disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory Volume 1 Rethinking Contemporary Mythologies Article 4 4-15-1992 The (Un)Reality of War: Reconsidering Stone's Platoon Tony Grajeda State University of New York at Buffalo DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/DISCLOSURE.01.04 Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Grajeda, Tony (1992) "The (Un)Reality of War: Reconsidering Stone's Platoon," disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory: Vol. 1 , Article 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/DISCLOSURE.01.04 Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure/vol1/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory. Questions about the journal can be sent to [email protected] A. DISALVO The (Un)Reality of War. Reconsidering Stone's Platoon by Tony Grajeda American Studies State University of New York at Buffalo Thirty years from now people will think of the Viet Nam War as Platoon. - David Halberstam' 1 What is one to make of such a comment ronceming Oliver Stone's 1986 film Platoon? Halberstam, a Vietnam War rorrespondent for the New York Times, respected journalist and author, "a man who's been there," according to Time, has been called in to pa$ judgment not only on feality but, as film critic, authorized to attest to its representation Widely hailed as the most realistic portrayal of war ever committed to film, for this very reason Platoon raises slippery questions over representation of 'the real.' Yet in its almost fable-like story of a young man's ascension into wisdom, as well as its constructionofanarchetypalheroicwarrior,Platoonalsoreachesmightilyfor a mythic grandeur unbounded by time or place. Indeed, considering that the Vietnamese have been rendered Other, even effaced, by the film, Platoon as historical document, as~ Vietnam War itself, appears to have very little to 1 do with history, let alone Vietnam. By replacing the Vietnamese-as-enemy with the morally obsessive enemy-within configuration, Platoon aspires to move beyond mere politics or history, offering instead a transcendent vision of some universal Human Condition. Thatsuchcontradictionresidesina mainstream Hollywood production isn't unusual; what is unprecedented is the thunderous applause heralding its hard-hitting reality, its brutal honesty in daring to tell-it-like-it-is; in short, its unflinching critical stance towards war. Although Platoon has taken its plat'e in the cinematic canon as an 'anti-war' film, its miscegenation of recent history,existentialcircumstanres, personal experiences, and mythic signifiers paradoxically implicates it in a much more radical glamoriz.ation of war: one sophisticated enough to denounceitsownantecedents while simultaneously extendingtheideologicalfunctionsof cinematicwaritself, i.e. the maintenance ?f the values and relations which sustain the 'good fight' cind the will to fight it. My interest here is not only in the film's critical reception lodging it within a conception of 'the real', but also particular images generating readings arrayed along a continuum from historical 'truth' to mythic faith. 2 The operating principle of praise for Platoon, the one word so closely associated with it that they're practically synonymous, has been 'realism.' di.JCIMNTe Fall 1991 40 REfHINKING CONTEMPORARY MYIHOWGIES 41 T.GRAIF.DA THE (UN)RF.AUTY OF WAR: RECONSIDFJUNG STONES PLATOON One would be hard pressed to locate the actual motion picture within the An all too appropriate example of this is circufution of texts is furnished swirl ofadoration, the ecstasy ofappreciation, the carnival of words denoting by Michael Herr's Dispatches, I counted no less than a doz.en references to the its 'reality.' cinematic nature of people's experiences leading Herr to write: One of the most realistic, viscerally powerful portrayals of jungle warfare ever I keep thinking about all the kids who get wiped out by 17 years of war movies 3 realized on the screen. (Gary Crowdus, Cineaste) before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good. You don't know what a mediafreakis until you've seen the way a few of those would runaround 4 grunts Platoon gives Vietnam back some of its reality. (The Nation) during a fight when they knew that there was a television crew nearby; they were actually making war movies in their heads, doing little guts-and-glory It is more than a movie; it's like being in Viet Nam. Platoon makes you feel you've leatherneck tap dances under fire, getting their pimples shot off for the 5 been there and never want to go back. (Steven Spielberg, Time ) networks.