely that those meeting the qualifications would actually be avid fans of both series. This was the case. Still, it was possible to find people who met all of the basic criteria discussed above who watched at least one of the series fairly regularly and had some passing contact with the other series. Those who were eventually recruited made an excellent group of people to aid in the analysis of these particular television series, due to their experience of the situations and issues being portrayed and their viewers' understanding of the programs.

Veterans were contacted through local veterans' organizations, in the following manner. A letter explaining the basic outline was sent to the person in charge at several veterans' groups likely to have \^etnam veterans as members. This person then made that information (including my 99 addresses and telephone numbers) available to potential participants. Those people who were interested then contacted me. Often, the veterans' group leaders offered telephone numbers of potential participants and offered the use of their name as an introduction for what otherwise would have been an entirely "cold" telephone call. When between approximately five or more people in a given category (male veteran, female veteran) were able to meet at a given time, a focus group meeting was scheduled.

Anticipation of more than twelve or fewer than four people available for a group was met with plans of adjustment by continuing to check with potential participants or establishing another meeting time for the overflow.

It was planned, in anticipation of personal emergencies and last-minute no- shows, that no group would be scheduled with less than six people for each interview so that a minimum group of four were able to meet. If only three people were able to participate, the interview would still be run. This latter situation turned out to be the case with most focus group sessions, and three was established as a minimum number of participants. Given the specialized requirements for participation, three people meeting the qualifications provided adequate information to warrant running the group. Postponing a potential focus group session in order to attract more people tended to be self- defeating due to attrition of the two or three people who initially agreed to participate. Attracting another two or three people would result in the same pattern of initial interest and withdrawal, especially given the narrow range of qualifications expected and diverse schedules of potential participants, and the large time investment needed for this project. One meeting was rescheduled due to a bomb threat at the Small Midwestern University 100 unconnected with this research project.

Protesters were sought in a similar manner, although they were more difficult to find given that few organizations exist for the express purpose of meeting their needs in the same way as do veterans' organizations. Still,

Vietnam war protesters were found by talking to individuals known to have protested the Vietnam war and soliciting names of those potentially interested. The process of contacting them was similar to the process of contacting veterans, wherein they contacted me. In this case, initial contact varied: office visits and phone calls, based on an acquaintance's name as a reference (with their permission) stating all of the basic information about the project included in the letter replaced the introductory letter sent to veterans.

At office visits potential participants were given a copy of the letter; over the phone an appropriate address was requested in order to mail it to them. Of more than thirty individuals with various experiences as Vetnam war protesters, roughly one third did not want to discuss the issue at all, and the remainder who were interested in the portrayal of the war in television series were not familiar with either of the programs. It was discovered that many of those in the latter group were either radically anti-television and did not own a set or said that they did not watch commercial television. It became clear that filling the groups for male and female protesters who were familiar with the series under study was next to impossible.

FOCUS GROUP DESIGN

Because research question two involves discussion of gender roles, groups were split into same-gender groups. That, along with service in

Vietnam, met the criterion for group homogeneity. In the initial design. 101 based on the general controversy over the war, separate groups of protesters and veterans were to be run. However, as discussed above, the absence of

Vietnam war protesters who were familiar with Tour of Duty and China

Beach combined with the presence of Vietnam veterans familiar with the series made the shift to veteran-only groups necessary.

Focus groups were conducted on July 30 and August 2,1990 at a large

Midwestern University and October 30,1991 and March 2, 1992 at a small

Midwestern University. Two general types of groups were run: male veterans and female veterans; one group of male and one group of female veterans was run at each location. For this study, women veterans included four Red

Cross workers, one Army surgical nurse, and one civilian government employee who worked in \detnam. Two Army surgical nurses were last minute "no-shows" and one other surgical nurse and an Air Force tactical coordinator who helped evacuate Saigon were unable to meet at times conducive to forming groups. The male veterans included one Marine rifleman, one Army scout dog soldier, one scout dog Marine, an Army medic,

a seaman, an Army infantryman, and a Long Range Patrol team member. A

Marine corpsman, an Army medic and three Army infantrymen were willing but unable to participate due to scheduling conflicts.

Of the seven men, two were black and five white. Of the six women,

one was black and five white. The men's occupations were: university

professor, two university staff members, a local businessman, and three

waged employees. The women's occupations were: three Red Cross workers,

one hospital nurse, and a university staff worker. 102

Each focus group ran approximately three hours in length. The first hour consisted of an introduction and viewing of the summary tape. The summary tape was used to refamiliarize viewers with China Beach and

Tour of D uty. It was 45 minutes long and consisted of excerpts of each of the first three seasons of both series.

RECORDING AND REPORTING OF FOCUS GROUP CONVERSATIONS

Focus groups conversations were recorded for later transcription. A duplicate system of microphones and tape machines was used in addition to the original equipment in case of equipment failure. Likewise, backup cassettes were on hand.

The focus group interviews were recorded on the audio channel of a

VHS video tape recorder so that two or more hours of continuous discussion could be captured on tape without having to interrupt the discussion to "flip" cassettes. The discussions recorded on the audio channels of the videotapes were transferred to microcassette for ease of transcription and then transcribed, by group. The groups' responses were compared on a question by question basis, moving through the focus group protocol in the same pattern in which the questions were asked. The answers of the each of the two men's groups were compared to get a male veteran consensus concerning the series.

This was compared to a similar consensus established for the two women's groups. These two positions were then examined for similarities and differences in their answers to sections II, III, IV and V of the focus group protocol. The overall impressions of each group were examined in terms of the portrayal of the two television series and the participants' direct input regarding gender roles and the concept of Global Police Officer. 103

FOCUS GROUP PROTOCOL AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

INTRODUCTION

The protocol used in the focus groups is based on the two main research questions. The first question concerns the current state of tension in and/or resolution of the long standing national myth of the United States as the Global Police Officer. This question will be addressed in section IV of the protocol, by focus group questions eight through eleven. The second question concerns the current state of tension in and/or resolution of the American version of the very long standing myth regarding male and female gender roles. This question will be addressed in section V of the protocol via focus group questions twelve through seventeen.

The "tensions" referred to in the main research questions were operationalized within the individual focus group discussion questions in two ways: first, as conflicts between characters that participants remember as represented in the content of the TV series and secondly, as conflicts participants bring up in discussion when asked to relate the televised

Vietnam era as depicted in China Beach and Tour of Duty to their own

Vietnam experience as veterans. Such conflicts may be represented in the discussion by talking about issues that participants feel are either properly represented or somehow lack representation in one or both of the series, and by questions the participants may have about the war that have yet to be answered by our society.

In order to address the first research question, the concept of the Global

Police Officer was introduced in general, in order to invite discussion which would indicate whether such a concept is or has been part of the participants' 104 living myth as Americans. Then, the participants' perspectives regarding such a vision of America's role in the world were sought. In the process, the participants' impressions of Tour of Duty and China Beach were solicited.

Using this approach, participants could be exposed gradually to questions addressing the conflicts that are at the heart of the first main question while simultaneously getting their impressions of the two series in question.

THE FOCUS GROUP PROTOCOL: FACSIMILE

I. INTRODUCTION: WELCOME !

Good evening. I am glad you are here tonight. Thank you for taking the time to join our discussion of the portrayal of the \^etnam war on network television. My name is Scott Marshall and I am a doctoral candidate at the Ohio State University. This group is one of several groups I am conducting in order to complete my dissertation. I am attempting to gain information about how people who served in the armed forces (or related organizations such as the Red Cross or U.S.O.) or protested the war during the Vietnam era relate to current depictions of the war in the television series China Beach and Tour of Duty. I am particularly interested in your views because of your familiarity with the era and your attention to these television series.

You have been selected because you have certain things in common that are of particular interest in exploring the representation of the "Vietnam war on network television. You are all male/female protesters/veterans of the Vietnam era and you are familiar with at least one of two television series. Tour of D uty and China Beach.

Please keep in mind that each of your unique opinions on the topic is highly valued. Do not be afraid to speak your mind as the discussion goes on, and please feel comfortable enough to say all that you care to in response to any question. Out of respect for each person here, please wait until another speaker has finished talking before offering your thoughts. After viewing two short excerpts from each show, you will be discussing America's role in the world, and the parts both men and women play within that role in relation to these television shows and the times they depict. 105

II. PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS

You are all familiar with at least one of the television series under study. I need to get an idea for this group of how many of you are familiar with which programs.

1. Who is familiar with Tour of Duh/1

1. Who is familiar with China Beach?

3a. Of the show(s) you are familiar with, which did you watch regularly? 3b. What are the main reasons you watch this/these show(s) regularly? 3c. Of the show(s) you watch do not watch regularly, what are the main reasons you do not watch regularly?

III. FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS: VIEWER IMPRESSION OF SERIES

4a. Think back to the times you have seen Tour of Duty or China Beach. What general impression do you associate with either or both of these shows? 4b. On what do you base that impression: your home viewing of the series, tonight's video excerpts or your experience as protesters / service personnel in the Vietnam era?

5. Based on this/these impression(s), what basic message(s) do you associate with either or both of these shows?

6a. What characters do you remember from either Tour of Duty or China Beach who stand out in your mind? 6b. Think back to what you have seen of this/these character(s). What is it about them that makes them memorable? 6c. What particular interactions between characters from either Tour of D uty or China Beach stand out in your mind? 6d. Of the interactions that stand out in your mind, what is it about them that makes them memorable? 6e. Based on your knowledge of the characters you remember, what character interactions presented conflicts that stand out in your mind?

7a. Of the character conflicts you remember, what makes them so m em orable? 7b. In what ways have any of the conflicts you remember been resolved in ways you consider satisfactory? 106

7c. In what ways have any of the conflicts you remember 1. been resolved in ways you consider unsatisfactory? 2. not been resolved? 7d. Based on your knowledge of the series, what issues do you believe to be important about the Vietnam war that were not addressed?

IV. FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS RELATED TO RESEARCH QUESTION ONE

TRANSITION: Vietnam is considered by many to be an outgrowth of the way Americans saw America's role in the world in the 1950's and 1960's.

8. To what extent do you think that part of America's role in the world today is to police international conflicts around the globe?

9. Think back to your perspective during the \^etnam era. To what extent did you think that part of America's role in the world then was to police international conflicts around the globe?

10. How do the messages/character interactions you remember from Tour of D uty or China Beach relate to your conception of America’s role in the world then or now?

11. Wliat similarities or differences are there between your experience of the Vietnam era and the portrayal you see inTour of Duty and China Beach?

V. FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS RELATED TO RESEARCH QUESTION TWO

TRANSITION: In American culture, society has defined different expectations for men and women, known as gender roles.

12. Of the characters you remember from Tour of Duty and China Beach, how do they fit these standard roles for men and women?

13. How do these gender roles apply to your protest/service experience interacting with others during the Vietnam era?

14. How, in your minds, do standard gender roles relate to the concept of modern warfare as practiced in Wetnam?

15. What effect, if any, do you see the military having on standard gender roles? 107

16a. Think back to the times you have seen Tour of Duty or China Beach. How is this effect or lack of effect on gender roles by the military portrayed in these series? 16b. How does your Vietnam Era experience inform your impression of the depictions of gender roles on Tour of Duty and China Beach?

17a. Have gender roles in America changed since the Vietnam Era? 17b. If so how? 17c. Are the characters you see depicted in Tour of Duty and China Beach more representative of gender roles of the Vietnam Era or of the present day?

EXPLANATION OF THE FOCUS GROUP PROTOCOL BY SECTION

The purpose of the focus groups is to provide an atmosphere in which participants can discuss their impressions of the television series from their unique perspectives as men and women veterans. Such discussion will be focused on the topics of America’s possible role as the world's police officer and the degree of reality standard gender roles had for the participants during their service in Vietnam, today, and as depicted in the series. Section I of the protocol is a welcome and introduction which reinforces basic information about the study, its purpose and origins. It also sets the tone for an open discussion and emphasizes the value of each of the participants. Section II contains the preliminary questions concerning participants' viewing habits of

China Beach and Tour of Duty. Section III includes questions which will provide basic information about the viewers' impressions of the series;

Sections IV and V address directly each of the primary research questions of this study. Comparing answers to the questions concerning the participants' perceptions of 1. the series and 2. the myths within the three-year storylines of

Tour of Duty and China Beach provide an indication of the tensions 108 surrounding the myths under study. Part of that tension is the potential meanings the series have in recreating the Vietnam war. Part of those meanings come from the accuracy of the series as they portrayed people, situations and issues. That accuracy-not just historically or technically but emotionally and in terms of the characters and issues portrayed—revolves around the two myths regarding gender roles and the world's police officer.

The Global Police Officer myth, to a great extent, was what was both being protested and was what brought men and women to serve in Vietnam in the first place; gender roles are basic to who fights and who is being protected in a war, both symbolically and practically. Gender roles are exemplified by the work of the warrior and the nurse; however, in terms of freedom to reach one's potential, gender roles operated in more constricting ways at home than in the war zones. Comparison of the perceptions of the portrayals in the television series between male and female groups will serve to provide information about gender roles of the time and the validity of the portrayals as well as their assessment of the American myth of the Global

Police Officer. The five sections of this protocol serve to gradually bring group members to a discussion of these issues.

In section II, the preliminary questions (1-3) are designed to provide a sense of the group's exposure to and interest in the two series. Questions One and Two will provide straightforward information about the series with which participants in a groups are familiar. Question three is designed to find out who watches which series on a regular basis, as well as their general reasons for selecting the series they watch. If a participant does not watch one or both of the series on a regular basis, question three is also designed to find 109 out their reasons for not watching. These general questions about the series being studied and viewing habits/preferences will also serve to get the group warmed up for further discussion of the meanings the series have for them individually and collectively.

Questions in section III will cover three basic aspects of the first research question concerning the tension in the Global Police Officer myth both as depicted in the series and as experienced by the participants. These aspects are: 1. viewers' perceptions of the series as related to this myth, 2. issues related to this myth they felt were important during the \Tetnam era and 3. issues related to this myth they feel are still important today. While themes related to such a myth may be present in the series, these questions are designed to see if the myth lives in the minds of the viewers. How the series are interpreted by the participants will suggest if the myth is a part of their taken-for-granted reality or something they recognize as a story to the degree that they do not believe it to be true and thus "only" a construction.

The first question of section III (4a) lets the group move from talking about how and when they have viewed these series to their overall reaction to the series, based on their memories of viewing. This is a bridge to talking about the content of the series. Question 4b helps to establish the source of information the participants are using to explain their impression either or both the series, and will help to promote talk about the content of the series.

Question 5 is the first step in getting the participants to discuss their own interpretations of the series with which they are most familiar.

Questions 6a-e address directly the viewers' recollections and perceptions of conflict between opposing characters. These questions take the 110 group from recollections of particular characters to the conflicts they may have come to represent for the viewer. At the heart of such conflicts are issues that may still be unresolved today. Unresolved social issues usually have some sort of living myth that helps to either bring them closer to resolution or keeps the issue from coming up in the first place. Questions 7a- d provide opportunities for the participants to discuss their perceptions of conflicts in the series, as well as how the issues addressed by the series' producers are remembered by people likely to be sensitive to such issues.

Section IV consists of questions 8 through 11. The transitional statement between sections three and four is designed to facilitate smooth movement between the details of the participants' recollections and perceptions of the series to the more specific topic of the Global Police Officer myth without forcing an interpretation of that myth onto the group.

Question 8 is designed to assess the participants' current perspective on the

Global Police Officer myth and 9 provides an opportunity for participants to them reflect on the interpretation(s) they remember having during the

Vietnam era. Question 10 explores possible links between the tensions the participants have picked up from the series and the myth being explored in research question one.

Question 11 elicits direct responses of comparison between the participants' own experiences and the television series conflicts salient to them. By moving from the participants' broad impressions of the series to the characters, issues and conflicts they remember it will be possible to sketch an interpretation of aspects of Tour of Duty and China Beach the participants' feel to be most important. By tunneling their responses from I l l general impression to particularly memorable character and conflicts, it will be possible to discover the parts of the series that have, by definition, mythic meaning for the focus group participants. The comparisons of participants' recollections of the Vietnam era to their recollections of the TV series will help to provide a context for the final analysis of the series. Especially important to that context are the follow-up questions which inquire about what issues have been left out of the series.

Question 12 is designed to facilitate a smooth transition from the discussion of the global police officer myth to section V and the topic of gender roles within the context of the characters recalled by the focus group participants. Question 13 directs the discussion to the concepts of male and female roles that were in place in the participants minds when they served in

Vietnam. Question 14 allows the participants to reveal the connections they make between gender roles and warfare, with an emphasis on the participants' own Vietnam experiences as prompted by question 13. Question

15 is designed to more directly address possible connections between the military as a male institution and the participants' concepts of gender roles as prompted by questions 12 through 14. Question 16a returns to the topic of the television series and asks the participants to comment on the series in the context of questions 12 through 15. Question 16b elicits the participants' own impression of the degree to which their responses about the series are affected by their Vietnam experience. It is conceivable that a focus group member could make assertions about the series based strictly upon the viewing of the series, keeping their personal experience out of their evaluation of the television program. Question 17a simply assesses participants' perspectives 112 on the difference between the gender roles of today and of the time period depicted by tlie series. Question 17b is a probe that is designed to draw out more specific reasons for their answers if they are not freely given in answer to 17a. Question 17c will be asked if a positive answer to question 17a is received; it is designed to provide an assessment of the participants' evaluation of the gender roles presented in the series and to shed light on their perceptions of Tour of Duty and China Beach as television series depicting character relationships of the 1960's or the present day.

ORGANIZATION AND ANALYSIS OF FOCUS GROUP RESULTS

As described above, each question in the focus group protocol is directly connected to one of the two original research questions. Each focus group session will be examined question by question. Tlie main points thought important by each group will be summarized in the results chapter, using two kinds of representative quotations. Significant themes arising from discussion will be represented by direct quotations with no indication of individual author; significant interchanges between members will also quoted as well, using numbers to indicate each individual's responses in the course of the interchange. The numbers are based on the order the individuals first spoke at the beginning of that group's transcript. In addition to representative quotations from participants, each of the five sections of the protocol will be summarized. These summaries will indicate main themes under the subheadings related to the two main researcli questions. The protocol questions related to research question one concern the group's: 1. familiarity with and general impression of the two series, 2. recollections of major character interactions, conflicts and important issues within these 113 series, 3. ideas of important issues not addressed within the series, 4. impression of America's role as global police officer during the war and now, and 5. impression of how the series' content and portrayals compared to their own Metnam experiences. Based on answers to these questions, an understanding of how much of the messages the producers / writers might have gotten across to their audiences can be achieved. Within that context, the essence of the myth of America as world's policeman as experienced then and portrayed in the series can also be assessed. The transition at this point in the protocol is to the topic of gender roles.

The five protocol questions related to research question two concern the group's: 1. understanding of how the characters they recall fit their notions of gender roles, 2. experience of gender roles when they served in

Vietnam, 3. understanding of any connection between gender roles and modern warfare, 4. understanding of the relationship between the military and gender roles, 5. recall of gender role portrayals in the series that fit their understanding of the relationship between the military and gender roles as well as how participants' Vietnam war experience guides their impressions of the series, and 6. notions of how gender roles have changed since the

Vietnam Era and their impression of the match between gender roles portrayed by the series and those of the Vietnam Era versus those of today.

Based on answers to these questions, the participants' understanding of potential relationships between gender roles, the military, and their service experience can be assessed in order to provide a context for participants' impressions of the way gender roles were portrayed in the series. 114

USE OF FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSIONS

The main concern of the analysis was to uncover, based on the interaction of main characters and the situations they are portrayed as experiencing, a set of opposing worldviews that seem to encapsulate the conflict at the heart of each series' presentation of the \detnam war. Based on the nature of that conflict and its balance of tensions, as well as the characters, situations and issues that seem to emphasize the conflict. The mythic images

(representatives of the conflict ascertained above) will essentially be tested for validity through use of the focus group interviews. The central question to be answered by the focus groups will be; are the myths uncovered by the critic in the content of the television discourse the same as or similar to myths being actively used by viewers? If not, what are the myths functioning for the group members that apply to their concepts of the Vietnam War and its portrayal on television? The focus groups provide an important link completing a circuit from content to viewer to critic.

The focus group protocol provides direction to the concepts of America as global police officer, gender roles, and issues important to group members both during the war and today. All expressions of opinion on these issues and any resolutions reached in sessions were included in the transcribed

portion of the sessions. The results were organized via the protocol sections

and questions; responses of gendered groups are indicated through

representative statements of two kinds: 1. single statements representing the

group's perspective especially well and 2. interactions of participants that were

representative of how the group responded to the question. In the case of the

former, no labeling of speaker was included; in the case of the latter, the 115 numbers assigned to the speakers in the transcripts were used to distinguish between contributors of a particular interchange. The final criticism will examine the patterns presented in the series and will use the focus groups' discussion of the series and the four hero myths to assess the the meaning of the series. Focus groups will provide a basis for the final criticism, which will provide a context for addressing the two main research questions as they relate to prime time television programming depicting the Vietnam war.

FOCUS GROUP RESULTS AND FINAL CRITICISM OF THE SERIES

In order to have a more thorough understanding of the discourse in question, three phases of analysis contributed to the final result: initial description, focus groups and final criticism. This general process provided ways to accumulate and account for the rich details presented by the two television series as texts. The focus groups open avenues to viewers understanding of the series, yielding interpretive data from beyond the perspective of the lone critic. The final criticism accounts for the connections and discrepancies in interpretation between the text as interpreted by the critic, using the four hero models, and by the expert viewers. This eclectic method has been constructed in order to provide and understanding, in more detail and depth than has been provided so far in analysis of these series, how the power of the memory of \^etnam is being influenced by broadly viewed television depictions of the Vietnam war. Such understanding can help us to make sense of our past experiences and shed light on the ways in which our mass mediated recreations of the past can contribute to the shape of our future. CHAPTER IV

RESULTS

This chapter consists of three sections. The first is the initial descriptive criticism of of the two series under study, upon which the focus group summary tape was based. This section provides a description of the main characters and settings of each series for each of the seasons they aired as well as a general assessment of the meaning of the main themes presented by each series. The second section is composed of the results of the focus groups themselves, arranged within the categories of gender by protocol question.

The third section is a short summary of the focus group results.

PRELIMINARY DESCRIPTIVE CRITICISM: TOUR OF DUTY

The overt themes in Tour of Duty changed with each of its three seasons: the first season offered a view of the Vietnam war from the point of view of an Army platoon in the bush; it will be referred to as the "Platoon" season because it resembles the feature film in many surface aspects. Some of the issues dealt with in this season were: tensions between officers and enlisted men (especially young new lieutenants and experienced foot soldiers), overt racism, conscientious objection to the war, the tensions between Special Forces and regular Army soldiers, the danger of old soldiers succumbing to disillusionment and drug/alcohol abuse, the effects of the war on the indigenous people, children as potential combatants, effects of the war 116 117 on soldiers' families, tension between the press and the military, the dangers of being too enamored of combat, coping with friends' deaths, the recognition of enemies as human beings, the dangers of drug abuse to cope with psychological pain caused by the war, and the futility of giving ground back that has been taken at the high cost of human lives. In general, the themes reiterated by the series were featured the tension of black-white relations, that good soldiers abuse neither drugs nor alcohol and cultivate a mindset that allows them to continue to function, that low tough but caring officers who understood the nature of this war could protect their people and function well, while many soldiers will succumb to hatred, greed, sadism, or incompetence.

The second season involved the same platoon, transferred to Tan Son

Nlrut Air base in Saigon; ongoing female characters were introduced as love interests of the two main characters. Season two will be referred to as the

"Saigon" season due to the squad's change in geography. The beginning of the Saigon season focused on the Tet Offensive and the Army's treatment of

"combat stress." Important issues throughout the rest of the season concerned: the futility of fighting the war outside of Cambodia, society's rejection of both injured and healthy veterans, the arrogance of U.S. troops toward their South Vietnamese allies, the perfidy and untrustworthiness of

C.I.A. operatives, and recognition that women could both kill and be killed in this war. Themes related to racism thread their way through many of the episodes. Dr. Seymour joins the Army to train doctors and medics in the U.S.

The third and final season will be referred to as the "Green Beret" season because it reflects a change in status of the squad. Alex Devlin is killed 118

when a restaurant she is near is bombed. The now-seasoned squad members

are transferred to begin a new season at Camp Barnett, a base for a number of

elite teams conducting secret missions. The now-transformed squad operates as a special forces team. Issues dealt with in this season include: conscientious objection and its ramifications, the Army politics and a My Lai-

type of incident, the "family" one's Army buddies provide, disillusionment

and drug addiction, friendly fire, exposure to Agent Orange, and the problems

for soldiers returning to "the world." Doc Hockenberry was assigned to

another post because he failed to fire on a VC prisoner who killed another

team member. The third was the last season of the series and ended with the

return of Purcell, Ruiz and McKay to civilian life in Montana, the Bronx and

Indianapolis, respectively; Johnson went home earlier in the season and was

to struggling to break color barriers at Ole Miss using the G.l. bill. An assault

on a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp fails due to poor quality

information.

Over its three year run. Tour of Diih/ addressed a number of issues on

a continuing basis that are associated with Americans' perceptions of the

Viehiam war, such as unprepared or uncaring officers endangering the lives

of their men, tension between journalists and the military, racial problems,

drug addiction, desertion, anti-war draftees, and the exacerbation of tensions

between experienced field troops, higher level officers and the military

bureaucracy. Episodes also featured stressful reactions to a range of combat

and hostage situations (foreshadowing what later would be known as Post

Traumatic Stress Disorder). The series ended with a glimpse of some of the

ensemble discharged and confronting life in "the world." 119

Overall, the search-and destroy raids, ambushes, and constant concern about the location and action of the enemy often gives the viewer an impression of a police or detective series, despite the accoutrements of war.

Tliis is supported by the tasks occupying the platoon which often include the recovery of lost persons, internal investigation of military and paramilitary organizations (such as the C.I.A.), the squashing of various illicit activities, especially in the second, "Saigon" season, as well as special reconnaissance and rescue missions scattered throughout the series run that are emphasized in the Green Beret season. Thus, although there are enough action sequences and visual cues to remind the viewer that this is a war, and the characters and plots offer evidence that this is indeed Vietnam, but the general feeling of the series is that of the ongoing detective series, with another mystery to be solved or problem to be tackled next week. Ultimately the mystery put before the characters of Tour of D uty is why their expectations about the war and their society seems to have betrayed them; the fleeting response to that betrayal before the series ended was for a few of the main characters to telephone one another to establish a stateside link to those with whom they had shared so much, evoking a strong emotional platoon-buddies-as-family theme that was introduced in earlier episodes but could not be explored in any depth outside of the setting of the war due to the cancellation of the series.

Tlie general setting for the Platoon season of Tour of Duty is that of an infantry platoon in the field in Vietnam, designed to depict what life was like for a foot soldier in the war. The title graphics introducing each episode, the extras, slang, music and references to places and names for enemy forces 120 inform the viewer this is the Vietnam war.

Tire two main characters introduced in the Platoon season of Tour of

D uty who carry through the entire series were Zeke Anderson from Idaho, a seasoned sergeant four months into his third tour of duty in Vietnam and

"LT" or Lt. Myron Goldman, the brand new officer with a WWII war hero father. The new people Anderson recruited at the beginning of the season were: Specialist Fourth class Roger Horn, a Chicago blues harmonica player who conscientiously objects and refuses to carry his weapon into the field;

Corporal Danny Purcell, a gung-ho high school ROTO volunteer from Montana; Private Scott Baker, a California “beach dude” who is vegetarian and a weight lifter; Private Alberto Ruiz, a macho Hispanic man from the Bronx who is deathly afraid of rats. The characters introduced at Firebase

Ladybird who are already in the squad are: Specialist Fourth class Marvin Johnson, a young black man from rural Mississippi who loses his best friend Mickey before pilot episode. Private First class Marcus Taylor, a young black man from Detroit; and “Doc,” a Japanese-American medic who wants to return home to go to medical school to make his Nissei parents proud. In command of Bravo company is Captain "Rusty" Wallace, who, although young, is a pipe-smoking father figure to the Lieutenant Goldman. Captain Wallace is killed near the end of the first season in an episode involving the transformation of a female journalist from a skeptic about the war to a supporter of the troops. Doc is killed during a North

Vietnamese Army night assault on the firebase which Wallace’s replacement was certain would not occur. Baker is transferred to a rear unit after being captured by the Viet Cong and rescued by his own squad. 121

The remaining of the characters are transferred to Tan Son Nhut air base outside of Saigon for the second season of the program.

The second season of Tour of Duty introduced Lieutenant Johnny McKay, a playboy Army helicopter pilot who loves flying and regularly transports the third squad while blasting rock’n’roll music on loudspeakers. Alex Devlin is a female newspaper reporter for the “ANI wire service,” who is introduced as a love interest for Goldman but to whom McKay is also attracted. Dr. Jennifer Seymour, a civilian contract psychiatrist working for the military was added in the season’s fourth episode concerning combat stress.

In the third season, the unit gets a new medic: Francis Thurman"Doc"

Hockenberry, who is a "hippie" conscientious objector, doesn't carry a rifle and is not required to do so. Colonel Brewster, a black man who is a Korean war veteran, is introduced as the commander of Camp Barnett, the “elite” base to which the squad has been assigned to as “Team Viking.” He is replaced by the more conventional Colonel Stringer when he violates orders from above to protect his men one too many times, and when he pushes for investigation of an incident analagous to the My Lai massacre. Although previous seasons included replacements for minor characters who were killed, the third season emphasizes an influx of new, poorly-trained recruits in contrast to the elite team that second squad has become. McKay is grounded because his new door gunner accidentally fires on Team Viking. Returning to work with regular Army units the team witnesses an acceleration of the introduction and loss of American soldiers. This provides to a growing sense of frustration, urgency and futility which is played out in episodes featuring themes from the darker side of coping with 122 modem warfare.

Overall, Tour of Diih/ centers on the formation of a task-oriented group from isolated individuals as well as the maintenance and growth of that group in the context of the rigors of modern warfare in Vietnam. The series offers a clear view of how the administration of the war limited the effect of even highly trained and motivated fighting men who could fight the enemy but not a "decay" of military standards within the Army and from society in general. In this sense, it attacks the military establishment from the right side of the political spectrum much as M*A*S*H did from the left.

PRELIMINARY DESCRIPTIVE CRITICISM: CHINA BEACH

China Beach's seasons did not fall so easily into individual categories.

Continuing threads established in the first season were being spun out in the second and third seasons, leading to a sequence of prequel episodes during the fourth season that give the viewer information about life before the timeline established by the pilot episode as well as flashing forward to post-war activities of the characters, including a present-day reunion at the Vietnam

Veterans Memorial. Despite this rather complicated plot structure of the series, the clearest picture of the series can be painted by focusing on its central character.

It is clear from the first moments of the series that the main character is

Lt. Colleen McMurphy, a surgical nurse from Kansas serving at the 510th

Evacuation Hospital, located next to a Red Cross recreational center on the

South Clrina Sea. Her character began as simply the strongest part of an ensemble but later emerged as the series' star. She is portrayed as an

American Irish-Catholic variation of the "good girl" who, as a nurse, could 123 simultaneously serve her country and be on her own away from her alcoholic father, nervous mother and five brothers in Kansas. When she comes to

Vietnam, she literally "Isn't in Kansas anymore;" near the end of the pilot episode, she is introduced to a crater where her quarters used to be with the phrase "Welcome to Oz."

McMurphy is first seen trying to relax on the beach in a red tank suit, complete with aviator sunglasses and dried blood around her fingernails.

After the camera pans up her body, the faraway sound of a helicopter is heard.

McMurphy first hangs her head, returns to the begin the work from which she was trying to escape. Amid the confusion and mangled bodies,

McMurphy begins triage. Her first words are "checkout counter," meaning that the soldier she is examining is so gravely damaged that he can only be made comfortable until he dies. McMurphy is depicted as the consummate dedicated professional who works even in her time off in order to stem the growing feeling that what she does doesn't help; a running theme of the series involves McMurphy giving up sleep to work and a strategy of forcing her to relax by barring her from the hospital. She is devoted to her job; by the end of the pilot, McMurphy has decided to sign on four another tour of duty rather than return home.

Lieutenant Colleen McMurphy's "alter ego" is "K.C from K.C".: Karen

Charlene Kolosky, from Kansas City, the resident prostitute, former civilian secretary turned con-woman, drug addict, and the base's connection with the black market. The first time we see her, she is wearing the proverbial red dress, casually leaning up against a doorframe and smoking a cigarette while the new women on the base are given a welcoming speech. K.C. is the most 124 implausible of any of China Beach's characters, given that a prostitute was far more likely to be Vietnamese than American. K.C. is presented as all that

McMurphy is not: the worldly cynical "bad girl." She is superficially disdainful of others' virtuous notions of helping, and is intent on making her way to the top of the power structure. In ironic contrast to McMurphy's nominal Catholicism, K.C. operates out of an abandoned church near the hospital and recreation center.

