Ok, my last two blogs have been really long, so I'm going to do this one differently. I will list the things I liked about the film, the things I didn't like, and then wrap it up in the most concise way I can.
Things I liked:
1. The way that many shots were long, as in they stayed on one thing for an extended period of time. This lets us really look at what we're shown, and it shows that the director wants us to get certain images in our mind. We see Lin hard at work, the mass of people experiencing the memorial, the simplicity of her original sketches.
2. The part about the memorial, meaning the first half of the movie. This part kept my interest.
3. The way that Lin spoke. She was matter-of-fact, but in a sincere way that made me feel like she was telling me instead of a camera.
4. It wasn't 2 hours long.
5. The music matched her voice, in that it was calming and fit the mood of the memorial (meaning that it was simple and reflective).
Things I didn't like:
1. The part of them movie that wasn't about the Vietnam Memorial. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't necessarily that it didn't hold my attention, it just didn't have to do with Vietnam and that's all that I'm really interested in about her life.
2. That mustached veteran who didn't like her plan.
Well, the main point I suppose I'm going to make is that this seemed to me like 2 films, one about her involvement in the memorial and then her later stuff. I would have liked to see more focus on her memorial, but I suppose that a full-length documentary on it would've been impossible or just less interesting. There didn't really seem to be a reason behind the movie other than just having her talk about the experience and, well, document the whole fiasco. There wasn't really a message that the director seemed to want to portray (at least I couldn't find one, if you did please tell me so I can rewatch this with it in mind... maybe do a second blog about it). Lin obviously had a message she wanted to tell the world with her memorial, but there wasn't much rhetoric involved with her explanation, because she just literally explained it. That's like Kubrick starting Full Metal Jacket by saying "Well, this movie is supposed to show you how war is bad." Now, if I could analyze the memorial itself this would be quite a different blog post, but you watched the film just like I did, so what else could I say about it that Lin didn't already say?
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Why she must defend her strong clear vision
Before I started watching the Maya Lin documentary, I wrote down two questions that would help me focus more on the rhetoric of the film making. After watching the documentary, I’ve decided I don’t want to write about the director’s rhetoric. What came on stronger, what had more of a presence was the rhetoric in Maya Lin’s monuments. The same way a rhetorician chooses specific elements in making an argument, Maya Lin chooses specific elements to serve her purpose for the monument.
Let me get back to those two questions. First I asked “Why would the director choose one rhetoric device over others?” second: “What would it be like if they hadn’t chosen those devices?” These questions were initially supposed to get me to think about how the different cinematic and rhetorical components were used to facilitate the film makers point. The questions in the context of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial architecture are still applicable. Why would Lin choose to design the memorial the way she did? What if she did it differently?
Applying the rhetoric to something other than the written word also put into perspective how crucial the different elements of rhetoric we’re learning about are. The different components of Maya Lin’s monument design support a purpose. She wanted to “focus on the nature of accepting and coming to terms with a loved one’s death”. The same way ideas need to be chosen for an argument carefully, architecture and are also need to have specific ideas that feed into the core meaning. Maya Lin realized what she wanted her monument to mean, thus she knew how it should look. The veterans who demanded a change in Lin's design did not know that changing the design would make the monument irrelevant.
Fog of McNamara's Brain: Clouded Judgment
Well played, McNamara.
I didn't enjoy this documentary as much as the other films we've watched, and the main reason for that was this was just...... boring. Not the purpose behind the film, which to me was a vessel for McNamara to tell his side of the story and not look bad to history, but the way it was done. I was so sick of hearing his voice by the end of the film, and I wasn't really all that into him to begin with. He didn't do anything to convince me that my predetermined opinion of him, that he was not a good person, was wrong.
Here's my problem with McNamara, which the film pretty much showed nonstop: He's a conman. He says it himself, that he doesn't answer questions, just what he wants to be asked. This is told to us out of his mouth about 2/3 through the film, and my opinion of him had slightly changed before this. He was learning about his mistakes, he had made the seatbelt a necessity (more on that later...) and he was a family man who loved his wife and kids (the happiest time of his life was right after he was married and had his first kid, "what a great guy"). After his confession (which he was absolutely not ashamed of), I had to take everything he had said and throw it out the window. Nothing he said was sincere; everything out of his mouth was planned and meant to manipulate his audience. Sadly, his rhetoric skills aren't nearly as good enough to fool me, and hopefully not any of you, either. There were times when he threw in a little pathos, tearing up while talking about JFK's gravesite being one of them, but most of the time he sounded like he was reading a script he'd been preparing since his departure from his seat in the cabinet. He never presented any logos, just what he claimed to be the truth; all the logos was shown by the director, and almost always this was some sort of image or newspaper article contradicting what McNamara was explaining.