• Platoonis the first real Viet Nam film, and oneof the great war movies ofall time. to The other Hollywood Viet Nam films have been a raix: of history. But Piil~ Thisratheroutreplay-actingwasn'tlimited necessarily the combatants: is historically and politically accurate.. .l think the film will become an Amencan journalists too, analysts and interpretersof the war, were not exactly immune classic. Thirty years from now people will thinkof the Viet Nam War as Platoon. to the cultural detritus of cinematic invasions: (David Halberstam, Time)' A lot of correspondents weren't much better. We'd all seen too many movies, Platoon makes us real. (John Wheeler, Vietnam veteran activist, quoted in stayed too long in Television City, years of media glut had made certain Time) 7 connections difficult. The first few times that I got fired at or saw combat deaths, nothing really happened, all the responses got locked in my head. It was the Such discourses outline a number of problaM in considering fictive same familiar violence, only moved over to another medium; some kind of representations of war. In this particular sequence the film~ first descn~ jungle play with giant helicopters and fantastic special effects, actors lying out as a realistic portrayal of warfare. It then returns to the country "some of .its therein canvas body bags waiting for the scene to end so they could get up again reality''; it is capable of transporting us to Vietnam, it becomes identical Wl~ and walk it off. But that was some scene (you found out), there was no cutting it. Alot of things had to be unlearned before you could learn anything at all, and the war itself. Finally, veterans are made to feel authenticated by the film: tt even after you knew better you couldn't avoid the ways in which things got brings a kind of legitimacy, a certain reality to people's lives. mixed, the war itself with those parts of the war that were just like the movies, And yet, one could be forgiven for asking. whose reality? More to the just like The Quiet American or Calch-22 .•. just like all that combat footage from point: how is (the concept of) war transmitted to the culture at large? Firs~ tel evis1on.. .. 9 admission: war really does exist-it is not merely or even primarily a 'text. What is problematic is that most people (in this country anyway) o~y kn?w Earlier in the book Herr deliberately toys with these boundaries, about war through its representations, through the forms of articulation suggesting that the story he's recording is his own movie. At some point a employed to describe it. That is to say (an understanding of) war cannot~ wounded soldier says to him, "I hate this movie," 10 a worrisome moment separated from representation. In postmodern parlance this sort of~ 15 made doubly unsettling in that the text disrupts a reader'salreadyprecarious usually referred toasintertextuality, the notion that,forexample,anexpen~ certainty: Is this a line in Herr's movie or the soldier's? of the real is conveyed as a text, and other texts act as sources for suggesting S oldiers in the field invoke invoking movie allusions seem disturbing what the primary text represents. In the sense that language is never enough, a likely source ofsuch phantasma being WWII's war-as-glory genre. transparent or identical to 'reality,' representations of the real cannot~ut help 1:18 Herr Illustrates , even one's memory is often at play with other images, referring to other represen~tions. This isn't so mu~ the real set a~t the unages which at least have the capacity to re-shape and scramble, relativize imaginary as it is a circular notion of both, model and image, reality and and compete with the 'real.' As Georges Duhamel remarked around 1930, "I representation interpenetrating each other. can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replami by moving images." 11 42 di.JClosuu FaJJ J99 l REI'HINKING CONTEMPORARY MITHOWG/& 43 THE (UN)R&IJIY OF WAR: RECONSIDERING STONE'S PLATOON T. GRAIEDA d~rated Vietnam vet, returns to Vi~ this time on the big screen: the To consider then that succeeding generations might be shaped by such military man plays an actor who playsa military man. Pye appears in Platoon representations of war, specifically Vietnam (already the Televised War ), as ~officer.who invokes the final apocalyptic air ~on his own defeated one edges ever closer to vertigo. For the participants of war themselve:s have position, stoically declaring, ''For the reoord, it's my call: dump everything been marked by cinematic representations, an~ those. expenenc~ you go~ left on my pods- expend all remaining." Lest anyone remain consequently become the basis of cinematic material, which m tum is unronvmced thatthismanmeansbusiness, theartidecitesfurthercred tials received by audienres as (at least) an 'ap~roximatio~ of wha~ war must be to D_ye's presiding as an authority on reality, including fonner oo':r of like.