In addition to McMurphy, K.C. and Cherry, Major Leila Carreau and

Laurette Barber from Valley Forge, P.A., U.S.O. entertainer who has come to

Vietnam for adventure and "men-o-rama" round out the central women characters presented by China Beach during its first season. Major Carreau is, perhaps, who Margaret Houlihan of might have been if she hadn't grown and changed so much throughout the course of M*A*S*H. She is the special services officer and administrator of the China Beach recreational center; as such she is in charge of the Red Cross workers but sometimes she fills in on nursing duties. She is a career, straight arrow type who revels in memories of

World War II and initially welcomes the small group of new U.S.O. and Red

Cross women to the facility by wishing them "a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful war." if only they will keep their skirts at a proper length and feminine dignities intact through proper appearance. She is set up in initial opposition to K.C.

The men of China Beach's first (short) season include Dodger, a 19-year old combat veteran who serves as the arclietypal Vietnam soldier; Samuel B.

Beckett, who runs the morgue and prepares bodies for return home;

"Sweetness,"one of Dodger's squad mates; Dr. Dick Richard, a glib, golfing. 125 draftee doctor who uses a chess timer to clock his operations; and Lannear

Boonewell, or "Boonie", a Marine from Dodger's squad who has been assigned as the beach's lifeguard after a traumatic encounter in the field, for which he later earns a medal and an investigation concerning Cambodia.

The second season of China Beach brought in new love interests for

McMurphy: a soldier named \^rmie who is obviously in love with her and

Jeff Hyers, a Marine medic who meets her on the beach later dies during an attack on the hospital. Specialist Fourth class Frances (Frankie) Bunsen, a young black woman who is looking for a place in the world and performs a variety of different jobs (including clerk, DJ, and assistant embalmer) and

Airman Wayloo Marie Holmes, a military journalist who pokes her nose into all facets of the hospital and recreational center are the continuing female characters introduced in the second season.

In the third season, more new characters were introduced: Holly

Pellegrino, an overweight [by stereotypical television standards] Red Cross worker; Sergeant Bob Pepper, a vintage southern WWII sergeant in charge of the motor pool, where Frankie Bunsen finds her first permanent assignment; the debonair French Dr. Bernard, who treats various patients in the area and becomes romantically involved with McMurphy. The final episode of season three features the discharge of Airman Wayloo Marie Holmes and

McMurphy's visit home on leave to visit her father in the hospital; she returns to Vietnam to get back to her work. Tire fourth season of China

Beach occurred after this study was initiated, but will be briefly discussed in light of McMurphy's heroic journey in the final chapter. 126

Issues explored byChina Beach during its run included tend to be connected more directly to character relationships and to the portrayal of the

reactions of individual characters to the portrayed effects of the war. In

China Beach, the emotional reactions of the characters to various life experiences are often more important than individual plot lines, which often

extend across more than one episode and provide opportunities to reveal

individual character interactions and reactions. For example. Dodger's near fatal injury and recovery over seven episodes of the second season or

Laurette's week-long U.S.O. tour over all seven episodes of the first season

provides sub-plots with which to reveal these characters' responses to and

interactions with one another regarding these circumstances. At the end of

each of these particular sequences, the character involved had somehow

changed his/her perspective: Dodger began to doubt his role in the war, while

Laurette found that "men-o-rama" could change rapidly to the horror and

pain of a mass casualty push in the operating room. In general, relationships

between the main characters tend to become closer over the seasons as they

work together, become more involved with one another's lives and help each

other confront the manifold losses war brings.

For the main characters, those problems included: changing

relationships with relatives in the United States, attempting to understand

the incomprehensible aspects of war, the personal changes wrought by coping

successfully with warfare in a foreign country, disillusionment with an

uncertain American dream and working to understand the roles men and

women play in American culture versus the potential and dreams each

person holds. Issues of race are interwoven throughout the series in the 127 context of the lives of the black characters, as are issues of drug and alcohol addiction in the lives of K.C. and McMurphy, respectively.

Juxtaposition of incongruous or unexpected images is a recurring tactic for getting some of these themes across, from hauling a wounded Santa Claus into the operating room and having to wrestle an M-16 rifle from him to the sudden death of Qierry when she steps out of a bunker after a battle is "over" during the Tet offensive, to the discovery of a case of bubonic plague by Dr.

Richard. Overall, the general thrust of China Beach is that of personal transformation in the context of the extreme circumstances of the Vietnam war and its aftermath. It offers a view of how individuals in a particular group reacted to their Vietnam experiences in various ways.

SUMMARY OF MEN'S FOCUS GROUP RESPONSES

II. PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS

All in the Large University group were familiar with Tonr of Duty. In the Small University group, two said they had seen "some of it" and one seemed to be a fan: "I try to get all the episodes I could. I don't think I've seen all of them but I did see a quite a few of them." Overall, the men, as a whole were familiar with Tour of D uty. The same held true for China Beach. For this series, three of the four in the Large University group indicated that they were familiar with it; all in the Small University group so indicated.

REGULAR VIEWING AND WHY THE MEN WATCHED

All in the Large University group indicated that they watched Tour of

D uty regularly. Two said they watchedChina Beach "sometimes." All in the Small University group said they watched both series regularly; one 128 w atched China Beach regularly. Verisimilitude was part of the reason for the

Large University group's regular viewing. They seemed attracted to programs that portrayed the soldiers more realistically than in other Vietnam recreations; one cited the character Dodger from China Beach as exemplary in terms of appearance. The others agreed with tliis interpretation:

1 ... the guy in the China Beach bit,with the rag on his head, lus face muddy. He was more, [he] depicted a soldier tliere. 2 Yeah. [He] depicted more of the ones I knew. 3 Yeah, because we didn't walk around—you didn't look clean.I mean there wasn't such a thing as looking clean.

Tliey also described Tour of Duty, m general as "more realistic" and classified

China Beach as something of a "fantasy." At the same time, the group's consensus was that "Tour of Duty still has too many women in it." Tliis seemed to be at odds with their experience; they referred to the "Hollywood mystique" and "glamor" of including women in what they experienced as an almost exclusively male environment. Two compared China Beach to

M*A*S*H "without the humor." A paradox of China Beach's simultaneous verisimilitude and falsity was expressed:"... so you see the authentic part of this; it is authentic because of the gear and all of that, they have perfect scenery. It's just not—Just not exactly real."

Tlie Small University group watched, in part, to learn about aspects of the war not familiar to them from their military service, but again, for aspects of verisimilitude, this time to gauge the media version: "I think I watch it just to see how Hollywood was portraying it. To see how badly they would portray it, how phony they could make it." 129

The Large University group watched China Beach little if at all, citing, again, resemblance to M*A*S*H. and a general distaste for the program due to what they considered its lack of "reality." The Small University group shared this view.

III. FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS: MEN'S IMPRESSION OF THE SERIES

The men's general impression of the two series was that they tended either to glorify war or trivialize it, based on comparison of their series viewing with their actual experience in the field. Even so, the messages that they associated with the series were that China Beach portrayed the war as essentially a "fun time." While they thought Tour of Duty shed some light on what it was like to fight, they thought it glorified war by failing to reveal its harshest aspects. The most prominent soldier characters were those remembered by the men: Sgt. Anderson, Lt. Goldman, and Dodger. The character interactions and conflicts they remembered were those which those that involved both highly realistic appearance combined with unrealistic behavior, due to the incongruities this presented. The memorable character conflicts were those connected to the themes of racist incidents, memorable again because of they matched the participants' experience. They found resolution of the conflicts to be generally unsatisfactory and they felt that a television series was incapable of depicting accurately the Vietnam war due to an imposition of entertainment constraints on otherwise acceptable storylines. They felt that the issues of Prisoners Of War and those Missing In

Action not addressed adequately in the series. 130

MEN"S GENERAL IMPRESSION OE THE SERIES AND THE BASIS EOR IT

In terms of a general impression of the series, the Large University group reiterated their questioning of the presence of so many women in a combat zone; they also commented on the inadequacy of the war genre:

2 They romanticize [the action]. It gives people the wrong idea of what war is all about. 1, 2 Tliere is no glory in— 2 —getting killed or being hunted. 3 Yeah. Or in hunting people.

In placing their observations in the context of their Vietnam experience, the group discussed the of absence of women where they were stationed, especially Western women, and lamented that those who were there were "off limits" to enlisted men.

In terms of general impression of the series, the Small University group reiterated a sense of overpopulation of women in the series, citing

U.S.O. shows and hospitals as their only sporadic contact with them during their tours. Emphasis was again given to the differentiation between Asian and Western women. They also noted the differences between their experience of infrequent yet intense firefight in comparison to the continuous

"action" provided by Tour of Duty. They recognized this as an entertainment convention, but went on to criticize as unrealistic the large amount of free time experienced by the TV soldiers in contrast to their experience of long stretches at base camps or on uneventful patrols in addition to combat:

1 I was infantry, in a line company and . . . we would go to the field anywhere from thirty to forty-five days at a time and then you come out of field for three days. I mean, you didn't go to town. I mean, the villages that we were in, were off limits any way. ... If you wasn't in camp you was out on a mission somewhere- 131

3 . . .When you wasn't out in the field reconning, we was . . . in gunships going from one place to anotlier. We didn’t stop in any villes [villages] or anyplace at all.

One participant revealed his impression of the shock value of some of the storylines:

I think in both shows, they had a young real good looking nurse or douglmut dolly that got killed in that show and that probably shocked a lot of .. ."post Vietnam people" who weren't familiar with it. And here was this nice young person going to war and ending up getting killed.

Given three choices of the basis for their impressions of the series expressed above (home viewing of the series, the video excerpts or experience as servicepeople), it became clear both from the real life examples used to support their answers as well as their explicit assertions that it was a combination of the three, with an important emphasis on their real-life experiences. This held for both groups. These are typical example of the explicit assertions:

It doesn't [come from viewing]. I mean, very little. Tire only tiring drat I got in common with most of those people is we were out in the field. I mean the rest of the time, those guys are in town, and we might go back to Quang Tri or something but that's the extent of it. Mine's based on experience. .. . Hollywood will not—I haven't seen anytlring out yet tlrat portrays Vietiram like it was. Because if it was, people might not watch it. They don't want to hear it. They don't want to rmderstand the vets, the people that was there. It's coming about a little more and more than what it was, but the biggest part of the population does not want to know about it. They don't want to accept it. Because it was, it just wasn't supposed to happen.

Tire Small University group reviewed some of what they felt were the more realistic aspects of Tour of Duty that they felt connected with their 132

Vietnam experiences:

In Tour of Duty they hit three or four things that held true. Like the new "90-day wonder' coming in . . .he's supposed to take orders, more or less, take orders from this sergeant that's been out in the bush and knows what's going on and it's hard for him to accept and that's what got a lot of them killed. Because they were the ranking officer, they don't have to listen to anybody and they get their ass shot off;: or, they are going to go out there and kill half their men and their men's gonna frag 'em.

MESSAGES MEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE SERIES

The Large University group explained the basic message(s) they associated with the series:

China Beach says "war is fun." That's what China Beach says. With a little nastiness here and there but on the overall we are having this great time and every now and then it gets messed up by the war. And Tour of Duty says "we are having this terrible time with some breaks in between." 1 think that's the contrast between the two 'cause China Beach emphasizes more having fun. Tliey are out tliere having fun but they've got their little problems . . . In China Beach a problem is the war and in Tour of Duty th e war is everything, you know, and you just get a release from that. But 1 think China Beach pushes a fantasy ideal too much with the partying all the time, bonfires on the beach and walking around in swimming suits. Come on!

The Large University group also emphasized the impact they felt Ton r of D uty episodes provided: "Well, that [China Beach] is the rear too, I mean, they are back there around the clubs and stuff. But Tour of D uty, no matter what episode you watch, something is going to hit home." In addition to the power of the episodes, the Large University group praised the authenticity of

Tour of D uty. They thought that the presence of women in the storylines, was inauthentic and a ploy to gain rating points, thus not connecting

"Vietnam" to "women" in any meaningful way: 133

2 I think he is trying to make it as authentic as he can and he has to probably just put the women in there just so he could get it on air. Because it probably wouldn't be on the air if you had a bunch of guys running around. 1 Really! Well America buys sex and violence and the war is a definite place to, you know, show the violence but tire sex tiring was not there so tirey are putting that into it.. .

MEN'S MEMORABLE CHARACTERS, INTERACTIONS & CONFLICTS

Tire Large University group discussed both positive aird negative aspects of China Beach's Dodger as a stereotypical Vietnam veteran;

1 The guy with the machine gun that came in, I don't know where he was commg from.... He was completely out of character. He was the only one who looked like a real soldier.... 3 But he has been in almost every one. . .. He was one of the main characters. He was always looking like he was just out of— 1 Just out of combat! Just out of the field! 4 They have some good things— 1 I'hat guy in China Beach has a negative image. He gives an image of this animal-like soldier. He is animalistic. 3 Ram bo. 1 Yeah. Rambo. He is going to shoot the door down. 2 And Rambo is so far from being realistic—. . . 4 He reminds the audience that tiris is the Vietnam War.... 1 Yeah I think he is the one that brings it to their attention: "Yeah, this is the Vietnam War." 2 Yeah, yeah: he's got a purpose. After all this is the war. 3 But... when I got back and was looking for a job, he is also the kind of person that they looked at: "Oh, a Vietnam Vet huh?"

The Small University group's basic impression of the series began with their assessment of the viewing audience as attracted to "the entertainment part of it" in combination with a conception of national apathy toward the the experiences of soldiers in Vietnam:

1 Most people will watch it for entertainment. They don't want to delve into it. 134

2 I still think seventy-five percent of the population still doesn't want to hear about it or try to understand what it was about or understand the problems we have now. .. . And there's just a little bit of trying to inform the general public of what it was. Wliich it lacks a lot in doing that, but they try. It's a fair attempt at it— 3 It could be better. 1 Well, like China Beach, where the chopper comes in and it's loaded with injured people, shot up or stepped on a mine, whatever... . That's how it was when they came in. But then again, I wouldn't know in a hospital because I wasn't there. Maybe just as soon as they got done, maybe they did traipse off to the bar!

Tire Large University group focused on Sergeant Anderson and the counter-culture medic "Doc" Hockenberry as the most clearly memorable characters in Tour of Duty: Earlier, they mentioned Dodger from China

Beach. Both seemed to stand for what they considered to be the authentic or

"real soldier:"

1 The sergeant in Tour of D uty. He stands out because he reminds me of tire real soldier. 2 And he's good! 3 There was always one there just like him— 1 Whether it was a sergeant or not. He was just a real soldier. He was always there to tell you not to do this, to do that and stay alive and remember what this is all about. Forget about your politics. He was always there to keep your headlevel... If you didn't keep your head level in Nam and let yourself get distracted you'd get killed.

3 He was also there to put a boot up your ass if you didn't keep up, carry your own load.. . .Because tlrere was lives depending on you. ... So not only was he there to lean on but he was there to push y o u - 1 And you needed that guy around . . . because sometimes you just got to tire place where you just said "What's the use? Why should I go on?" And he was there to tell you: "Well the reason you want to go on is because you want to get out of here. You want to get back to the world." He got that message through to you and you would use that as energy to move on with. 135

1 [The sergeant is] the main character. The rest of them are like supporters. 3 Oh, the medic. The "compassion of the corpsman. ..." I didn't see any corpsman didn't want to carry a weapon.. . . 1 You learned real quick in Nam that they didn't care if you were corpsman or not and tlie [enemy] didn't care if you had a weapon or not. People that talked about they "didn’t want to kill anybody" changed their m ind.. .

Sergeant Anderson was the most memorable Tour of Duty character for the men in the Small University group as well; on China Beach the characters this group remembered most clearly were were Colleen McMurphy and Beckett:

3 On Tour of Duty, the sarge. That guy was a good actor and tlie way tliey wrote for the, tlie way he played tliat tiling, he was, you might say, the "straight shooter" of the thing. He stood out. And of course the girl on China Beach. The star . . . Delaney, "the angelic nurse." Those are the two characters that stand out. . . 2 I'd say the sarge because . . . he's got so many men with him and he's looking out for all of them and trying to bring them all back alive. 3 ... the guy that took care of the bodies. The black guy that played . .. that character sticks out in my mind.

The continuing nature of the characters made them memorable to the

Large University men, but in a negative light:

1 ... I think that these shows give such a happy face to war and they build up tlie excitement and the machoism, that a lot of guys are going into the service feeling th at. . . the worst thing that would happen if you go into the service is you go to war and you have to go and fight. Tliis is telling the guys now that "even if I go into the service and do go to war, it's not going to be bad." 4 That's because tlie main heroes stay alive time after time. .. . 3 There is always a concept of death in your head [in the field]. I mean these guys [in the programs] are getting back up you know. They are just getting wounded. I tliink it is the problem with a lot of the kids nowadays. These guys go by and just spray a house. They don't realize that death is final. 136

The Small University men found that traces of realism made the characters they recalled memorable to them:

3 Tlie sarge .. . cared. That guy projected that image to me that he cared about liis guys. He wanted to make sure tliat he got tliem back alive. That was liis job to save, to make sure that they got back.

2 That one little clip that you had there when they was coming back down the hill that they took.. . .that was common, and the one private there is asking that colonel for answers. We never got any answers. You just went and done what they told you to do and that was it. You had no answers. He was wanting answers and we still want answers. And you don't get 'em. You didn't get them there. 3 ... As you watch those programs you caredabout... tlie individual characters, the tliree or four main characters of eacli show. You wanted to know what was going to happen.... It piqued your interest. It kept you wanting to see something about it.

On the topic of character interactions, realistic actions and appearances stood out for the Large University group:

1 Tlie sergeant yelling at the men, in a good natured way. That happened. 2 It's not so much the way tliey react to each otlier; that part is less realistic. It's more of how they look. 1 You had to get along out there. You depended on each other for your lives. 3 That's right! In that respect, it \Tour of Duty] was real.

The Small University group found inaccuracies of interaction between characters in terms of what was not portrayed:

. . . I think in Tour of Duty .. . they was more like friendly, buddies; tliey was very close. .. .You got close to tliem yet, kept your distance because if we do that one of us might not be here tomorrow and if that gets to you emotionally then tomorrow you might be gone too. It was just something that was an unwritten law. I think [the TV series] didn't have tliat. 137

For the Large University group, accurate visual impact portrayal of both series was the primary reason for their remembrance of characters and interactions, while the veracity of the characters' behavior often didn't match the scenery and costuming:

2 lire look was incredible! They caught the scenery really well on China Beach. 1 And the interaction of the sergeant with the men was so basic, but you get that in any of the movies. 3 Yeah, mostly it is the way they look. 2 It was very authentic. On both of the shows. 3 Very authentic!

Tire Small University group echoed the Large University group's emphasis on a combination of visual veracity and inaccurate behavior:

2 Because some of the things was similar to what you had over there, but not quite right. 1 And lot is jusL ridiculous. 2 Yeah. 3 But it still is a show-tlrey can't make it too real, or nobody would watclr. I tlrink a lot of times its more the general story tliat I rem em ber.

MEN'S' MEMORABLE CONELICTS: RESOLUTIONS & OMISSIONS

The Large University group focused on the series' depictions of racial tensions as the most memorable conflicts:

1 I remember the Confederate Flag incident in . . . Tour of D uty . That was always a stickler. That would always cause problems because it brought about the racial tension that was involved here in the States at that same time. There was a segregation to a certain extent because brothers did "the dap" and we all hung together and tilings like tliat. I hung on both sides of tlie fence. I don't know how I did it but I hung on both sides of the fence. 2 You had to. 1 'Cause I had to work with everybody. 138

The Small University group's most memorable conflicts also focused on racial tension but addressed inter-unit conflict between officers and enlisted men as well:

Between officers and NCO's. The officers wanted to know what was going on and what they want to do is not get everybody killed. Or wanting questions, that they had in there. He's wanting questions, or answers, and they didn't get any answers.

Tlie Large University group found that the reasons their most memorable character conflicts were memorable was because the series depiction matched tlie kinds of conflict they had encountered in \detnam.

The portions they found to be clearly unrealistic were not usually remembered:

1 It [racial tension] was memorable because that's the way it was. Tlrere really were warring camps.... 2 The music, the atmosphere, it all depends on where you were and what you did. Since I was at China Beach, 1 find unrealistic most of the time, so I don't remember that much of what they [the series] showed.

The Small University group explained that frustrating instances- conflicts between officers and enlisted men—that matched their experience were most memorable:

1 It was their idea of everything was so "unjust." Like in China Beach the kids get blown away and in Tour of Duty the guy going down the mountain, they lost a bunch of guys going down the mountain or going up the mountain and turn around and leave it. 2 For the third and fourth time. 1 You might say "Why? It's not right." They did the same thing in '61, up and down, up and down. Hamburger Hill was the same thing. 139

Regarding conflicts they remember been resolved in ways they considered satisfactory, the Large University group reasserted the general topic of the series' glorification of war;

1 I don't think they resolved anything. They create a lot of problems by glorifying war. 2 That's right, but the main ones always came back. They weren't killed and if they got hurt they were back the nextweek.... They resolved the racial tension by not dealing with it most of the tim e. 1 But it was resolved when you went out, and they were mostly in the field. 3 The sarge and that new lieutenant didn't see eye to eye for a while, but they worked it out.

Although there was some disagreement, the Small University group echoed the Large University group's concern with war series' war without consequences:

1 In the programs everybody lives "happily ever after" and they go home and things are fine and everybody loves them and after they get through the initial controversies, everybody is fine. It's not like that. 3 ... My memory of both shows, it didn't work out that way. [McMurphy] had trouble witli alcoholism. 1 I mean after they get through their controversies. . . . 2 They had their problems when they got there, then they more or less got them worked out to where they was pretty happy after that.... 3 I was just thinking that in both of them, when the guys got back they had a heck of a lot of problems tlrere. And you used the phrase "they lived happily ever after." That. . . doesn't come true; ... in both shows, life didn't end up "riding off into the sunset." . . . 1 ... I'm not saying that for every one of them, everything turned out rosy. You've got a majority of them [doing well].

In assessing series' conflicts they remembered as being either resolved in ways they considered unsatisfactory or not been resolved at all, the Large 140

University group discussed the racial balance of the casts:

1 .. .You found out in the field there were more blacks in high risk positions, radio men, macliine gunners, point men. You had more blacks [than are shown in Tour of Duty]. I [saw] more black radio men, more black point men. . . . 2 Tour of Duty . .. does show some of the drudgery of combat. 1 Yeali, just being out tliere. I don't think Tour of Duty has a good racial mix. I think they have the one black that is always hanging around the sergeant. ... A guest comes in every now and then. ... It really gives the wrong impression: . .. that the elite blacks are with the whites in the field and tliat's not true. . . .

In addressing series' conflicts they remembered as being either resolved in ways they considered unsatisfactory or not been resolved at all, the Small

University group discussed the depictions of the psychological impact of simply having been in combat, as well as the series' flaws:

1 People's well-being in their brains, in their heads. Everybody is still screwed up by most of it. I mean, most everybody has gotten to where they are functional and carry out a normal day-to-day life. For me, 1 consider myself fairly normal but there isn't a day that goes by that I still don't think about some of the incidents, you know, every day. Tliere are a lot of people who can't think of anything else but that. Just like the two guys on the phone, when they got home. They needed some help. . .. 3 You could feel for them. Tliey were going through sometliing; in that respect they were more realistic than than your regular TV heroes. 2 But in Tour of Duty they wore too many hats, back and forth all the time. My experiences was you had certain units that done certain things and that's all they done.. .. And you left the special missions to the guys that was trained for it, where here they done everything.

Regarding unresolved issues the series relevant to the \Tetnam war, the Large University men focused on politics:

1 The one thing they keep harping on is the political situations surrounding the war and also the lack of direction of our commanders in . . . our armed forces. The hill thing. Taking the 141

hill and going back. I remember we went out and we fought all night for tlris hill and had fire brought in tire top of us and the next morning we walk out and leave the hill. You know that kind of thing just raises all kinds of questions in your mind and that's the kind of question they raise which I think should . . . always be raised, because whenever we step off into another war we should know what we are going to do. 2 But we didn't leam anything, 'cause we are still doing it.

The unresolved issues the series relevant to the \^etnam war recalled

by the Small University men focused on disabled veterans. Veterans

Administration hospitals, and the Prisoner of War/Missing in Action issues:

2 POW's and MlA's. They never had anything on either.... There was one when some of the nurses got captured and they was in a tunnel operating on this, this gook, and then they got out. 1 Yeah. 3 Tlie lieutenant; I think he was held captive for a while and he got rescued somehow too. 1 And he stayed in? See they don't do that. Once you're a POW, you're out of there. ... I mean, they don't put you back in your seat. 3 If I'm not mistaken they were moving the guy out of the country or they were taking him back up north, that's when the guy got rescued . . . They didn't touch too much on—well of course that's back in America—the guys that were crippled up in service. I don't recall them touching on that too much. We seen that one little clip there in that one VA hospital but that was a real super- sanitary version there. 1 Yeah it sure was, wasn't it? . . . 2 Tliey give the impression . . . that they are there and they’re going to deal to your every whim and every need tlrat you have, and they don't do that...

IV. FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS RELATED TO RESEARCH QUESTION ONE

GLOBAL POLICE OFFICER: MEN'S BELIEFS THEN AND NOW

In their assessment of the extent to which they thought that part of

America's role in the world today is to police international conflicts around 142 the globe, the Large University group was direct and adamant about the continuing existence of that role. They connected it to the interests of

American big business around the world:

1 It is still the same. 3 It hasn't changed a bit. 1 We still have tire same policies that we go around acting like the big peace maker. You know we still are seeing like this whole thing happening in the Arab countries: Kuwait and Iraq. We alert our fleets, send them over there and do exercises with them . That's the same kind of policy that we were doing then. We considered ourselves to be the world's policeman, and we are always interjecting ourselves in conflict. The Beirut conflict, we interjected ourselves into that with the sixth fleet. That same principle still holds true no matter what the politicians and what our newspapers say, we still think we are the big policemen. 4 [Sarcastic] We have to protect our oil companies' interests. 1 ... Vietnam politicized u s... because it gave us reasons for going to Nam that were null and void. ... To stop communism 'cause it was this big bad threat.... We got over there and we found the people didn't give a damn whether they lived in communism or capitalism. They didn't give a damn. 2 Everybody was in business. 1 It was us that cared whether or not to live in a communism or capitalism, not them. And that was the whole point is that we never checked with them to see what they wanted to do and we installed a puppet government that was playing us to get our money and living high on the hog. 4 And they assassinated the ones that wouldn't agree. 1 Right, we had them assassinated.

Tire Small University group's discussion of the extent to which they thought that part of America's role in the world today is to police international conflicts around the globe centered on global changes and an assessment of the U.S. as an ineffectual Global Police Officer rather than overt disagreement with the concept:

2 ... It seems like every little conflict the United States is involved in, we get more of our people killed than anyone else for 143

helping other people that could care less whether [we] are there or not. ... We go over there, we do all this shit for 'em and we lose a lot of lives— 2 And we pump all this money back into these countries. 1 But they whip us. 2 We have people here at home that need help. 1 It's big business, that's what it is. 2 That's exactly what it is. 1 People branched out and branched out, and then they got forty billion dollars invested in this country and they may know some politician that says "you got to protect me over here. We'll run in two brigades as advisers and shoot 'em up." It don't work that way any more. 3 From a political standpoint, I would say America is, to me is supposed to stand for individual rights and basically democracy, I guess. And the current deal, like the deal with China for example: we've got a good example here that we could try to influence China without going to war with China by economic means and yet [to] the President of our country, China can't do anything wrong. They can have a massacre in Tienanmen Square, "Hey, don't worry, don't sweat it. We'll still have McDonald's over there opening a new branch in Peking . . . and that's all right." America to me has to stand for freedom for individuals and electing people of countries. Let's go back to the basic thing about Vietnam. To me, we were to allow the South \^etnamese live their life under "supposedly" a free [system]—but of course it wasn't, itWcis basically a dictatorship—but America is supposed to stand for freedom.

In discussing the extent to which they thought that part of America's role m the world was to police international conflicts around the globe during

their service time in Vietnam, the Large University group unanimously

agreed with the statement of one member that they fully and faithfully

believed in America's role as a Global Police Officer:

1 Let me tell you how it started with me, and when I look back I can see the brainwashing that took place. As I went to lûgh school and junior high school, we got what we called as a current Weekly Reader. There was always an article each week about French Indo-China. We were fed this information steadily and securely all the way down the line about this and then it hit tire big 144

newspapers about how communists were taking over and the domino theory . . . and I ate it up whole. Me being an American, getting my loyalties pulled, tugged, my chain rattled,... saying "God I don't want communism in the United States." So off I go to Vietnam to stop communism getting into the United States because I thorouglily believed .. . that if we didn't stop it in Southeast Asia it would be in California. And ... it would be all over the United States. There is no way that they could have done that, you know. But that's where it started. And when I got there, Metnam was the most eye opening experience for me because it finally gave me a world view. I had always had the American view. I had always read the American papers, been taught in he American schools, the same things and purely the American way. And finally getting overseas I started to see things from the perspective of other countries in the world. . . . But from the very beginning, . . .we were supporting the colonialism of the world . . . We found out that people listened to us and we were like the good American, we thought. So we went around trying to make everybody else as good as America. And this is how the whole political thing keeps going and it still rolls that way. We still set the standard of the world according to A m ericans. 4 Yeah we want to break their culture and make their culture like ours. 1 Americanize it.

Tire Large University group also explored the cost of being a superpower in

general and with the individual costs of the Wetnam war, which sheds light on the participants' personal reaction to the actuality of policing the globe:

3 The fastest way was to get ahead in the world for a country was to go to war with the United States. Because they will come right back in and rebuild you. 4 We're starting to look at sending money to Russia. 1 We are already sending money to Poland, Czechoslovakia, R um ania. 2 And they spend their money on weapons. And we are spending ours on their economy___ 3 You know yourself if they would have untied our hands— 2 We would have won. .. . 3 hi no time. It's just—You know it was the same old thing: take that hill, give it back; take that hill, give it back. 145

1 Our hands were tied. Don't shoot this person, don't shoot that person. 3 DMZ, don't go any further than the DMZ. We did, but— 4 Our government is the greatest liar that we have. 1 Any government is. That's what people fail to get. I don't care whetlier it is tire United States government, Clrina, Russia. Government has one purpose and one purpose only. 2 To stay in power.... 1 They can't operate any other way. It's force___ 4 The wealthy, industries and businesses put the politicians in who are going to run the country.... 1 Is when the United States goes out and does it's sabre- rattling and decides that it is going to do tlris for that country or that for that country where there is national security interest. .. . 2 And they will call upon the poor kids. .. . 1 Project One Hundred Thousand stated that those men who were best qualified to go into college would be given deferments. Those that were lower socioeconomic scale would be given the "chance " to go into the service regardless of their scores, regardless how they felt, this would make them better prepared to move up on the socioeconomic scale after the service. In other words, there was a plot afoot to put lower socioeconomic people in and to allow those that were in the higher groups away. . .. and let tliose who could survive, survive. 4 There is no question about it and in every country it works that way. 2 Every time I go to tlie Wall and I see some of my buddies' names up there and I think about them. ... I just think about how worthless it was sometimes. 1 It was a worthless cause. We didn't get anything out of it. Tlrat's what pisses me off. 3 . . .Why didn’t you run off to Canada? 1 Because I was patriotic.... 2 The entire set of Americans are guilty of not responding to all of those names on tlrat Wall. . . . America has not responded to the people who have served this country . . . honorably. You can look at those names up there. It makes me sick every time I go over there because nobody gives a damn.

The Small University group was also in agreement over positive acceptance of America's role as the Global Police Officer during the war and 146 discussed some of the ways in which they came to believe this, combined with some disillusionment upon direct encounters with protesters at home and blame directed at the press:

1 I was naive back then. I believed what they told us. It was the right tiling to d o .... 3 The domino theory was a big thing back then. 2 ... With the atomic age and everybody in the 50's was buying fallout shelters and nuclear war was like the drop of a hat . . . and then you had the Cuban Crisis with all the missiles moving in. Then we get the impression that we are going to Vietnam to fight communism and to stop it there before it comes to our shores. Then you are over there, but first you are fighting for sometliing that you tliink you believe in, then you find out you are only fighting to stay alive, because all the other support and a lot of the things that you pick up that you hear was going on over here was white-washed to where it wasn't all that bad and then you find out later, basically, when you are over there that all this shit is going on and you wonder "what in the heU are we doing here then?" Then you come back over here and you get eggs thrown at you because of a public that looks down upon you because you were "baby killers."...

