FRIENDLY CIVILIANS:
IMACES OF WOMEN
AND THE FEMINIZÑION
A ntan's presence suggests what he is capable of doing
to you or
for .vou, By contrast, ø wotnan's presence
. ' . dctines what can antl cannot be donc
to her,
John Bergerl
Vìetnanr fìlms
employ two images of women: one,
ü-te wonlen
'oback home," femote, removed from
most often seen transfixed in photographs
l9Tbut,
or^tearfully
awaiting their soldiers' retum ; and"two,
tne char acieriz ati ori of the feminine-p assive,
ttranrpul
of
able, sub missive- the traditional depícti on
character, here to be applied tô men as
iliì,t3tL{.
'"u'' what I want to argue in this essay is that
lÏ1"uPdt*o images-of "woinen" and the 'ãfeminine"-
ü: not ofuy to further the narratives of Vietnam
war fìltns,
but io bring those stories "home," to
ili$:" tiieir messagei upon the audienceé of
;iTnaq films. Most"impórtantly, these images of
;umen,b e come the ide oio gical m átrices froriwhich
oi-*"uuYwood Vietnam theater constructs i/s image
"^me audience-an audience that the dominant
ffitV wishes to create as passive, manipulable,
li"ul a'rd submissive, in othãr words, as féminine.3
'* ttnal
, effect of this feminization is to defuse
üìËirio political dissent in contemporary American
OF THE AUDIENCE
IN VIETNAM FILMS
By Susan Jeffords
I will discuss three fì1ms in particular, each of which
presents a different aspect of the images of women:
Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1919),Hd,
Ashby's Conùng Home (1978) and Ted Kotcheffls
First Blood (1982). Though there are many other
Vietnam films,a I choose these because of their
widespread distribution and popularity. The dates of
these fìlms are important, for it is a premise of this
discussion that, though two of the fìlms' narratives
date to the period of the Vietnam War, all are in fact
ab out social events occurring in America in the late
Seventies and early Eighties. As Bill Nichols explains,
'oCinematic narrative . . . seeks to resolve contradic-
fe arfúl, tions and provide models for action in the present,
not the past, though it may use the past to do so.")
Specifically, these films are directed at those who
wish to enact social change through violent or radical
confrontation-w omen, veteranso b lacks and others
who, throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, were
pressing society for recognition of their political and
economic position. Vietnarn fìlms aim to "feminize"
these audiences and thereby negate their social
demands. In addition, recent Vietnam fìlms use the
images of women and the feminine to prepare their
audiences for a revisionary attitude toward the
Vietnam War and military conflicts in the present.
The images of women are best established in
Apocalypse Now. Tt'e narrative begins with Captain
Willard lying on a bed in a Saigon hotel room, the
blades ofthe rotating overhead fan evoking the most 13
 Apocalypse Now
11979): the
cènterfold as
the Amerícan
counterpart of
the wife's
plxotograph.
persistent emblem of the Vietnam War and its new
military strategies, the helicopter. Next to his hand
lies a letter written on pale blue stationery and a
photograph of his wife, a graduation picture. Willard
examines the photograph while his voiceover com-
ments, "I hardly said a word to my wife 'til I said
'yes' to the divorce." With his cigarette still hanging
from his lips, he bums a hole through the center
of the picture, destroying his wife's image. Willard
thereby severs his last ties to "home" and to the
woman there who does not understand his "mission."
Before he goes deep into the Vietnam jungle in search
of his prey, the rebel Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, Willard
must cut himself off from his past, from his emotions,
from his familial values. On the perilous trip upriver
to Kurtz's camp, those who refuse to abandon those
values, those who cling to their past, will die.
"Mr. Cleano" the panicky gunner on Willard's boat,
receives a cassette-taped letter from his mother in
L4 WIDE ANGLE the mail picked up at the læt outpost, the Du Long
.,r1.?d
.1
it, she tells him about his family, friends
Bridge. In
and home. Suddenly, the crew is attacked by unseen
riverside guerillas ald Clean is killed. While his
friends gather around his body, his mother's voice
continues: "Do the dght thing and stay out of the
way of the bullets." Unable to release himself to
Vietnam, Clean is killed.