To sum all of that up if it doesn't quite make sense to you (I'm not sure how to explain some of this, but I believe that this example will set things straight and hopefully have an impact on how you viewed the film), I'm going to talk about the part of the documentary where he discusses his time at Ford. But Ron, you ask, why would you focus the main point of your blog on Vietnam about his time at Ford? That's the entire point. McNamara, when asked to transition into Vietnam, blurts out that he has to talk about Ford first, almost like if he didn't his entire plan would fall short. This was another moment that made me question his intent. The entire point he makes with his commentary on his Ford days is that he helped the company turn around and made the seatbelt standard, in fact it was basically his idea! What a great guy, this Robert McNamara, he saved countless lives (he is sure to point it out, too). All of this somewhat large chunk of the film is just an attempt to get our minds off of the consequences of his actions regarding Vietnam; we shouldn't think of him as the person responsible for the deaths of 58,000 soldiers, but instead a savior, bringer of safety to automobiles. Hogwash. I see through your bullshit, McNamara.
The thing is, though, the director kept this part of the interview, which I read was 20 hours long, entirely intact. I had initially thought that the intent of the director was to provide McNamara with a chance to tell everything about what happened, to show that we needed to learn from war, to finally learn what went through the man's head. He accomplishes these things, in fact I liked the list of lessons McNamara learned, but now I believe he also wanted us to see that this war was started and maintained for ridiculous reasons by ridiculous people. Through the conversations between various presidents and McNamara, we see how dishonest and dodgy the men at the top were. This was the good part of the film for me, but it couldn't take away how much I hated listening to McNamara talk.
Back to the eleven lessons McNamara learned. While these are all solid things that are all logical, I can't help but notice that McNamara uses them to justify his past actions. The biggest example of this is number nine, "In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil." Sometimes you gotta kill to stay alive. It's a dog eat dog world out there. Please. He might as well have said, "Killing civilians and ruining the lives of countless Americans? Hey, there was a good reason!" How did he "do good" by sending more troops into Vietnam, when he clearly knew it wasn't going to won anytime soon? What good would that have done anyways? Stop communism from spreading? No. It would have stopped a nation from achieving its independence from an imperial power. He shows his ignorance about this when he discusses his meeting with the Vietnamese leader who I can't remember the name of at this moment. The other man, clearly angry at the fool he's speaking with, points out that McNamara didn't know jack shit about what was going on in the nation. McNamara, being the smart person that learns from his mistakes that he is, gets angry and leaves. Oh, wait, the smart person that learns from his mistakes would have apologized, admitted his mistake and ignorance, and worked to improve his relationship with whomever he had wronged.
One more thing that irked me was the whole bit about his Medal of Freedom. He seemed damn proud of it while speaking of it, but it didn't seem to hold any significance to me. LBJ gave it to him right after he was out of the cabinet, so to me this seemed like just a going away present, a gift for a fellow conspirator for all his years of backing him up. McNamara tries to look like he is a great man, a hero, but anybody who watches the film will see that he doesn't deserve this medal, he deserves a beating. This is like if Obama presented Bush with a Medal of Freedom for his fantastic reasoning and wisdom that lead him to go to war in Iraq. We are shown evidence by the director that not only did McNamara know that there was no reason to go to war in Vietnam, he even gave to go ahead after learning that the ship that had been "attacked" by torpedoes was actually just nervous radar crew members overreacting to something on the radar. His judgment is completely garbage, and that's where his medal would be better off.
I know the point of this wasn't for all of us to turn out how I am right now, which is even more upset at our involvement in Vietnam. This documentary, after all, is another way for the whole situation to be broadened in our minds. We are shown the personal story of one of the main characters for the US, and that by itself should be an interesting, if not highly enjoyable, film. I didn't dislike the documentary; in fact I like it very much for the way it showed the flaws in his stories and how deceitful the government can be. It's just too hard to enjoy something heavily anchored on a person who spent his life using his mind to manipulate people.
But Ron, you point out, McNamara always did research and "get the data" is one of his lessons! True, but he gets statistics to prove his point. For example, when he thinks that less pilots would die if they fly higher in the B-29s, he gets information to prove his point (they can fly at higher altitudes, won't get shot by artillery, etc). This, of course, leads to less accuracy, which leads to the strategy of "just drop more bombs so you HAVE to hit your target," which leads to fire bombings (he tries to say it wasn't because of him, but... come on, you really believe him?), which lead to the destruction of Japan.