GLOBAL POLICE OFFICER: SERIES VS. MEN'S EXPERIENCE

Upon being asked to relate messages or character interactions they recalled from the series that related to their conception of America's role in the world either during their service or in the present, the Large University group focused on their own mindsets before and during their service, rather than the television series:

1 W ell, there's the connection of America being the policeman and the peace-maker and tire savior ... I went to Vietnam feeling that I was part of this vast amount that was going to help people. Even going to hell with a gun in my hand ... I was going over there to help people. 2 I never drought that. I knew I was going over there to kill people. That's all I knew. V\dth the Marines all you think about was killing. 147

1 Somehow that didn't register until I got to Nam. When I got to Nam it registered. What my job was. 3 Hell, I went wherever they told me. I went because they said I had to go there.... I didn't want to kill. You looked at what was in front. Tlrey say "Take that hill "-[we do it]....

Tire controversial nature of the war was underscored by the group's explanation of America's changing attitude toward its global police.

1 It took years before something like Tour of Duty and China Beach could even come on television because up until that time we were pariahs, you know. We were the unknown. People didn't want to know us. They didn't want to know we were from Nam and they didn't want to hear about our Nam experiences. They just didn't want to know. Because I think by them knowing, I think by the television bringing it into your home each evening on the six o'clock news let them know too much because America is a very "baby" society. . .. Everything is so beautiful and we're just good people and we go out, and we help people. And no we don't go out and kill people and we don't do nasty things like that; but that was brought to the attention of the American people and they revoted against that. They said "No I don't want to be identified as an American if this is what Americans do." And so that caused a problem with them. We came back from Nam, they didn't want to hear of us because tlrey didn't want to have tlris identity with us. I mean even family didn't want to hear about what you did in Nam. 2 ... Family was the worst;... "We don't talk about that here." We need to talk about it

Tire Small University group responded similarly: they did not bring up

details from the series, but explored the impression that the services of the

Global Police Officer are often im wan ted by those for whom they serve.

2 I think we are still trying to do the same shit, of what the government is trymg to make us believe that we have to go to tlris country and do this, and we have to go to that country and do that. We have to send all this foreign aid to these coimtries, and then we find out we are sending all this stuff to these countries and they don't appreciate it or they're protesting against us or sometliing like that and it was kind of basically the same way it was in Vietnam. The people didn't care. 148

1 The people didn't even want us there. 2 You didn't get to know the people or their way of life or anything about them. You are just there doing one thing and that's go over there do your job and come back home, what you thought your job was. So if you didn't get to know the people so why tlie hell should tlie people care whether you are tliere or not?

Upon probing for connections by the series to idea of America's role in the policing of international conflicts, the Small University group relayed some general messages about the futility of war and the lack of understanding of civilians at home:

Tlie [television series] did show, for the kids who were watching it for the first time or maybe were hearing about \Tetnam ... as entertainment, that real people get killed real quick ... if you go into a war. . .. And they showed how the sorrow came back to the family. I think there was a couple of times when I think the sarge went back ... to a funeral.

Discussion of the similarities and differences between the Large

University group's experiences of the Vietnam war as compared to the portrayal they saw revealed in the series revealed a continuing concern with the visual verisimilitude without conveying the reality of the experience in the context of promoting or glorifying war and military service without revealing the price to be paid in human terms. They then contrasted the television series with Vietnam war feature films:

1 Tlie real is not shown because it is not very nice and it's very boring. You spend a whole lot of time for maybe a . . . minute and a half of intense action and you spend a whole lot of time before you hit action again and that part of it [won't] sell in Hollywood... . These shows are the best recruiting tool they got now.... 2 [Military clothing] is chic. When you . . . get it the hard way that's a little (Afferent tiian just causally saying "lets's go see if we can be macho men." Because one thing those movies do not show [is] taking a shit in the outhouse, building these straddling trenches. It doesn't show any of the stuff that deals with— 149

1 Reality. 2 Mosquitoes, tlie slime, with the smells. 1 Getting put down in a rice paddy that is full of buffalo shit for half a day. 2 It just doesn't show all of these destitute kids eating out of garbage cans. It doesn't show all of this. Tliat's reality.... 1 It doesn't show the mangled bodies,... a battlefield with bodies laying all over the place. 2 It doesn't show the bodies that are stacked u p ... that the war is so nasty. 1 It's hell, it's hell. 2 It's the nastiest thing that you can ever imagine. If you can imagine something being nasty. I mean it is nasty. 1 It is nastier than that. 3 ... You hear all this "for God and country" and all that. The tiling that. .. breaks a lot of people in is when they make a friend over there and you see that friend fall. It becomes a revenge type thing.... You might sit back in the rear and watch the war at night and be all patriotic and ... think of America or back home, but when you were out there it was your butt. You were mad because your friend got blown away. The last thing you remember is them taking him out by a helicopter, Medevac, in Nam, and never heard any more from 'em. 1 Yeali... It wasn't God, Mom and apple pie, country.

The group named several feature films which each thought more clearly expressed a degree of "reality" of the Vietnam experience. They came to a consensus on the propagandists nature of all depictions of war for entertainment purposes;

1 And this is the thing these movies still do. They still do the same tiling that was done to us in training. They make the enemy seem like a non-human. 1, 2 And that's not true. 1 They are human beings just like us. 2 Yeah and I guess after my experience in Anwah I realize that there is no valor in murder, either.... 4 Except you live with it the rest of your life. . . . 1 You see that's one thing these Tour of Duty and China Beach give. They give the thing of you being a big hero killing somebody. 150

1 Then you wonder why kids go out here in the streets and kill each other. 4 The problem today in television and shooting, your problems are solved on TV. 1 Yeah, they're solved. You just blow the guy away.

The Small University group's assessment of similarities and differences between their \^etnam experience and the series portrayal emphasized differences, especially in terms of what they expressed as entertainment value necessary to a successful television program, resulting in the glorification of war:

1 Uiere are all kinds of differences. . . . Entertainment. 2 ... It is entertainment, it has to interesting to make ratings on the TV.. .. They really didn't lût really what it is actually like as far as going out in the boorües. It's glorified. War is not something you glorify. Most people, I think, that have been in actual combat say it is the worst thing they ever want to do. They wouldn't want to do it again but they would if they had to. 3 Most of the time that you spent over there it was boring, nothing was happening, and you were waiting for the next thing to happen. Maybe a day or two or week .. .would go by where as a show they only have forty-some minutes they gotta have some action or something "live" in there. 1 [Laughing] Yeah! It wouldn't do to have forty-seven minutes of just sitting at a post in the bush!

V. FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS RELATED TO RESEARCH QUESHON TWO

MF,N'S ASSESSMENT OF GENDER ROLES OF SERIES CHARACTERS

In discussion of their evaluation of the portrayal of gender roles by the characters they remembered from the series, the Large University group concentrated on the ways they thought culture determines gender roles and that this cultural construction was what made women less fit for combat than men, as opposed to some natural criterion. Some in the group revealed 151 some disdain even for the nurses with whom they worked.

1 I've been around some women who would think they are combat ready, and I have a problem with that because men are cast in the fighting role as a fighter-hunter-gatherer... If we introduce this woman into our combat unit we got a problem. . Somebody is going to become protective of her. Somebody is going to want her. 2 How do you explain these women we fought all day? 3 Israelis. 1 Because their culture is different. Our culture definitely lays down the role for a man and a role for a woman. . .. 4 [In the Navy Hospital Corps,] . .. The nurse didn't take over as the hero and the grand leader.... We had many of these fresh green nurses that came in from school and when I was in the naval hospital they couldn't find their butts with both hands especially during emergencies.. . . We did everything. A nurse stood by, watched and "uh-huh" approved. 2 And passed out.

The Large University men then discussed increases in the numbers of

women serving in the military, finding it hard to imaging dealing with women colleagues to the degree that is expected today:

2 When we served in the military there were very few women there in the military. Now it's almost ten percent. . .. And 1 can't imagine that ten percent of the troops at Camp Pendleton or something or Lejuene being women. It's hard to imagine that but I'm sure that's true. And so the whole military has shifted and changed. Our vantage point is a lot different. 1 We're not into that culture. 2 1 don't know how people would have responded. . . .

They also discussed socialization of gender roles and the women in their lives

who influenced them to try to understand a woman's point of view which

may be different than their own, based on interactions with girlfriends, sisters

and mothers:

It has taken me quite a bit of socialization with my girlfriend ... to bring myself around to understand a woman's point of view 152

because I was brought up in a purely male culture. ... Understanding how a woman feels about things as opposed to how you feel about things.... To look at it from a more emotional, more caring [standpoint].... But you suppressit.... As you grow older, you get into macho society you leam ... that you do these little things. If you tell a guy "drat doesn't look cute on you" he says "I don't look cute in anything." So you leam not to say that. ... You get pressure-grouped into the macho point of view and so you walk around being macho and then one day you wake up and find out that you are being so macho the women are backing off from you .. .

In elaborating on gender role socialization, the Large University group went on to discuss their own backgrounds, which varied from an Eastem European

Jewish family, to Southem black religious ultra-conservative family to a black

California family.

1 [Men and women] had their roles. I found out that I was sitting around saying "Well, why don't you cook something?" and she [his girlfriend] would say to me "You can cook." ... But she taught me that. ... I thought I wasn't that macho, that I was just "being a man." Then I found out that I was more macho than I [realized] because I shut out that part which I grew up with. lA^th my sisters I grew up understanding them and dealing with tlrem but then in the outer world I grew up understanding that a man had his role as the head and king.. . . The male roles that are depicted in the movies still push men towards that macho image. 2 American men are, by definition, more macho than a lot of men all around the world. 1 1 see the point. I think there is a lot of consultation of women's liberation effort in China Beach, to upgrade the women in the service.

The Small University group's assessment of the series' gender role portrayals focused more on current events and women's current role in military action:

3 ... Desert Storm and Desert Shield showed that our country now depends on women whether they are in the back of the planes to provide fuel for the fighters or whether they are putting 153

ammunition on the planes or whatever they're doing, we have a lot of women in the service nowadays. . . . 2 Well I couldn't tell you about the gender roles because I was never around any Caucasian women when I was there. 1 I was, when I was in the hospital. 3 There was no women on the ship either. 2 Other than a couple of U.S.O. shows we got to see maybe fifteen m inutes of, and that's about it.

Upon probing to see how the Small University group thought series characters fit the gender roles, they suggested that the roles presented in the two series were accurate;

2 From back then, it's about how they were. I mean the women were nurses and the men fought. Douglmut dollies, back then, that’s just about the way it was. 3 It also showed in that one dramatic scene where that woman had to kill that one guy, you know, that it showed a woman could do it under that pressure, that she would do it. 1 Yeah, but women are the stronger sex, anyway. 2 ’Vietnamese women would shoot you. 1 Damn right they will. They can pack some weight too, buddy!

MEN'S ASSESSMENT OE GENDER ROLES IN THEIR VIETNAM

EXPERIENCE

Discussion of the application of gender roles to the group's service experience during the Vietnam war by the Large University group centered on the presence of nurses and news correspondents in some areas but a complete absence of women in most of the group's experience of training and service.

1 ... At the time that we came through women were nowhere in the service. 2 They were nurses and that's about all. 4 See, the women that I culturized with in the service were hospital corpswomen and we were all equal. . .. The women worked in their units and the men worked in their units. . . . 154

1 I remember in basic training and in AIT [Advanced Infantry Training], going through there were no women. . . . 4 To have a woman aboard ship, and we in western society have been taught that we hold a woman's arm, we open a door, we protect women at all cost. There is a lot of resentment aboard ship in this role. 3 I caught sea duty for two years my first two years in the Marine Corps. I was on an aircraft carrier- 4 Can you imagine a woman— 3 I can't even imagine it now. 1 I can't eith er.. . . 1 The problem I see here in America [is that] the standard is the wliite male, and the white male says "women are not equal to us and we will not let them be equal to us." . .. 2 You don't think that could change? 4 No. I do. 1 Slowly it will erode away but it is going to take a while.

The Large University group reiterated the lack of contact with women in most of the areas where they served and provided an assessment of the series' gender roles as stereotypical yet accurate for nurses and Red Cross workers:

But they sure hit it right in those two series because the only women are doughnut dollies, nurses. . . . They don't even show any tiling like my w ife.. . . There were a hell of a lot of civilians as support backups. .. . There were a lot of women there, and they have been given no... glory, no recognition, no benefits. . . .

One participant discussed a pivotal experience that challenged both his notion of gender roles and his view of the war:

2 [We fought a group who were] dug in down there in the mountains. They protected that whole area and when we finished with them, after about ten or twelve hours of fighting-napalm, all sorts of sorties and strikes and everything else—we went down there and it w as . . . about 25 hard core N.V.A. nurses down there. They were taking care. They had been wounded, some of them ten times and that's when I realized then in my own mind that I was out of place. These people fighting for their homeland. They were 155

fighting a superior force and they held us! They shot a couple of our airplanes down. They were shooting everything.... I felt kind of stupid from then on out in that whole country because to see those women— ... I even dream about it sometimes. This one had a picture of her child on her neck there and it still drives me crazy.... 3 They always have a picture of their girlfriend, mom or dad. 4 ... Tlrey were people. 1,2,3 They w ere people 2 That's the part that bothers me. ITiey were mothers. . ..

The Small University group's discussion of the application of gender roles to the their service experience during the Vietnam war centered on the presence of nurses in the military and go-go dancers in shows or clubs; they felt the portrayals of gender roles in the series were accurate, as compared to their experience, again emphasizing little contact with women for most of their service.

1 Well when I was there that's how they were: nurses and go- go dancers. 2 But most of the time, I hardly seen women at all. It was only some special shows and when you was in the hospital.

MEN'S DISCUSSION OF GENDER ROLES AND MODERN WARFARE

Tire Large University group's discussion of gender roles in relation to the concept of modem warfare as practiced in Vietnam emphasized a positive assessment of women's chances to be allowed into certain combat units in the future. They focused on various roles women played in Vietnam and the stereotj'^pical nature of the series portrayals:

. . . Women shouldn't have any problem with being combat pilots now witli tire sophistication and witlr all you need to kirow to do whatever you have to deliver. And ... a lot of war is fought from the air now and a lot of it is computerized. I think so. They should actually be on a ship somewhere directing war operations. You know, carrier operations or something. ... I think the more technical [the job], the more women will be very important. 156

The group praised the performance of women military police officers in U.S. military action in Panama:

1 I heard a couple of them got court martialled .. . because they fired weapons and they were not combat MOS [Military Occupational Specialty]. They got court martialled for iliat.. .. 4 Everything I heard about the women fulfilling their role was excellent. The support was excellent. They did over and above what they are required to do because MP's, don't forget, are non­ combat. ... 2 I think women are getting short changed in the military. So they can never make rank that way.... 1 That's where you make rank fast, through combat. 2 llie MP's [make rank] pretty good.

Alternately, the group expressed concern that men could be wrongly accused

with sexual harassment in an environment with women co-workers.

1 There has been a lot of problems with women on ship. 1 just seen where an officer got court martialled for raping this woman after they went off on shore leave.... and there's been a lot of cases of sexual harassment. . . . 4 It's like here at the university. One off color remark,and we call lose our jobs .... Whereas in reality there is a hell of a yin- yang going on between men and women out there... . 2 That's a good point you raised and especially in the service with all the men and all the macho, the biggest macho in the world. ... Here you are, if a superior officer or somebody makes an advance at a woman, [and] she responds positively it's okay, but if she doesn't it's harassment. 1 Talk about double standards! 4 ... You'd get these fresh young nurses in from indoctrination. And they would say well we’re not allowed to fraternize with enlisted personnel. I used to resent that. It's like saying, "Well you're dirt. You stay over there." 2 Well, that's the way the militaryis.... They were saying they were a different class. ...

Tlie group also discussed the change in job opportunities for servicewomen

while simultaneously deriding some of the traditional roles for women in 157

military service.

4 Stateside there is an awful lot of women, especially in the Navy now .. . .You can see a lot of women mechanics, a lot of avionics and Navy air. Electronics. The only place women could go when I was in were yeoman, . .. clerical people in the offices, hospital corps bays. 2 Yeomen are flunkies. 1 Gophers! 4 Today when you watch Navy News, hell you're watching A- Teams, aviation electronics teams flying. . . .

The Small University group's discussion of gender roles in relation to

the concept of modem warfare as practiced in \detnam focused on doubt that

another Vietnam-like war could happen due to changes in military policy

over the years.

I don't think there will ever be another Vietnam because [of] tlie tactics that were used over there; I think we've learned from it, or hopefully we have. There will never be another war fought like that one was, because it was a losing proposition from the first day the first American stepped on that soil. Because of the policies that a government has. But I think their policies have changed some since then [based on] Desert Storm or Grenada.. ..

MEN'S PERCEPTION OF EFFECT OF MILITARY ON GENDER ROLES

Discussion of the effect recognized by the Large University group of the the military on gender roles focused on future adjustments they felt necessary by the military for the inclusion of more women, rather than the

perpetuation of traditional gender roles through standards of dress, conduct,

and training. They discussed the traditional view propagated by the militaiy

concerning women: as part of a serviceman's "liberty," not part of liis "life" as well as emphasizing their separation from most women while in service:

2 They're going to have to adjust to the numerous women in there. I don't see how some of those old lifers are dealing with it. 158

1 ... There were actually some men who go into the service to get away from women. . . . the only time they paid any attention to women is when they were out on leave. But after that women were no good to them. . . . They're going to have to get a lot of these guys out of there because they are going to cause problems because they are not just going to work for or with a woman. 3 A woman was part of their "liberty" not part of their "life." 1 ... And we were told when you go to liberty you— 3 "Go for it, guys." 1 Run and "get your girls." 4 ... The women you were chasing after were civilians in the street, Vietnamese. How many "round- eyes" were there? 2 I don't know. I never saw any. 4 Unless you went to a back post, like a rear post. 1 Down in Camranh Bay and the Air Force hospital there were women there, but they were strictly "off limits."

The Small University group's discussion of the effect of the the military on gender roles centered on women's expanded participation in combat roles alone.

1 I don't think the military has any effect on it. 2 I think it's Congress who has the biggest part of to do with it. The military can't do any tiling—there's been a lot of controversy of letting women into actual combat. 3 They are talking about putting them on fighter planes too. 2 And the military can't do it without an act from Congress, and it's going to be up to the American people, the voting population, to decide what would happen.

MEN'S DISCUSSION OF SERIES PORTRAYAL OF MILITARY'S EFFECT ON

GENDER ROLES

Tlie Large University group's discussion of the effect of the military on gender roles as portrayed in the series centered on the disparity between current military options for women and those available during the Vietnam war: 4 Tlrey don't compare to the changes that have happened. Tlrey show it pretty much the way it was. But all that romance part 159

is just too much. 1 ... The Army keeps you from worrying about romance! 2 You had a job to do. So did everybody: men and women. 3 They fit times of the shows: nurses, Red Cross, that kind of thing. 1 Yeali, although you didn't see women, I think they seem about right for time, but that has more to do with society than the military.

Tlie Small University group discussion of of the effect of the military on gender roles as portrayed in the series focused directly on their view of the accuracy with which the roles Vv^ere portrayed:

2 From back then they're pretty much what you'd expect them to be.... I wasn't around the opposite sex hardly at all when I was there.. . I think for that particular period of time it was accurate from my standpoint. 3 It was pretty standard. I mean you had, like you said, the U.S.O. shows. I tliink botli Tour of Duty and China Beach feature the various U.S.O. shows witli the girls coming in there and showing off everything and all the guys whooping and hollering and everything. Obviously the nurses. . . . Where they kind of blundered a little bit were the female reporters [who] would go out and do something . . . super dangerous . . . but in-country, whether you are on the front line or [if a bomb] blows up and kills you, you are still dead whether you are a man or a woman. 1 Dead is dead. 2 Yeah I seen a few reporters over there but not very many because what we done we didn't take them with us. . . .They would go out with a larger unit operation, they didn't go out with small units or out on an ambush.

Discussion of how the Large University group's Vietnam war experience informed, or acted as a filter, of their impressions of the depictions of gender roles in the series was an affirmation that previous evaluation of the roles of nurses and Red Cross workers was accurate based on their experience, which was clearly being used as the primary filter of the series. 160

This filtering process also holds for the Small University group, which concentrated on the verisimilitude of the portrayals, again implying that they used their experience as a gauge of the series:

2 Tlrey showed it pretty much the way it was: nurses and go-go dancers. 1 When I was there that's how they were. And the Red Cross.

MEN'S DISCUSSION OF SERIES AND CHANGES IN GENDER ROLES

The Large University group's assessment of change in American gender roles since the Vietnam Era was positive. All recognized substantial gains made by women in the United States, but discussed the superficiality of some of the changes. The group limited the discussion of change in gender roles to those of women:

1 Oh yeah definitely. 3 Tlrey were changing at the time the war was on, yeah. Women are gaining more of their rights as human beings. 2 I don't think they've changed at all. ... I think the masses of the women in America are still in the same boat. ... I think there are a few women who are getting advantages but they are a lot more likely tokens in a lot of situations and they are used to make sure that "we have six women now, now I want you six women to make sure no other women get to this level here." And they do it. And women are harder on other women than men are on women. .. . I'm not really sure that the underlying problems . . . have gone away. 1 I have to agree there. I think there are still fundamental problems for women in our society. I remember now reading an article about women making it to the executive suite in corporate America. ... As many women as there are in middle management, a . . .trickle make it up to the executive suite. . . . 2 It's still a man's environment. It really is.

Some argument was made for slow and steady progress in changing gender roles by affirming women's rights within the system: 161

4 I think women have made tremendous inroads and it is going to take women in those positions to open the way for others. . . .We got a woman on the Supreme Court. We have more women going into politics and it's where you have to make the changes through the political structure in this country . . . 1 If you look at the abortion issue we're talking about... a women's rights issue. It says the government should have no say- so in what a woman decides to do with her body; but as you can see there are a lot of politicians out there and a lot of people [who disagree]. The fundamental concept that we as men determine what a woman can do. ... As long as those fundamental problems remain and men's perception of women as not equal or capable— 1 don't care how many studies you come up with, they just don't listen to the studies. [V\^th] all the women who are in corporate America in the middle management . . . there should be a lot more women to hire up into these executive suites but there aren't . . . because of the men's attitudes. . . . It's; "Well, she can't do the job, she might get pregnant and then we would have to do he job." Urey fall back into these old cliches. ...

Men's roles were indirectly addressed as the discussion shifted to world politics and the comrections between gender and war, culminating in this conclusion:

2 Who has the most hardware will eventually control the world. We found ourselves like tlrat after World War 11 and we have the bomb. And that's an equalizer and everyone knows that. 1 ... That's why mothers should be in Congress because they would stop some of these wars. Men have this thing that will send their sons off to war to die and for some reason they forget about ... their sons dying. They say "the idea, the purpose is all important so my son will be pushed into that." Mothers say "that is my son we are sending off" and they will make an emotional judgment on it... in preservation of that youth. Men always send us off to war. 4 Oh yeah. Oh, no woman would. 3 But there are times when you can't spend three or four months trying to figure this out. There's times when you gotta- 2 You got to go to war. Sometimes you gotta go. 1 You got to make that move. You sometimes understand when you have to go. But 1 am saying that if the Vietnam situation had been thought out rationally, there was no reason for 162

us to be there.... 2 I think it was very well thought out. If you read the Pentagon Papers, you can see that it was thought out in detail. 1 It was thought out to fit... the purposes ... of tlie people who were in power. .. . And their concept was like, "We need to do something here because we feel that it is necessary."

Tlie group then discussed prisoners of war from Vietnam and speculated on reports of sightings. This was a topic for which all members seemed to show interest. The topic had shifted from change in women's gender roles to world politics indirectly emphasizing an unchanged male role and then to the P.O.W. issue.

The Small University group's assessment of change in American gender roles since the Vietnam Era was unanimously positive, and centered on military roles and television news portrayals:

3 We see it on television all the time. The war that was just fought. They had a lot of pictures of women in it. 1 Women went to war and dad stayed home with the kids. .. . 2 [During \^etnam it] was the other way around. . .. But in the Gulf War there was a lot of women that went over there and their husbands stayed home with the kids. ... A lot of the women that went over there was flying supplies up to the front line troops. 3 Which is a very dangerous job. 2 There is a difference between night and day as of then and now. 3 Yeah, there is no comparison on anything at all except the dying. That's about the only similarity here. 2 You die the same. You die, you die.

Both the Large and Small University groups unanimously assessed the series' depiction of the characters as more representative of gender roles of the

Vietnam Era rather than the the present day. In the Small University group, this led to a general discussion of the effect of playing the roles had on some 163 of the actors:

2 ... I met a couple of them from Tour of Duty and talked to them. . . . My impression was that they believed in what they were doing-of course they had a script and everything else—but they believe in the people that was actually there that fought. They say they respected the Vietnam Veterans and understood them more so than a lot of other people because of what they was doing on China Beach and Tour of Duty, that they understood us even though they wasn't there. 3 But they got to put on the shoes for a while.

Wlren probed about the women's roles specifically, the Small University men recalled the portrayal of the war as providing opportunities for women to expand the responsibilities in their work:

2 ... in this one episode . . .when she went back to that hospital, talking to tliat otlier nurse who said "you go back over there, you are something over there; you're not nothing over here." I think that says it right there, as of then and now, with what they're doing. 3 That was a real good point. That was a good point.

SUMMARY OF WOMEN'S RESPONSES TO FOCUS GROUP PROTOCOL

II. PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS

All members of the Large University group were familiar with Tour of

Duty. In the Small University group, all indicated familiarity; responses included from a simple assertion of familiarity, one who watched it "a bunch," one who "watched China Beach much more than Tour of Duty ," and one woman who "probably . .. never watched a complete show but 1 certainly remembered those actors and have seen enough of them." Overall, the women, as a whole, were familiar with Tour of Duty. 164

All members of both groups indicated that they were familiar with

China Beach. For this series, three of the four in the Large University group indicated that they were familiar with it; as did all in the Small University group.

REGULAR VIEWING AND WHY THE WOMEN WATCHED

All in the Large University group indicated that they watched Tour of

D uty regularly:

1 But not every single time it came on. 2 I watch both. 3 MostlyTour of Duty, but China Beach sometimes.

One in the Small University group said she watched both series regularly; two w atched China Beach regularly.

Curiosity over the portrayal of "familiar territory" was part of the reason for the Large University group's regular viewing. One participant w atched Tour of Duty regularly because her son was a fan.

The Small University group watched for similar reasons, focusing on the program as a sort of replay of a part of their lives:

3 I probably watched it [China Beach ] because it was an era in a life.. . . And of course for me,. .. the Red Cross representation . .. was a draw. I wanted to see how that was upheld. 2 The first time was because there was a Red Cross person as a main character which was unusual. . . . It's a time in your youth that you didn't begin to realize how young you were, until you looked at them. And that is what kept me watching it. 1 I was interested in the Red Cross person and, but beyond that there was a-I don't know—it was kind of a weird fascination, sort of a love/hate relationship with the show and with what went on, and how I felt about what went on at the time it was going on. 165

One of the Large University women who still works for the Red Cross explains her reason for discontinuing watching China Beach:

I don't watch China Beach. The first little bit they showed there. ... I know I could feel myself turning red and getting embarrassed by myself, watching the portrayal.... It was very painful to watch it again. The portrayal of ... the Red Cross people ... was totally off-the-wall... truly degrading....

The Small University group was also dismayed with some ofChina

Beach’s characters, but continued to view the program:

2 ... There was a lot that I missed because of schedule—but you had a group of female characters, somebody seemed to have to be portrayed as a ditz, somebody needed to be a heroine.... There was a character for everyone and 1 had a really hard time with the Red Cross person seemingly the ditz and the nurse the heroine. 1 I remember tlrinking that that was a dumb portrayal of the Red Cross person, particularly when you had a consultant but [whether 1 watched it or not] would probably have more to do with whatever else was on at the time.

One Small University woman cited violence as her discontinuation of w atching Tour of Duty after initial curiosity:

... 1 wanted to know what Tour of Duty was like but 1 really do not like to watch violent shows and that was "up front" war. China Beach had an away-from-the-combat setting. But when 1 didn't watch China Beach 1 had two reasons. I'm not much of a TV person, and so 1 just got a little tired of it [and] 1 always thought that Red Cross character was totally in error: the 19 year old, the reason she was over there. 1 worked with our adndnistration for the program that she was with: the S.R.A.O. ... If 1 was home 1 would watch it again. It was ... a period of my life and .. . there's not always somebody to talk about it.

III. FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS: WOMEN'S IMPRESSION OF SERIES

The women's general impression of the two series was that both series looked realistic, that Tour of Duty was the most accurate and plausible, but 166 that it glorified war. This was based on based on a sense of verisimilitude that the series provided and a sense of nostalgia for a part of their lives, and was filtered through their own experience of the Vietnam war. The women felt that message that they associated with the series was one of interpretation of the war from a current perspective, combined with an overemphasis on blood and pain. The character interactions and conflicts they remembered were depictions of realistic kidding around, racial conflicts, tolerant behavior and romantic interactions primarily because the accurate look of the characters combined with inaccurate behavior or speech. The memorable character conflicts were those between officers and men, between American and Vietnamese people, and between doctors and nurses; they were memorable because of the verisimilitude perceived by the participants. The women found resolution of the conflicts to be a television contrivance, but that women were forced to cooperate while men could do so without much obvious interaction. The women veterans felt overt politics regarding the war, portrayal of the Vietnamese people as other than the enemy, and humanitarian services were important issues not addressed in the series. The group thought M*A*S*H covered these topics more thoroughly.

WOMEN'S GENERAL IMPRESSION OF THE SERIES AND BASIS FOR IT

The general impression the Large University group got from Tour of

D uty was that it glorified war, and that the stories presented were less important for the stories told than for the feelings evoked or connections made to these women's real experiences. They echoed the men's response that there was something intangibly incorrect about the series but also cited the characters of the women as being especially incorrect: 167

3 .. .Tour of Duty ... glorifies combat. My son gets glued to that show. He's fifteen and he wears the full combat outfit, from the steel pot to the backpack, flack jacket, the whole gamut. He sees war as going out there like Zeke, and he doesn't see the guys getting hurt. He doesn't see the pain of war. He sees the glory of war. And in that respect I don't like Tour of D uty because I know what it is doing to my son. But, on the other hand, we have to have soldiers. We have to have boys who want to grow up to be men to fight for their country no matter if it's an unfavorable war or not. ... 2 Wlien I watch I discount the stories because they are so wild and unbelievable, but I tune into tlie feelings . . . that they eitlier do portray or that they are trying to bring ... across to people. And I relate to that. Most times when 1 watch either one of the shows, something will trigger something in me and even though I am watching the set. I've got my own story going on up here and I remember back to when 1 felt that way there. So half the time if you said "what was the story about?" I probably couldn't tell you, right after watching it. .. .You said you thought it glorified combat ... I don't see it in that light. But maybe if they had a show about the civilian population over there I would not watch it. I was neither a nurse nor a Red Cross worker so when I watch them I don't react the way you two probably would to what they are doing and how they are being portrayed.... 1 I don't particularly like they way that they depict ninety percent of the women in the show. One's a hooker, one's kind of a bubble head; the only woman in any kind of a command position is - 3 A real air head, kind of plastic. 2 Yeah . . . she's very feminine on the outside but nothing there. No strength. . . . I've often thought, "why can't they show more of what most women were like over there?" And 1 think what people forget is every woman there for the most part was a volunteer. 3 Not everyone. There were a lot of nurses that got sent over there. Volunteered to go into the Army but did not volunteer for Vietnam. . . . 2 ... My reaction to every movie or every TV show that 1 have seen about Vietnam, is the feeling over there and ... it reawakens in me, the feelings. And a lot of it is anger.... But the story lines on these shows, 1 just discount them. It's Hollywood. It's just not real. 168

1 ... I think Tour of D uty . . . does a far better job of showing a more complete picture . . . lliey show that it wasn’t all blood and gore and traipsing through the jungles and being miserable; it shows relationships that the men had. I saw almost exclusively men who were well and in a relaxed setting .... I saw a pogo stick on fire base over there and they had one little show where a guy from California got a skateboard. ... That's what I saw of the men, mostly the enlisted and mostly in their own settings.

The Small University group's general impression of Tour of Duty was connected to their service before and after Vietnam:

And the Tour of Duty part reminded me of the first patients 1 worked with at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The 101st Airborne ^ter Hamburger Hill, and I think that by watching that, the memories that that brought back was the stories of those kids said, talked about. And I think, aside from an nostalgia part of it, that was a group of people that I felt I knew from that experience.

The Small University group's general impression of China Beach was based

on their experience as well, combining a fascination with verisimilitude as

well as with error:

3 Well, it was so hard. I got so wrapped up in the Red Cross part of it. For a doughnut dolly to be a hospital worker— First she's in a helicopter, and then she's out at a fire base and— 1 Doughnut dollies were in the helicopters and on the fire bases but not also in the hospitals. . .. 2 ... When she ... progressed through the show it got a little easier to watch her, [but] it was kind of like "what can you pick out that's wrong now?" But then again, there was also that fascination of looking and saying "yeah, that's what used to be." 1 I was a hospital worker so I kept waiting for it to get more authentic. For China Beach, it was sort of arguing with what was going on or finding fault with it: having a dialogue with the movie. Tour of Duty I got turned off of fairly quickly because it just seemed like somebody had to die in order to make this make any sense, and that eventually characters that I liked or was invested in would die and . .. there will never be a happy ending so "why am I you know watching this kind of thing?" And so after a while I just drought it got pointless, tlrat it was just tire violence. 169

2 One thing I remember about when Tour of Duly started was the premise was they were brand new actors, young, ... that it would change each year, like the war did.. . You are not used to your TV that way. I mean, you just assume that they would stay 19, if they leave that the show ends.