In contrast, Lance, the Malibu surfer, adapts himself
more and more to his surroundings, masking himself
in jungle camouflage, shaping a head omament out
of native wooden arrows, and echoing the animalistic
cries that reverberate throughout the jungle. He
blends in with the Montagnard tribesmen of Kudz's
army, wearing only their loincloth, and bathing
himself in the ritual blood of the sacrifìciai bull.
Lance is the only one to return with Willard from the
"mission."
On the way upriver, Willard seals his pact with
Vietnam when he responds to a soldier's wish to be
 a
l.
back home, 'oTrouble is, I've been back there, and I murders, brutal tribal raids-Kurtz had indeed, as far
know that it just didn't exist anymore." The fìrst
man sent on this mission, Captain Richard Colby,
failed; instead of "exterminating" Kurtz, he joined
his brutal army. From the camp, Colby sends a
onl'm
scrawled message to his wife: not coming back
.. . . Sell the house .... Forget it." Kurtz's fìle is
fìlled with pictures of his wife and son, but like
Colby and Willard, he knows that he cannot go home;
for them, 'oit didn't exist anymore." The farther they
are fiom home, from images of women, the deeper
they become enmeshed in Vietnam.
Earlier, when Chef had tried to go into the jungle to
collect mangoes (re fantasizes about Raquel Welch
and mangoes), he and Willard were chased back to the
boat by a tiger. Chefs conclusion: "Never get off the
boat." Willard agrees: "Never get off the boat. Abso-
lutely Goddamn right. Unless you're going all the
way . . . . Kurtz got off the boat." Fightingthe war
his own way-head-hunting, scalping, midnight
"The Bunnles
embody the
fantasies of
American
manhood."
as the military was concemed, "got off the boat."
For this crime, he had to be 'oterminated, with
extreme prejudice." In a war filled with its own
atrocities, Kurtz, tghting with bloodthirsty success,
had gone beyond the limits of accepted military
behavior. Though, æ Willard objects, "Accusing
someone of murder in this war is like handing out
speeding tickets at the Indy 500."
The American counterpart of the wife's photograph,
the centerfold, adoms the military store at Hau Phat,
the site of the Playboy Bunnies' landing in Coppola's
Vietnam. Equally out of place in this jungle war, this
is the other image of womenitApocalypse Now.
The Playboy dancers are flown into the jungle by
helicopter, landing on a stage surrounded by hooting
soldiers a:rd phallic columns that appear alternately
and indeterminably to be missles and hpstick. The
Bunnies here embodv the fantasies of American
manhood, dressing ai a Cowboy, an Indian and a 15

'1
t,
" , . , we have fixed by the film's gaze in the place of those
been
who are alien to Vietnøm and îts masculirtíty,"
cavalry soldier, reviving yet another era of American
expansionism and imperialism, of a less troublesome
war where the battles were [lore clearly won and the
slaughters more simply patriotic. The women dance
seductively with cap pistols on their hips, making love
to the soldiers' M-l6s while Vietnamese villagers
watch from outside the barbed-wire fences. The Play-
mates dalce as they would 'oat home," back within
the guarded confìnes of the Playboy clubs. What they
fail to realize is that they are now in the territory of
VietnamJ
In the midst of the dance, the soldien begin to leap
on stage and accost the dancers. They seek initially
only the women's autographs, but as the soldiers
surround the women, their attentions become more
threatening. The dancers and their prornoters have
failed to see the violence that lies below the surface
in these soldiers' lives, the irreverence with which
they treat the boundaries of an alien American life.
Accustomed to Arnerican representations of the war,
these women are unable to see the reality that is
Vietnam.
