Reel-to-Real: Intimate Audio Epistolarity During the Vietnam War Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Matthew Alan Campbell, B.A. Graduate Program in Music The Ohio State University 2019 Dissertation Committee Ryan T. Skinner, Advisor Danielle Fosler-Lussier Barry Shank 1 Copyrighted by Matthew Alan Campbell 2019 2 Abstract For members of the United States Armed Forces, communicating with one’s loved ones has taken many forms, employing every available medium from the telegraph to Twitter. My project examines one particular mode of exchange—“audio letters”—during one of the US military’s most trying and traumatic periods, the Vietnam War. By making possible the transmission of the embodied voice, experiential soundscapes, and personalized popular culture to zones generally restricted to purely written or typed correspondence, these recordings enabled forms of romantic, platonic, and familial intimacy beyond that of the written word. More specifically, I will examine the impact of war and its sustained separations on the creative and improvisational use of prosthetic culture, technologies that allow human beings to extend and manipulate aspects of their person beyond their own bodies. Reel-to-reel was part of a constellation of amateur recording technologies, including Super 8mm film, Polaroid photography, and the Kodak slide carousel, which, for the first time, allowed average Americans the ability to capture, reify, and share their life experiences in multiple modalities, resulting in the construction of a set of media-inflected subjectivities (at home) and intimate intersubjectivities developed across spatiotemporal divides. ii Dedication To my grandparents for your love, service, and support. Your courage and fortitude in the face of insurmountable odds inspired this project and will continue to in my future endeavors. iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my advisor, Ryan Skinner, who continually animated my academic curiosity but, through constant challenge and corralling counsel also kept me on track. I would also like to Danielle Fosler-Lussier for her invaluable guidance, both scholarly and practical. I am deeply indebted to you both. So many professors have inspired the work that follows but I would like to specifically extend my gratitude to Barry Shank, Dorothy Noyes, Galey Modan, Brian Rotman, Udo Will, David Huron, Graeme Boone, and Katherine Borland for showing me how to write what I love. I am also indebted to archivist Sheon Montgomery of the Texas Tech University and curator Lynn Heidelbaugh of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Thanks also to my many interlocutors for sharing your stories with me, and to members of the United States Armed Forces more generally. On a personal note, I thank my parents whose tireless and unwavering support made this dissertation project tenable through a particularly challenging period. I would also like to thank Brian Campbell, Kelan Lowney, and Joseph Virskus, whose social sanctuary and intellectual foundations allowed me to make this project a reality without losing my sense of self. Thanks to you all. iv Vita December 9, 1979……………….Born, Spokane, WA 2004……………………………...B.A. Music Composition, Whitman College 2009-2014……………………….Graduate Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University 2011-2013…………………….....Graduate Research Assistant, The Ohio State University 2014-2015……………………….Lecturer, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Music Area of Emphasis: Musicology/Ethnomusicology Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization: Folklore v Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………….ii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………………iii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………..iv Vita……...………………………………………………………………………………………….v Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………………..vii Transcription Key………………………………………………………………………………..viii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter 1: Distanced Dialogue…………………………………………………………………...16 Chapter 2: The American Military Epistolarium…………………………………………………50 Chapter 3: Scene-Setting & Methods…………………………………………………………...106 Chapter 4: Audio Epistolarity…………………………………………………………………...148 Conclusion: Legacies of Audio Epistolarity…………………………………………………….257 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………..276 Appendix A: The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University Sources..…………….294 vi Abbreviations AFE Armed Forces Entertainment AFRN Armed Forces Radio Network AFVN Armed Forces Vietnam Network APO Army Post Office ARC American Red Cross ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam DASPO Department of the Army Special Photographic Office DOD Department of Defense EOC Enlisted & Officers Clubs (I)SOP (Informal) Standard Operating Procedure ICP Internal Colonial Postal Union MARS Military Auxiliary Radio System PRC Portable Radio Communications PSYOPS Psychological Operations USO United Service Organizations VVAW Vietnam Veterans Against the War NVA North Vietnamese Army VC Viet-Cong vii Transcription Key … pause - mid-syllable, word interruption ? raised pitch ending . down pitch ending , phrasal pause, maintained pitch […] ellipsis repeated vowels extended syllables italics accent via raised pitch CAPITALIZATION accent via increased volume [brackets] paralinguistic respirations, prosodic qualifiers, non-vocal sounds, co-linguistic action, context cues viii Introduction To me this is so intimate, so personal, just something I really want for myself … this taping is so … I wouldn’t tape to anybody but you and I don’t want you to tape to anybody else but me, and the kids. This is just something I feel because it brings the closeness that we really need right now … together. And, I just … want it this way. And … I don’t know, sometimes I feel selfish in a lot of my feelings but where you’re concerned, in this awfully lonely void, I feel I can just not think any further than our life together, and the children at times […] Our whole day revolves around our feelings and thoughts for you honey. You don’t have to worry about that. You’re our life, together. (Joan Gunby 1967) It was just more … real … as if they were there. The tapes were really what got me through it. (Jim Gunby 2012) These sentiments, expressed by my grandmother and grandfather respectively forty-five years apart, allude to the palliative, embodied and intersubjective salience of the auditory “real,” communicated between Spokane and Khorat, home and “the hooch,” via technology newly available to military families during the Vietnam War: the portable reel-to-reel tape recorder. For service members stationed abroad, maintaining substantive and emotionally fulfilling relationships with one’s family and friends at home is essential to sustaining one’s mental health and, by extension, occupational readiness. In addition to institutional resources, personal affective networks are also central to one’s ability to preserve one’s intersubjective integrity, a necessary 1 precondition for successful reintegration into civilian and domestic life upon returning from a tour of duty. For members of the United States Armed Forces, communicating with one’s loved ones has taken many forms, employing every available medium from the telegraph to Twitter. My project seeks to examine one particular mode of exchange—“audio letters”1—during one of the US military’s most trying and traumatic periods, the Vietnam War. By making possible the transmission of the embodied voice, experiential soundscapes, and personalized popular culture to zones generally restricted to purely written or typed correspondence, these recordings enabled forms of romantic, platonic, and familial intimacy beyond that of the written word. More specifically, I will examine the impact of war and its sustained separations on the creative and improvisational use of prosthetic culture, technologies that allow human beings to extend and manipulate aspects of their person—most commonly, memory—beyond their own bodies. Reel- to-reel was part of a constellation of amateur recording technologies, including Super 8mm film, Polaroid photography, and the Kodak slide carousel, which, for the first time, allowed average Americans the ability to capture, reify, and share their life experiences in multiple modalities, resulting in the construction of a set of media-inflected subjectivities (at home) and intimate intersubjectivities developed across spatiotemporal divides. But what does it mean for a medium—principally, in this case, the acousmatic2 voice—to change one’s subjectivity or relationship to others? In the context of combat zones in Vietnam, phone calls were extremely rare, making the receipt and recording of reel-to-reel tapes the only way to actually hear the voices, and to experience the everyday aural environments, of one’s 1 This is the most commonly used term to distinguish the material artifacts of audio epistolarity from other forms and the one I will employ for the rest of this dissertation. Other common names include “auditory letter,” “tape letter,” “audio correspondence,” and “reel letter.” 2 Coined by Pierre Schaffer (1966), this term refers to the by then ubiquitous experience of hearing sounds without also seeing their instigating, vibratory source, common to all sound recordings. 2 intimates. From frying bacon to watching The Kingston Trio on The Milton Berle Show, pirate radio skits to the buzzing of giant dobsonflies, the importance to interpersonal intimacy of sharing