Given three choices of the basis for their impressions of the series

expressed above (home viewing of the series, the video excerpts or experience

as servicepeople), the Large University group made it clear that they based

their general impression of the series on a combination of their experience

and their viewing of the series:

2 Oh, it's got to be a combination of both being there and seeing the shows. Like I said, its the feeling of them that I relate to. 1 It has to be both. I can't watch without remembering what I saw there. That's why China Beach m akes me so angry! 3 We can't help but base it on our experiences.

The Small University group also expressed that their initial impression was based on a combination of their own experience and viewing of the series:

3 I guess it's a combination. ... I did not really know how it was for the men. I only saw them when they were injured or recovering in Saigon and then a year later in Japan.. . . I'm always testing the program to personal experiences. 1 Yeah. Always. 2 ... I'm doing it all the time I think.

MESSAGE WOMEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE SERIES

The Large University group first questioned the notion of any single

message put forth by either series, but the basic message they associated with

the series emerged indirectly. Comparing the series to earlier war films, they

felt television portrayals to be less sanitary and therefore more realistic; the

group saw in the series a portrayal of American people in Vietnam having a

context for all that was happening at the time, which they referred to in terms 170 of "20/20 hindsight."

2 . . . Tlie message that. . . anyone who was there gets from it is a lot different than a message that might be coming to someone who wasn't there. . . . Your son is getting one message about combat and you are getting quite another one when you watch Tour of D uty. I always find it interesting when they put in either a line ... I never heard said over there, something like "do you think we will remember how to behave once we get back into the real world?" .. . It's almost like the message is "now see, they really knew there was going to be trouble later on." 3 No, we didn't. We had no idea. 2 ... I never heard anybody over there say "Well I've had to turn off my feelings; gee, I wonder if I will ever be able to feel them when I get back into the real world?" 3 That's something that has come out since we have come back. 2 They've got 20-20 vision over there in hindsight. 1 ... People twenty years later are watching and saying "oh I know why that is done that way because that's the way it happened." 3 It's just like some of the episodes of M*A*S*H. If you listen to some of the dialogue they will refer to things happening in Southeast Asia during Korea, which things were happening in Southeast Asia, but I'm sure they didn't talk about it in Korea. They didn't know where Vietnam was, Indochina, any of that area. Nobody did.... 2 ... What I like to think, after an episode on one of these shows is-maybe somewhere out in the vast TV land, somebody who wasn't there who might be having a problem with [Wetnam vets]. ... If it would make one person like that stop and say "Gee it really must have been hell for them," then we think that's great . . . whether the story is "Hollywood" ornot... . 3 ... I can remember watching TV when I w^as a kid and watching the old John Wayne movies and watching World War II. And you never saw blood, you never saw anyone in pain, and you never saw anyone crying. And that's what I took witii me to Vietnam. That was my viewpoint of the war. I didn't see all the blood, I didn't see all the pain. I didn't see all the tears. But I felt them and I saw them and I experienced them when I got there. And they are more vivid now, these shows. They do show more agony than you ever saw out onTJte Sands of Iwo fima. . . . They love to show blood. That does give a truer picture of what 171

happens....

Tlie Small University group associated some very basic storytelling themes with the series, most of which they thought had little to do with

Vietnam, per se:

3 War is hell? Women are whores or angels? Those are movie themes. Tliose are theatrical. 2 Men are brutes or saints. 1 It's [not] deep! Yeah. 3 . . .1 agree. It's a very traditional TV theme. 1 The message of the shows to me ... [is] that they were trying to recover, and pay some kind of service to the men, to the people who served in Vietnam because of the awful thing that happened when they got home. I really thought maybe that their attempt was to bring home to the re ^ a r folks back home that there really was trauma in serving in Metnam and this thing happened. . . . 2 . . . Platoon had been such a raging hit that it was time to test tlie waters.... It was 15 years after. The youngest [people of our generation] are turning 35 and 40. If you tliink about it, that's when the World War II shows started coming out. Combat was in the early 60's so that's about 15 years after the end of World War II. ... I mean it just made sense to me that once you tested the waters with the movies [TV programs would be next]. . . . 3 The theme of the show was "like it or not this is our war and we are going to continue playing it." . .. Tlie way out is to do what everybody else does and the reward is you get to go home and you don't have to do this any more. So the conflict is over, except then you wonder what the person lives with for the rest of their life, but that's not critical [to the program]. And the message always was that the sergeant is the person who knows where he is going and is the person who is the leader and that was true.. . .

WOMEN'S MEMORABLE CHARACTERS, INTERACTIONS & CONFLICTS

The characters the Large University group remembered from the series were Danny Purcell and Scott Baker fromTour of Duty and Colleen

McMurphy from China Beach:

2 Tliat young boy mTour of Duty, from California: Danny? He always reminds me of that young boy that was over there when 172

I was there.... If I think of Tour of Duty, I think that image, that California blonde, very open, real "American-looking" face. 3 With a great big gaping chest wound. That's what 1 see. 2 The one episode .. . where he gets on drugs; that's what happened to the young fellow that we knew there. So 1 think of him. On China Beach, they don't let anybody other than the star be remembered too much. . . . You are never given much opportunity to latch on to another character.... 3 ... She reminds me of a friend of mine . .. because of her appearance... .When 1 see her 1... see Diane at work. She does the same kind of work. She was a very good girl, but she was just one of the rest of us, and we all did the same kind of jobs. Not one nurse that was over there could function in all the capacities the character does. There's just no way. It's unrealistic.... She does stand out because of that. 1 1 remember all the women I've seen there. 1 don't find characters in China Beach to be particularly likable, any of them really. 1 don't find McMurphy admirable at aU. 1 find her to be— 2 Arrogant. 1 1 was gonna say "a bitch." ... 2 1 think "bitch" is pretty good. 1 O n Tour of Duty 1 find many of them 1 like, that's probably because 1 worked with them and saw that. ... 1 didn't have to deal with hookers and 1 didn't deal with bubble heads and 1 didn't deal with nurses. Maybe there were folks like that. But the men— 3 1 think they make the men in Tour of Duty, more personal. They show the emotional side of them. They kind of bare them down so that you see real people in them but you don't as much in China Beach with the female characters. But 1 think that, too, is indicative of our society. Male oriented. . . . That's the message that 1 see overall. When you look at the way Tour of Duty is done and the way China Beach is done, China Beach, as a story just sucks: the body line, the story line just doesn't do it. . . . Tour of D uty usually has a fairly decent and more believable story .. . 2 ... We all think the characters in Tour of D uty are more . . . likable. ... They're more real.. .. we aU say that we like the Tour of D uty characters better. 1 1 went to fire bases ... and saw the guys joshing each other like they do. Didn't see the barracks, we (hdn't go out in the jungle, but the guys kidding each other was something that was one of my fondest [memories because] in the middle of this situation, these guys could have a good tim e.... 173

2 We used to go out to a lot of the base camps.... It was like the marvelous company was coming. . . . You were representing sister, mother, whatever, depending on the age group. ... I think that's why Tour o f D uty strikes a chord. But I still think that in China Beach, they do hit on some emotional reaction. Because Tour of Duty can't. They are not showing any women in it. . . . 1 Let’s face it. Vietnam is "in." . . . It's fashionable— .. . 2 And it has been for a while and it is going to go out of fashion and ten years from now it is going to come back in. .. .

The characters the Small University group remembered from the series were all from China Beach:: Cherry, Colleen McMurphy, Holly Pellegrino,

Laurette Barber and Dodger.

2 Well I like the short little fat black haired one. [Holly Pellegrino] 3 ... After Nan Woods there was this one girl that I could relate to because there were a lot of her that went through.... I saw them. And they were regular girls. We had very attractive ones . .. but then there was the other contingent, that were just simple dark haired, on the pudgy side, you know. And I related more to her too. I forget her name but I really liked her when she came on. I really did like the nurse on China Beach. . . . She was a lot like some of the nurses that I knew in the hospital. What struck me tonight [wasjthe physical resemblance between the young man who is obviously— 2 Bush crazed? 1 Yeali. A Full Metal Jacket kind of person. . . .Willim Defoe. ... It was tliat same, even physical resemblance as if he is a character type in the series. 2 I was a hospital recreation worker and ... I remembered the apprehension, the first time 1 went into a multi-patient room. ... I have to say that I identified more closely with her reaction than I cared to, because I would have probably told you I was not that nervous. But 1 could see myself in that and talk through the whole thing as I remember much too clearly. 3 ... I could relate to that. ... You didn't know what to do and you didn't know what to say. You just tried to be . .. really nice and say something kind. .. 2 .... I tliink one thing that I remember from that show was the . .. former civilian's secretary that is now the local prostitute. It implies that she is living on the compound. ... It certainly 174

couldn’t have occurred at the place they are depicting. . .. And the kind of "loose" U.S.O. person .. . was not a realistic portrayal of the U.S.O. activity. 1 ... And they had to depict it some way so that was—but the prostitution and interestingly enough I can't relate to that lady officer, either. I never understood her... 2 . . .China Beach . .. was the composite of a lot of moody, morose, sometimes happy people, all very intense. ... I don't remember not laughing as much as they didn't laugh. .. . 3 Yeah. M*A*S*H was really our model for how to get through it. How to get through it psychologically. 1 And most people, the military did it that way. Everybody did it that way.

Tlie Small University group agreed that loss of imiocence was the one quality that made characters memorable for them:

I think whenever they show the loss of innocence it just drives it right home to you. That's what happened. That line when he said he was 19 and he looked like he was 35. That's what you saw and you could see it happening. They would come in from base cam ps... . Each time they came in they were a little more weary, a little more tired, a little more jaded. So any time they showed that aspect of it, those are the ones I tend to remember the most because I think that that's what I found most horrible about \^etnam.

Both physical resemblance to the people they served with and behaviors that were strikingly different from their actual experience made the characters memorable to the Small University group:

1 Well, I think some of them represent the city, they are composites of experiences or real experience. The nurse inChina Beach bears a physical resemblance to someone I know, so that probably was it. And the G.l. character who is ... a "war lover," ... I met so few of those types of people.... I suppose those folks were out there but maybe they never ended up in [my] hospital. So there was something atypical about the G.I. who was going to break down a door or shoot, or was menacing. We had probably a dozen women and twenty-five hundred guys and I never felt that I was in any danger or that any of the rest of us were. 175

2 G.I.'s went out of their way to act as if this was a normal situation and "this is not a gun I am carrying, that's not incoming that you hear."... The blonde physically looks remarkably like a really good friend of mine and I think that that was probably part of my problem with the character.... [My friend] was not like that at ah... and like you, tlie nurse reminded me of somebody. And I liked that character. I thought it got a little bit heroic at times . .. but then again I kept saying "well this is a composite." I would have liked one ditzy nurse to walk by at some time during the series .... And I remembered the prostitute too, because again, I thought "this just cannot be" When the show began to... expand, focusing on so many people, that was when I began to lose interest because I couldn’t keep up.... 3 ... For China Beach there was the Red Cross connection and the interest. And the things that make it memorable are the strong feelings of "that couldn’t have been." [With]Towr of D uty, . . . I keep homing in on the cross section of young men that were in that war and they did portray them and so that’s memorable for me because I remember clearly feeling , when I was over,.. .that "this could be—you know—a brother." ...

File Large University group found that the particular interactions between characters from the series that stood out in their minds were centered around the unique relationship of Sergeant Anderson and Lt.

Goldman as well as a more general "kidding around among peers," among the enlisted men:

3 File way Zeke and L.T. interact: I never saw that in military. In base camps you never saw a sergeant of his supposed age ... L.T. apparently was younger and he still had a lot of respect for him. Most of our guys who came in... were enlisted, and very rarely did you see a sergeant and a lieutenant on the same ward. ... I never saw that and I would like to think that that was the way it w a s.. . . 2 It sure w asn't that w ay in M.A.C.V. Headquarters! 3 Most of the officers I knew thought they were so much better than everybody else. . . The first lieutenant out in the field might have had a closer friendship with his sergeant than these men but I never saw it. 176

1 Kidding around among peers--however it is depicted or whoever the characters are—is always memorable because it is what 1 remember. The guys kidding each other about going back home, and a girlfriend would have gone off with someone else. The kinds of tilings they would talk about, deflating each other's egos.... It was very common.

The particular interactions between characters from the series that stood out in their minds of the Small University group centered around the tolerant relationships of the women, racial interactions, and depiction of the rom ances;

2 In both of them ... I remember the women better, the friendships or acquaintanceships, the different kinds of women. . . . Different from college [when] you still picked .. . those people tliat were like you. I remember having really different people as friends and . .. enjoying that. And I remember that from the show. The tolerances, . .. the acceptance for the thing that you liked about somebody and forsaking anything else. 1 I don't remember the particular incidents but the times when race was important and the times when it wasn't. ... You would have encounters where obviously the male bonding or the being in the same unit or experience was what was important and there was a great deal of loyalty. Then you would have other situations in which, maybe just for the sake of the show, that racial tension .. . became important then obviously it was a source of conflict. But I remember that more about Tour of Duty. 3 ... One week everybody is together and the next week some redneck comes in and can disrupt everything. That was hard to watch. I guess I never saw it [in \^etnam]. I guess because there is a belief of TV that makes you wonder "was it true?" Could it be that, could you go from that one degree to the other? 1 . . . [b\]Tour of Duty, they brought the reporter, and there was a reporter in China Beach too. I went on a temporary duty to Chu Chi [and saw some reporters] and I tliought they modeled this character after this really attractive A.P. news reporter. I thought, 'yes that was really real" ... that stuck out for me. 3 I did question the romance .. . 2 If you polled female reporters I don't know that you would find one that dated a lieutenant from the field. 177

3 Yeah. In fact I think they were moving around so fast I don’t think they had time for relationships with military. I think they were with their own. They were with their reporter contingents. 1 There was practically--There was no real privacy. If you were really going to have a brief sexual encounter with somebody there, was no place to go to have one.... 3 In Saigon there was that opportunity. If people could get passes to Saigon, you know, that was the Army, but not— 1 But not in the field.

The Large University group found that the verisimilitude of details in the series as well as strong deviations from their experience were what helped the interactions that stood out in their minds to be memorable:

1 For me, it was the details that matched my experience. That's what made them memorable to me. 3 It's just the opposite for me. Like with the friendships between the officers and enlisted on Tour of Duty. That just didn't happen, because so many of the officers were so snotty. They were just so different from what I encountered. 2 Yeah, it is mostly the differences that catch my attention although they don't show headquarters tliat much on either program. But the officers, yeah. Geez, most of 'em just weren't friendly.

The Small University group found that the interactions that stood out

in their minds were memorable because they looked realistic but acted or

spoke in ways incongruous with the participants' experience:

2 The things I remember from China Beach? I can remember thinking about the parties at the club and those were happy and I thought "now that was positive and I liked that." I just don't remember enough about the other interactions. I really don't. 1 The characters who get discouraged or who get disgusted or who have some kind of crisis—and they did this reasonably well in M*A*S*H every once in a while: somebody would decide "this whole thing doesn't make sense and I want to go home and get out of here.". . . I don't remember that experience. Everybody knew when they were going home. . . .and people really didn't get into counting . . .until they were short timers. . . . 178

1 The conscientious objector types, or the people who wouldn't kill anybody; the G.I.'s would kill them themselves. Where I was, they were very open about that. Because "I count on you to save my life so if you don't want to be here or you won't carry a weapon" ... you would never say that to anybody because you would be dead. Your buddies would kill you because they would consider you to be likely to cause their death.... 2 1 remember the mixture of faces. The one medic with the glasses and the little moustache. Now what he said 1 never heard, what he looked like was very familiar. 3 1 remember one specific interaction, [one] that 1 relate to a lot and 1 think it was a conversation . . .with that one reporter about "they got their high body count" and then that other in Tour of D uty when they were ordered back down off the hill and that anger and "what is the command doing?" 1 was with officers in Saigon and some of those conversations took place {in 1966 and 1967].... The officers already in Saigon were saying "we can't fight this war." . .. The other big thing about those officers was the frustration of being in a headquarters, being at M.A.C.V. in Saigon rather than being in a field unit. Those interactions [were] very real. 2 ... When Cherry is taking the group of three new ones around when she says something about "don't cry? And tliey said "doesn't that make you hard?" . . . That was contrived. Now the geographic bachelor part was true. . .. But when you looked at those four girls 1 thought, "well there go four of, anybody—" 1 Any one of us. . . .The chit-chat between them was very real. ... It was their attempt to portray [Cherry's] character and what she was all about was ... totally false from the start. 2 Tire night they are going to help the singer aird they dress up as her back up singers. That was an "iffy" one. But if you were ever going to do it, if you were ever going to let go enough of yourself that would be what you would do. The thing that impressed me about that was that there was enough caring, that they cared enough. 1 would have liked to have thought that 1 could have been that kind of friend to somebody.

Conflicts between characters that stood out in the minds of the Large

University group were between nurse and doctor, between officers and enlisted men who had begun to question the war: 179

3 I liked the clip there with tlie doctor and McMurphy in the bar because there were days that you felt like she apparently did. When you get off duty and you feel like you have worked yourself to the finish, to the bone, and yet you still lost patients. It was just overwhelming, the amount of work you had to do. You just didn't want to be there because you felt like you weren't doing any good. You weren't doing what you wanted to be doing at that point and time in your life. Some older person .. .that you would see [as] a big brother image saying "things are rough right now but it's going to be okay and you go out there and win one for the Gipper," or sometliing. I like that. He said some powerful things to her, without lecturing. 2 1 think the scene where they were coming down from the hill after they were told they tliought they had it and they had to come back and he asked—what was it?—a colonel or something, and said "just remember we are important too." When I see things like that, and I have to relate it to the administrative side of it, that I saw it at M.A.C.V.... I would see first the raw data that would come in and how it would be changed and manipulated, so that the air-gram went back [to Washington D.C.] more positive. And that just used to—I mean you are talking about conflict! That's what that scene triggered in me: the anger I used to feel. .. and the frustration! . . . The stupidity of some of the decisions that were m ade.. .. the conflicts with authority—

The conflicts between characters that stood out in the minds of the

Small University group centered on McMurphy and Dr. Richard, Beckett and practically everyone, Leila Carreau and those not following the rules, K.C. and everyone, and between McMurphy and her mother, in China Beach. For

Tour of Duty, the conflicts the Small University group remembered were between Lt. Goldman and Sgt. Anderson, between Lt. Goldman and Captain

Wallace, and between Lt. Goldman and his father.

3 . . .There was the conflict with the nurse and the doctor in the bar. But remembering . . .China Beach, the biggest conflict, the person I always remember having the worst times with other people was the young man that worked in the morgue. He was .. . the one person . . . having the most conflict with others because of his job. He was always put in the position of needing to explain- 180

1 How he could do that. 3 And being how he just stood, that's how it always hit me, all the time. That he was the one that had the most conflicts with people. 2 I saw a lot of internal conflict: feeling good about what you were doing and yet the conflict with how can you feel good about what you are doing. When what's-her-name finally became the administrator, . . . she was the focus of rank authority that you always, that you never liked the boss, the one who has to make you play by the rules. And my memory Chinaof Beach was she was the only one that was trying to keep any rules going. Because the doctors certainly weren't. . . . There was conflict with her .. .that softens up over time. There was conflict between everybody and K.C. Then again then you ended up with the "heart of gold" and "there but for the grace of God go I. 3 Tlie prostitute with a heart of gold is an old movie thing. . . . 2 And the "abused by your fatlier" is the new theme. 1 Yeah. That "explains" why she became a prostitute, supposedly. 2 I didn't see anything new. 3 In Tour of Duty, it was seemingly constant conflict between the men and they had the conscientious objector, the conflict between the hardened sergeant and the new officer. It seemed like that was constantly going on. 2 The conflict between the young lieutenant [and] the father, the old colonel. . .. 3 They are traditional conflicts though. 2 ... There are movies out of World War II about the conscientious objector . . . 1 But it is also reflecting of us, of life, of everyday... but it's just harsher. 2 One thing that I remember distinctly about China Beach when .. . McMurphy . . . comes home and the lack of understanding of the family. I can remember vividly getting off the plane and . . . basically being thrown into a car by my mother saying . .. not unkindly, but really-"nobody's gonna want to listen to you sc you might as well ride around the state with me and tell me everydiing.". . . 181

WOMEN'S' MEMORABLE CONFLICTS: RESOLUTIONS & OMISSIONS

The Large University group explained that the character conflicts they remembered were memorable because it matched their experience. This impact held even for characters or situations that looked right and then behaved or played out improperly:

2 What makes it memorable is that looks or feels like something that happened to me. I think that, for me, gives it credibility. 3 What she said! 1 No, that's really true. That's why it is so frustrating to see things, or people that look authentic and then behave improperly, at least from my point of view.

Again, the Small University group found that character conflicts were

memorable either because they matched their experience or because they

deviated from that experience:

2 They were either very much like the experiences I had like what I had or they really weren't. 1 Yeah! 2 They were a dichotomy. 3 Yeah I guess that's how it is for me, too.

In discussion of the ways in which the conflicts they remembered had

been resolved in ways they considered satisfactory, the Large University group

brought up the realistic portrayal of the frustrating way the the military

hierarchy sometimes arbitrarily resolved problems; they went on to

concentrate on the superficiality of any televised resolution to a conflict:

3 I love the way the colonel resolved his problem. It was just basically "shut up and go on, soldier." 1 That was realistic. 2 That's right. That was very realistic. . . . Sometimes they have resolution and sometimes they just "leave you there" which 182

I think is good. 'Cause I think that the whole experience has left a lot of us just "here."

The Small University group, in their discussion of series conflicts

resolved satisfactorily, addressed female bonding as a part of shared experience, men's "silent" resolution of their conflicts and differences between men and women in regard to need for obvious resolution. They

discussed the transformation of Horn's character from a conscientious objector to a dedicated team member, and briefly addressed the general pattern of false resolution of television programs as well:

1 I tliink the women usually would come to some bonding or some resolution of conflict more often than I remember the men. ... The recognition of a shared experience is I guess is more the conflict resolution. 3 I don't remember what happened to the conscientious objector. 2 ... My memory is that he stayed with it through a normal sequence. There's the one with the glasses and the moustache who was the medic, and then there's the tall black haired one who . . .got injured and he ends up going back.. .. Here's this kid who compromised everything, and they give the hill back. The medic went through a series of taunts. Two or three shows worth of taunts from the others and then, again, made his heroic effort, another [common] TV theme. . . . In assessing resolution of series' conflicts they remembered as being either unsatisfactory or not been resolved at all, the Large University group continued to emphasize their perception of the ease of all television program conflict resolutions. They distinguished between the basic structure of the two series: Tour of Duty, which provided episodic conflict resolution versus the lack of resolution provided by China Beach's extended plot lines.

1 Everything gets resolved too easily on television. Especially China Beach, which was not real at all. 183

2 The feeling I get from the television shows is different than some of the movies, so I guess in that sense they didn't resolve m uch. 3 I think they did on Tour of D uty. Everything was taken care of by the end of the program. Except for the next time they went out! 2 China Beach was more like a soap; nothing ever seemed to get resolved.

Tlie Small University group discussed the depiction of character

conflicts in the context of Tour of Duty's overall message of the continuity of

the war-as-television-series:

. . . Whenever someone would be introduced you could always tell who wasn't going to be a continuing character because it was somebody with a conflict. It was obviously going to be resolved in favor of the theme of the show ... If there was a person who objected or had some real doubts or questions, then before the end of the show that person would be thrust into a situation where they had to kill somebody. So it would be like "well you lost your 'virginity' now so you might as well hang around for the rest of the war". Or they would appear to be so dysfunctional and so out of synclr with everything else that was going on, tliat it was obvious that their position didn't make any sen se.. . .

Regarding unresolved issues the series relevant to the Vietnam war, the Large University group focused on what the series failed to portray; the

indigenous people as fully human, rather than as either assistants or

enemies. They thought M*A*S*H portrayed this more comprehensively.

The group disagreed about whether Americans, in general, cared about the

people of Vietnam, leading to a discussion of the stereotyping of Asians in film and TV.

2 I don't think they ever show enough about the Vietnamese people themselves and the way the Americans— 3 The Americans don't care. 2 Well. See, I disagree. I think the Americans do care.. .. 184

There were a lot of good people working with the Vietnamese over there, and they just never show it. There's always suspicion that they are VC or they're stupid. They never show a Vietnamese lawyer, doctor, politician. 3 That's one thing M*A*S*H has over them. 'Cause they would show Korean doctors and nurses on M*A*S*H. 2 ... I think it is sending a very clear message to this day, the same as the message was given to the people over there: dehumanize them, they're not worth anything. And they were . . . people with a culture just different from ours, that's all 3 But I don't think it would sell Hollywood. . . .That's why they did the program. It wasn't to make a statement. ... It was to sell the products.... 3 I've always contended that there as many stories out there as there were people there in country. 2 Maybe that's why it's so difficult to bring all this stuff to resolution for so many people because here you have the common bond of being there but, boy, everybody was standing in their own shoes for sure.

The unresolved issues the series relevant to the Vietnam war recalled by the Small University group were the conflict between career and drafted soldiers as well as the political nature of the war rather than the simplistic portrayals of waging it. They felt the series lacked portrayals of the humanitarian efforts during the war, as well as of the involvement of

Vietnamese people in the everyday lives of the characters. Again, M*A*S*H was cited as providing superior portrayals of these last two elements.

2 ... I remember vividly, that [inTour of Duty , the Vietnamese people] were all Viet Cong. 3 I want to say the political issues, and I'm not sure it was addressed, it was addressed a little bit in Tour of Duty with that [conversation] that they have to have the body counts. That was an allusion to who was really running the war. It was politicians versus the career Army that were calling the shots that was an issue, and I don't know that it was ever addressed in China Beach. The political aspect of the whole war was never, to my knowledge, brought out. 185

2 No, and it was more of like "this is the humanity of the war and the politics are hidden" and that wasn't true. 1 Drugs as an issue. ... In China Beach. 2 ... It isn't addressed until. . . the end where McMurphy is a recovering alcoholic, and there are a couple others. But it's not addressed at the time. It's addressed 20 years later.... 3 You know there was tills other thing going on in Vietnam. The military and Red Cross involvement, the medical missions to the Vietnamese villages and Cambodian villages that I don't think were ever portrayed.... 2 M *A *S*H did a better job of, in the little bit it showed of Red Cross of showing the international and league activity through the orphans, etcetera, then this one. 3 And they also brought in the mission. There's always missionaries in all these countries. Civilian missionaries, you know, that was in M*A*S*H a lot and again never in the new o n es.. . . 2 They had a cleaning woman in China Beach ... [but] she became a Viet Cong or the tool of the Viet Cong, a cousin. There was a shampoo girl at the beauty shop.

IV. FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS RELATED TO RESEARCH QUESTION ONE

GLOBAL POLICE OFFICER: WOMEN'S BELIEFS THEN & NOW, SERIES & REALITY

In their assessment of the extent to wliich they thought that part of

America's role in the world today is to police international conflicts around the globe, the Large University group were convinced that Vietnam had changed this and made what turned out to be an inaccurate prediction about war in the Persian Gulf.

3 I think because of Vietnam it's not. 2 I think they are pulling back. 3 We need to stay home and take care of our own. There are so many people out there in our own country who are in need: all the homeless. 2 I think the thing that upsets me the most is I think we are still pretending, we are still sending out messages that that's what we are going to do but we haven't really come the aid of any of our friends since Vietnam. I mean we aren't even going to do 186

anything with Kuwait now. We are just going to sit back.

The Small University group's discussion of America's role in policing international conflicts centered on an affirmation of Americans' general belief in that role and led to more discussion of changes in their perspectives on the war and the government after they served. They briefly discussed the deleterious effects of Americans' presence in the places where we have waged war, a legacy that counter-balanced their initial enthusiasm over service.

2 Yeah. I do. Even now I do. 1 Grenada is a good example. 2 I mean who better to do it [police the globe] than [American] idealists? 3 ... That's our view of our role. 1 I wouldn't call it idealist but, "Everybody's business is our business. "If it's good for General Motors is good for the world." 3 And there's this, I don't know. There's this uncontrollable fear, on my part at least, but I see it in my family too of the "Well, we want to win this." The pure, the total dejection over the Vietnam fiasco that led to a moral crisis, a crisis in our psyche and our society-whatever-the psyche of the society; and then the rooting for the Grenada thing to work out well; and then the pure elation with the Persian Gulf?! It seems like I have no control over being caught up in that, b u t. . . sometimes I don't want to. . . . I changed my view of the whole Vietnam issue after I came back and long—'cause I didn't really know what was going on for a while, until 1 got back to the United States. .. . 3 And so I started changing my real view: "should we have been there or not?" ... I think it's still very much confusing and complex: your relationship with your government. You want to believe. 2 ... My Dad set up the B52 maintenance squad in '58 so we've grown up knowing that we were involved. I'd grown up knowing that that was what we were "supposed" to be doing and then lived through the protesting time and still . . . have never come to grips that we lost.... I kept saying "there are these idiots out there" and then I realized that botli sides were [idiotic]. I guess the biggest thing was when my father finally admitted to me that the government. .. was lying to us. 187

1 ... We were highly indignant that anybody would think it was really strange to send people that far away to defend something. And I remember the black G.I.'s saying "we've brought racism to a country that doesn't know what it is.. . . racial epithets and so on." . . . We brought all of this with us and imposed this on a country that already had enough problems, let alone all tlie other garbage we brought with us. 3 Like we did with the other wars and left behind, the children, the mixed race children and whether they were Vietnamese and White, Vietnamese and Black. They are all just disregarded by that society. But we did that in Europe. 2 We did it in Korea, Japan. 3 We did it everywhere.

In discussing the extent to which they thought, during their service in

Vietnam, that America's role in the world was to police international conflicts, the Large University group was divided on the issue. The nurse went to Vietnam to nurse, a decision she considered to be apolitical; the Red

Cross worker denied even thinking about such matters, and the MACV secretary was keenly aware that America served such a role and was surprised that tlie others did not do so. The others subsequently indicated that their lack of attention to this general role of America in the world was ignored because they fervently believed in it at the time. Their reactions to protesters at Americans airports on the way home functioned to let them know that some people did not share this point of view.

1 I never thought about that stuff. Never.... 2 I think that's why I went, initially. I felt we had a right and we should go there and all the idealistic reasons we bought into. I really thought it was important. I think it was important. I'm not downgrading what we tried to do there. Boy, I just wish our government had been honest about it. [To 3]. ... Did you feel this country was more or less the "guardian of peace throughout the w orld?" 3 Yeah. Basically. As far as the political ideologies of why we were there and what we were doing, that never entered my mind. 188

I was there because there were American soldiers there that needed nursing care and tliat's the only reason why. I will always be a patriot, I will die a patriot, a flag in my hand. But I did not question whether we were right or wrong in being there. That didn't come until after I came back. We never even heard much about the anti-war demonstrations going on. 1 didn't know about that until we got home. Then, when they started throwing rotten vegetables at us as we walked off the plane, I thought "Oh gee, somebody doesn't like us." . .. The first thing we did when we got through customs was we went into the bathroom and we got out of our uniforms. We didn't want people to know that we were military personnel. . . .

The Small University group was also in agreement over positive acceptance of the role of America as the Global Police Officer. They mentioned the domino theory and discussed some of the ways in which they came to be disillusioned with the war after they got to Wetnam. The group went on to discuss the conflicting concepts of the glorification of war in

American culture and a perception that America "ran out" on a commitment to the South Vietnamese.

