Contents

1

Introduction 2

2

Vietnam Stereotyped 3

3

Why Vietnam? 4

4

The Community 6

4.1 The Characters 7

4.2 The Background 10

4.3 Breaking-up of the Group 11

4.4 Re-establishing 13

4.5 Reunification 14

5 Conclusion 15

List of Works Cited 17

- 1 -

1 Introduction

The movie

The Deer Hunter

was released in 1978; three years after the end of

the Vietnam War. During the war, the American public had received censored

information by the mass media concerning the war. The American sense of

mission and patriotism hovered above and disguised uncomfortable topics such

as the cruelties inflicted on Vietnamese civilians by GIs or less palatable the

justifications for the U.S. intervention in the war. It therefore left no space for

any respect towards the Vietnamese as an individual being part of an ethnic

group with its own culture. Although stereotypes about the Vietnamese are

adopted and developed in

The Deer Hunter

so much so that even critics stood

up for the former "enemy" and condemned the depiction as "racist" ­ the

enemy is not, unlike in several other movies produced at that time, simply an

excuse for demonizing particularly the Vietnamese; it serves as a rather

symbolical threat to a community of "war buddies" and could be replaced by

any other enemy.

In this paper I will argue that labeling

The Deer Hunter

as "racist" is

misconceived, since the adoption of the Vietnamese as an enemy image has to

be reduced to the threat itself. The first two chapters will explain how the

attitude of the American public towards the Vietnamese as their "enemy" was

shaped and why the issue of Vietnam became a central to the plot. This will

show that the emphasis is laid on something else: human relationships within

the group and

not

, as it at first seems to be, on the enemy itself. Therefore, I

will explore the significance of community in this particular case and compare

the relationships within the group before, during and after the war. It will

become clear that the original hierarchy of the group dissolves when the group

is threatened. The group´s war experiences lead further to an inability to take

part in the social life at home. Since the original group is shattered, the new

group is challenged to refer to the former bonds that have always kept them

together in order to establish a new identity. Ironically, this new identity is

based on the patriotic phrase "God bless America".

- 2 -

2 Vietnam Stereotyped

The "American Phase" of the Vietnam War lasted eleven years ­ from 1964

until the end of the war in 1975. The Americans left when their aim ­ victory

over North Vietnam and the VC ­ proved to be unattainable. During these

eleven years, the government controlled the public´s opinion concerning

attitudes towards the "enemy" by means of the media; they oversimplified the

image of the enemy to suit circumstances. Especially during the first years of

the war, the reporting suited official wishes and therefore contributed to both a

deep disappointment about the outcome of the war and additionally it created

illusions about the war in general (cf. Wacker 94). Consequently, stereotypes

about Vietnam were created right at the beginning of the war, and were not

likely to be changed by events that could be made to promote to a more

moderate view of the happenings in Vietnam. Both the students´ revolts and

demonstrations, especially in Ohio ­ an answer to injustice inflicted on the

Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers ­ did increase a belief in the

injustice of the war, but all in all, the original stereotype was affected only

slightly and at least its basic features persisted until the end of the war. During

the last phase of the war, the pictures that were shown became somewhat more

"real": human victims were shown; but television, that could be switched off at

any time, contributed to the feeling of great distance to the actual goings-on

and, consequently, people did not feel really concerned by them (cf. Wacker

94). It is likely, therefore, that this depiction of "reality" confirmed, and even

reinforced people′s attitudes. The startling outcome of such stereotyping was

the belief that the whole population of Vietnam consisted uncultivated,

uneducated, backward, treacherous and obscure farmers. According to

Lippmann, an editorialist and sociologist, who was the first to conceptualize

the process of stereotypization (cf. Miller 6), the labeling and pidgin-holing of

another group, is typical: "We pick out what our culture has already defined for

us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out is the form

stereotyped for us by our culture" (Lippmann 55). Thus, the average American

was actually not given a chance to create a more moderate view of the

Vietnamese, since the News delivered pictures the government had constructed

for them. Some socio-psychologists even argue that the American people are

- 3 -

particularly susceptible to creating enemy images, if the USA is understood as

a melting pot, a "rootless, anomic people" (Kennedy 342), continually

attempting to discover its own identity: "[the] image of an enemy originates in

the need of a group to have a sense of its own identity. A group can only

achieve and sustain that identity by measuring itself against an "other" (Freud

in Kennedy 340). By promoting, for example, a strong sense of patriotism,

society create an "ingroup" ­ any nonmember of the group belongs to the

outgroup. Stephan and Rosenfield, who have dealt with ethnic and racial

stereotypes, are of the opinion that we consider "the ingroup as being superior

to other groups. Thus, a positive ingroup identity is achieved at the cost of

rejecting outgroups" (103). It must be taken into consideration that a stereotype

should not only be seen as an inconsiderate opinion or a mere prejudice.

Leyens remarks the necessity of stereotyping as "an intra-psychic process

whose main function is to make sense of the world" (13). However, bravely

trying to recognize reality is ultimately "exhausting, and among busy affairs

practically out of the question" (Lippmann 59).

Thus we are able to comprehend the public′s reaction towards the enemy-

image conveyed in

The Deer Hunter

. In this movie the images of the

Vietnamese at least

tended

towards a direction the people expected. But the

scriptwriters did not anticipate that this enemy image in combination with the

Russian Roulette scene would be far too shocking. Since the media had been

trying to prevent showing acts of brutality, people were not prepared to cope

with it. Suid even mentions that "[p]eople were afraid of it. The Russian

roulette scared the hell out of them" (Suid 354).

3 Why Vietnam?

The Deer Hunter

was released one year after the Vietnam War ended.

Interfering in a war that did not concern the US directly was a questionable

decision and, especially after details about American warfare methods became

public, the resistance movements in the USA started. These were reactions to

events like the My Lay massacre, a war crime committed by American soldiers

on Vietnamese civilians.

- 4 -