All in all, the idea behind the film is great, but there's just not enough diversity when it comes to information (it all comes out of McNamara's mouth; we can barely hear the director shout his questions, most which challenge what he's saying). When a man who admits to saying things that he wants to instead of what he's asked tells you that he's learned a lot from his mistakes, it's impossible to not consider that perhaps he just wants you to think that and he's avoiding the real issues. Perhaps he's been so used to telling people whatever it is he wants to say that he stopped even telling himself the truth. Perhaps he's so convinced that he's changed and learned that he'd be willing to film a documentary about his past. Perhaps he'll make a list of things he learned and tell emotional, personal stories about his president buddies. Perhaps he'll bring up that one time he had a good idea to save some lives to distract from the death he brought. Perhaps someone will see through his charade and use his interview to show the real person that made the decisions during this pointless war. Perhaps a class will watch it for a rhetoric class to see how we can't really believe what we're told, even if a person says it's true and this person was physically involved in the situations discussed. Perhaps.
Oh, by the way, the music in this was awesome. Philip Glass is fantastic, and I was really happy to see that he did the score for this. His music is very epic and moving, and fit perfectly with the imagery from Vietnam. Great choice by the director, and a very effective way to show us the ugly part of the war. If you can, watch Koyaanisqatsi, I'm not going to explain what Wikipedia can do for me, but it's worth checking out.
I didn't enjoy this documentary as much as the other films we've watched, and the main reason for that was this was just...... boring. Not the purpose behind the film, which to me was a vessel for McNamara to tell his side of the story and not look bad to history, but the way it was done. I was so sick of hearing his voice by the end of the film, and I wasn't really all that into him to begin with. He didn't do anything to convince me that my predetermined opinion of him, that he was not a good person, was wrong.
Here's my problem with McNamara, which the film pretty much showed nonstop: He's a conman. He says it himself, that he doesn't answer questions, just what he wants to be asked. This is told to us out of his mouth about 2/3 through the film, and my opinion of him had slightly changed before this. He was learning about his mistakes, he had made the seatbelt a necessity (more on that later...) and he was a family man who loved his wife and kids (the happiest time of his life was right after he was married and had his first kid, "what a great guy"). After his confession (which he was absolutely not ashamed of), I had to take everything he had said and throw it out the window. Nothing he said was sincere; everything out of his mouth was planned and meant to manipulate his audience. Sadly, his rhetoric skills aren't nearly as good enough to fool me, and hopefully not any of you, either. There were times when he threw in a little pathos, tearing up while talking about JFK's gravesite being one of them, but most of the time he sounded like he was reading a script he'd been preparing since his departure from his seat in the cabinet. He never presented any logos, just what he claimed to be the truth; all the logos was shown by the director, and almost always this was some sort of image or newspaper article contradicting what McNamara was explaining.
To sum all of that up if it doesn't quite make sense to you (I'm not sure how to explain some of this, but I believe that this example will set things straight and hopefully have an impact on how you viewed the film), I'm going to talk about the part of the documentary where he discusses his time at Ford. But Ron, you ask, why would you focus the main point of your blog on Vietnam about his time at Ford? That's the entire point. McNamara, when asked to transition into Vietnam, blurts out that he has to talk about Ford first, almost like if he didn't his entire plan would fall short. This was another moment that made me question his intent. The entire point he makes with his commentary on his Ford days is that he helped the company turn around and made the seatbelt standard, in fact it was basically his idea! What a great guy, this Robert McNamara, he saved countless lives (he is sure to point it out, too). All of this somewhat large chunk of the film is just an attempt to get our minds off of the consequences of his actions regarding Vietnam; we shouldn't think of him as the person responsible for the deaths of 58,000 soldiers, but instead a savior, bringer of safety to automobiles. Hogwash. I see through your bullshit, McNamara.
The thing is, though, the director kept this part of the interview, which I read was 20 hours long, entirely intact. I had initially thought that the intent of the director was to provide McNamara with a chance to tell everything about what happened, to show that we needed to learn from war, to finally learn what went through the man's head. He accomplishes these things, in fact I liked the list of lessons McNamara learned, but now I believe he also wanted us to see that this war was started and maintained for ridiculous reasons by ridiculous people. Through the conversations between various presidents and McNamara, we see how dishonest and dodgy the men at the top were. This was the good part of the film for me, but it couldn't take away how much I hated listening to McNamara talk.