Apocalypse Now captvres and preserves the ímages of
16 WIDE ANGLE women prevalant in American culture-.the angel and
the whore, the mother and the mistress,6 contir
its trade iá the minored coin of American ,.*ulìl*u
Most importantly, these images are defìned in Leìì*11
to the masculine point of view" But because ttruj"'"n
gaze is determined, not so much by its object ôs hr, r,
way of seeing, the_masculistgaze creaÍes its imagei
it observes them. In her discussion of pornograpþ ists ""
the least subtle of the ma.sculist gazes-Susan Griffìn
refers to women as the "blank screen" onto whici
m-asculist representations projected: "The n¿1¡ii
-are
of her real being is erased,.as if her cultural inags
had been carefully prepared for a clear p_lojection o¡
an image, and $e comes_to stand-for all that nat
would_deny in hirnself." / Laura Mulvey reinforces
this relationship in broader cultural terms: "Wonan
then stands in patriarchal culture as signifier for the
male other, bound by a symbolic order in which rnql
can live out his phantasies and obsessions througf-'
linguistic command by imposing them on the silent
imaee olwoman still tied to her place as bearer of
meuîing, not rnaker of meaning.ñE
Griffìn's use of the fìlmic analogy_is not accidental,
for this is the gaze of dominant fìlm, projecting its'
images onto the spectators of patriarchalcinema,
simultaneously creating images of and for that
audience. To retum again to Mulvey, "'It is the place
of the look that defìnes cinema . . . . Playing on the
tension between fìlm as controlling the dimension of
space (changes in distance, editing), cinematic codes
create a gaze, aworld, and an object, thereby^produc"
ing an iliusion cut to the measure of desire."9 Most
important for this context is the extent to which
dominant cinema appropriates that gaze for the crea-
tion, not only of the objects of cinematic illusion, but
of the audience as wel1.
Though members of the audience may identify with
the male characters on the Vietnam screen, they are
also being made subject to the gaze that screen
returns. They are fìxed by the masculine gaze of the
fìlm in the place of the feminine-the non-participant,
the uninitiated, the blank. As the Playboy Bunnies
land at Hau Phat, the camera is centered in the
audience, so that we see the dancers as the soldiers
see them. But as the soldiers become more violent,
our camera view is shifted to a spot behind the
dancers, as we, now placed in their vuLrerability, are
attacked by the violence of Vietnam. As audierce,
we have been fixed by the film's gaze in the place
of those who are alien to Vietnam and its masculinity.
"In the play of identity and difference in which the
economy of looks is regulated by the cinematic
machine, a subject is produced for this place in the
 I0
tm¿]Ðîary which structures textual operations."
'ñe-production of that subject by Vietnam cinema
ir ãrtritu.¿ through the process of feminization.
As Susan Griffìn reminds us, "The very word 'woman'
iãnin.r all those qualities which the mæculine mind
off from itself . . . . And in the female live all
""iits
iã. oualities the male has decided are inferior and
l,trtrËct." 11 This repression of the feminine is at the
i",àrt of Apocølypse Now and much Vietnam litera-
i,tre. It is most explicitly acknowledged in Bob
äldrr-un't recent novel, Letters to Nanette, in which
6is main character, AIan Bronstein, enlists in the
ãrmy in 1963 only to discover that his company is
¡eing sent out to Vietnam. He experiences moral
anxiéty about going to awar that he doesn't believe
in and finally plots an escape through a psychiatric
discharge. The tale is told in his letters to Nanette,
an amorphous, undescribed woman who is the only
one to whom Bronstein can express his fears and
doubts. At the close of the novel, we discoverthat
there is no Nanette, only a name that represents a
suppressed part of Bronstein's character: "I suppose
úràt was the importance of writing, it put me in Coming Home (1978 ) : " . . . the fllm deníes the very people it
is trying to defènd, the Vietnam veteran,"
touch with anotler self which wæ in hiding [dudng
his enlistment] but which needed to come out 19r
li.utty oncein a while so as not to suffocate."l2
Biderman explicitly recognizes the extent to which
the military mæculine denies the feminine. Unlike
many other Vietnam soldiers, Bronstein is aware of
Home has far more damaging consequences than this.
his need to acknowledge that part of his character.
Not simply denying the serious issueì of the Vietnam
And it is this voice-'oNanette"-we are to presume,
that keeps Bronstein from going to the war. It is ryal, the film denies the very people
- it is trying to
defend, the Vietnam veteran.
tlis voice that is repressed in the Vietnam theater.
