[Windhoek, 11/20/21} On my last day in Cape Town, 10/31/21, I met a Filipino nurse, Eric, who was in South Africa to take a test for a job in Springfield, Missouri. Eric had worked six years in Saudi Arabia, and six in Qatar. Paid well enough to take foreign vacations, Eric had also learnt enough Arabic to communicate with patients, so he seemed comfortable in Arabia, yet nothing beat the allure of the USA!
Since Heart of Darkness is mentioned, I want to draw your attention to Chihua Achebe's "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'," as published in the Massachussetts Review in 1977: http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html
Also, to use an 1899 novel about the Congo to describe South Vietnam in the 1960's, then declare that "it is not about Vietnam, but Vietnam itself" is the height of madness, but what do I know, I am only Vietnamese!
As for the arm chopping episode, imagine if there's a Chinese film that claims Chinese soldiers went to some town in Alabama to vaccinate a bunch of white kids, then just after they left, an old white guy ran after them to say local white men had just chopped all these kids' vaccinated arms off, would you find that believable for even a second? Not only that, a Chinese soldier was so distraught, he felt like tearing his teeth out, so this Chinese soldier cared more about the white kids than local white men, and I'm stressing local because in Apocalypse Now, the arm chopping happened before the American soldiers could get far away. They were close enough for an old man to run after them.
If the point of the arm chopping was to terrify Vietnamese from associating with Americans, then why did the old man run after these Americans?! Because they didn't just represent charity and science, as embodied by the vaccines, but justice. The old man ran after these foreigners to report a crime committed by his own people!
Again, none of this happened, but was dreamt up by a Jew, John Milius, and let us not forget that Jews are fantastic at conjuring up unimaginable atrocities, but only as committed by other races, of course, so we have Jewish skin lampshades, Jewish fat soap and, of course, six million Jews gassed to death. If you point out that the Israeli Army is as savage as they come, then you're a hardcore Nazi!!!
The only way that soliloquy ever made sense to me was if the Viet Cong had been acting on suspicion that the "inoculations" were a poison or sterilant.
The dumb grunt American soldiers, Kurtz included, may very well have thought they were doing "good" by force-injecting "medicine" into the native kids. But, unbeknownst to the grunts, it was actually military-grade bioweaponry. In all likelihood, this same dynamic may have been at work during the Indian Wars of North America, as the soldiers on the field may very well have believed they were doing humanitarian work by handing out blankets to the poor slobs they were driving out of their ancestral lands...when really the blankets were weaponized with smallpox by the frontier equivalent of DARPA.
In the context of Kurtz's story, the native cadres had the cajones to hack off the poisoned arms, as necessary to prevent the toxin from reaching the heart, brain, or gonads, where the real "tikkun olam magic" happens. While Kurtz and his boys wept that their humanitarian efforts had been thwarted, the brass above them were merely irked that the rising generation of Viets wound up merely maimed, rather than genocided once and for all.
Remember that scene well, but never picked up on the subtle reference that only civilized (smart) people will take advantage of modern technology (vaccines) but un-civilized (dumb) people won't.
Guess I was always transfixed on Brando, wondering to myself, "Is that what they call acting ?"
To little fanfare, the NFL stopped testing unvaccinated football players a couple weeks ago.
When push comes to shove, money always wins out.
No way were they going to lose a star QB to a positive test with the Super Bowl & all those TV dollars within smelling distance.
I feel now, what Kurtz was implying then: that the parents of the children who had the temerity to accept the vaccine from mortal enemies, were the ultimate culprits. A nation can suffer enemies abroad, but the death of us all is from traitors within.
My idea after the Great Denouement
is the shuttering of all holocaust museums and the heaping of all severed vaxxed arms into a pile of
“ unliving art” as a testimony to the ingrates large and small who foisted this calamity upon us all.
Regarding your analysis of Kurtz's line in the film, you said: "Movie goers, though, are not encouraged to think too hard about anything. What they got from this scene is that Vietnamese are unfathomably barbaric and Americans must be less squeamishly ethical in future wars..."