Back to the eleven lessons McNamara learned. While these are all solid things that are all logical, I can't help but notice that McNamara uses them to justify his past actions. The biggest example of this is number nine, "In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil." Sometimes you gotta kill to stay alive. It's a dog eat dog world out there. Please. He might as well have said, "Killing civilians and ruining the lives of countless Americans? Hey, there was a good reason!" How did he "do good" by sending more troops into Vietnam, when he clearly knew it wasn't going to won anytime soon? What good would that have done anyways? Stop communism from spreading? No. It would have stopped a nation from achieving its independence from an imperial power. He shows his ignorance about this when he discusses his meeting with the Vietnamese leader who I can't remember the name of at this moment. The other man, clearly angry at the fool he's speaking with, points out that McNamara didn't know jack shit about what was going on in the nation. McNamara, being the smart person that learns from his mistakes that he is, gets angry and leaves. Oh, wait, the smart person that learns from his mistakes would have apologized, admitted his mistake and ignorance, and worked to improve his relationship with whomever he had wronged.
One more thing that irked me was the whole bit about his Medal of Freedom. He seemed damn proud of it while speaking of it, but it didn't seem to hold any significance to me. LBJ gave it to him right after he was out of the cabinet, so to me this seemed like just a going away present, a gift for a fellow conspirator for all his years of backing him up. McNamara tries to look like he is a great man, a hero, but anybody who watches the film will see that he doesn't deserve this medal, he deserves a beating. This is like if Obama presented Bush with a Medal of Freedom for his fantastic reasoning and wisdom that lead him to go to war in Iraq. We are shown evidence by the director that not only did McNamara know that there was no reason to go to war in Vietnam, he even gave to go ahead after learning that the ship that had been "attacked" by torpedoes was actually just nervous radar crew members overreacting to something on the radar. His judgment is completely garbage, and that's where his medal would be better off.
I know the point of this wasn't for all of us to turn out how I am right now, which is even more upset at our involvement in Vietnam. This documentary, after all, is another way for the whole situation to be broadened in our minds. We are shown the personal story of one of the main characters for the US, and that by itself should be an interesting, if not highly enjoyable, film. I didn't dislike the documentary; in fact I like it very much for the way it showed the flaws in his stories and how deceitful the government can be. It's just too hard to enjoy something heavily anchored on a person who spent his life using his mind to manipulate people.
But Ron, you point out, McNamara always did research and "get the data" is one of his lessons! True, but he gets statistics to prove his point. For example, when he thinks that less pilots would die if they fly higher in the B-29s, he gets information to prove his point (they can fly at higher altitudes, won't get shot by artillery, etc). This, of course, leads to less accuracy, which leads to the strategy of "just drop more bombs so you HAVE to hit your target," which leads to fire bombings (he tries to say it wasn't because of him, but... come on, you really believe him?), which lead to the destruction of Japan.
All in all, the idea behind the film is great, but there's just not enough diversity when it comes to information (it all comes out of McNamara's mouth; we can barely hear the director shout his questions, most which challenge what he's saying). When a man who admits to saying things that he wants to instead of what he's asked tells you that he's learned a lot from his mistakes, it's impossible to not consider that perhaps he just wants you to think that and he's avoiding the real issues. Perhaps he's been so used to telling people whatever it is he wants to say that he stopped even telling himself the truth. Perhaps he's so convinced that he's changed and learned that he'd be willing to film a documentary about his past. Perhaps he'll make a list of things he learned and tell emotional, personal stories about his president buddies. Perhaps he'll bring up that one time he had a good idea to save some lives to distract from the death he brought. Perhaps someone will see through his charade and use his interview to show the real person that made the decisions during this pointless war. Perhaps a class will watch it for a rhetoric class to see how we can't really believe what we're told, even if a person says it's true and this person was physically involved in the situations discussed. Perhaps.
Oh, by the way, the music in this was awesome. Philip Glass is fantastic, and I was really happy to see that he did the score for this. His music is very epic and moving, and fit perfectly with the imagery from Vietnam. Great choice by the director, and a very effective way to show us the ugly part of the war. If you can, watch Koyaanisqatsi, I'm not going to explain what Wikipedia can do for me, but it's worth checking out.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Mistake X 10,000,000,000
Every person that was involved in the Vietnam War had a story, so did Robert McNamara. I didn’t know how much further I didn’t know about the Vietnam War. This guy was the Secretary of Defense! Our ideal vision of the president and his cabin/associates are that they should be flawless and free of mistakes. When they do make mistakes, we the people, blame them for it. Sure, “I don’t think you have to be qualified any to be President,” or even graduate with a perfect score, but that’s our ideal vision, that people with that much authority can NOT make mistakes. I feel like that’s what McNamara was trying to get at. Mistakes here and mistakes there, that’s all that had happened with the Vietnam War, it was a HUGE MISTAKE! Who’s mistake?