As the fìlm opens, Luke is angry. Frustrated by the
We tum now to what that theater tells its audience war and hissenseless paralysis, he strikes out, verbally
about the feminine as we look at one of the most pop- and physically, at those who come near him.'In ordei
ular Vietnam fìlms, Hal Ashby's Comìng Home, to protect themselves, the nurses restrain him, strap-
Released in the same year as Michael Cirnino's The ping his arms and chest to a hospital bed. Still, hê
Deer Hunter (1978), Coming Home begns where refuses to eat and continues his vèrbal assault on the
Cimino's film ends, with the return of the Vietnam hospital staff. He is uncooperative, belligerent-angry.
veteran. Toutpd by many as the leftist Vietnam film
But by the end of thefúm,it is Luke who is preacñing
¡howing the damage the war has brought to individual nonviolence and restraint, not only to anbther
lives, Morris Dickstein praises the film for',bringing veteran, Bob Hyde, but to an auditorium full of high
the war home. For o-nce the Hollywood left has school students, prospective military recruits. Whát
done itself proud."l3 It is seen by others as the has happened to break Luke's anger? What has
"feminist" Vietnam fìlm, having a hero, Luke, who
espouses feminist qualities and releæes Sally Hyde
endearçd him to so many fÌlm viewers? \4hat has
made him so "feminine?"
from her traditional female role of military'wife.
But the film is finally, as James C. Wilson cãncludes. Most obviousþ, he falls in love with a woman, Sally
tar less radical than it mieht appear: "Ostensiblv Hyde. It is Sally whom Luke speaks to from his
about the painful processóf healing the wounds ôf hospital bed, Sally who first takes him from the hos-
Vietnam, Coming Home degenerates into the soap pital to her home for dinner, Sally who first makes
opera love story of Luke and Sally." 14 Bú Coming love to him. The hospital's message is clear: æ Luke t7
 ñç¡

,'"'Å
.¿
:ì
.)
'4
&
!9
¿;
n

;
s
u
1

t\
ir
"The guih for the war has been relnterpreted so as to lie in the penonal føilíngs ofindividual soldíers, nat the polítícal faîlíngs
of the government."
Lô.nntes more passive, he is allowed more freedom,
Si,liu,Lting from bed to gurney to wheelchair to
lj,äìtrr.t. He moves from his single room to a multi-
Ï"i¡rnt ward to his own apartment. In other words,
lri.-nrot. "feminine" he becomes, the more access
i^ .ociety he gains" So much so that, by the end of
ür ttt'n, Luke has achieved the freedom to encourage
"uintrt
to be equally non-violent, equally passive.
rhe anger against the war and the govemment that
i'elle,l his early violence has been defused from
to a personal one. Instead of striking out
"ntiti.¡
lo:Linst the society that sent him to Vietnary,-by the
.iã the fÌlm he is indicting only himself.l s ln the
,i
liàsine scenes when he speaks to the high school
.i6r. ht talks, not of the injustice of the war or the
imperialism of U. S. intervention or even the des-
iruìdon of Vietnamese lives and land, but instead
of hir o*n guilt. In tears he confesses, 'oThere are
lots of things that I did that I fìnd pretty hard to live
with now." His argument to the students is that he
doesn't want them to feel that regret as well. The
guilt for the war has been reinterpreted so as to lie
in the perconal failings of individual soldien, not the
political failings of the government. And it is feminin-
ity tliat is the mechanism for that reinterpretation.
Let me state this clearly. I am not suggesting that
Luke should have encouraged the young men to enlist
or excited their passion to kill. I am trying to anaTyze
why, when the war had been over for three years, the
iast troops being withdrawn in March of 1973, this
fìlm was espousing pacifism. There was no real
question of these students enlisting to fìght a war.
As Lrwrence Suid remarks, "the message came at
least ten years too late."lÓ Recalling Bill Nichols'
insistence that 'ocinematic narrative[s] . . . resolve
contradictions and provide models for acíonin the
present" litalics added] , who was this film's
audience?
First and foremost, Coming Home was directed at the
Vietnam veteran. Luke's lesson was, "if you want to
be re-incorporated into society, if you want to 'come
home,'you must be passive." Luke becomes the
apostle for this message æ he encourages Bob Hyde
to 'oput the gun down" and accept, as he had, Sally's
love. Rehabilitated, Luke can say (ostensibly to Bob,
but really to the audience), "I am not the enemy."
0n a læger scale, Al Auster and Leonard Quart sug-
gest that Vietnam films of the Seventies are oriented
toward reviying a lost confìdence in_American strength
and will, bothiocial and military.lT But for a closer
ideological understanding of these fìlms, we need to
look at one of Hollylvood's most recent Vietnam
productions, Ted Kotcheff s Fírst Blood.