1 1 was totally committed to that. 3 I was. And again it was all wound up with this; "We have to defend democracy. Better to do it on foreign land . .. instead of on the shores." 2 And I was certainly convinced that we could certainly take care of something the French had botched up. I mean that was just no question. . . . The domino theory made perfect sense to me. 3 The domino theory really did make sense. I believed that. . .. 1 I thought it was the biggest waste of time, the biggest waste of lives, that every 19 year old kid that died was an absolutely useless and senseless death, and that we had brought havoc to a country that already had enough problems. And that's the history, the story of our country. We gave the Indians blankets with Tuberculosis and Small Pox and that whole colonization thing and we didn't even have the decency to stay in Nam to at least do the sort of rebuilding ... that we have done in the past. But 1 went with the illusion that I could help the people who were being affected by the war. ... 1 really couldn't put it into words until I 189

saw The Americanization of Emily and I thought "that's right, that's absolutely right: we celebrate war and we do celebrate people's dying." And that's a terrible awful ugly thing to do. Songs like Green Beret drove me up a wall because it's like "I've died and now I have this little kid and I want my kid to be raised so that he can die a hero." . .. That's senseless. 3 ... I really knew that I was changing.... When my parents who had been through World War II... [clianged]. I guess when I heard my mother say "I would send my sons to Canada first," then it sort of started coming to me that "Whoa! My mother!?" ... I really feltthat... I was there because our troops were there and we had a mission to be there. There was no political [agenda]; it didn't matter who was right, who was wrong, whether we should or not. As Red Cross we were there in support of our troops over there. 2 I had fallen for it hook, line and sinker. .. .We used an excuse of a protesting population to walk out on a country.... Having fallen for it like that, [it] was ... a real blast in the face .. .when it was over, and everybody was hearing from Kissinger that "there is nothing going on" and all of a sudden we know there are more sailors in Southern Thailand than . . .ever.... We were sitting at the beach and got the little binoculars and there goes the Enterprise on the way to the Gulf of Tonkin right after Kissinger had said, "Oh no, no-no-no," and . . . that was the complete loss of innocence. At that point I still believed we didn't know about concentration camps until they opened the gates. 1 "We're good." 2 It was the whole onslaught of having to believe that... I didn't live in the ideal country that I thought I had. 3 I was in Tliailand, again, when Saigon fell. And the one thing that I am also concerned about is the Vietnamese we left behind. . . . Some of them made it out of there and some of them we knew that we were leaving behind and they were dead people ...

When asked to discuss messages or character interactions they recalled from the series that related to their conception of America's role in the world either during their service or in the present, the Large University group focused on what they considered to be the superficiality of China Beach in contrast to Tour of Duty, which "touched on" the issue of America's role 190

"every now and then."

2 China Beach doesn't seem to have much along those lines. They just seem to have "fluffy" stories. I think Tour of Duty maybe touches on it every now and then about the later role, America's role. That kind of thing. I can't remember any episode of China Beach that's got much depth to it. 3 It usually is real superficial. The only one that I can remember that had any [emptional] depth to it is the one that had the interviews with the women veterans, and then would go and show scenes of China Beach and then go back and talk to the veterans. . . . 2 Or that one scene where that young Red Cross worker at that party at that dinner . . .when she stands up and more or less tells her general where to stick it.. .. 1 1 thought it was a little bit out—[of character]....

The Small University group, when asked to relate messages or character interactions they recalled from the series that related to their conception of America's role in the world either during their service or in the present, responded that they felt the series did not address this issue directly; but they also mentioned that they did not think of those issues when they were serving over there either.

1 I don't think they were that global. I didn't think I was that global. 3 And they didn't address the issue. 2 No, not really. No......

Discussion of the similarities and differences between the Large

University group's experiences of the Vietnam war as compared to the portrayals they remembered from the series revealed an emphasis on lack of officially sanctioned combat experience as a major obstacle in evaluating

Tour of Duty even though they had contact with violence:

3 Well, in Tour of D uty, I don't think any of us saw combat. China Beach : some of the episodes, in part, depicted what it was 191

like for me, a few of them, not too often. 'Cause we ... weren't right there on the water. But some of the experiences [or] overwhelming feelings of "Will it ever end?" when they start bringing casualties in which you sometimes would get from China Beach., 1 can relate to real well. [The] episode where K.C. finds out that her father died. A very good friend of mine, she had been in country, the chief nurse came to her and told her her father had died. It was very, very traumatic and to this day it still is traumatic for her.... Every time I see that one I relate to it. There [were other situations] that reminded me of experiences I had and that's when I get up and leave and not watch the show because it brings back too many memories. I mean I have enough trouble, still, when helicopters fly over.... 2 ... We didn't see combat, although during Tet we were cut off for a couple of days.... You could hear "ping, ping" as bullets were going off the side of the balcony ... a claymore mine went off and part of that came through the house. . . . And yet within two hours we were sitting around drinking. 1 mean, that's the craziness in yourself. You were shot at one minute and you were drinking the next. Because you had been shot at.

The Small University group's assessment of similarities and differences between their Vietnam experience and the portrayal they saw revealed in the series focused on a reiteration of their earlier discussion of the inaccuracies of the televised storylines as well as the verisimilitude of the visual images presented, thus the the series were both "similar and dissimilar."

V. FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS RELATED TO RESEARCH QUESTION TWO:

WOMEN"S ASSESSMENT OF GENDER ROLES OF SERIES CHARACTERS

In discussion of their evaluation of the portrayal of gender roles within the series, the Large University group concentrated on the general accuracy and verisimilitude of the characters' behavior. They emphasized their experience with military and medical power structures classifying most 192 women as servants within the workplace. The main discrepancy they saw in the series was a lack of depiction of polite interaction behveen the soldiers and

Red Cross S.R.A.O. workers.

2 For that era I think they are pretty accurate.... At that time, women's lib hadn't really come into it's full blossom so I think they still had that subservient position there. Even the woman who was supposed to be in charge of things really isn't. . .. 3 Well our chief nurse wouldn't make any final decisions or anything without concurring with the colonel. He was the CO of the hospital.... 2 Our exec, officers did not like civilian women secretaries at all cause you couldn't order them around. ... He said something to me one time about "I suppose you're going to want to go on R and R." I just went like this [grabs cloth of her own blouse] what color is this? This is not khaki. I tell you when I'm going on R and R so don't ask. Ooh! That was basically their feeling toward the civilian women anywhere. 3 Well military wasn't much different. . . . 2 Oh, and you had doctors too! 3 ... And they were all older than we were. ... I never saw a doctor fall off a pedestal as fast as those doctors I worked with did. When you are in nursing school you look up to these guys. They are really fantastic. They save lives and we're their handmaidens and we'll do whatever they tell us, right?. That's what they breed in you when you're in nursing school Then you get in a real life situation in a war zone in Vietnam and you are living in the same hotel with these guys and you see them running around naked, you see them drunk. You know the whole gamut; they are no different than we are. Those pedestals came right down, but then they put those greens on and they had those double bars on them and most of us just had a single bar: "Yes, sir! I'll do what you say— for now." But when those greens came off, " Forget it Freddy!". . . 2 The grunts treated every woman they met like a lady. 1 Absolutely. 2 It was the officers that were- 1 There was one thing on China Beach that . . .showed ten women in the back of a deuce-and-a-half and they had . . . the little U.S.O. troop and three or four Red Cross people and ... they went off into the middle of nowhere on one of the programs. And these guys had built a latrine. They had like a translucent piece of cloth and then the girls were standing against the sun and the sun 193

would shine through and the guys were cheering! I never saw that. ... They would go off in the opposite direction and they would do nothing like they showed on that program.. . . Maybe it happened someplace but it didn't happen to me and I never heard of anyone who ever got that kind of treatment. Tliey did treat us like hopefully they wanted their sisters or whoever to be treated. At least that's how I always felt. 1 never saw anybody being disrespectful. And we didn't have to take orders either you know. We were pretty independent. We were at the mercy logistical support, but we didn't take our daily effort's direction from anybody except our own unit directors.. ..

The Small University group's assessment of the series' gender role portrayals echoed the sense of accuracy for the period expressed by the Large

University group, but they went on to label the portrayed gender roles as

fitting mainstream gender roles "very well. Very stereotyped."

WOMEN"S VIEW OF GENDER ROLES IN THEIR VIETNAM EXPERIENCE

Discussion of the application of gender roles to the group's service

experience during the Vietnam war by the Large University group centered

on the courteous behavior of the soldiers in the presence of Red Cross

workers, the potential conflict of stereotypical women's gender roles with a

military officer's duties, the politeness of the men as contrasted with the

"arrogance " of their officers, and an anecdote showing how the power

structure which normally supports women's manipulation of men in the

case of physical strength broke down in a war zone and revealed the lack of

power in a role that at other times engendered respect and politeness.

2 Whenever we were at a base camp, the enlisted [men]: you couldn't ask for a more polite group, more courteous group. I mean they probably didn't act that good at home.... But boy, when you ran up against some of those egos in the officer corps or the the State department guys: ugh! 3 We had an officer meeting [concerning] discipline.. . . The CO was trying to instill in us the factthat... we were officers, we 194

were better than the enlisted men, we were to expect and demand respect from them. .. If they didn't salute you then by golly you do something about it. . . . So 1 walk out of this meeting .. . and this great big black guy about 6'5", doesn't have his hat on, very sloppy . .. doesn't salute ... 1 stop him. And 1 said "Soldier put your hat on and 1 expect a salute from you!" He put his hat on and he saluted me.... He was so upset that he beat up two or three other guys. He ended up being sent to Long Binh jail.... He was known for his temper, and 1 still did that because ... if you are gullible enough that you want to make a good showing for your superior officers you would do what theysay.... The arrogance is built in, from the top down. . . . 1 When I arrived at Camranh Air Base for my last assignment ... 1 had this stack of stuff but 1... knew that you could use your little wiles if you wanted: "Oh I'm soweak".... You just had to look like you were about to exert yourself and you had a swarm of people there. ... 1 would just get my stuff and start shoving it across the airport [to get help]. This time this poor colonel appeared and said "I'll help you Miss." ... 1 told him 1 was going to Camranh Air Base. . . But he took me to the Army side, not the Air Force side and we got there and pulled up in front of the Red Cross office and he jumped out and said "Your replacement is here!" He was told "We aren't expecting a replacement. They are on the Air Force side." He went "oh." He went over to the motor pool and ... said "drive her over to the air base" and he walked off. ... 1 felt really sorry for thisPFC.... We kept going farther and farther away from an Air Force-looking place; then he found out he was wrong and he just really dumped me there. ... It was "well my duty is done and I’m Army and 1 live over here" 3 Now it's your problem .

The Small University group's discussion of the application of gender roles to the their service experience during the Vietnam war was simple assent. They felt that, at that time, they were playing exactly the roles society expected of them, "just like 1 was supposed to."

WOMEN'S DISCUSSION OF GENDER ROLES AND MODERN WARFARE

The Large University group's discussion of gender roles in relation to the concept of modern warfare as practiced in Vietnam centered on their 195 perception of a lack of connection between gender roles and warfare. The group went on to discuss the increasing degree to which women are being involved in combat-like situations, but one group member was adamant that women aren't labeled as combatants, even if they exchange fire with the opposition as military policewomen did in Panama. In response, the others defined war as when one is being shot at, suggesting that women who act as combatants ought to be given the benefits that go with such work.

1 Modem warfare? I don't think they relate at all. Women weren't involved in that. They were there to pick up the pieces. 3 You could do a real good job [making pieces]. Especially these "wonderful" things called napalm and white phosphorus. . . . 2 I think probably women's role in warfare hasn't changed since the first rock was dropped. We are always there to pick up the pieces and try to patch things up and heal people and make things right. The weapons get more sophisticated but the basic healing is the same. And that's always been a women's role. Maybe it will change if they ever put women in combat positions. Of course now it's generally pushing buttons. 3 Panam a! 2 No they haven't. They don't call it combat. 3 No, but they were firing guns, too. 2 Not one of them got their Combat Infantryman's Badge. 3 No that's true, they didn't. 2 A friend of mine said that if you are getting shot at it's a war. 3 There you go. That's a good definition.

The Small University group's discussion of gender roles in relation to the concept of modern warfare as practiced in Vietnam focused on contrasts between Vietnam and Desert Storm and the changes in women's roles in

American culture in the intervening time period. Again they focused on the social definition of women as non-combatants.

3 It's hard not to bring Desert Storm into play there and you know, there were no female pilots at that time [Vietnam]. 196

1 There were no females in combat! . . . 2 No. . .. But everything we've done has been since then. It was still traditional then. There is still a long way to go but there have been some [changes]. 1 Yet women were exposed to combat. I mean women had to hit the bunkers. 2 They did in World War II, also. 3 But they weren't out there shoulder to shoulder with ma­ chine guns in the fox holes—that was expected and that was our- 1 Yeah, they w ere not combat troops.

WOMEN'S PERŒPTION OF EFFECT OF MILITARY ON GENDER ROLES

Discussion of the effect seen by Large University group of the the military on gender roles varied from expression of no effect at all to a progressive function of opening of certain jobs to women in the military before they were open to women in the larger society. Along with this discussion came an assertion of the lack of effect of the military on the larger society because of its "reactive" rather than "pro-active" nature.

2 I don't think the military influences standard gender roles. I don't really think they do. They do within in their community. 3 The importance of the military is becoming very minor . . . as politics change in this world. It's no longer that important to have a strong military, in a lot of people's minds.... I still believe you have to have some power behind you. .. . 1 ... I think women were able to perform more traditional male roles sooner in the military. You don't hear too much about. . . truck drivers, whatever.. . . Maybe they were there [in Vietnam]. 3 I don't think there were women truck drivers at that point in time. There are now. I have a friend .. . [who] was in a motor pool and worked on... [and] drove deuce-and-a-halfs .. . 2 During the second world war, although they weren't considered military, there were the pilots [who] flew the planes over [to Europe]. My God, those women did more dangerous work than some of the— 3 Than a lot of the military men! ... I am ex-military, I am still military, even though I am no longer active duty, no longer reserve. The Army was part of my life, an intense period of time and it will always be a part of my life. Vietnam will always be a 197

part of my life. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about Vietnam that I don't remember something. Sometimes it's all good and sometimes it's not. But I still see myself as military personnel and I will until the day I die. 2 ... Any person who has experienced a traumatic event—you remember some of the feelings about it... specific to you. But the military as an organization really doesn't have any bearing on the day-to-day life of most Americans. It doesn't influence what is going on in the overall. Because it reacts. Military isn't really proactive, it's reactive. . . .

The Small University group agreed that there was an effect on gender roles by the military; their discussion centered on a homogenization of male and female gender roles into a sort of generic "soldier" role whose work identity supersedes other considerations. This was contrasted with an observation that women in the military today seem to look more feminine than those women with whom they worked during the war.

3 [Gender roles in the military] have come a long way. 1 Well I'm not so sure. ... If you think ofMajor Dad, for example, the woman is very clipped, very reserved, very "marine." ... The gender then gets buried and you become "a solder." This is how a soldier behaves. I remember . .. this general was giving a talk and was talking about driving to the airport with his wife and his son; he was going to Vietnam. [It involved] kind of slapping his wife on the shoulder and saying "be a soldier" or... "Let's not make a big deal out of this" and patting the kid on the head and then going off to the war.... 2 ... Women I've seen in uniform [recently] . . . really look different. . . than what I remember. A lot more make up, a lot more "do" to the hair. Now some of that may be "style," but I thought they don't look the same in the uniforms as the women that I was around at that time [in Vietnam]. There was one redhead on our base that really just was striking and I thought "Isn't it interesting that [military women] today . . . reminded me more of her than of the others." 198

WOMEN'S DISCUSSION OF SERIES PORTRAYAL OF MILITARY'S EFFECT

ON GENDER ROLES

The Large University group's discussion of the effect of the military on gender roles as portrayed in the series covered the lack of central roles for women other than McMurphy and the unflattering portrayal of women in power.

3 Well in most of them women are given secondary roles or except for China Beach and McMurphy. Everybody else is kind of the second class. 2 ... The only women who is supposed to be the strong leader is portrayed as a jerk. 1 Yeah. On Tour of Duty the civilian psychiatrist, the sergeant's girlfriend,. .. [became] military. 2 Yeah, she went into the Army. I always thought that was an anomaly. . . . There weren't many women doctors then. 1 Or civilian doctors.. .. 3 But they did not care for [treat] military personnel.... In a military hospital, there were military physicians and military nurses taking care of them. ... I don't know where they got that one from. The only civilian doctors I knew about were those who worked there with the religious groups. 2 ... You didn't see that many female military personnel at Nang Phu either... . There was a major in Khe Non who was ... the only officer, female, who lived in that compound other than m en . .. 2 But the only ones that you see portrayed are all in supportive roles. There is nobody in command. But that was the way it was.

Tlae Small University group discussion of of the effect of the military

on gender roles as portrayed in the series addressed the mothering aspect of

nursing and the contrasting stereotypical "dumb blonde" who was portrayed

as being there just for her looks, and the degree to which the cameras were

used to feature stereotypical body images of both men and women, but with 199 an emphasis on women.

1 W ell I felt a very telling scene is the one in the bar where she is saying to the doctor "you don't hold their hand, you don’t stick around, you're not the last person they see when they die" and the implication that that would be a female role whether she was a nurse or not... to provide some kind of comfort. ... To be unable to handle the conflict. . . [is] what irritated me so much about the Red Cross person. Everything frightened her, "dumbness" frightened her, it wasn't the war, that people ought to have been frightened of, it was all this silly kind of sort of "dumb- blonde" image. I thought was very much a stereotyped gender role. 2 One thing in that same scene is where he makes the point of "... I was drafted, you volunteered.". . . The majority of the nurses 1 knew had gotten assistance to get through nursing school and they had to be in the Army, and at that time if you were taking assistance to get through nursing school you were going there. So I remember thinking to myself "there is drafted and there is drafted." And there were very few, particularly of the age that they portray here, were complete volunteers. 1 And the shots of the body. You know, the opening shots. When you saw the female bodies the focus is on the breasts or on the thighs, that kind of emphasis and not as much with the guys in terms of focusing on bodies, particularly on muscles and that kind of thing. But it's much more on faces or activities that they are involved in. I think that has something to do with gender stereotypes.

Discussion of how the Large University group's Vietnam war experience informed, or acted as a filter of, their impressions of series depictions of gender roles concentrated on the inevitability of complete filtering on the participants' part. They also discussed their observation that television programs must contain images that sell their story, therefore limiting the depiction of events to the those which can create a believable television storyline. Regarding the series in question, it was pointed out that a great deal of the daily living and even "fun" that happened during the war is overlooked in order to to portray a certain appropriate grimness fitting the 200 larger context of the way the Vietnam war is imagined. The group emphasized the "unreal" nature of being in Vietnam as compared to

"normal" American life.

3 Well I check every thing I see on those two programs by what I experienced or what I have heard about from other people that have been there, what I've read about combat roles. .. . W henever China Beach is on, I look through it with two eyes that saw the real thing happening.... [My viewing] is very well tempered [by my experience]. 2 Sometimes when they do things—and I think "If that sells ... you may even believe some of the things we did." I went to parties with generals who dressed like VC, with the pajamas and every thing. I flew in helicopters drinking champaign. I mean it happened over there but they're showing it was all [horrible]—and for some, ... especially, the nurses, it must have been awful. . . . While I was doing certain things this other side was going on and I was having a good time. 3 You had your jobs to do. 2 And the guilt.. .. They were a lot of good people there and everybody worked real hard but by God you partied hard too. 3 Oh Yeah. When we got off duty, the first thing we did was go to the bar.... 1 I don't know what they are talking about. I lived in the "convent". I would just hear about this stuff . .. 2 We used to have to go shopping at commissary with M16's and .45's. You couldn't travel w ithout one. You try going to [a local supermarket chain] with an M-16. . . . You'd hear small arms fire, and you wouldn't move. You're not going to give up your place in line. You were nuts. When they talked about coming back to the real "world," it’s not... a flowery expression. 3 A different situation. 2 It was "Disney World" over there. It was absolutely insane. The thing that amazes me constantly is the friendships . . . that continue to this day, because they were made in such an unreal— 3 An emotional time. 2 And an unreal life. I mean we had servants! ... If you wanted to go some place you called out and they had a helicopter. .. . They .. . devised this plywood sort of a sleeve and they would slide that into ... a troop-carrying chopper. ... They had bar stools bolted down to the bottom of it and a bar! . . . 201

1 That's the one that they got in trouble because they had the journalists on it. They had it carpeted and everything. . . . 3 [Laughing] I love it! Americans will party anywhere!. .. 2 But when I see things on China Beach., those were the good times. We had bad times too. We had miserable times but there were ... a lot of good things that came out o f... my experience, for my growth. And I don't feel like "geez somebody had to die for me to grow" because I don't equate it with that. 3 They would have died whether you grew or not. 2 Wlien I go down to look at the wall and I see all those names and I tliink to myself how sad it was but that also represents to me the two dearest friends that I have, I met there. So my sadness is always tempered with a lot of gratitude, because I will never find friends like that... . 1 I have found . .. the same sort of camaraderie, bonding among military, the nurses that I've seen.... [You meet someone] and all of a sudden she's ... a good friend. And the same among the Red Cross people.... You . . . don't have to have been there together but they have been through the fire and so have I. 3 It's a common bond. It's very strong. . . . 2 I remember the parties but boy I can remember a lot of nice people that were there one weekend and they weren't there the next. Never to return again.

The Small University group's discussion of how their Vietnam war experience informed, or acted as a filter, of their impressions of the depictions of gender roles the series emphasized even more strongly the degree to which their experience had to be such a filter;

2 Completely. 3 ... If you've been there, you can't watch it without— 1 Relating back. 2 It would be interesting to know the reaction of people who have no memory of it. People twenty years younger than we are. I have to liken it to my reaction to combat, which was "No. Oh!" 202

WOMEN'S DISCUSSION OF CHANGE IN GENDER ROLES: THEN AND NOW

Tlie Large Uiiiversity group's assessment of change in American gender roles since the Vietnam Era centered on changes for their generation, especially those who served in Vietnam as well as positive changes in general for which women have fought within American society. They made connections between larger issues such as the protecting the environment for future generations and the destructiveness of war for the youth of a society.

This culminated in a statement of the horror and the lack of glory in war and

Vietnam as a symbol of that lack of glory.

2 [Gender roles have changed] for the women who went to Vietnam—I don't know about the rest of them ... 3 I see women to becoming more influential. .. Not afraid to speak up and say what they think. And they are more willing to take an active role in what is happening in the communities and what is happening on the state level. 1 Every level. 3 It's just a maturing of the female, 1 think. Some of the things that we have fought for and gotten. 2 1 think [it] is more universal. Maybe it's the environmental issues that help to bring everybody together too. Women . . . are becoming a lot less selfish. Not that women were ever really selfish but they've always been taught (and its a terrible thing, really): "Only men get to be selfish." Women are becoming much more interested in universal causes. They are going beyond their immediate little circles. . . . Women are really moving out. I think a lot of that is an expression of the knowledge that we can't continue sending our children off to war! And if we are not going to send them off to war let's give them whatever is best. 3 If you are going to send them off to war don't tie one hand behind their back. 2 1 find more and more people just saying "no more war period." . . . 3 You know when you stop and think though, the way modem warfare has become, how can anyone win another war? 203

2 I don't think anyone has ever won a war. There's never anybody who won a war. 3 That's true. We won the second World War supposedly, but Japanese have a better economy than we have. 2 We won it in the short term. 3 They won it in the long term.. .. 2 I hope the Afghanistan war for the Russians is what the Vietnam War was for the Americans, touching in the heart and soul of everyone, just how rotten the war is.... There is NO glory in war, none at all.

The Small University group's assessment of change in American gender roles since the Vietnam Era was that they have begun to change, combined with recognition of "an underlying wish that nothing had changed." This was compared to the effect of civil rights laws on overt racist practices in America. With probing, the group discussed that in many crucial situations, such as competition for high-level corporate or government jobs, discrimination against women has not changed much at all, even though some gender role expectations have changed.

2 Well, I think they have begun to change. ... In the Red Cross . . . men are now in the same jobs that only women were in. The hospital manager can be a man now where they were always female when we were in. 1 can remember that we began to break into what was the bastion of the male Red Cross employee role: the service to military installation. That came out of the necessity of cutting back but it still has begun. I don't think they are doing the same job that we did but 1 don't know if anybody is doing the same job that we did. Even if they were women.. . . 1 Certainly the literature would suggest that this is true. If you look at pressures for leave from work, for husbands, for new fathers and the number of women alcoholics . . . keeping pace with the number of men alcoholics- 2 H eart disease! 3 H eart attacks! 1 .. .If all those things are true, ... then there has been some change in gender roles, at least in some limited fashion and women are obviously now in the military academies and women 204

are in combat and that sort of thing. . . . I'ui ivot so sure that the roles have changed a lot. We're in a transition period ... I think the Clarence Thomas hearings are a good example. If the situation had been reversed and the woman was being considered for Supreme Court Justice, what would have been the impressions of people or who would people have believed? And it's in those situations that 1 think gender roles have not really changed. 3 That there's an underlying wish that nothing had changed, that we would "go back," on part of some people.. .. Wherever woman have come, it's been hard and almost forced by law, in some ways the same as racial discrimination. 1 mean we have had Congress make laws— 1 I'm not sure that the roles have really changed. I'm not sure that we automatically think of vasectomy as often as we think about abortion, or that the safe sex issue really has more to do with a virus than it has to do with some kind of equality among the sexes o r... respect for your partner... . Although certainly there have been some breakthroughs as far as some kind of equality ... there is still [a problem] in corporate situations. 1 remember a couple of years ago a female attorney in our community being told how to dress to appear in court or that you can be a corporate executive as a woman, but you need to dress in a more masculine o r... tailored kind of way, and I'm not so sure that's really a role change or reversal. 3 1 can remember a time in the Red Cross when 1 started out. A lady who 1 worked for who should have been president of this organization, and . . . would have never had a chance at all, at that time. It was never going to be. . . . There are definitely more women in higher positions.

The Large University group's assessment of the characters depicted in the series as more representative of gender roles of the Vietnam Era or of the present day suggested that some of the portrayals were too modem, in terms of dress and behavior but that the gender roles matched those of the time depicted;

3 I think more of the '60's. Although some times, like that reporter on Tour of D u ty, . .. [who had] an aggressive personality going out for herself but in the end she did what she was told. 205

2 Don't you ever find when you were watching that she was in one, thinking to yourself, "Oh come on, not back then." A woman being like that? Not and get her way. She could behave like that but she would be yanked back to New York. Because the military just wouldn't put up with that. 3 I think that is kind of like a placation to the 80's. Putting that into a 60's setting when it didn't actually happen in a 60's setting. ... 1 There's one on Tour of D uty that they showed who got off the helicopter in a skin tight tank top. ... I don't know anyone in their right mind who would dress like that. Truly.... 3 They wouldn't have then. It was a more conservative era.

The Small University group felt that the series' gender roles were representative of the Vietnam Era. They went on to discuss elements regarding changes in gender roles since that time which were not addressed in the series, such as pregnant officers, military moms and the military structure's assumption that servicemen would always have wives to care for the children. Also addressed wast the power of the military "mission" that guides not only assumptions about families, but about the usefulness of countries where bases are located. In this context, the military departure from the Philippines was compared to the withdrawal from Saigon.

2 Yes, definitely, the Vietnam Era. . . [On]Chi7ia Beach, I never remember ... a male nurse and there was at least one around. And so in terms of how traditional that was: extremely It was of tlie time. . . . 1 We had a woman who became pregnant. She was a captain in the Army and she was a nurse and the haste to get her out. I mean it was as if no one was responsible for this except herself and so "we've somehow got to get her ... out of the Army." ... Certainly now, we have mothers of children in the military... 2 I remember the first Red Cross friend of mine who tested the maternity benefits for an unwed mother and got it.. .. I guess I look now at a couple of single young women, pregnant, having babies and remember what my friend went through.... [It] is so different. 206

1 ... Except that the ... mission of the military has not changed and while the military has adapted somewhat, a soldier is a soldier. They used to say to us "If the military had wanted you to have a significant other they would have issued you one." That was the standard military line.... As people talk about going to Europe, it's "Yes, we need you in Europe because you are a soldier and if you want to bring your family that's fine, but you've got to look out for them. You have to find a place for them to live on the economy." The stories during Desert Storm: the parents leaving the children behind and the Army saying "Hell, this is the military. You knew that this was your mission and we're sorry that you have a two-year-old or whatever, but the mission of the military is to go fight this war." The accommodation for relationships seemed to be something the press was fascinated with and I kept saying to myself "This is the military. What did you think they wanted you to do when you signed up?".. . 1 But the military was also forced into making many accommodations [in Desert Storm]. . . .emergency communications for our families to their service members, were limited during those times. . . . But one of the types of communications that could go was a breakdown in child care. In Vietnam you'd never have had that message. But you did not have women with children. 3 But in Wetnam we didn't have women with children serving, and so the military has been forced. . . to accommodate to some things that are going to happen. And I'm sure they would prefer not to have to.

At this point the Small University group's discussion of gender role changes shifted to a discussion of the aftereffects of policing the world, whether in

Vietnam or in Kuwait:

1 ... I don't want to make it sound like nothing's changed or there hasn't been any redefinition of roles. There certainly has, to some extent, but I tliink, as much as possible that the mission has come first and the accommodations have not been all that drastic or different. When we walked away from Clark Air Force Base and left all the Philippinos, it's the same as leaving Saigon in a w ay:. .. " We can't rebuild here so we're going to go home now. " 2 "We're real sorry. And you don't like us anyway, so—" 1 " We're real sorry about the boost to your economy that we were. Well, we're just going home and a matter-of-fact don't bother packing." When you get where you are going, the military 207

will give you another allowance fo r... whatever it is that you need. That's the singlemindedness of that military mindset to a large extent, but it also provided lots of things for us. I mean, I had all kinds of stereo stuff. I got a trip to Hong Kong for R and R because, you got it. That was part of being there.... [Desert Storm had the same] waste, the tremendous movement of all the things we would like to have with us. Even amidst the hardships... . All the stuff that’s left [is] just going to decay there. [In Kuwait:] ... thousands and thousands of pounds o f... pharmaceuticals that can't be used ... so we just walked off and left them.... And I thought "We are walking away and leaving this hospital: no repair manuals, no way to fix anything, no spare parts, little kids on crutches that are this big and they are going to get bigger kids--" 2 And there are no crutches. 1 And the crutches aren't going to grow as the kids grow. I thought "we're doing it again." 3 Again! . . .

GENERAL FOCUS GROUP SUMMARY

The groups of male and female veterans revealed, not surprisingly, that the television story that has been told about the Vietnam war in prime time programming is one more representative of what they expressed as

"Hollywood" values than a clear representation of actual experience.

However, both the male and female groups expressed the notion that, for a person who has had no experience with Vietnam war and that both series were accurate in many ways, especially in terms of the look of both the characters and the settings.

Interestingly, all groups favored Tour of Duty in that they felt it was much more representative an informative about the war than China Beach.

The males felt that China Beach was utterly inaccurate in its depictions of the presence of women and the recreation center. The character of Dodger, the 19- year old combat veteran was both, was recognized by the men as both 208 representative of what it was like over there and too much an "animal" or

Rambo-like character. The strongest characters and issues for the men were the Tour of Duty characters of the platoon sergeant, Zeke Anderson and the conscientious objectors with whom we worked: Horn, the Chicago blues harmonica player who refuses to carry his weapon into the field, and the more stereotypical counter-culture medic "Doc" Hockenberry, who is there

"only to patch people up and I don't shoot anybody; ever" because "Canada and jail would have been negative experiences." The women felt that the central nurse character, McMurphy of China Beach was effective yet unpleasant and therefore difficult to identify with. They felt she was too bossy; one group felt the term "bitch" was appropriate to describe her. They recalled both K.C. and Cherry as being unflattering stereotypes and Holly as being more representative of what women serving in Vietnam looked like.

As a whole, responses by all participants indicate that television programs that dramatically depicting the Vietnam war in prime time tend to be discounted by those who were there; at the same time it is clear that some of the issues raised in the series and the characters of the series tend to be memorable enough to give an indication of the mythic function the programs perform; even if participants did not approve of the characters, they recognized and remembered them. The two extremes of stereotypical combat veteran (Dodger and Sgt. Anderson) and the two conscientious objectors in

Tour of Duty relate to around tensions associated with the Global Police officer myth. For China Beach, what seemed to be an detailed, positive portrayal of McMurphy was almost wholly discounted by both the men and women participants who viewed the series. The responses of the veterans 209

indicate that the programs seem to either engender reactions based on current

veterans' issues or act as a catalyst for the veteran in remembering some of

their experiences during the war. In either case, the veterans' attention is

often directed away from the story told in the television program to either

their past or their present. The veterans provide a reference point to evaluate

the program on a level of physical and emotional accuracy more than to

provide information on their identification or involvement with particular characters. For the most part, these veterans saw the core dramatic attributes

of a plot or a character but filled in many details with actual memories of

their own experiences.

Tour of Duty, an action-adventure program specifically designed to appeal to a male audience, was preferred by both male and female participants. The Tour of Duty perspective on the world police officer myth is a variation on a still-strong myth as demonstrated by the recent Persian

Gulf war; still, the point of view presented by Tour of Duty is remarkable in light of the stereotypical image, still strong in the minds of many Americans, of the Vietnam soldier as a misunderstood or misdirected hero. The two male and two female hero myths discussed earlier will shed light on the heroic journeys of the focus groups' most memorable characters. CHAPTER V

ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS

This chapter consists of six sections. The first is the analysis of the focus groups' impression of the series and their memorable main characters and conflicts. Section two is a brief review of the patterns of heroic mythic stories as defined by Campbell, Jewett, Lichtman, and Pearson and Pope. The third section outlines the story presented by each series and addresses the mythic hero patterns of which each series made use. Section four examines compares men's and women's focus group responses regarding the myth of

America as a Global Police Officer as well as how each series dealt with this concept. Section five is the analysis of the focus groups' responses to research question two, regarding gender roles and the series' presentation of gender roles. Section six is a discussion of the methods and specific findings of this study as well as general findings regarding viewer-aided media criticism and suggestions for further research.