My own interpretation of this when I saw it was that it was intended to illustrate Kurtz's complete loss of morality, not to suggest or recommend a pattern of behavior. But my interpretation may be biased by having read Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", on which the movie was loosely based.
Hi all,
Since Heart of Darkness is mentioned, I want to draw your attention to Chihua Achebe's "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'," as published in the Massachussetts Review in 1977: http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html
Also, to use an 1899 novel about the Congo to describe South Vietnam in the 1960's, then declare that "it is not about Vietnam, but Vietnam itself" is the height of madness, but what do I know, I am only Vietnamese!
As for the arm chopping episode, imagine if there's a Chinese film that claims Chinese soldiers went to some town in Alabama to vaccinate a bunch of white kids, then just after they left, an old white guy ran after them to say local white men had just chopped all these kids' vaccinated arms off, would you find that believable for even a second? Not only that, a Chinese soldier was so distraught, he felt like tearing his teeth out, so this Chinese soldier cared more about the white kids than local white men, and I'm stressing local because in Apocalypse Now, the arm chopping happened before the American soldiers could get far away. They were close enough for an old man to run after them.
If the point of the arm chopping was to terrify Vietnamese from associating with Americans, then why did the old man run after these Americans?! Because they didn't just represent charity and science, as embodied by the vaccines, but justice. The old man ran after these foreigners to report a crime committed by his own people!
Again, none of this happened, but was dreamt up by a Jew, John Milius, and let us not forget that Jews are fantastic at conjuring up unimaginable atrocities, but only as committed by other races, of course, so we have Jewish skin lampshades, Jewish fat soap and, of course, six million Jews gassed to death. If you point out that the Israeli Army is as savage as they come, then you're a hardcore Nazi!!!
Linh
The only way that soliloquy ever made sense to me was if the Viet Cong had been acting on suspicion that the "inoculations" were a poison or sterilant.
The dumb grunt American soldiers, Kurtz included, may very well have thought they were doing "good" by force-injecting "medicine" into the native kids. But, unbeknownst to the grunts, it was actually military-grade bioweaponry. In all likelihood, this same dynamic may have been at work during the Indian Wars of North America, as the soldiers on the field may very well have believed they were doing humanitarian work by handing out blankets to the poor slobs they were driving out of their ancestral lands...when really the blankets were weaponized with smallpox by the frontier equivalent of DARPA.
In the context of Kurtz's story, the native cadres had the cajones to hack off the poisoned arms, as necessary to prevent the toxin from reaching the heart, brain, or gonads, where the real "tikkun olam magic" happens. While Kurtz and his boys wept that their humanitarian efforts had been thwarted, the brass above them were merely irked that the rising generation of Viets wound up merely maimed, rather than genocided once and for all.
Linh
Remember that scene well, but never picked up on the subtle reference that only civilized (smart) people will take advantage of modern technology (vaccines) but un-civilized (dumb) people won't.
Guess I was always transfixed on Brando, wondering to myself, "Is that what they call acting ?"
To little fanfare, the NFL stopped testing unvaccinated football players a couple weeks ago.
When push comes to shove, money always wins out.
No way were they going to lose a star QB to a positive test with the Super Bowl & all those TV dollars within smelling distance.
Great stuff as always, Linh.
Bill
I feel now, what Kurtz was implying then: that the parents of the children who had the temerity to accept the vaccine from mortal enemies, were the ultimate culprits. A nation can suffer enemies abroad, but the death of us all is from traitors within.
My idea after the Great Denouement
is the shuttering of all holocaust museums and the heaping of all severed vaxxed arms into a pile of
“ unliving art” as a testimony to the ingrates large and small who foisted this calamity upon us all.
Great piece as usual, Linh!
Regarding your analysis of Kurtz's line in the film, you said: "Movie goers, though, are not encouraged to think too hard about anything. What they got from this scene is that Vietnamese are unfathomably barbaric and Americans must be less squeamishly ethical in future wars..."
My own interpretation of this when I saw it was that it was intended to illustrate Kurtz's complete loss of morality, not to suggest or recommend a pattern of behavior. But my interpretation may be biased by having read Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", on which the movie was loosely based.