Sylvester Stallone plays John Rambo, a veteran ofthe
Green Beret special forces in Vietnam. While hiking
through the northwestem mountains, he passes
through the town of Hope. Upon entering the town,
the sheriff, Will Teasle, tells him, "We don't want
guys like you in this town." Taking him for a
wanderer and a misfìt, Teasle escorts him unkindly
a out of town. Rambo, determined not to be re-routed,
re-enters the town and is promptly arrested. Trying
to contain him in the jail, the officers strip, shower
'and shave Rambo by force.
In a flashback that
returns him to a Viet Cong prisoner-of-war camp,
Rambo strikes out, using his special forces training
to escape the jail. Pursued by the sheriff and his
deputies into the woods, Rambo begins a war on the
town, using special forces tactics that eventually
leave many injured ald much of the town destroyed.
Turning on the town the skills that he was taught by
the military in order to fight the government's war,
Rambo tells them, "In there you are the law. Out
here, it's me-I'll give you a war you'll never believe."
The implication of this plot is clear; Rambo is to be
seen as a victim of the government's policies in Viet-
nam. Like Shedff Teasle, who pushes Rambo until
he responds and then hunts him when the response
is violent, the govemment, in recruiting and training
soldiers for Vietnam, pushed them to violence. As
Alan Bronstein says of his military training, "They
want me to be angry. They want me to be mean.
They want me to be capable of murder."l8 Like
Teasle, the govemment refuses to allow the violence
to escapeinto the towns of America" Veterans who
retain this violence and use it against the state, for
whatever reason, are restrained, confìned, or, as the
novel Firsl Blood makes explicit, eliminated. Frrsf
Blood, in its novel and film versions, offers the two
choices allowed to,the veteran-to become feminized,
or be eliminated.l9
In the novel, Rambo's battle with Teasle is a personal
contest of manhood, until finally Teasle, having shot
Rambo and been shot himself, projects himself into
Rambo's mind and identifìes with him so much that
he believes he knows what Rambo is thinking. Track-
ing him to a brush field with Col. Trautman, the man
who trained Rambo, Teasle "knows" that Rambo
wants to die fìghting. Still trying to make his best
attempt at the battle, Rambo shoots Teasle and mor-
tally wounds him. With this shot, he lies back on the
ground and imagines death taking over his body: 19

First Blood (1982): " . . . the two choices allowed to the veteran-to
become feminized, or be eliminated."
"He let it happen, went with it, erupted free through
the back ofhis head and his skull, catapulted through
the sky, through myriad spectra, onward, outward,
forever duzling, brilliant, and he thought if he kept
on like this for long-enough he might be wrong and
see God after alI."IO Butîeath dões not simpiy
"take over." Rambo has been shot in the head by
his former mentor, Colonel Trautman. When Teasle
learns this, he dies in peace. Rambo has been elimi-
nated.
In the film version of Fint Blood, Rambo, still stalk-
ed by Teasle and Trautman, shoots Teæle and allows
Trautman into the sheriff s offìce where he is hiding.
But instead of shooting Rambo, Trautman listens to
his veteran's tale. Rambo had lost all the men in his
unit but one, whom he traced to this mountain
region only to fìnd that he had died of Agent Orange
contamination. Alone except for Trautman, Rambo
tells the Colonel; "You don't just turn it off. I do
what I have to do to win, but somebody can't let us
win." Exhausted from his confession, Rambo falls
into Trautman's arms, crying. Trautman, with his
arms around Rambo, convinces him to give up the
20 WIDE ANGLE battle, and Rambo leaves the station wearing Traut-
man's overcoat. The movie ends here, with a freeze
fiame of Rambo going out"into the world, while we
hear the voiceover song chant f9r uq, "It's a real
war, / right outside your front door." In the f!fr,
Rambo has been feminized.