FOCUS GROUPS AND THE SERIES

Tlie context for the characters of Tour of Duty and China Beach is the general impression participants had of the series and the message(s) they per­ ceived in the series. Both the men and the women watched both series be­ cause they presented realistic looking scenes and characters, while the actions and words of the characters were often discounted as unrealistic compared to the group members' experience. There was curiosity about how this era of

210 211 their lives would be portrayed, tempered by an understanding that any television series would be limited by what they considered to be the "enter­ tainment" or "Hollywood" constraints of broadcast network television.

While these participants were not completely involved in these series as they viewed, the series were able to hold the attention of especially knowledgeable viewers even though the individual characters were not particularly engag­ ing for these viewers.

Both the men and the women preferred Tour of Duty to China Beach because they felt it provided a more accurate portrayal of the war and of

American military men in Vietnam. While the men considered the mere presence of non-Asian women a factor that made China Beach a"fantasy;" the women felt that what was amiss was much of the behavior of the charac­ ters and the plots of the episodes. At the same time, some of the women re­ ported that the feelings expressed by the characters of China Beach did seem real to them despite what they felt were inaccuracies in characterization. The women also felt that the basic visual impressions of the two series were accu­ rate. This raises some questions about the portrayal of essential meanings in a television series through the symbolic constructions of character and plot, but in this case, it seems to be part of the price to be paid for the participzmts' experiential expertise as Vietnam veterans. The emphasis put on accurate ap­ pearance of sets and characters and feelings, rather than on character behavior and action lends emphasis to the concept of television as a visual mythmaker, apart from the storylines presented.

Overall, the men felt that the message of China Beach is "war is fun," and that of Tour of Duty is that "war is hell, with some breaks now and 212

then." The women felt that the most basic message sent by the series was an

erroneous notion that people in \^etnam during the war had all of the

context that historical hindsight provides the two programs' writers. The

women also recognized the stock "movie themes" present in the series, such

as: war is hell, women are whores or angels, and that the "Sarge" character

will be the person in control most of the time. This provides the basis for a

clear separation of the series for the men: Tour of Duty as limited but legiti­

mate and China Beach as frivolous. The women seemed to have more toler­

ance for the programs as potentially meaningful stories, even if they consider

these stories to be inaccurate ones.

The context for discussing the series characters was, for these partici­

pants, that of a realistic looking setting in which the participants found unre­

alistic characters moving through unbelievable plots. Still, some of the char­

acters and interactions stood out to the participants because they reflected a

measure of the reality these people experienced. The men remembered

Dodger, McMurphy and Beckett from China Beach, and Sgt. Anderson and

Doc Hockenberry from Tour of Duty. The women remembered McMurphy,

Cherry, Holly, Laurette and Dodger fromChina Beach, and Sgt. Anderson,

Purcell and Baker from Tour of Duty. This suggests that the women were not

only more receptive to the stories in general, but that they were familiar with

more characters, especially female ones. Also, the characters with top billing

in each series seemed to stand out to both groups: Anderson and McMurphy.

Regarding character interaction, the men recalled interactions in the se­ ries that were not conflicts, such as omissions from the series or realistic in­

teractions (i.e. not getting too friendly to new recruits). When directly pressed 213 about conflicts depicted in the series, racism and the unjust treatment of the enlisted men by the officers emerged in the men's discussion, while the women saw conflicts in nurse-doctor (McMurphy vs. Dr. Richard), officer- men (Goldman-Anderson, Goldman-Wallace), and American-\detnamese

(general reaction) relationships. This suggests that the women paid closer at­ tention to the character relationships in both series than did the men.

Regarding resolution of these conflicts, the men saw resolution of the conflicts presented on the screen, but discounted them as "Hollywood" con­ trivances. The men felt that the actors, having played soldiers in 'Vietnam, had the closest idea about what combat experience had been like. The women felt that the Army's authoritarian way of resolving frustrating problems

("When you don't have the big picture, its hard to understand.") was realistic, but beyond that they saw no real resolution offered in the series. This sug­ gests that the women were, even though they discounted some of tlie charac­ ters' behavior and the plots as "Hollywood," responding to those elements in the series that were realistic and added to the "truth" of the story being told, while the men were more interested in searching for errors in the series.

Commenting on issues resolved unsatisfactorily by the series, the men saw resolution of remaining psychological effects of war and political lessons to be learned from the war as limited by the programs' "entertainment fac­ tors." The men named disabled veterans issues, the state of Veterans'

Administration hospitals and P.O.W./M.l.A. issues as unresolved by the two series and in society. The women also emphasized the "easy resolution " tele­ vision entertainment programs often provide to complex social issues, and cited the dehumanization of the Vietnamese people and use of stereotypes of 214

Asians as issues unsatisfactorily resolved by the seriec. Unresolved issues for the women included conflicts between career and draftee military personnel, the political nature of the war, and pervasive substance abuse. The emphasis on "entertainment factors" and "slick" television problem resolution suggests that while these programs may provide ways for the larger society to label and therefore resolve many of the issues of the Vietnam war, the complexity of the issues for these veterans has not been successfully embraced by either of the two programs. This would suggest that attention needs to be paid to those for whom resolution is provided in the depiction of various social issues in the mythic criticism of television programs.

While the veterans were indeed familiar with the series, as is indicated by their ability to recall and evaluate characters from the series and situations from specific episodes, it is also clear from their discussion of character con­ flicts and the questions regarding how experience was used in evaluating the series that some significant portion of their viewing time was spent in recall­ ing actual events or people from their Vietnam service. While the veterans were especially helpful in assessing the degree to which the series depicted

Vietnam in a convincing fashion and in assessing the two main research questions, their detailed knowledge of the plots of the episodes was insuffi­ cient to provide a check on the critical assessment of the hero cycles. Their recollection of characters and impressions of the series were, however, help­ ful in this regard. Comparison of the effectiveness of each section of the focus group protocol is covered in the last section of this chapter. 215

REVIEW OF THE HEROIC MODELS

Campbell's monomythic model consists of several stages, the most prominent being a call to adventure, initial refusal then acceptance of that call, assistance of various helpers, travel to the threshold of another world where the hero uses his accoutrements to kill dragons or demons and then to subdue the goddess figure, a return to the world, changed, with a boon to benefit his society (Campbell, 1973, p. 245-246). This general outline applies to both the men and women of both series as they confront danger and fears in the strange new land that is Vietnam.

Pearson and Pope's modified monomythic model emphasizes a mythic pattern that involves the overcoming of dragons, beginning with four cultur­ al misconceptions about the proper role of women in society; "a Woman's

Place" is where she must deny herself to be affirmed by others (1981, p. 17);

"The Good Angel" where perfection is the norm for a "good" woman (1981, p.

27); "All for Love" wherein women are objectified because they must be res­ cued by a hero from their problems, (1981, p. 35); and "The Giving Tree," the mask of the all-sacrificing heroine, applied to squelch the conflict of self-ne­ glect with the culture's demands (1981, p. 60). These misconceptions applied to the women characters in China Beach most directly; many of the women in Tour of Duty were portrayed as operating more independently of their var­ ious male counterparts than were those in China Beach. Even so, each of the continuing female characters of both series connect with one or more of these types.

The female hero who has recognized and refused these four miscon­ ceptions has begun the first step of her heroic journey. She next must then 216 recognize her current "guides" as captors and slay the dragon of the "virginity myth," which forces her to choose between the burden servility to be consid­ ered "good"(this applies most directly to McMurphy and Wayloo) and the gift of independence and to be considered "bad" (this applies directly to K.C.)

(1982, p. 69). The female hero begins her journey by battling dragons on this side of the threshold. Few of the female characters seem to move much be­ yond this step of the model; some aspect of the war intervenes and requires service within the context of one of the four misconceptions.

During the second step of Pearson's female hero's journey, the hero rec­ ognizes that all of the qualities of the male hero reside within her; she en­ counters a powerful seducer, discovers him to be a captor, and slays the drag­ on of romantic love, which has previously limited her potential (Pearson and

Pope, 1981, p. 68). The female hero journeys to her ancestral home, seeking her father as a heroic model; she finds it in her mother. The hero develops a female context for heroism, thus freeing herself from the misconception of fe­ male inferiority and establishes a "viable female tradition (Pearson and Pope,

1981, p. 68). Even in China Beach, the series with most chances for establish­ ing such a tradition, the weight of the war obscured this very personal goal for most of the characters, except that the women managed to learn from one an­ other and from those who had come before them. For example, "F.N.G.," flashed back to McMurphy's first days in \Tetnam and the nurse whose tradi­ tions she helped carry on.

The female hero's Return comes about in two steps: The New Family, where both the hero and her society are united in community and wholeness

(Pearson and Pope, 1981, p. 223) and "The Kingdom Transfigured," providing 217 utopian visions of a better world, thus uniting hero and her society (Pearson and Pope, 1981, p. 260). Both series offer the military and particular units in

Vietnam as replacements for family, but within the context of the military it­ self rather than in context of this hero cycle.

Jewett's American monomyth features elements consistent with changes often made in the process of mass mediation of various stories; his monomyth highlights the differences between accurate history and successful mediated storytelling in American culture. The pattern followed by the male hero begins, like Campbell's monomyth, to refuse an initial call to adventure; but in American popular entertainment, that adventure is in the form of re­ deeming a threatened Eden tlirough direct and violent confrontation and of the that wliich threatens; if the enemy attempts to fight back, it is destroyed.

Characteristics of American monomyth's male hero are: origins outside the community being saved, either physically or socially, the pure motivation of a selfless zeal for justice which keeps him from becoming vengeful, and super­ human powers that allow him to hurt only those who deserve it (1977, p. 195-

196). In either gender, the American monomythic hero is able to reunite the community and save an already existing Eden, rather than establishing a new one as does Pearson and Pope's female hero. Except for saving the proposed

"Eden" of South Vietnam, this pattern is most clearly established by Tour of

D uty's main characters: /mderson and Goldman.

The female hero of the American monomyth has the same ability to accurately judge who is good and bad as the male hero, but she does not at­ tempt to physically retrain or harm her target; she attempts to convince the wrong-doer to change his or her ways through an almost magical force of 218 correct moral argument: through talk rather than through force of arms. Like

Heidi, she has the power to convince the lame to walk and the mean-spirited to become generous.

The female hero in Lichtman's goddess myth progresses through the three stages of virgin, mother and crone. The virgin stage is one of discovery and development of personal power and independence; the mother stage is one of nurturance and the turning of one's talents to the good of the group; and the crone stage is where the hero uses her life wisdom to guide others.

McMurphy finds herself in stages two and three at once: being mother to her patients and to herself at once, leaving her to cope with the pain of her service later in life rather than advancing into the crone stage. Most of the women in both series are stuck at levels one, two or both; none are at level three except, perhaps, for K.C. whose rough life has ostensibly taught her much about wielding power in the world, and McMurphy, who comes to sim­ ilar conclusions from a different path.

TOUR OF DUTY’S SERIES NARRATIVE

Over the three seasons Tour of Duty was on the air, its essential topic was about the need for military men to protect the United States; this basic message was put across in the individual stories of the members of the third squad. These stories fall into three distinct categories: people who are drafted to serve their country and return home to civilian life, career soldiers who choose to continue to serve when not compelled (as opposed to cynical and manipulative "lifers"), and those who conscientiously object to the war. Most of the squad belongs to the first category: Joltnson, Purcell, McKay, Ruiz, and recently trained Private Griner are portrayed going home to a world that is 219 not at all ready to accept them. Anderson, Goldman, and Taylor have chosen not to accept that world; ultimately, Sergeant Anderson, Lieutenant Goldman

and Private Taylor fall into the second category, but they seem to be mired in a

war that continues with less and less competently trained and motivated re­

cruits. Only Horn and Hockenberry fit category three, and their different be­

havior toward the squad ultimately determines tlieir fate. Purcell momentar­

ily fits in this category due to his disillusionment with the war effort and its

effects, but his squad/family helped him to return to the fold of category one.

Tour of Duty's "Platoon" season was concerned with the adaptation of

new recruits to the demands of fighting the war in the bush. The variety of

circumstances they find themselves in throughout the first season establishes

their heroic potential potential in coming seasons; therefore a brief account­

ing of all of the first season episodes is included here. Overall in season one,

the third squad becomes a group of capable soldiers, acquiring and practicing

the skills they need to survive.

Several incidents portrayed in the first season set the characters in

motion patterns of behavior leading to the categories discussed above. The

first of these is a portrayal of the war as changing in unexpected ways. Captain

W allace and Sergeant Anderson discuss the first of these changes;

Anderson: Oh Yeah? Well, I'll tell you something, Captain; we came about that far [gestures] from gettin' overrun.

Wallace: I know. C'mon Zeke, I want you to take a walk with me. There’s something I want to show you. [They move to an area where enemy bodies lie on the ground.] You were out there among them, Zeke. They all look like this?

Anderson: Whaddyou talkin’ about? The uniforms?

Wallace: Yeah 220

Anderson: Yup. Every last one of'em; and they ain’t your typical rice paddy daddies either.

Wallace: Nope. We got something altogether new here. North Vietnamese Army Regulars.

Anderson: First time I've heard of them bein' this far south.

Wallace: Yeah. We've got a whole new war ahead of us Zeke. ... By the way, you did a good job last night.

Anderson: Hell, I'm alive! Can't do any better than that!

Later, when the new recruits stumble onto an enemy munitions dump and destroy it, the non-violent Private Horn wrestles with an then kills a North Vietnamese soldier to save a group of officers; his sergeant checks on him:

Anderson: You all right?

Horn: I killed!? I killed!

Anderson: No. What you did was you saved our lives. Now, that's what you're supposed to do. Do yourself a favor: next time use one of these [tries to hand M-16 rifle to Horn].

Horn: [refuses it] This war's wrong.

Anderson: [Angry] Maybe. But that's not the point! [throws rifle into Horn's already bloody hands and walks away]

Episode three involves an order to relocate a South Vietnamese village that display the arrogance of higher level American officers and their lack of understanding of the people:

Major Rigby: I told you, sergeant, this valley is clean and we aim to keep it that way.

Anderson: Yeah, well good luck on that sir. 221

Rigby: We don't need luck. Just a lot of hard work and American ingenuity. We're gonna make it happen: shove some more of these hamlets together, throw in a Rural Construction team, get these people some medical help, a little technology-hell! They won't let us leave!

Anderson: Well. Charlie and the North Vietnamese might have a little something to say about that, sir.

Rigby: Not if nobody'll listen to 'em. I'm telling you sergeant, we know what's good for these people. Our agricultural techniques could triple, quadruple their yields. This country could become a major exporter again!

Anderson: Or VC. could get a lot fatter!

Rigby: You wait. Nop San is going to be a shining example of what Americans and Vietnamese can do together when they set their minds to it. It might even shake some of that cynicism of yours, sergeant.

Anderson: Oh, I'm not cynical, sir. I'm just responsible for a lot of men who depend on me to be realistic.

Later, in the face of attacking enemy forces, they are ordered to abandon the villagers the have been escorting. They feign radio trouble and take the peo­ ple to their destination, saved in part because one woman they are escorting is married to a V.C. soldier who kills N.V.A. soldiers to protect her. The squad is confronted by the Major Rigby and display their unity:

Rigby: Maybe you thought it was a cute trick last night, turning your radio off instead of obeying orders. Well, it wasn't cute, it was insubordinate! And insubordination will not be tolerated! If the command structure breaks down, gentlemen, we're gonna lose this war. You do NOT risk your lives for something of no tactical or strategic importance [turns to leave]!

Ruiz: [Who had befriended a mamasan who died] People ARE strategic, suckah!

Rigby: Who said that? I DEMAND to know WHO SAID THAT! 222

Ruiz: I did!

Taylor: No you didn't, I did!

Purcell: I think I did.

Johnson: Wait a minute, I said it.

Horn: Hey, no. I said it.

Baker: It was me, man!

Doc: No it was me.[pause] Sir.

[Major Rigby glares, turns, and stalks to his helicopter].

The fourth episode of the first seeison involves a "hot-dog" Green Beret sergeant named Michaels. Anderson is reluctant to turn Iris squad over to someone who will probably endanger them unnecessarily:

Michaels: Look; we need each other on this thing. I want you to know I respect how you feel.

Anderson: Now lemme tell you how I feel fear when I go out there and I feel pain whenever my people get hurt. That's what I feel, that's all I feel.

The base of their conflict, an incident from a former tour together is later revealed: Michaels: My mission was to inflict casualties. Now sometimes you got to take hits to score hits!

Anderson: [Infuriated] Don't give me body counts and kill ratios! 'Cause I was there! I stood in elephant grass splattered with my people's blood! I heard seventeen and eighteen year-old kids cryin' out for their mommas all night long! I saw 'em die in the mud and the rain!

Michaels: I made a mistake, Zeke! I said it now! I made a m istak e!

Anderson: That whole firelight had no meaning. No meaning whatso-damn-ever! Except maybe to the kids that died! 223

On the mission, Michaels loses his best friend as well as his hubris and comes to see Anderson’s point. Horn shoots a wounded N.V.A. soldier who is about to fire at him and Purcell and later finds a picture of the man's family in his shirt pocket. Both Horn and Michaels move closer to

Anderson’s perspective, becoming more used to killing and compassionate, respectively.

In the fifth episode, Horn discovers that local Buddhist monks using their monastery bell set up American patrols for Viet Cong ambushes. The woman who is the V.C. informant is killed by Johnson, who had earlier be­ friended her. Now Horn's intellect as well as his rifle are used to help defend the squad.

Episode six concerns overt racism. Johnson leads a group of black sol­ diers who confront souüierners who fly the confederate flag over their tent; the entire squad stands behind Jolmson and the flag comes down. Squad soli­ darity triumphs over racism.

In episode seven, Anderson rescues his former drill sergeant from the stockade to serve in the squad; the "old hand" turns out to be an alcoholic who sleeps on duty and nearly lets his patrol get wiped out. In the end he gives his life to save Anderson, who carries the body out when they are picked up by helicopter. It is clear that Anderson is surpassing his instructors.

The eighth episode of season one concerns an orphaned baby which the squad discovers, picks up, and brings in to a hospital. They are trained to kill, but only the enemy. They demonstrate that they have compassion for inno­

cent human life. 224

Episode nine involves a brief foray into the P.O.W. issue: Baker and his twin brother are captured and tortured. The two are subsequently freed by the actions of the third squad.

Episode ten reveals that Goldman has a relationship with a nurse at the base hospital in Chu Lai, Lt. Nikki Raines, who eventually refuses to be involved with a man she might see die in her operating room. The charac­ teristics of those who serve more than one tour of duty are outlined by

Anderson and Sergeant Edmonds:

Anderson: Edmonds, you re-upped for the same reason I did: because you ain't got no place else to go!

Edmonds: No. I re-upped because after I processed out, I was in the bus station in uniform glarin' everybody down and got some sage advice from an old wino: Say, Clyde, you best head on back to the war now son, 'cause yo' momma ain't gonna take you back the way you is.

This establishes the fixedness of Anderson's position in the narrative: he feels he truly has nowhere else to go. Episode ten is important because it initiates

Purcell's struggle with patriotism when he shoots a fleeing "V.C." who turns out to be a young boy:

Hazard: [in horror, quietly] A kid! [out loud, sarcastically] Nice shot, Purcell, you greased yourself a kid!

[a baby bawls in the background; the mother of the child, carrying a baby, kneels at her son's body, cries out, and points at Purcell while shouting at him. Purcell simply looks on in horror.]

Anderson: All right, let it go, Purcell. You can't account for every bullet fired here.

Purcell: I didn't come here to kill children.

Anderson: Purcell, now look. This whole village could be VC for all we know. We don't know who pushed the button on the 225

mine--it might have been a kid.

Purcell: And it might NOT have been!

Doc: Sarge! She’s got a sick baby here, too. It doesn’t look good.

Anderson: All right. Doc, you do what you can for the baby, then let's get out of here. Let's get out of here, now.

Purcell: [kneels by mother, gestures] I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen, [she spits in his face].

When Purcell goes to a chaplain for advice he finds little comfort:

Chaplain: I can hear your confession, absolve you of your sins, but all any of us can do is the best we can!

Purcell: I guess I'm confused-about a lot of things.

Chaplain: We're all searching for answers.

Purcell: Yeah. Yeah. I guess I am lookin' for answers- answers to what the hell we're all doin' in this godforsaken excuse for a country! Chaplain: What we're doing here? Son, I'm here to give you comfort and support, but sometimes I'm just as confused as you are.

His lieutenant does not seem to be of help:

Goldman: Purcell, forget it, just forget it!

Purcell: Why does everybody keep telling me to forget? If I knew how to forget, dammit, I would, wouldn't I?

Goldman and Anderson find a drunk and AWOL Purcell in a brothel; they forcibly bring him home. On the next patrol, they pick up the mom and baby and bring them into Chu Lai hospital, where the mother forgives Purcell and the morale of the squad is temporarily restored. 226

The eleventh episode of season one features the insertion of the squad into very hostile territory to rescue a downed pilot. It takes Anderson into a valley where his unit was nearly wiped out on an earlier tour and he is skittish about going; at the same time he finds it difficult to write what might be his last letter to his daughter Katie. Then, when the pilot the has to be abandoned so that the squad can escape, the pilot asks Anderson to write a letter to his own daughter. As the squad is about to leave, Zeke pumps his shotgun and heads back to defend the airman; the rest of the squad follows. They fend off the first group of N.VA., then retreat as more

N.V.A. pour in. Goldman calls in waiting helicopters and threatens to fire on them when they don't want to land in a "hot" landing zone. The group is successfully "extracted." Anderson has overcome his fears, and writes this letter for the pilot:

Dear Melissa, My name is Zeke. Your daddy is a friend of mine. I met him in Vietnam. I only knew him for a short time, but I respect him very much. Your daddy is a very brave man. He loves you very much and he'll be home soon. I hope we'll all be home soon.

Episode twelve involves the confrontation of Anderson by a female television news reporter, Vicky Adams, who is avoiding the "five o'clock fol­ lies" to get to the truth about the war. She is an attractive woman and consid­ ered by Anderson to be a distraction and therefore a danger to the men.

When a soldier is killed by a sniper while clowning around for the camera,

Anderson grabs it from the cameraman:

Vicky It’s just a story! That’s our job, dammit!

Anderson: [Ripping film out of camera, tossing it into the jungle.] And its my job to protect my men.

Vicky [As reel sails off into the foliage] Oh shhhhttt! 227

Anderson And I ‘m gonna do that job, even it it’s only protecting a memory! [Tosses camera back to cameraman.]

Later, Anderson explains his motivations to her:

Anderson; I’m gonna make it home. And I know that I’m gonna drive by a VA cemetery, and I’m gonna look out there and I’m gonna get to thinkin’ about what I did over here. And I gotta know that not one of those tombstones is out there because of something I did. Not one of 'em. Can you say the same thing?

After a firelight in which Captain Wallace is killed, Vicky gets injured, frightened, and shepherded out by Anderson; it is clear that the experience and the sergeant’s persuasion have “converted” her:

Anderson: Intelligence is gonna have a good time with all the documents and stuff they found. They did get their high body count.

Vicky: Somehow that just doesn’t make up for it.

Anderson: No ma’am it does not.

Vicky: Will you ever forgive us?

Anderson: It’s over.

Vicky: I want to say something good about these men, sergeant. I think they’re getting a bad rap back home. They’re not a bunch of murderers or baby-killers.

Anderson: Look here now. You keep lookin’ hard enough and you will find those. We’re just a group of people just like any group of people. I think it’s just too bad that we don’t ever get looked at as individuals, y’know?

Vicky: W hat do you want when you go home?

Anderson: [Visibly brightens.] When I go home?! I want to be treated like human being when I go home. Hell, we’re all gonna need somebody to talk to. 228

Episode thirteen of the first season centers around a U.S.O. entertainer from a "military family" who has been rejected from the service due to epilepsy but wants to be allowed to fight. When the helicopter taking the band to their next destination crashes, the young man uses eagle scout skills to keep himself, two female dancers and a male saxophone player alive. He is elated by the first firefight he experiences, at one point saving Anderson's life by killing an infiltrating enemy soldier. This leads to a rash attempt to rescue

Ills friend's forgotten saxophone; when Anderson goes back to get the two young men, the sax player is ambushed and killed and the would-be hero throws himself on a grenade to save Anderson, who is shaken by the young man's combination of stupidity and self sacrifice.

Episode fourteen concentrates on the arrival and effect of the Kennedy- esque Captain Larry Heath, the new Bravo company commander. He is ambi­ tious, reckless and confident that a coming attack will not touch Eirebase

Ladybird; the base is overrun and third squad is saved only by Anderson's foresight and preparation. Doc, who is about to return home to medical school, and nearly everyone is killed. Tlie Captain is converted to Anderson's perspective and winces when a colonel visiting the burned out firebase congratulates them on their high kill ratio: "With a little luck, there'll be a lot more days like this one."

Episode fifteen takes place in Honolulu. Purcell is there on emergency leave because of his father's heart attack; R and R for Ruiz and Taylor take their R and R there to lend support to Purcell. They confront anti-war college students, a hospital ward full of injured Vietnam veterans, and one bitter vet­ eran in a wheelchair who they barely save from committing suicide. 229

Episode sixteen focuses on the relationship formed when a temporarily blind Goldman holds a Viet Cong woman prisoner they are eventually forced to help one another survive. After a time Goldman's sight returns and he hides her where she can die in peace from her wounds, rather than turn her in to interrogators.

Episode seventeen involves a Hispanic soldier befriended by Ruiz.

When he discovers the man to be a heroin user he tries to help him, but the man subsequently endangers his squad mates and himself and is killed be­ cause of mistakes made due to liis altered state of consciousness.

Episode eighteen shows Anderson's opposition to tricking servicemen into re-enlisting when their tour is up, combined with Taylor's newfound feeling that the Army is his home. It is at this point that Taylor joins

Goldman and Anderson in the category of career soldiers.

Episode nineteen reveals the devastating effect of bringing the war the

Montagnards, the indigenous people of Vietnam, and lets the squad share their culture with them. It portrays the ruthlessness of a South Wetnamese province chief and his connection to the drug trade through a stereotypical

Asian warlord character, ARVN Major Tung, who attempts to massacre the village to get the American equipment provided them. The squad stops this massacre, but not before the Montagnard chief is dead.

Episode twenty sends both Goldman and Anderson to the hospital in

Chu Lai, where the Lt. Raines finally breaks off her relationship with

Goldman and where he wins a shootout with a North Vietnamese spy.

Episode twenty-one, the finale of season one, marks the departure of

Horn, who recovers his conscience and refuses to participate in the assault of 230 hill 1,000, which has been taken and abandoned twice already by his unit. He is unwilling to die for nothing and willing to take the consequences of his ac­ tions. Yet, when a lightly wounded Taylor is sent down the hill to rest, Horn remembers why he is fighting: for his friends instead of patriotic ideology.

[Loud machine gun fire sounds as Horn slams up against a wall of sand bags, tosses a satchel charge into it and destroys the enemy machine gun bunker, where the sound was coming from. Wounded, Horn struggles back to his buddies who are pinned down. They call to him.]

Squad: Horn! C’mon! Horn get outa there!, etc. [Johnson pulls Horn the last few feet to safety as the bunker explodes.]

Squad: [Whooping and shouting. The machine gun has stopped firing. A corpsman arrives.]

Anderson: How’s he doin’?

Corpsman; He’ll live, but we gotta get him outa here.

Anderson: Yeah, but how bad is it?

Corpsman: His war’s over, that’s for sure!

Anderson: Horn, how come you came back up here?

Horn: I knew you needed my help.

Johnson: We took the hill, Horn. We took it back thanks to you, m an .

Horn: Let’s see if you can hold on to it this time.

Anderson: [Amazed] Yeah. Third time’s the charm. [Corpsmen carry Horn away.]

Goldman We’re digging in up here, over?

Radio voice: Evacuate the area. Colonel Donnelly’s on the way for inspection.

Goldman: I don’t believe this! 231

Anderson: All right, let’s get dug in here!

G oldm an: Forget it!

Anderson: Sir?

Goldman: I said forget it. We’re not diggin’ in. We’re goin’ back down the hill.

Johnson: What!?

Baker: [Kicks ammo box viciously.] Oh man!

Anderson: Wait. This’s gotta be somebody’s idea of a joke, right?

Goldman: I wish it was. Saddle the men up. [sarcastically] The colonel’s coming up the hill!

Anderson: Well did he give you any idea why?

Goldman: You know better.

Anderson: All right! Second Platoon! Form up here! C’mon, listen up! I’m only gonna say this one time. We’re headed back down the hill. That’s right. C’mon. Purcell, you lead the way. C’mon.

Ruiz: I don’t suppose you could-

Anderson: [Angry] Don’t ask me questions, Ruiz. I ain’t got any a n sw ers.

Colonel: Good work, men!

Goldman: Sir.

Colonel: It’s a job well done, men!

Purcell: Colonel?

Colonel: Yeah. What is it, soldier?

Purcell: Why do they keep havin’ us take this hill and then givin’ it right back to the enemy?

Aide Soldier, I don’t think that you’re- 232

Purcell: Colonel please. Answer my question.

Colonel: Objectives change. When you don’t have the whole picture it’s hard to understand.

Purcell: [Angry] Sir, you pinned medals on my chest yesterday. I think I’m willing to give my life for my country, but I’ve gotta know that it matters!

Colonel: [Aghast.] Of course it matters!

Purcell: A lot of men lost their lives on this hill, sir. One of my best buddies got all shot up. And we go and give it back to the enemv! It’s as if it were all for nothing!!

Colonel: [Annoyed.] I think you’re out of line here, soldier.

Purcell: [Livid] Just remember, “sir.” that our lives mean something, too.

Colonel: [Quiet.]

Purcell: [Angry and sarcastic.] “Good afternoon.” SIR! [Salutes very formally.]

Aide: [Cowed, the aide returns the salute while the rest of the squad pass sullenly by.]

By the end of season one, the third squad of second platoon of Bravo company has matured and become a team of seasoned fighters and sur­ vivors. Goldman and Anderson have shifted from adversaries to a caring team who lead their men wisely and competently.

The "Saigon" season of Tour of Duty finds the squad's jungle war con­ verted to a street war. The first two episodes concern the Tet offensive of 1968, about which Goldman, pilot Johnnie McKay and reporter Alex Devlin discov­ er evidence just before the attacks begin. At the same time a retired buddy of

Anderson's is involved in illegal activity, but dies helping the squad back to safety. In this season, the two main characters find female counterparts. 233

Goldman competes with McKay for the attentions of Alex Devlin, while

Anderson and Dr. Jennifer Seymour embark on a romance initially instigated by their shared care and respect for the men being treated for "combat stress."

Even the romantic relationships of the second season arc modulated by violence, however: Dr. Seymour, the civilian psychiatrist who is on contract to the military and tries to persuade the military psychologists to change their traditional treatment methods, is ironically thrust into the role of patient when she kills an apparent assassin who wounds an acquaintance wearing

CIA fatigues (episode six). By midway through the season, Seymour has ac­ cepted a conunission as an Army major to train doctors and medics in prepa­ ration for the psychiatric aspects of the war (episode eight). She is effectively removed form the series, except when Anderson visits her at the beginning of the third season.

Keyed to Dr. Seymour, the third, fourth and fifth episodes of Tour of

D uty's second season revolve around the psychological impact of the war and the Army's unwavering policy of sending physically fit men back to their units as soon as possible to "shake off" their problems and get back to their work. At he same time, the relationship between Goldman and Devlin is based on the time they can share due to his assignment to the Tan Son Nhut

Army base and her assignment to follow his unit in the field. Devlin pursues a number of stories, and there is often conflict between her choice of stories as a reporter and his perspective as a military officer. She never backs down from a fight and vigorously pursues stories in her search for the truth about the war. After being lost in the bush and recovered by Goldman and McKay, she doesn't acquiesce to Goldman's demand that she avoid such situations 234 again (episode six).

During the second season, the third squad finds itself in Cambodia

(episode six), trains soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and learns about American prejudices against all Vietnamese (episode seven), confronts the extreme pacifism of a Quaker woman's philosophy that nearly gets Purcell convicted of murder for saving her life (episode nine), finds itself temporarily racially divided over the death of Martin Luther King Jr., (episode ten), trails a missing green beret (episode eleven), foils the smuggling plot of

C.l.A. operative who used to be a friend of Anderson's (episode twelve), helps catch a serial killer and reforms a newly transferred recruit who hides his own fears through a racist attitude (episode thirteen), goes back into tiie field with a S.E.A.L. group (episode fourteen), copes with the death of a gung-ho new recruit and finds that Goldman and Anderson have been left behind in the face of a large N.V.A.attacking force (episode fifteen), and acquires a new lieutenant (episode sixteen). The "Saigon" season of Tour of Duty abruptly introduces female characters and then gets rid of them just as abruptly, getting back to the first season's emphasis on combat.