In Apocalypse Now, Captain Willard is told that
Colonel Kurtz could have _been accepted back into
the fold if he had reformed, but refusing to change,
he had to be eliminaled. Coming Home offers {he
same theme in its ending, showing Bob Hyde strip_
ping and running into the ocean. Has he gone to þi
cleansed or to commit suicide? to be feminized ¡p
etminated? This 1978 fìlm leaves open the question
that the 1982 First Blood answen,. the qlestiorr,
not simply of the Vietnam veteran, but of dissent in
general. These films rc-place dissenters, througþ
feminization, in their traditional role as members of
the status-quo, of the audiençe. What are the charac-
teristics traditionally required of an Americal
audience in dominant cinema? Silence, passivity,
immobilty, sensitivity, impressionability-the stereo.
typical qualities of the feminine. So to be re-placed
in that audience is to be silenced, pacified, immo-
bilized. The ideological theater that represents the
Vietnam War creates its own audience.
The Vietnam literature itself testifies to the effec-
tiveness of tftis Hollywood theater.2l Over and over
again, Vietnam veterans confess to Hollywood's
impact on their war experience: "It wæ like a big
movie"; "I was John Wayne in Sønds of lwo Jitta.
I was Aldo Rey in Battle Cry";"I-1vas seduced by
W. W. II and Jóhn Wayne movies."22 From their fint
day in the country, the soldiers were treated to the
movie that was to be Vietnam. Jonathan Polansky,
recalling his arrival in Vietnam in November of 1968
for Al Santoli's Everything We Had , remembers seeing
TIrc Green Beret (1968) his first night in Vietnam.23,
Soldier after soldier talks of John Wayne, wanting to
t¿ke his place in the moyie: "I had flash images of
John Wayne films with me as the hero."24-As one
soldier perceives, ".Fverything is symbolism that
you're living on."25 Most recently, the Vietnam fìlms
themselves have become the mise-en-scene for new
military actions, as we leam that the American
soldiers going into Grenada played Wagner, re-enact-
ingthe attack scenes of. Apocølypse Now.
Most interestingly, Julian Smith believes that Holly-
wood in some way failed the Vietnam veteran:
"Today's films about veterans actually reflect the
moral isolation of the combat soldier-an isolation
created in part by Hollywood's reluctance to provide
,hê kind of patriotic and emotional support for this
t.'--*-o.
for the earlier ones."zb The contradiction in
Ï.ili.Áoning reveals the real purpose of the Vietnam
iil" On the one hand, Smith refers to fìlms' ability
1Ï'l:iän..r'ongoing reality;on the other, he acknow-
i"'¡nes Hollylvood's power to shape that reality. If
iïith had applied his more astute insights on Holly-
i""á¿ *ur fìlms to his first observation, he would
il*e concluded that those dismal píctures of veteran
are there for a reason.
iife, their "moral isolation,"
,,lt was apparently not uncommon for Vietnam vets
*Á .o'ne back angry, and when some became upsetL
iñeir method of coping was to become violent,"tt
A veteran imprisoned for possession of a weapon
ããscribes the prison situation: "But coming out of
ãrientation they put all the Vietnam vets in the worst
oossible situation in tlle prison system. They know
that lou know what danger is really all about . . . .
They know thq! you'll take a chance because you
alreàdy have,"'2ó Given their high level of military
training, their experience in combat, and their
famliarirty with violence, it is no surprise that Holly-
wood has failed to "support" the Vietnam veterans.
Instead, it needs to divert their anger, dilute it, defuse
it-feminize it, or, as a last altemative, eliminate it.
lhe identifìcation of a 'ofeminine" audience is not
original to Hollyrvood. Earlier in this century, rhe
masses were depicted as "feminine": "The people,
in an overwhelming majority, are so feminine in their
nature and attitude that their activities and thoughts
are motivated less by sgþer consideration than by
feeling and sentimeni."29 Adolf gitler continues his
argument: "Like a woman . . . who will submit to
the strong man rather than dominate the weakling,
thus the masses love the ruler rather tJran the sup-
pliant . . . ; they often feel at a loss what to do with
Ifreedom], ^ and even easily feel themselves
deserted."JU This association of the passive, mani-
pulable masses with the image of women lies at
the core of much of Hollywood's Vietnam theater.
For a reason. It is not simply the violence of the Viet-
nam veteran that these movies wish to control-
though that is their most direct goal-but the violence
of other dissenting groups as we1l. Michael Renov
describes the same pattem of feminization or elimina-
tion for Hollywood's W. W. II films directed at
women who, as a result of the war, were moving out
of more traditional spheres. For women who
attempted to construct independent lives, "two
possible resolutions for such activities became viable:
selfhood is neutralized by romantic allegiance or
marriage, or selfhood is annihlated by déath."31
Peter Marin writes of a woman's reaction to the
Vietnam veterans' situation: "I remember once des-
cribing to a woman friend . . . how it was the vets
felt. 'But that's it, that's it exactly,' she said. 'That's
how I felt having my abortions, after the abortions.