Alex Devlin, after interviewing an N.V.A. officer about the Tet offen­ sive and the tunnel system in which he lives, is killed by a bomb after she re­ turns with her "hot" story (Season three episode two). Unlike Vcky Adams,

Devlin keeps her journalist's objectivity and has the power to choose her stories and move fairly freely around the country. Even so.Tour of Duty's

Vietnam is an unsafe place for reporters, doctors, cind other non-military

"meddlers." Wliile a war zone is indeed an unsafe place for anyone, disap­ pearance of the non-military core characters emphasizes the essential value 235 placed on the stereotypical sergeant and the now-seasoned lieutenant who was smart enough to learn from him. Both have learned to "go along to get

along," and draw their power by working with the system, as represented by the Army in general and specifically by their squad. This is a practice distinct­

ly at odds with the M*A*S*H's portrayal of manipulative mavericks who use

the system against itself. Tliere is little activity of this sort inTour of Duty, ex­

cept to reinforce the humanity of the squad members (i.e. episode three, sea­ son one) or as a pretext for launching the squad into an investigation, often of

a corrupt military, which is ultimately successful. Not only is the squad ready

to clean up Vietnam, they seem prepared to take on the Army as well.

The "Green Beret" season of Tour of Duty begins by finishing the cliff-

hanger of Anderson and Goldman's M.I.A. status. They have been captured, but are able to free themselves only to nearly be killed by their own squad on

patrol (episode two). In this same episode, they acquire a new medic, Francis

Thurman Hockenberry, who is a far more conscientious conscientious objec­

tor than was Horn: as a medic, he is not required to carry a weapon and refus­

es to kill anyone. This is also the episode in which Alex Devlin is killed.

In the third episode of season three, McKay speaks at Alex's funeral ser­

vice because Goldman cannot say a word, and the third squad is moved to an

elite special forces base and transformed into "Team Viking," due to a man­

power shortage and the squad's now high level of competence. Anderson is

sent to the United States to speak at a black friend's funeral where he demon­

strates that racism can be overcome as he is grudgingly accepted by the man's

family. In the second episode he is able to see his daughter, Katie. He offers

his philosophy of war to his ex-wife, who meets him at the door: 236

Katie’s mom : She’s just a little girl; she doesn’t understand about war.

Anderson; Neither do I. In the fourth episode, Anderson balances his desire to stay in the U.S. and have a normal family life with Dr. Seymour with what a pressing need to re­ turn to his men. Seymour finally breaks the deadlock by telling him that he must return to do what he feels is right, but that when he returns for good she will wear his ring. Anderson returns to the transformed unit. As Team

Viking, the squad works alone on various special mission projects; later in the season, they are assigned to a regular Army platoon once more.

After witnessing the results of a My Lai-type massacre at the village of Phu An, the entire team is shaken (episodes five and six). Doc tries to “get clean” in the rain and shaves his regulation-breaking mustache off. Purcell, who has been drinking heavily and smoking marijuana, begins smoking heroin, and Goldman takes the incident to the commander.

Purcell tries to explain how he feels about the war as a whole when the team is discussing whether or not the Army will cover the incident up: Purcell You don’t understand anything. We killed those people. . . . And this is all One Big Lie! The war, our country; it’s a lie!

Johnson We’re all upset, Danny--

Purcell No, I keep thinkin’: what if this was happening to us? You know-back in the world? What if it was your sister. Ru[iz], your parents? I think about that, and I want to puke my insides out! But I can’t! I been here too long (episode six).

Depression sets in and Purcell shaves his head and goes A.W.O.L. in episode six. As in the first season, the team catches him and and helps him 237 through withdrawal symptoms. Just in time for a Thanksgiving episode,

Purcell is accepted back into the unit, and they celebrate thanks for one anoth­ er with a special turkey dinner; however, the unit involved in the massacre has been dissolved and reassigned (episode seven). In episode eight, the base commander. Colonel Brewster leaks the Phu An story to the press and is transferred because of it

From then on, Purcell is back in full capacity (episode nine); he has overcome both his drug habit and his doubts about the war. A promoted

Johnson goes home in episode eleven, after sitting out a mission in the previ­ ous episode. Fie faces more blatant racism that he encountered in Vietnam but is warmly welcomed by his family, who take some time getting used to his planned college career. Meanwhile, Anderson and Goldman reflect on their place in the world as they stand guard outside an orphanage on Christmas eve. Strains of Silent Night fill the air;

Anderson: LT, I think I'm gonna stay up all night tonight. I don't get many chances to guard a buncli of nuns and cidldren.

Goldman: Hmm, Metnam: land of new experience.

Anderson: Aw, LT, what the hell else we gonna be doin'? FIm?

Goldman: Yeah! You could be home with Jennifer; I could be looking after my father. What do you think? Do you suppose they 're sleepin' any better knowing we're here?

Anderson: Nosir! Probably worse.

Goldman: Well, so much for that!

Anderson: But I'm finally startin' to feel good about where I am. Don't get me wrong LT, I'd rather be home with Jennifer, but I'm not. I'm here. And somehow—that's okay. Tliat sound weird to you? 238

Goldman: No weirder than most of the things you say!

Anderson; LT, look at it like this: I mean, here it is, Christmas eve, you know? And I mean the kids are in there singin', Lt. McKay's in there bein' Santa Claus; Ruiz there, Ruiz just might get himself a girlfriend-who knows? I mean, it's almost perfect!

Goldman: And I got you!

Anderson: 1 said almost perfect!

Tlie rest of the season portrays: facing a massive N.V.A. night attack with untested troops (episode thirteen), a serious incident of friendly fire that grounds McKay (episode fourteen), a sympathetic look at one deserter's story

(episode fifteen), the stranding of Taylor and Ruiz in an area about to be heav­ ily bombed (episode sixteen), the acquisition of more inexperienced and reluc­ tant recruits as well as a "gung-ho " news photographer (episode seventeen), the discovery of and battle with an N.V.A. tank, the return of Taylor and Ruiz after weeks alone the field, and Doc Hock's refusal to fire on an escaping prisoner who kills one of the new recruits (episode eighteen). This is a psychological turning point for Doc Hock:

Goldman: I think that sometimes when ideology and reality collide, you just can’t base your decisions on the comfortable beliefs of the past.

Doc Hock: Then what do you nossiblv base 'em on?

Goldman Something you can live with for the rest of your life.

Like Purcell, Hockenberry finds that his experience of the war so chal­ lenges his value system that he becomes seriously distraught. He is forever split from friendship with Purcell and others on the team: he is reassigned to a rear medical unit where he administers morphine to 239 patients on a small ward similar to China Beach’s “checkout counter.” He is labeled as a killer due to his inaction and left in the process of questioning the belief system that had earlier sustained him. Episode nineteen empha­ sizes exposure of the squad to Agent Orange.

In the first half of the two-hour final episode, Anderson and Goldman help the returned Colonel Brewster lead a daring rescue attempt at a prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam. After all of the successful patrols Anderson has led, this one fails. The camp is empty despite the C.l.A.'s information to the contrary. The message is that even the best soldiers cannot function with unreliable information. During the raid, a newly acclimated and trained

Private Griner is blinded by a grenade concussion and McKay is wounded

such that he will not fly in combat again; we never again hear or see those of

the squad who remain in \detnam. They seem to fade away after the rescue

attempt, washed away in the new world that confronts Ruiz, Purcell, McKay

and Griner. As such, the narrative leaves the main characters in Vietnam;

the heroes remain in the “underworld," presumably continuing to fight, this

makes sense, given that Anderson and Goldman represent the Global Police

Officer who has yet to return home and brings a boon to society by staying

away from and defending the "frontiers" of that society.

The second half of the final episode takes place in the United States. At

home, Ruiz telephones Purcell after being denigrated as a "loser" by a World

W ar II veteran at work; he needs to make contact with a close friend who un­

derstands. Ruiz began the series with a phobia of rats and used his .50 caliber

machine gun to try to kill one in a bunker during a mortar attack; the "com­

mie rat" survived in something of a metaphor for one aspect of the American 240 experience of the war. More importantly, Ruiz had worked through combat- related problems with Dr. Seymour. Purcell began as a stereotypically All-

American character with high school R.O.T.C. background who vouches "I don't think patriotism is something to laugh about . . To which Anderson knowingly replies: "Oh son, when it gets you into the fine mess that you are in now, it is something to laugh about" (Pilot). His Vietnam experience af­ fected him greatly, and he coped with those problems; but at home he is spumed because of his service. McKay, the "crackerjack" combat helicopter pilot, who was always there for the third squad, encounters blatant job dis­ crimination and ultimately rejects the "boring" world of doing radio traffic re­ ports.

Overall,Tour of Duty clearly emphasizes "action" in terms of violence and danger experienced by its characters, but it allows for character develop­ ment in ways that support its general message. Anderson is the chief convey­ or of that message: that dedicated soldiers will always be necessary to police the world, that Vietnam veterans are regular people who need somebody to talk to about their experiences from time to time, and that many regular peo­ ple are still needed to become soldiers in order for the mission of the Global

Police Officer to be fulfilled. In Tour of Duty's Vietnam, conflict over the war was a temporary questioning of global policing; the series is a reinforcement

of the myth, not a reason to reject it. As some of the male participants point­

ed out. Tour of Duty makes a tremendous recruiting tool for the armed forces.

Tire mythic story presented byTour of Duty is twofold: first, there is

the call to adventure in a foreign land that the war itself represents, especially

through the portrayal of the growth of the new soldiers; second, there is the 241 adventure represented by Anderson's visits to the United States, wherein he brings the boon of knowledge of a changing world back to his home and fami­ ly, which is his squad. The first adventure includes Vietnam a place beyond the threshold of American experience and features the presentation of Viet

Cong men women and children, the men of the North Vietnamese Army,

Buddhists, American deserters, drug addicts and conscientious objectors as well as a fairly constant flow of C.I.A., Army and indigenous profiteers, disil­ lusioned enlisted men and incompetent officers as the dragons to be fought by the heroes of the third squad. The second adventure, given that Anderson's home is the Army, is into civilian America, represented as a largely feminine world through a dead friend's mother, Anderson's ex-wife and young daugh­ ter and Dr. Seymour. The dangers he faces in the U.S. are disrespectful war protesters and a public sentiment against the war combined with a growing intolerance for young military recruits who are going to Vietnam to "grease some gooks" and think that they will win the war handily. The knowledge he gains of this changed America prepares him to more adequately care for the men with whom he works. The last we see of Anderson, Goldman and

Taylor is in their failed assault on the prisoner of war camp; this is perhaps symbolic of the eventual outcome of the war, given that this mission's failure was due to mishandled information from those higher in the command chain; the C.I.A. operative with them simply doesn't believe that the prison is abandoned, and is dragged bodily away by Anderson. What is more impor­ tant in the context of Tour of D uty's narrative is the fairly well articulated de­ piction of the soldier who, against reason, is willing to sacrifice for his buddies and for his country. This is not the message usually associated with many 242

mass media depictions of the Vietnam war, and seems to be an attempt to rec­ oncile many of the problems of Vietnam—psychological trauma of battle, lack of civilian support, an untrustworthy government, dubious allies and politi- ciaiis—into a reinforcement of the ideals of a nation devoted to policing the world more familiar to viewers of mass media entertainment films or television series based on previous wars.

Tcmr of D uty fits of Jewett's American monomyth in several ways, some of which are almost automatically integrated with the topic of the

Vietnam war. First, the male heroes are mostly draftees, those who did not enlist but somewhat reluctantly heeded the call of their draft board or chose

Vietnam service over a prison term. Purcell, the only obvious volunteer, is

"punished" in the narrative by having to confront the effects of a war based on his ideals, but gradually comes to terms with his experience through the support of his military "family." Tire rest are suspicious of the war; and Horn eventually comes around to support the squad with fire power, while Doc

Hock is ostracized for acting on his beliefs and not killing when it would have saved a man in his squad. Second, the task of redeeming a threatened Eden is already established by the war itself: the ideal of South Vietnam as a democra­ cy is the one most characters profess to be fighting for, beyond personal sur­ vival. The war is also the embodiment of the violent confrontation of the hated yet respected Met Cong and N.V.A. Defeat of these enemies seems sure for most of the series. All of the heroes have origins outside Vietnam, and their pure, selfless motivations are established through the care taken for the large number of babies and women encountered in the bush. This was espe­ cially clear in the development of blind Goldman's rapport with a female 243

V.C. prisoner in the first season. Anderson and Goldman use their example to keep their men from being vengeful, although they struggle with a desire for revenge. Those who succumb to vengeance are always outside the squad: the deranged sniper from season two, and the revisitation of My Lai during the third season. These incidents show that, in Tour of Duty's world, these are mere aberrations in the context of a larger moral use of organized deadly force. The superhuman powers that allow our heroes to hurt only those who deserve it are the variety of American military technologies used to fight the war. These are operated with less control by the military as a whole, but

Anderson and Goldman have a nearly perfect record of military action to de­ stroy only the appropriate enemy..

Even so, the heroes of Tour of Duty are unable to reunite the commu­ nity that is South \^etnam within the series narrative, and the image of an al­ ready existing Eden shifts from the potential South Vietnam envisioned by the U.S. back to the United States itself, which is less Edenic than our return­ ing heroes remember it: war protests, continuing racism, and harsh judg­ ments of veterans direct the returning heroes back again to the idealized squad that was their family in Vietnam. A switch has been made: Vietnam seems more like home while the hometowns of these young men have been transformed into a new wilderness to which they have yet to adjust.

The female heroes of Tour of Duty, reporter Alex Devlin and Dr.

Seymour, correspond to the classic American monomythic female hero be­ cause both use the power of talk to do their heroic work. Alex Devlin, re­ porter (following in the tradition of Brenda Starr and Lois Lane) uses the power of the press to find the truth, and is, within the context of the series 244 narrative, blown up after her last assignment in the field. Dr. Seymour, as a psychiatrist, represents the power of talk to help those who know about the truth of the war to cope with it. Even though she seems an ideal mate for

Anderson, her transfer to the United States and the portrayal of her waiting for him until he comes back from his fourth and final tour of duty has a "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" quality about it that eliminates her character as effectively as was Alex's. His Christmas eve discussion with

Goldman affirms this. Thus, we find that our heroes eventually forsake fe­ male companionship in the tradition of the American monomythic hero.

Both of the major female characters in Tour of Duty interfered with the basic monomythic of the series and were therefore terminated. Yet, Tour of

D uty's story provides only one perspective on the Vietnam war. China Beach, while less concerned with the rigors of combat, provides a much less opti­ mistic message: that the individual has only his/her immediate friends to rely on in coping with the pain and stress of war.

CHINA BEACH'S SERIES NARRATIVE

In general, the story presented byChina Beach over its run provides a narrative collage of appropriate grimness presented through the ensemble of

characters around which the series rotates. This series is far less linear than

Tour of Duty in the sense of presenting wholly self-contained episodes fol­

lowing one another to create a complete narrative; however, groups of

episodes cluster together to form the important units of the series. China

Beach not only takes on the extended serial form of a soap opera, but includes

elements of both fantasy and reality beyond the bounds of the realistic por­

trayal that Tour of Duty provides. China Beach episodes include strange 245 happenings such as the appearance at the 510th Evacuation Hospital of a dead soldier's deceased grandparents ("Skylark"), a carnival troupe that seems ca­ pable of supernatural feats ("Magic"), and from the fourth season, an episode dealing with the spiritual power of a Native American soldier who teaches

McMurphy about healing beyond the medical practices with which she is familiar. At the same time, the recollections of a variety of men and women are used in "Vets" and "Souvenirs" to bring the perspectives of real Vietnam veterans into the world of China Beach. Thus China Beach, while having a less clear narrative structure than Tour of Duty, casts a much wider net in its reach for useful interpretations of what happened in Vietnam; it becomes less believable in the eyes of both the male and female participants. At the same time this range of interpretation lends an emotional impact to China Beach that is only sporadically felt in theTour of Duty episodes.

China Beach's first season-seven episodes—represent a week-long visit to the base by U.S.O. performer Laurette Barber. During that time, she is transformed from a minor back-up singer in search of "men-o-rama" (pilot episode) to a person who, through the help of her newfound friends, has gained a spot with headline entertainer Johnny Grant's "Operation Star lift."

Although she doesn't want to leave, and has established a relationship with

Boonie, the lifeguard, she chooses to try to achieve her dream of show busi­ ness success. This choice effectively takes her out of China Beach's narrative.

Qierry White seeks out and finds her soldier-brother during the first season of China Beach.. In "Hot Spell," she must check an unidentified body that might be his; she helps K.C. acquire a potential investment that turns out to be worthless. In "Chao Ong" with the help of K.C., McMurphy and Dodger, 246 she discovers her brother Rick "under the biggest rock" in Vietnam: as a pimp and black marketer of drugs and weapons. He doesn't recognize his sister and suggests she would be popular because of her blonde hair. In the process of dealing with the loss of a brother who was really only a memory, she is quick­ ly transformed from a naive outsider to a seasoned realist who is accepted as woman, not as a"kid." In Lost and Found Part II, she is responsible for training new Red Cross workers, "let '68" finds her trapped on a firebase dur­ ing a rocket attack; when she is steps out of the bunker into the rain to cool off after the attack is over, she is blown to bits. Thus, she too is taken out of

Chinn Beach's narrative just as she begins to discover who she is and what she wants to do. K.C. escorts her body home to Iowa in "Cherry," midway through season two.

W ayloo Marie Holmes comes to the base as a military reporter and leaves with to pursue television news reporting with A.B.C. Her major story brings Boonie a medal and painful memories of a difficult combat situation in Cambodia. She is a romantic interest for Dr. Richard, but functions as a

"medium bad" character somewhere between K.C.'s calculatedness and

McMurphy's righteousness. She connects better with McMurphy, when they discuss the merits of keeping their fathers thousands of miles away in both "Twilight" and "Tlie World Part I." Way loo is whisked away to New

York; McMurphy accompanies her to visit her own father and save him from a second heart attack in the hospital while a civilian nurse babbles about rules and an intern who can barely keep up with her pace of delivering emergency care ("The World Part 1"). 247

McMurphy and K.C. are the core opposing characters who come to some resolution in the series; they oppose one another because former is

"good" and the latter "bad." Yet they find they are very much alike; their res­ olution is to acknowledge their affection and care for one another. In so doing, they begin to recognize that the social labels defining them as "good" or "bad" mean less than the level of trust the relationship the are able to build with one another. This level of understanding is not established between

McMurphy and her own mother. In "The World, Part II," McMurphy tries to make her mother understand who she is:

I'm never going to be all the things that you and Dad wanted me to be. I'm not going to join an order and become sister Margaret Mary like your sister; I'm not going to marry somebody that I've known since grade school, buy a house over on Elm Street and raise a bunch of kids, like Brian and Shawn; I'm not even going to live over the garage and hide out from the world like Brendan. This is me. It's who I am. I'm never going to be who you want me to be; never.

McMurphy ends up consoling her brother in much the same way nurses in

Vietnam; after an initial decision not to return to Metnam, she explains to two Berkeley political science students "what it is like:"

Hot, sticky, sweet rain, laughter, naked kids, sweet rain, smells, laughter, blood under your fingernails that won't come out. I held a boy as his life bled out. I turn out tire lights at night and its all their faces, their voices. I recognize them in everybody I see... And what if I forget; what if I can't remember? Are they gone forever? ... I won't forget tliem. Ever. (The World, Part II)

McMurphy ultimately takes the advice of a friend working in a V.A. hospital, that she will "never do more, never be worth more than you are over there" after encountering a former patient now at the V.A. who recognizes her as

"My nurse. She saved my life" (Tire World, Part II). McMurphy seems to 248 have regained her place when she returns to the 510th Evacuation Hospital in time for a "mass cal" and tells the first patient she sees "You're gonna be just fine" ("The World, Part II").

Dr. Richard gets "dear Jolinned" while on what was supposed to be rest and relaxation leave with his wife in "Qiao Ong." Over the run of the series develops romantic attachments with both Wayloo and McMurphy. When they leave for the U.S. in "The World, Part I," he responds romantically to

Wayloo and professionally to McMurphy when he tells each one "I need you." After a he dispenses passionate good-bye kiss to Wayloo and a handshake to McMurphy, she responds "More than you'll ever know!" and goes back to kiss him before they leave. He yells "I love you to both of them as the helicopter lifts off, but then quietly says "Come back, McMurphy" after it has gone. Ultimately, Richards marries a woman named Colleen who is a

doctor also, apparently in lieu of maintaining romantic relationship with

M cM urphy.

Dodger, is the quintessential Vietnam soldier stereotype who protects his men at all costs and dispenses survival knowledge to them, such as "Trust what you fear the most" ("Ghosts"). Yet in the pilot episode and in "Twilight"

he and Boonie pine for the "good old days in Injun country" when the war

was "sweet." In that time, he may have been much more like Tour of Duty's

Sergeant Anderson, but something has changed, something never vocalized

by the men. He is dying when McMurphy finds him just beyond the perime­

ter of the hospital in "Lost and Found Part I." As McMurphy helps to nurse

him back to health over seven episodes, he gradually falls in love with her.

In season three. Dodger discovers he has a Vietnamese-American son ("Dear 249

China Beach"). Challenged by Dr. Bernard's disdain for the lack of responsi­ bility of young American soldiers. Dodger manages to get his baby through bureaucratic red tape and bring little "Charlie" home to the United States

("Souvenirs") He returns home to explore the world and finds himself in a veteran's cemetery on Memorial Day shouting: "Don't anybody ever forget us!" ("The Tlianks of a Grateful Nation").

Colleen McMurphy discovers in China Beach's pilot episode what the men of Tonr of Duty gradually figure out—that she has found a home and family in military service in Vietnam. In addition to regular work in the op­ erating room, her care for the men leads her to spend time with Jeff Hyers, the Marine medic who seems to have fallen for her; at tlie same time Dr.

Bernard brings with him children and an insane ex-wife, unexpected addi­ tions to an attractive man. As such he is a reminder of the complexity of life and offers a model for responsibility and care that Dodger takes to heart.

Tlie initial stages of Pearson's female hero cycle best fit the storyChina

Beach tells because its characters never seem to get past the original social misconceptions about women. K.C. is successful within the confines of the role of the shrewd, rebellious entrepreneur, but her schemes never allow her to achieve the financial break she desires. For example, when she tries to win her fortune in "Hot Spell" through acquisition of an ancient vase, she finds she has exchanged her hard-earned savings for a fake, and must return to prostitution once again. Her most successful enterprise is one that helps to legitimize her in the eyes of Major Carreau: the opening of a base beauty salon in "Limbo." In the fourth season, McMurphy wanders the country for years: doing manual labor at an orange juice processing plant in Florida, 250 spending time in the Rocky mountains with Dodger and eventually marrying man she cannot seem to stand because he does not share her Vietnam experi­ ences which they follow her for years after the war is over.

Leila Carreau becomes less remote, and proves throughout the second and third seasons that she is a team player and works in the O.R. and triage along with the other nurses. She eventually marries Sergeant Pepper who, like Archie Bunker, began as an obvious racist but was transformed into a lovable if irascible "lug." He is the one with whom Leila has the most in common, other than rank. Despite her slight transformation, she remains a fairly conservative character and model of traditional upright womanhood.

Of all the characters. Cherry showed the most signs of growth from a shy "girl" to a woman making her own decisions and speaking her own mind

("Lost and Found, Part 11"). She was replaced in the second season of the se­ ries by the irrepressible and much more insecure Holly Pellegrino, who looked less like a model and more like the average woman who served in the

Red Cross. Holly is confronted with the fact that her best friend may be Viet

Cong in "With a Little Help From My Friends." She endures a painful and dangerous abortion in "Holly's Choice" after an unexpected liaison with

Zimmer, a soldier wracked with pain over not challenging an officer's ar­ tillery coordinates, which resulted in the deaths American soldiers from friendly fire.

Frankie Bunsen's character grows and acts fairly heroic as well. She matures from a glib and gawky private when first introduced to an assertive young woman who, literally, finds a place from which to contribute to the ef­ forts of the base, after job-hopping through the second season. As the lone 251 black woman in the ensemble, she confronts dragons the others ignore or are unaware of, such as the bigoted side of Sergeant Pepper. He thinks he is trying to help Bunsen and "Answer Man" restore a truck in his motor pool:

Pepper: Hey Answer Man! How about not eating your taco all over this fender, huh?

Ans. Man: Sarge: give it a break, okay?

Pepper: What is it with you people? No sense of humor? Now Bunsen, here, has got a sense of humor: she just welded the rear tire to the right fender! The sweet smell of fresh, burning rubber. Prob'ly takes you back to old Dee-troit!

Bunsen: Tm not from Dee-troit. Sarge!

Pepper: You know, its beyond me why I allowed you people to work on this vehicle. It'll take me forever just to undo the damage!

Ans. Man: Well, it might help if you'd stop callin' us "you people."

Pepper: [Grabbing steering wheel away from him] Hey, nice touch! I should have known a half-pint Mexican'd know some­ thin' about stealin' auto parts!

Ans. Man: Hey, I'm Puerto Rican. So get your bigotry straight!

Bunsen: Get off it willya, Sarge? You said we could work on the truck.

Pepper: Yes, and then this turned into automotive boot camp! Next thing you know, he'll be merchandisin' my hubcaps, and you sweetheart— Well, Bunsen, your still just a colored girl who doesn't know a muffler bearing from a patooga valve!

Bunsen: Well. Maybe the Great Wlrite Honky Massa isn't a very good teacher! We worked two days straight on tliis stupid thing, listening to nothing but flappy white slurs spewin' out of your big m outh! 252

Pepper; W ell then I've got a suggestion for you. Private! Why don't you just reassign yourself to that deuce-and-a half? It needs a lube job! You too, Answer Man! Y'know, you two couldn't restore this baby if the outcome of the war depended on it! So as of now, this area of the motor pool is no longer an Equal Opportunity Employer! [Grabs steering wheel back from Answer Man] Gimme that! C'mon. Move out! (Skylark).

Tliey restore the truck in their spare time, which both touches the

Sarge and earns his grudging respect. Frankie also earns the respect of an in­ fantry squad when, because of her name, she is promoted to sergeant and mis­

takenly sent to lead them at a firebase ("Warriors"). Because she is often mis­

taken for a man, and because she sometimes entertains as a singer/comedian, her role is not free from stereotypes; even so, Frankie Bunsen spends a great

deal of time exploring what her potentials are and trying to figure out what

she wants to do with them. Because of this, she moves beyond the social mis­

conceptions about women's roles and begins to become heroic.

In general, the women of China Beach are traditionally heroic in that

they serve the war effort to the best of their ability and despite various person­

al problems. At the same time, these characters are only embryonic female

heroes beginning to get a sense of their own wants and needs apart form the

larger culture. Overall, China Beach presents a Vietnam scenario in which

the dark side of the war is ever-present, even during "fun times" designed to

combat that dark side. The characters' personal struggles with their comer of

the war are continually woven into the series, and the soldiers and wounded

do not have the positive aspect that Anderson and Goldman bring to Tour of

Duty. For all of the realistic depictions of combat in Tour of Duty, there is 253

more emotional pain and confusion revealed in China Beach.

This difference can be explained in two ways: first, because of the differ­ ence m focus of the two programs, and second because of the provision of the explanatory myth of the Global Police Officer exemplified inTour of Duty

and lacking in China Beach. To elaborate on the difference in focus of each se­ ries; the pain of being injured or losing men in battle is of a somewhat differ­ ent sort than the pain of tending to those who are injured and dying as they come into a hospital. Tire essential nature of a series emphasizing combat troops versus one emphasizing a hospital and recreation center help to cause this difference in portrayal of the pain of war. In Tour of Duty the flow of in­ jured emd dying is away from the focus of concentration, the active squad, and there is a compensating flow of new soldiers coming in. In China Beach, while there is a flow of new people coming in, most are not being killed, injured and subsequently replaced. The constant flow is of the injured, those near death and those already dead: what flows away from the field flows into the hospital and morgue of China Beach. In addition, there is a recirculation of healed and rested troops back into the field, inevitably to cycle through again on R and R or due to injury. Thus, the tone of each program is slightly

different thus providing different perceptions of the Wcir.

China Beach provides no emotional Sergeant Anderson to deal with the emotional assault of Cherry's "loss" of her ideal of her big brother, K.C.'s coping with the death of an incestuous father, McMurphy's distant alcoholic father, Boonie's combat stress, or Dodger's bone-weariness of combat when he

remains in Vietnam after his tour is technically up. These personal tragedies

are heightened in China Beach in addition to the general stress of the war. 254

This emphasis on various personal problems, combined with the constant pressure of military bureaucracy, the flow of wounded through the hospital and bodies through graves registration exerts an emotional pressure far be­ yond the physical traumas inflicted by the fighting itself. InChina Beach, there is no one to help the men and women cope with their reactions to the

Vietnam war but themselves. Tliere is no Dr. Seymour attending, none of

Sergeant Anderson's folk wisdom and gentle-but-tough encouragement. As

Sergeant Pepper tearfully puts it after describing a particularly wrenching combat decision he had to make that cost him a very dear friend: "Those are the jokes, folks!" (How to Stay Alive in Vietnam, Part I"). Thus each charac­ ter in China Beach fights individual battles and strives to make connections with the others. None is individually capable of acting heroically to save them all; McMurphy is forced to face this in "Warriors" when she mistakenly revives a man who is brain dead but still breathing. While she cannot abide

"giving up" on a patient, finds she must give way when circumstances so dic­ tate. In China Beach, the characters seem to be facing their various dragons, with their fears and tragedies, but there is no portrayal of an overriding an­ swer to the questions they face, as there is, for example with Purcell or Horn in Tour of Duty.

The dragons to be overcome by the women of China Beach are highly personal ones, ones they carry with them beyond the war. For the most part,

China Beach portrays struggles with and minor victories over some of the four cultural misconceptions discussed by Pearson and Pope. Bunsen, Cherry,

Laurette and Wayloo are the most heroic of all the women of China Beach, but three of the four are subtracted from the main story of the series fairly 255 soon after being introduced. The women who form the central core of most of the narrative are those who find ways to change themselves to fit their sur­ roundings, not the other way around.

McMurphy is clearly heroic, but she is essentially a combination of

Pearson and Pope's "Good Angel" or "Giving Tree." In "A Rumor of Peace,"

Major Garreau reveals the nickname the other nurses have for McMurphy:

"Sister McMartyr: Our Lady of Perpetual Duty; and I coined that last part my­ self!" McMurphy copes superficially with the pain she must take on from the patients and friends in in her life; she is a nurse at her core, and she chooses to remain in Vietnam because it offers her the opportunity to do what she does best, including smiling and telling dying young men that they are "going to be okay." She copes by taking on the pain of others around her until she can do so no longer. She brings no obvious boon upon returning from her adventure, but sacrifices much of herself in the act of pursuing her adven­ ture. Less obviously, however, McMurphy symbolizes that many Vietnam vetermis bring back the experience of coping with death to a culture in which death is only acknowledged as an ending rather than part of a cycle. In this sense, McMurphy has been catapulted into the crone stage of Lichtman's hero model before her time. Rather than passing from one stage to another, she must function in the first two—virgin and mother—simultaneously and then make the jump to crone as well. Yet the culture she returns to does not pro­ vide room for her to sort out this compression of human experiences, so she finds no way to begin to express these experiences upon returning home.

Tlie only characters who seem to begin to recognize that the qualities of the male hero reside within them are Bunsen, K.C., McMurphy, and Cherry. 256

Bunsen is the only one to serve as the sergeant of a squad on a firebase, even if only for a few days. McMurphy asserts in the pilot that she is "just one of the guys, " K.C. is an exceedingly tough customer, and Cherry begins to see the assertive nature in herself before she is killed. Yet each forsakes a truly heroic journey for the comfort of being able to get through the present moment in the act of "housekeeping' in the hostile environment of Vietnam. The fe­ male heroes of China Beach seem only to be beginning to discover a female context for heroism; they find it in one another, not in their mothers. Thus, while these women are exposed to experiences that allow them to be freer

than they might have been in a more restrictive environment in the United

States, they are ultimately there to serve the men, whether for personal gain-

like K.C.-or for more selfless reasons, like McMurphy or Holly. Yet such

selfless dedication has a cost that K.C. understands and dislikes, and which

McMurphy is unwilling to recognize until she works through her pain witli a

counselor twenty years later. K.C.'s solution, that no one is trustworthy and

that money is the arbiter of all things, doesn't seem to make her any happier

than McMurphy, although she does arrive to meet her old friends at the Wall

in a limousine in the series' finale.

Rather than establish a new "viable female tradition" as does Pearson

and Pope's female hero, the women of China Beach simply expand and im­

prove slightly upon the existing traditions concerning the helpmate role of

women in our society. They show that trust and companionship are possible

even in the most trying experiences, but aside from coping from moment to

moment, they provide no new model of female heroism. 257

In "Ghosts," "Nightfall," and "Holly's Choice," there are instances where the women band together to help one another; these episodes present moments wherein a larger culture which restricts women's heroism is overt­ ly recognized. "Ghosts" deals with the death of relationships: Dr. Richard and his ex-wife; Beckett and his first love: Mai, a local woman; K.C. and her anger filled memories of her father. It also deals with the erroneous perceptions men have of women: Dr. Richards' of, Beth Ann, his ex-wife, Beckett's of Mai,

Vinny's and Dr. Bernard's of McMurphy. "Nightfall" deals with the brutal murder of a Vietnamese prostitute filling in for K.C., who is trying to get out of that business. McMurphy and Major Garreau grudgingly cooperate with

K.C., giving her enough information to confront Major Otis, the new com­ mander of the base; when he will not explore the issue to protect his career,

K.C. goes over his head and he is transferred back to Saigon. K.C. then works to keep the murdered woman's daughter from a life of prostitution. In

"Holly's Choice," Holly relies on K.C. and McMurphy to help her through a difficult decision and the medical aftermath of an illegal abortion; McMurphy makes it clear she would not have made that choice but that she supports

Holly nonetheless. These episodes, along with other flashes of insight from time to time throughout the series (i.e. "Chao Ong" from the first season,

"Cherry" from the second season and How to Stay Alive in Vietnam, Part 1") provide the core of episodes where the female heroes of the series are being heroic for one another rather than in the service of various male doctors or soldiers around them. McMurphy voices the perspective of incipient female heroism succinctly when she tells Beckett near the end of a short discussion of expectations for men aird women in war: "It's time for us to do what we 258 want, Beckett, if we only knew what it was" ("How to Stay Alive in Vietnam,

Part I").

The message of China Beach is not necessarily that old coping mecha­ nisms and gender roles are necessarily good, but that they are the ones used by individuals dealing with the \^etnam war. In this sense, China Beach is sim i­ lar to Tour of Duty in that it implicitly advocates coping meclianisms of the past provided by the more traditional myths. For Tour of Duty, this was an emphasis on the necessity of Americans as global police officers; China Beach emphasized calls to support and "clean up after" the global police officer even in the face of the harsh costs of war.

THE GLOBAL POLICE OFFICER MYTH IN FOCUS GROUPS AND SERIES

Men and the Global Police Officer

Tlie men felt not only that America's job was to police the world both today and during the Vietnam Era, they felt that that concept still motivates much of current/American foreign policy. Both groups affirmed the role of

Global Police Officer for the United States, positing business interests as the driving force behind maintenance of that role. A stronger, more naive ver­ sion of this belief existed in the participants before and during their service.

All seemed disillusioned with their treatment by the public upon returning, especially when encountering protesters and unfavorable press coverage of the war. Although they did not explain it in those terms, it seems reasonable that pervasive belief in in the Global Police Officer myth may have been what helped Tour of Duty to appeal to the men as more realistic.

The men did not relate series messages or character interactions to the global police officer concept, but they recalled the that the concept was part of 259 their perceived purpose in going to Vietnam. Again, the veterans' experi­ ences, helpful in evaluating the appearance of the series, prevented them from becoming fully engaged in the series characters and detailed messages.

Tliey explained their dissillusinment with the Global Police Officer myth when the perceived they were unwanted by the people for whom they felt they were fighting, both at home and in South Vietnam.

The correspondence between the men's Vietnam experience and the se­ ries reiterated earlier discussion of visual verisimilitude without conveying the reality of the lived experience, which they felt tend to promote or glorify war without indicating the human price to be paid for military service. They felt the television series compared unfavorably with Vietnam war feature films and that the standards and practices requirements for broadcast televi­ sion entertainment programs promote a glorification of war that their actual experience belied.

Even though the government was perceived by the men as as responsi­ ble for creating situations like Vietnam, the Global Police Officer was affirmed by the men as existing in their minds during their service and today.

Although they may oppose the idea of the Global Police Officer due to the

"radicalization" that service in Vietnam brought, it is clear that in the men's minds, that myth is still functioning in American society; even discussions of gender roles turned, in one of the men's groups, to speculation of whether or not Russia could still be considered an enemy and to what degree China poses a military threat to the United States. Underlying these speculations is that order around the globe is still maintained by America. Wliile the men criti­ cized the government, it was clear that the myth of the Global Police Officer is 260 still alive and well, if tarnished by their wartime experience.

Women and the Global Police Officer

Tlie women also felt that America's role in the world was to police the world during the \^etnam Era, but some were convinced that the war was in­ strumental in challenging the myth of the Global Police Officer; others ac­ knowledged Americans' general belief in that role while simultaneously rec­ ognizing it as a cause of strife as well as of aid. They discussed the disruptive effects that the withdrawal of American presences have caused around the globe.

During their service, some of the women felt that they were there to help South Vietnamese people, all felt that they were there to help the men serving in the war, no matter their job. Tliere seemed to be a division be­ tween those who felt they were performing political versus apolitical jobs when they served. Their strong belief in the rightness of the American cause

(and thus in Global Policing) led them to consider their jobs apolitical. The domino theory was cited as one strongly held belief fostering service in

Vietnam; they came to be disillusioned during their service upon seeing what conditions were "really like." They saw a conflict between the glorification of war in Americcin culture and a perception that America"ran out" on a com­ mitment to the South Vietnamese. Wliile this myth seems to be operating in the culture for both men and women, the women seemed to be more critical of the necessity of war while the men defined war as horrible yet inevitable.

Tlie women, who seemed to command a better knowledge of the series than the men, saw only sporadic references to Global Policing in the messages or character interactions of the series, however, they felt that this was not 261 unrealistic given that they were unaware of such issues when they served.

Tlie women felt that lack of combat experience kept them from fairly evaluating Tour of D uty, but they reiterated the significance of blatant inaccu­ racies of the televised storylines as well as the verisimilitude of the visual im­ ages presented. The women recognized faces, the men's relaxed interactions some settings as accurate, while the men noticed the scenery and some peo­ ple, especially the main characters of Tour of Duty as exhibiting "realistic" be­ havior.

Wliile the men's responses did not reveal any direct connections be­ tween the Global Police Officer myth and the series when asked, their discus­ sion of beliefs and the narratives of the series make tlie connection well. The women's responses suggested a basic acceptance of the myth although they seemed to be more aware of the negative aspects of such a role than were the men. The character most recognized and admired by both the men and women was Sergeant Anderson, the strongest proponent of taking care of his men in order to protect his country. He fit the ideal American monomythic hero more closely than any character, and was the centerpiece of the more tra­

ditional and optimistic of the two series.

The Series and the Global Police Officer Myth

Tour of Duty, through the emphasis on the main characters' decisions

to remain in the military, reveals America to be "Tlie Kingdom

Transfigured," in existence now; therefore there is no reason for the female

hero to work to transform it. The story Tour of Duty tells supports the

American myth of the Global Police Officer, revealing that even under the

least favorable circumstances, America must have heroes who stand ready to 2 6 2

to transform other kingdoms to meet our view of the world. This echoes

Heilman's analysis ofThe Ugly American, which offers the ideal American past as the ideal for Vietnam's future. The core male heroes of Tour of D uty,

Anderson and Goldman, are the heroes ready make the transformation: as they gain mastery of their martial skills, the series narrative makes them modern frontiersman, surrogate Green Berets. Although caring and consid­ erate, these men exist to protect the nation's interests, even if their loved ones will sleep poorly because of it; it is their destiny.

So too is the destiny of the volunteer or draftee, portrayed through the characters of Purcell, Horn, Ruiz and McKay: each must serve well and take the consequences even if it causes pain or injury. The different treatment of

Purcell, Horn and Doc Hockenberry as they agonize over their role reveals the price to be paid for declining to kill as a Global Police Officer, even if one is willing to die for the cause: one is abandoned rather than healed, like Purcell or venerated, like Horn. Tlie boon these heroes try to provide is a safe world; without their efforts, it is implied, the world would not be so safe. The funda­ mental basis for the domino theory is thereby resuscitated.

The military in China Beach is a mysterious entity which cannot be controlled: represented by officers, it threatens, punishes, bestows seemingly meaningless awards and provides the wounded and dying to the hospital and the merely exhausted to the beach. It, along with congressmen and actual fa­ thers, is portrayed as responsible for much of the pain and confusion sur­ rounding the series' characters. This is in addition to the pain and confusion of the war itself. The series shows America to be a Kingdom mightily in need of transformation: in Vietnam the horror of the war continues and at home 263 people do not seem to be willing to recognize that it is happening. While the former is a regular part of the series, McMurphy and Dr. Richard discuss the latter;

McMurphy: Nobody cares about what happened over here. The world's gone on without us. They'll never know what it was like!

Dr. Richard: But we'll spend the rest of our lives trying to tell 'em ("A Rumor of Peace").

Tlie purpose of most of the characters in China Beach is to survive their cur­ rent situation and get home, but they take the pain of their experiences with them. Although the main characters in Tour of Duty say that the best that they can do is survive, they survive, if not for the purpose of freeing South

Vietnam, then for protecting the rights of other Americans or the lives of their squad-mates; in China Beach, the only objective is for the characters to survive and get home; once there they begin to deal with their experiences and adjust to "normal" life, often by trying to forget it it.

Tour of Duty uses much of the structure of the American Monomyth to recast the loss of South Vietnam as a reaffirmation of traditional American heroes despite the traumas of psychological shocks and philosophical crises;

China Beach emphasizes much of the horror and despair of the war along with the traditional heroines who must help to ease those who do the fight­ ing. China Beach's portrayal of women's opportunity to "be more" and "do more" by serving in Vietnam provided all of the problems of any other war, plus the disillusionments accompanying the Vietnam war, with no real high­ er purpose or grounding value than survival itself. As a practical value, that seems to be a good lesson, the one all surviving soldiers learn from any war; 264 but as a story, China Beach elevates this practical knowledge to the level of myth itself, without making any explicit antiwar statement.Tour of Duty leaves the viewer with a feeling of essential order by affirming the Global

Police Officer myth, while China Beach provides a feeling of disquiet and pain by emphasizing the complexity of the war without providing any organizing structure other than that men will war and women will be there to support them. Thus while China Beach does not promote the myth and even offers evidence that Global Police Officer myth may not function, it does not replace it with another way for Americans to make sense of war other than personal responsibility.

GENDER ROLES IN TLIE FOCUS GROUPS AND THE SERIES

Men and Gender Roles

Tlie men felt that gender roles in the series were stereotypical yet repre­ sentative of the place and time, based on their experience, suggesting that these stereotyped roles were functioning , taken-for-granted myths. They em­ phasized acculturation of gender roles to explain their belief that American women were unlikely to be "combat ready," rather than some natural criteri­ on. In the discussion, nurses were judged to be less competent than male corpsmen;thus while they recognized gender roles as being unequal social cre­ ations, they continued to take the one-up position of men within our society for granted.

The men were impressed with the current numbers of servicewomen and thought it would be difficult to deal with women colleagues in the ser­ vice. Some of the men felt that women's active participation in the The

Persian Gulf War was more pertinent than the series, but when pressed. 265 explained that series characters fit gender roles of the time and place they depict; men fighting, women serving as nurses and "douglinut dollies": "back then, that's just about the way it was," although the portrayal of the female psychiatrist shooting an assailant "showed a woman could do it under that pressure ..." This suggests a bias against women even in the face of expecta­ tions that some women could perform as well as men in some situations. In addition, it supports the portrayals of gender roles of the series as being realis­ tic in for their time period.

The men emphasized experiencing little contact with women in most of the areas where they served but judged gender roles in the programs as stereotypical, yet accurate for the nurses and Red Cross workers, news corre­ spondents and go-go dancers in shows or clubs with whom they had sporadic contact. They praised the effort of women military police officers fighting in

Panama and were also concerned about accusations of sexual harassment due to changing gender roles. This again supports a basic level of convergence be­ tween the series portrayals and the men's experience, as well as a conflict be­ tween military women's roles of a generation ago and today.

The men's discussion of gender roles and modern warfare revealed positive assessments of women's chances to be allowed into certain combat units in the future, along with various roles women played in Vietnam and the stereotypical nature of the series portrayals. Some of the men doubted that another Metnam-like war could happen due to changes in military poli­ cy, so that even women soldiers would not be exposed to what the men were in Viehiam. This suggests a tension between acceptance of the expansion women into a previously men-only arena and the perception of women as 2 6 6 not being quite up to the standards of that arena.

The men thought that the relationship between the military and gen­ der roles would concern future adjustments necessary for inclusion of more women, with a concentration on expanded participation in combat. Tliey ex­ plained tlie military's perspective on women has been: as part of a service­ man's "liberty," not part of his "life;" however, they emphasized Congress' role in determining the status of women in the military being more influen­ tial than past practice. Tlris suggests that the men's perception of ultimate so­ lution to the tension of bringing women into the military in combat roles is not through individual acceptance, but through the legislative process.

The men thought the effect of the military on gender roles as portrayed in the series was that options have increased for women since the Metnam war and that the series images of women were accurate, except for the espe­ cially dangerous assignments or circumstances in which many of the charac­ ters were portrayed. This suggests the preservation of the differences between the men's ideas of military women's roles today and of the Vietnam Era.

Tlie men reaffirmed that their experience was clearly being used as the primary filter of the series. Their ongoing concern with verisimilitude of the portrayals implied that they used their experience to judge the characters in the programs. This supports the original intention for the use of the groups to provide knowledge of the times otherwise inaccessible to the critic.

Tire men agreed that American gender roles have changed since the

Vietnam Era, especially concerning television news portrayals of military women but it was brought out that such change is superficial ratlier than sub­ stantive. This suggests that although the groups were aware of this change in 267 culture at the level of face value, only a small minority have examined the issue in regard to the long-term success of such change.

Tlie men thought the series characters' gender roles were more repre­ sentative of the \detnam Era and they felt the series accurately portrayed war as providing opportunities for more responsibility for women than civilian life. The effect of playing the roles had on some of the actors was discussed.

Tliis suggests that the series portrayed accurately the gender related jobs men and women performed in Vietnam, in relation to opportunities available in the United States.

To summarize, the men thought that the gender roles in the series were portrayed accurately. They defined "gender roles" as essentially wom­ en's roles, supporting their sometimes voiced perspective that men are pri­ mary and more competent. They felt that and that changes in the military's gender-based limitations were acceptable to all but some career military men who joined the service to get away from women. The men recognized the change in gender roles of the last generation but separate it from their own war experience because of their low level of contact with women during ser­ vice. This reveals the tenacity of traditional gender roles even in the face of experiences with women fighters who were defined as especially impressive because they were both nurses and mothers as well.

Women and Gender Roles

Tlie women also affirmed the general accuracy of the gender roles in the series in that time frame but had much more detailedperspectives about gender roles, even though they also tended to define them as women's roles.

Tliey emphasized that both the military and medical power structures classify 2 6 8 most women as servants within the workplace. They thought the portrayals suffered from lack of routine polite interaction between the soldiers and Red

Cross S.R.A.O. workers, and that the gender roles depicted were too stereotyp­ ical even as they were affirmed as accurate. That the women saw gender roles as limited by the large power structures in the culture and simultaneously perceived gender depictions of the characters as accurate suggests that these power structures, such as the military hierarchy, were functioning within the series. Polite interactions in any television series would be of short duration and only tangentially related to any part of an episode, except as part of the background and would not be expected to stand out in a series narrative. The lack of politeness does seem to mark the Red Cross women as more "scenery" than active participants in the series.

Tlie way gender roles were displayed during the women's Vietnam ser­ vice were through courteous behavior of the soldiers in the presence of Red

Cross workers, the conflict of expectations for women who is a military offi­ cer, politeness of the enlisted men versus "arrogance " of their officers. For the most part, the women felt that, at that time, they were fulfilling their so­ cial roles appropriately. This suggests that the basis for judging the series characters' gender role was appropriate, as well as that the jobs based on gen­ der role portrayed in the series again were essentially accurate.

Tlie women felt gender roles were disconnected from the concept of warfare. Even though they recognized that women are being involved in combat-like situations—such as exchanging fire with the opposition as military policewomen did in Panama—these women accepted the definition of women as non-combatants. They felt that women's role in warfare was to 269

"pick up the pieces." They thought that women who act as combatants ought to be given the benefits that go with such work, however. Tlrey pointed out changes in both warfare and in American women's social roles between

Vietnam and Desert Storm. This again supports the strength of traditional gender roles, even when changes in the roles are recognized as necessary. The women wanted to separate themselves from warfare as a men's activity.

Even though some had been stationed in places on the receiving end of enemy fire, the still strongly defined themselves as non-combatants, which can be attributed both to taking advantage of the social norms allowing them to avoid even more direct participation in fighting than they had previously experienced.

Tlie women saw a variety of effects on gender roles: no effect at all be­ cause it affects only people under its direct control, limited influence on soci­ ety because the military is "reactive" rather than "pro-active" in relation to society as a whole, a progressive effect of providing jobs to women in the mil­ itary before the rest of society has, the creation of a generic "soldier" gender in which whose job roles supersede traditional gender roles; also, modem mili­ tary women were thought to look more feminine than those of the Vietnam

Era. Tliis suggests that the women cis well as the men associated gender roles

with job classifications and opportunities. It also suggests a tension within

the military regarding leading or following witliin the society, rather than re­

liance on the legislative process discussed by the men.

Tire women saw the military's effect on series' presentation of gender

roles in terms of a dearth of strong roles for women combined with unflatter­

ing portrayals of women with power, which they felt was accurate yet 270 disheartening. McMurphy's prominence and strength as a nurse was rejected as bitchiness, inaccurate and overly heroic and was contrasted with the stereotypical ineffectual "dumb blonde" character of Cherry. Tliey noted the degree to which the cameras were used to feature stereotypical body images and women, and sometimes men as well. This suggests that the women were concerned less with the gender roles being portrayed than with unflattering portrayals of the women they felt represented them.

Women's discussion their Vietnam war experience filtered their im­ pressions tlie series' gender roles explained that it was impossible for that not to happen and that television programs must use images that sell their story, which limits accurate depiction of events. It was pointed out the "fun" times which occurred despite the war were overlooked in order to display the tragedy of war. The women emphasized the "unreality of being in Vietnam compared to "normal" life in the United States: strong friendships built in short periods of time, the emotional effect of being there, and a way of life that included servants, travel by helicopter and contrasts of happiness and sadness. The women explained that such an experience had to filter their im­ pressions of the series completely. This suggests, as it did for the men that the focus groups provided appio^ riate information to the critic for assessing the series which was otherwise unavailable. Again, that benefit was countered by a decreased familiarity with the plots and characters.

Tlie women felt that the changes in gender roles since Vietnam are those their generation has fought within society, which they connected to larger issues such as protecting the environment for the future and the de­ struction war inflicts on younger generations in society. Vietnam symbolized 271 that horror and the absence of glory in war. Yet the perception was that such changes are only a beginning in a society where there is a"an underlying wish" by some "that nothing had changed/' not unlike the effect of civil rights laws on overt racist practices in America. They discussed that in many crucial situations, such as competition for high pay or status jobs, that dis­ crimination against women continues in spite of change in gender role expectations. This suggests that the women see such change as more embry­ onic than most of the men's view of it as already accomplished.

On the whole, the women saw the series' characters as more represen­ tative of gender roles of the \detnam Era, although some of the portrayals of dress and behavior of the women were considered too risque for the times.

The women found changes which were not explored in the series: pregnant officers, military mothers, conflict betweeir family needs and the military's overriding mission. They compared the military departure from the

Philippines to the withdrawal from Saigon and pointed out that aftereffects of policing the world are ignored by that mission. This reinforces the gender role comiection between women and war as the "support" or "cleaning-up- after" function of women in American society, and demonstrates an attention for ultimate consequences which is not often shared by men. It also explains why an effort at realistic portrayals of the women in the series tended to limit their heroic activities to those sanctioned by traditional gender roles, thus re­ inforcing the status quo even in the wake of a character like Margaret

Houlihan.

Both the men and women recognized the series' presentations of gen­ der roles as highly stereotypical; and tended to define "gender roles" as 272 women's roles, rather than as roles possessed by both men and women. Tliis was expressed through the strong tendency among the women's groups to de­ fine women as non-combatants and by the men's tendency to talk about some women as "flunkies" or incompetent even as they praised advances for women in society.

Series and Gender Roles

Tlie stereotypical gender roles portrayed in bothTour of Duty and

China Beach and recognized by both the male and female focus group participants reflect the conventions of prime time television presenting a controversial topic; still, the mythic function they perform is that of the reifi­ cation of mainstream social roles. As a controversial issue requiring an inter­ pretation, Vietnam is dealt with in these series by reinforcing the traditional social order, rather than by establishing a new order, with new myths to sup­ port it. While the series they portray some of the women in either non-tradi- tional roles (or in expanded versions of traditional ones) that even the ex­ panded gender roles that wartime provides do not always find their way into mainstream civilian society. Alex, the independent reporter, is blown up im­ mediately she chooses

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Discussion of a people's mythos inevitably comes to discussion of their collective hopes and dreams. In the case of America, our national hope is to avoid "another Vietnam" and our dream is to revisit the Viehiam era in a time/place when we emerged victorious, as has been portrayed in any num­ ber of Vietnam films addressing P.O.W./M.l.A. issues. Lifton discussed the connection between dreams and war stories of some early 1970's veteran 273

rap groups:

Yet after a while the men themselves detected a ten­ dency to "tell war stories" as a means ofavoiding personal feelings. And after a few months there was a shift, as one of them put it, "from war stories to ourselves"—with increasing focus on here-and-now psychological struggles. Having achieved that focus the veterans could then return to the war, as tlrey repeatedly did, but in a way that connected it to their immediate lives. Memories and images of the war then became bound up with but also subsumed in a deepening self-exploration—with subtle combinations of "war" and "now" often emerging in the dreams the men de­ scribed (Lifton 1973, p. 85, italics his).

The ultimate messages of Tour of Duty and China Beach function as did Lifton's veterans' war stories, but on a national rather than on a personal level. Of the two series, China Beach explores more of the pain, personal cost and aftermath of the war, and does so in a mamier sometimes more emotion­ ally realistic and surrealistic than Tour of Duty's unswerving narrative real­ ism and tightly organized message that there must always be a Global Police

Officer. Both series tend to provide storylines that show assimilation as good and exploration of the conflicts of the past as bad—whether it is within a mili­ tary unit in Vietnam or within the civilian culture in the United States. The reward for assimilation is especially clear inTour of Duty's diverse treatment of the two conscientious objectors, Horn and "Doc" Hockenberry.

The heroes of Tour of Duty and China Beach do not engage their drag­ ons or demons in the kind of fight expected by the traditional hero cycles; rather, our heroes seem to bargain with them, sweep them away until the cur­ rent job that must be done is completed. The ongoing combat of the heroes with their ultimate demons is only hinted at in Tour of Duty, and explored 274 in more detail by China Beach. Still, assimilation into the larger culture and maintaining contact with one's "Viehaam family" seem to be the keys to hap­ piness in both series. As all the focus groups said, many veterans' battles with memories, with the military itself, with the Veterans Administration, and even with the government are still being conducted and will not be over soon. Yet, our belief in our nation as a special protector continues to lead young men and women into situations for which it prepares them inade­ quately. The ultimate battle is with our culture, our myths, our own conceptions of ourselves that drive us as a nation to continue to pursue new

" Vietnams" both abroad and at home.

The focus groups provided information which would not have sur­ faced in a traditional mythic criticism of these series, such as the favoring of

Tour of Duty over Chain Beach by both the men and the women. Simple rat­ ings information would have indicated that China Beach was favored over

Tour of Duty; this holds for the population in general, which is mostly non­ military. Thus the veterans are an audience whose expertise and perspective would have been missed without the use of the focus group interviews.

Although those responses are biased toward the perspectives of military and related personnel, it provides valuable outside information that helps one to understand the perspectives of both programs because they are about Vietnam veterans and the kinds of prices some have paid in service of their country and its mythology.

Tire focus groups were helpful for checking veracity and for providing expanding the critic's perspective; at the same time, they were not helpful in gauging the mythic level of the series stories based on character interaction 275

because this aspect seemed to be the one least attended to by the viewers.

While their experience and knowledge of the Viehiam war was crucial to this criticism, it also affected the way the series were seen by the participants: thus

the emphasis on the groups on visual accuracy of characters and settings, but

a lack of interest in the stories and a confusion presented when a character's appearance recalled a real person the peirticipants had known. Fortunately, the critic in this case was free to examine the series' stories in detail, provid­ ing an accurate record of tlie character interactions throughout the run of each series.

Section II of the focus group protocol provided enough information to ensure that the veterans were familiar with the series and revealed their viewing preferences. Section 111, and the questions in Sections IV and V re­ garding character conflicts were ineffective in helping to validate the mythic structure of the series, as discussed above. Tlie reason sections W and V pro­ vided more useful information from the participants was that each provided a relatively concrete framework or model that could be recognized and evalu­ ated by the group. The problem with Section 111 and the questions about char­ acter conflicts was that they were highly abstract and did not provide any framework around which the participants' responses could be structured.

Tliis problem was compounded by the fact that the participants had strong memories of the war which could be activated by a setting, a situation or even the appearance of a minor character.

Two modifications could be made in future studies to improve the method: either limit the study to a program drawing highly involved fans who are familiar with the series in minute detail or, if the opinions of less 276 fanatical viewers are sought, provide participants with with a stronger frame­ work within the focus group protocol for evaluation, such as one or two of the hero cycles. The more concrete nature such a model would give the group a device to organize their viewing experience, which they could then assess as for a kind of "goodness of fit" with their impressions of the series.

Fans of series such as Star Trek or Beauty and the Beast w ould be able to provide reliable data about their impressions due to their involvement with the series, and greater depth of understanding of the series could be gained. If necessary, one or more hero cycles could be presented for use as described for the less fanatical viewer The third option would be do conduct a more tradi­ tional criticism without input from viewers, but the price would be the per­ spectives unavailable to the single critic.

Tliis study deals with elements of our culture connected with the

Viehiam war that are still crucial to 1. our definition of ourselves as a nation

(global police officer) and 2. our definitions of ourselves as individual men and women (gender roles). Responses to Operation Just Cause in Panama, the Persian Gulf War and our involvement in Somalia have contributed to a resurgence of these issues across America. The split between those who protest war and those who support it has intensified. There is a new category that spans the two older ones at the same time it splinters them: those who support the troops, but are appalled at war and support of war itself. This leaves a great deal of room for people to avoid the difficult issue of defining an American purpose that excludes war. Those who support the U.S. under any circumstances can unite with those who support war in general; both of these groups can unite with those who are willing not to protest a war as long 277 as it does not interfere with their daily lives or the lives of those around them. In the meantime, war itself continues, with more destruction per sol­ dier, more technology devoted to destruction,and more chances that such de­ structive power may be used again and again to resolve international argu­ ments and to punish those with whom the U.S. government is displeased.

Tliis study examined related concepts having to do with gender roles and the role of the U.S. as the world's police officer. The Persian Gulf War, re­ cent military action in Somalia and planned action in Bosnia and the actions of Presidents Bush and Clinton, the United Nations, and discussion and ac­ tions by the U.S. Congress leading up to the war have recently demonstrated the degree to which the United States is willing to actualize or reify its role as the world's police officer. Tlie recent conflict between those who express sup­ port for U.S. troops at war overseas, those who express opposition to war and the' police officer" myth has been potent. The vehemence on both sides as ex­ pressed in television interviews, letters to the editor indicate that the dichoto­ my between hawks and doves has yet to abate. Sucli debate has probably been going on in much of recorded history, even to the extent that our very gender roles are predicated on the basis of who is allowed to participate in, support, and oppose war. Keeping in mind that there are those who currently separate the war from the warrior and that part of the opposition to the Vietnam war came from veterans themselves, this dichotomy still exists in our culture. In

American culture in particular the Vietnam war has been a long episode that contradicts our myths of ourselves as the fighter of the good fight, a unique nation ordained to oversee other nations without being a colonial power, the chosen people of the world to bring stability to the globe as a whole. Tlie 278 recent notion of a "new world order" was simply American myth's version of the correctness and progress of the old world order.

Ultimately, no analysis of Vietnam on television can be complete with­ out some reference to M*A*S*H, because both series, China Beach especially, exist in the shadow of M*A*S*H's success. While M*A*S*H's anti-war mes­ sage came across in capital letters, it offered true black comedy and functioned as both a drama and a comedy as necessary to make its anti-war points. To u r o f D uty is essentially a counterpoint toM*A*S*H and cuts through any anti­ war messages by letting us know that any "sane" American would fight to save his buddies and himself, even if at ideological odds with the war itself.

In this way. Tour of D uty, regardless of the scene, offers a kill-or-be-killed choice to the viewer which is difficult to examine as part of a television pro­ gram. This is a much easier initial choice for an infantryman or military po­ licewoman whose job is war because it is a clearly defined choice and because military indoctrination prepares people to make just such a choice. Still, for those who surviving the consequences of that choice, the difficulty reasserts itself. Tour of Duty is classic war genre television in that it presents a difficult situation and, in the telling of the story, resolves the essential problem by showing that it is appropriate for soldiers in a war to fight well, even if they might experience some undetermined difficulties at some point in the fu­ ture. Tour of Duty's final episode reasserts the problem; that the assumptions about when and where it is appropriate to conduct war are debatable, and the

debate is settled through the exemplary heroes Anderson, Goldman, and

Purcell. Purcell's character, along with those of Hockenberry and Horn reveal controversial aspects of the war in Tour of Duty in the form of conscientious 279 objection, Buddhist protests, drug addiction, and the killing of children.

Even so, the essential message is not the glorification of war per se, but the glorification of personal survival which is, in turn, an integral part of the combat soldier's lot (literally, for draftees) and is the basic premise on which a war is waged. It is implied that because one can't fault a soldier for surviving, any problems with the war were not really the military's fault. While this is an antithesis to M*A*S*H's war-is-always-wrong message, each is an extreme and the synthesis of the two will probably not make the basis for a successful television series.

China Beach on the other hand, explores more of the confusion and turmoil of the human cost of the war. Because China Beach confined itself to dramatic depiction—albeit in some surreal storylines—it lacks the range of in­ volvement that M*A*S*H provided with its black humor. This distinction was not lost on the focus group participants. China Beach, if attended to closely, is deeply involving and dramatically strong, but it is essentially a tragedy; its characters and setting sows the seeds of its own demise, with no over-arching message to make sense of the confusion other than that war is inevitable. This, the essential message of China Beach is that all who were touched by the war will suffer, either physically or psychologically; it portrays dealing with the war as something put off until decades later. China Beach provides an image of the war as a tragedy, but a tragedy that is handled by those like McMurphy , Dodger and Dr. Richard; thus it doesn't have to be dealt with by the average viewer. China Beach‘s characters take on the pain of the war and insulate viewers from the war; the series seems to drive away people who have first-hand knowledge of the Vietnam war. Tour of Duty, on 280 the other hand, transforms the divisive nature of the Vietnam war into a more traditional notion of war by offering main characters who embody the

Global Police officer myth and make sense out of the confusion over the rightness of the war.

One of the main differences between the heroic models as evidenced in the series narratives and the opinions of the expert viewers as presented in the focus group results is that these series portray the Vietnam war via charac­ ters and plot lines the focus group members could not identify because they differed with the actual experiences of the participants. At the same time, one of the reasons they continued to watch was because of the verisimilitude they found in the "look" of both series. The mythic mialysis revealed that the per­ sonal responses to the war portrayed by the characters in Tour of Duti/ w ere guided by the American monomyth, in so doing helped to address the contra­ dictions of the \^etnam through the strengthening of the Global Police Officer mythology. Tliis reduced the tensions generated by the war to a familiar pat­ tern of problems traditionally solved through the dedication of individual soldiers to the cause even in the most adverse circumstances. China Beach, on the other hand, solves the problems that Vietnam presents through the application of four traditional misconceptions regarding women's role in so­ ciety, even though the characters show hints of moving beyond some of these roles. In either case, for those who view these series, the of the memory of the uniqueness of Vietnam is adjusted, through the telling of these tales, so that Vietnam occupies a more comfortable place in American memory than it has previously occupied. 281

This interpretation would account for the unanimous response by the focus group participants favoring Tour of Duty and at the same time account for higher ratings for China Beach. If the average person, with no connection to the military, using the popular conception of Vietnam as a "problem" would that notion reflected in China Beach and be able to identify with its message, while Tour of Duty's portrayal of Vietnam as a solved problem might seem to be an obvious oversimplification Participants' perceptions of the series glorification of war support such an interpretation. In addition, some of the inevitable connections between Chinn Beach and M*A*S*H might bias viewers in favor of that program. The person who experienced military service "in country" in Vietnam, as was explained by the focus group interviews, would not be able to relate directly to the characters and situations either series portrayed, but would find more aspects of veracity in the series making the strongest connections to the Global Police Officer mytliology with which they are already familiar.

Future research in this area could be directed in a number of areas, in­ cluding: analyzing the cable series Vietnam War Stories, including fans of the programs in the focus groups regardless of their military experience and, given that the focus groups add a new dimension to mythic criticism, strive to pursue connections between mythic criticism of mass media products and reception theory. WORKS CITED

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