The same sense of significance and meaning. The
same sense of isolation-no one on either side of the
question to understand how I felt.' "32 And let us
not forget that "more than any other war in Ameri-
can history, Vietnam wæ a class war, fougþt pre-
dominantly by minorities and the poor."JJ These
are the implicit audiences for Vietnam theater-
women, minorities, the poor, the veteran. These are
the people who are warned not to get off the boat,
not to leave their seats in the theater.
Vietnam films are the most explicit examples of the
general attitudes of Hollywood domilant cinema,
ã cinema that works to "Americanize" its audience
by creating viewers who will accept, internalize
and enact the images thal arc projected onto them
by the masculne gaze of the screen. It is quite pos-
sible to subvert this cinema, but one must fìrst invert
that gaze by altering the structure of this theater,
changing the ways in which we watch and are
watched by the fìlms that are attempting to shape
us.
Make no mistake;Vietnam fì1ms are violenl. But they
present violence as a part of the test of the mæ-
culine, a part of the battle that is war. They do not
present violence toward the state, nor its institutions.
And if they do, the violence is soon "e1iminated."
"However bioody and violent filmmakers have por-
trayed combat on the screen, the action and excite-
ment usually have become escapist entertainment
"creating
rather than a reyulsion^ against w ar." 34
Violence in Vietnam fìlms is generally remote, spor-
adic and meaningless-even First Blood takes place
in the deserted mountains of the Northwest-and it
is always confronted through individual, personal
or psychological experience rather than in political
contexts. The Vietnam audience is shown that vio-
lence exists, but it is apolitical and away fiom home"
The goal offeminiåation is to convince the audience
that brutality and violence are alien to them. To do
this, Vietnam theater establishes its authority by
identifying the audience with the place of women-
back home, away from the battles, away from the
war, aird then presenting the consequences of any
attempt to challenge that authority. Vietnam violence
cannot "come home" with the veterans, cannot
be "at home" with the audience. As John Rambo
tells us, "There are no fiiendly civilians." 2t

NOTES
lJohn Berger, Ilays of Seeing Q.lew York: vrkng, L972),
pp.45-46.
2laura Mulvey suggests a similar pattem for the western:
"Here two functions emeÍge, one celebrating.integration into
so cietv throush m arriage. the ot her celebratin g resistar ce
ieiponsibilities.. . the sphere repre-
to social starðards and
sented by women." "Aftèrthoughts on, 'Visual Pleas¡re
and Narrative Cinema' Inspired by Duel in the Sun (King
Vidor. 1946)." FrameworE, No. 15/1ó/17 (Summer 1981),
p. 18.'The óiosseender application of these categories is
Similar lo Steve Ñeale's hißtence that men can be equally
the obiects of a masculist (voyeuristic and fetishistic) gaze.
"Mascillinity as Spectacle: Refledions on Men and Main-
stream Cinema," Screen,24, No. 6 (November/Decembet
t983),2-r7.
3Annette Kuhn, in her fine book on fìlm, Women's Píctures:
Feminísm and Cinerna (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul
1982), uses the telm "feminine" to describe "an attribute
of teitual organization. . . that poses a challenge to
dominant forms of reiationship between texts and recipients
. . . . A feminine text woulf in this way constitute a subvet-
sion of and challenge to a 'mainstream' text" (12). Our
definitions are opposed, yet complementary, as the femini-
zation of the audience that I discuss here is an effect of domi-
nant cinema, while the "feminine" reading thaf Kuhn
proposes is a means of discovering and subverting that
effect.
The process that I am describing is more like that which
Ann Douglas identifies in The Feminization of Amerîcan
Culture (New York: Avon, 1977), in which she sees "femini-
zation" as a means of identifying and shaping marginal
cultures, specifically those of \ryomen and the clergy in
nineteenth-century America.
4For the most complete Vietnam filmographies, see James
C. Wilson's Vietnam in Prose and Film (Jefferson, N, C.:
McFarland and Company, L982), and GiÏben Adatt's Viet-
nam on Film: From 'The Green Bereß' to'Apocalypse Now'
(New York: Proteus Publishing, 1981).
58il1 Nichols,ldeologt and the Imøge @loomington; Indiana
Uniu Press, 1981), p. 76.
6Fo¡ a further discussion of these contrasting charaû.ellrza-
tions of women and thefu use in literary culture, see Sandra
Gilbert and Susan Gubar's excellent study, The Marlwoman
in the Attíc (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 17-31.
? Susan Griffin , Pomogtaphy and Silence (New York : Harper
and Row, 1981), p. 19.
Slaura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,"
Screen, 16, No. 3 (1975), 6-19.
9tø¡¿.
101. N. Rodowick, ',The Dífficulty of Difference," Iilíde
Angle,5, No. 1 (1982),4-16.
1 lSrsan Griffin, "The Way of All Ideology," Signs, 7, No. 3
(t982),64r-61.
12Bob Bid"rman, Letters to Nanette (San Fr-ancisco: The
22 WIDE ANGLE Contemporary Liierature Series, 1982), p. 243.
1 3M.orris. Dickstein, ack Ho me,"
ip¡in41g i^t^All B P a fti s an
Review,45, No. 4 (1978),62'1-33.
l4wilson, Vietnam ín Prose and Film, p. 83. Hollywoe¿ ¡,^^
to repeat this pattem a few years later with the ro¡onOas
cized version of the Russian revolution, Reds.
15es Rictrald_ olpaln points out ín relation to Ameds.,
hterâture of the Sixties and Seventies, contemporary soqi;iy
encoutag€s inpividgals t^o see social problems..as_th"I own
fault. raiher than that of the society at large. ("Thc Shani..
of thê Canon in U. q. Fiction, 19.60-1975," Crítícal Inqltì11f,
10 [ September t9831, 199-223.)
l6l,awrence_Suid, "Hollywood and Yietnam," Film
Commen t, 15 (September L97 9), 20-25,
17Al Auster and Leonard Quart, "Hollylvood and Vietn¡-.
The Triumph of the W11," Cineaste, g (Spring 1979), 4_i'"'
lSBiderman, tr etters to Nanette, p,28,
l9Jean-Francois Lyotard characterizes this imperative
¿g
"be operarþnal . . . or disap-pear" tn The postmòaem Coît-
diti.o1:.A lgport on-K.nowledg3, Jluls, Çqq$ Benningron
and Brian Mossumi fMinneapolis: Univ. of M.innesota pîss,
1984), p. xxiv.
?9pgui¿ Moyell, First Blood (New York: Fawcett Cresr,
197 2), p.255.
2lJulian Smith's stldy, Looking Awøy: Hollywood and
Vietnam (New York: Chæles Scribner's $ons, L975), offe¡g
a good discussion of the influence of Hollryood films on
World War I and II and Korean War audiences.
22[ark Baker, Nam Qrlew York: Berkeley Books, 1981),
p. 75 ; Phillip Caput o, A Rumor of War (New York : Ballan-
tine Books, ), p. 255 ; Baker, N øm, p. 15.
1.97 7
2341 Santoli, EverythingI4Je Had (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1981), p. 104.
24Baker,Nam, p.22.
25 Santoli, Everything We Had, p, 99 .
26smith, LookíngAway, p. 159.
27 Santoli, Everythíng We Hød, p. 144,
28&ake\ Nam, pp. 280-8 1.
29¿dolf Hitler , Mein Kampf Qiew York : Reynal and Hitch-
cock, 1.940), p,237 ,
3oh¡¿., p, ss,
3lMichael Renov, "From Fetish to Subject: The Contain-
ment of Sexual Difference in Hollyr,vood's Wartime Cinema,"
I|íde Angle,S, No. L (1982), t6-28.
32Peter Marin, "What the Vietnam Vets Can Teach Us,"
The Nation,27 November L9\Z,beglrffilng on ftont covet.
33wi1son, Vietnøm in Prose ønd Film, p, 4.
34suid. "Hollpvood and Vietnam."
Susan Jeffords teaches literary theory and f¡1m at Floridâ
State University and is currently completing work on the
question of a fõminist nanative âs wellas articles on recently
released Vietnam films.