“In nuclear war, you make one mistake and you’re going to destroy nations.”—Robert McNamara. That was such a strong and smart call. I think many people overlook that outcome. We wouldn’t be happy if some nation just started bombing our cities and homes, which would happen if we get into nuclear warfare. This movie made a big impact with how I interpreted the United States’ involvement. First, it was my anger towards the Vietnamese when I watched Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, then my anger towards the United States when I watched Hearts and Minds, and now my anger after watching Fog of War towards everyone because everyone misjudged things. I think all of this is great because it shows a lot of one-sidedness and I am able to see facts as well as opinions on both sides.
I’ve never seen or heard of McNamara at first, but when he was first presented, it was so casual; it seemed like the director made a mistake already in putting together the film. I’m pretty sure many like myself, didn’t know of McNamara before watching this movie, so at first, I didn’t see how he was involved with the Vietnam War. As the movie went on, I started to see how heavily important McNamara was to the United States. He helped the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, the big guy, the head honcho, make decisions!
What was pretty funny to me was how it was mentioned about how little he actually knew about the role of the Secretary of Defense for the United States. McNamara had to know at least something or had proper training in order to get that position and meet with the big heads of the United States. If that was the case that he got the position even though he didn’t know anything about the role, then maybe I can become Secretary of Defense one day. This was a weird presentation of McNamara because who believes that? The clip was put into the film in order to make the audience believe it. At the same time, it’s hard to trust but it was all to probably cover up McNamara’s mistakes. In other words, he’s saying at first that he wasn’t qualified and didn’t know what to do and he knew very little of the role of the presidents’ cabinets that even though he took the position, he made mistakes, and his cover up could be that, “I knew very little about my role” (not his quote, but just an example of what he could have said).
McNamara showed much knowledge and concern for the well-being of ALL humans living on this planet. The director put clips of conversations he had with President Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to portray this. I think this overall documentary/interview on McNamara was trying to not only show the background and behind the scenes of what the Presidents and his cabinet’s did, but mainly to show what McNamara did as Secretary of State and how people misunderstood and looked at him as.
I think the use of the dominos had great meaning in the documentary because for one it was kind of relating it to the Domino Effect of the war, but on McNamara’s standpoint, it could’ve even meant that mistakes will keep occurring unless we fix it. It so happens that the mistake (dominos) was all over Vietnam and the dominos were just tumbling over the country, because there were mistakes everywhere.
There were parts in the movie were they show disheartening words to portray McNamara. These words play into the screen right after McNamara told the camera that he made mistakes and how he was viewed as. As a part of the audience, I can’t help but sympathize for the man. He had a healthy and happy lifestyle with his family/wife, became president of the Ford Company, and then became Secretary of State. McNamara made it soak into me because the screen went blank right after he explained how he became president of the Ford Company and then said, “Then that’s when everything came down.” Right when he said that is when his role and part in being the Secretary of Defense played in. I thought from that moment, “Man, I’m gonna feel real sorry for this guy.” In the end I did, because the director used clips/interviews/speeches/conversations to show how very little it was McNamara’s fault in many of the mistakes. The director made it so that McNamara can say that he made mistakes so that we can sympathize, but nowhere in the film did I see, “Here, this is what McNamara did and it was horrible.” It was through McNamara’s words that let us know he made mistakes, he admitted it. The mistakes seemed to be directly pointing at Lyndon B. Johnson and the Chief of the military, but were never stated.
ps. something weird happened when I tried to italicize the names of the movies, so just pretend they're italicized =)
“In nuclear war, you make one mistake and you’re going to destroy nations.”—Robert McNamara. That was such a strong and smart call. I think many people overlook that outcome. We wouldn’t be happy if some nation just started bombing our cities and homes, which would happen if we get into nuclear warfare. This movie made a big impact with how I interpreted the United States’ involvement. First, it was my anger towards the Vietnamese when I watched Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, then my anger towards the United States when I watched Hearts and Minds, and now my anger after watching Fog of War towards everyone because everyone misjudged things. I think all of this is great because it shows a lot of one-sidedness and I am able to see facts as well as opinions on both sides.
I’ve never seen or heard of McNamara at first, but when he was first presented, it was so casual; it seemed like the director made a mistake already in putting together the film. I’m pretty sure many like myself, didn’t know of McNamara before watching this movie, so at first, I didn’t see how he was involved with the Vietnam War. As the movie went on, I started to see how heavily important McNamara was to the United States. He helped the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, the big guy, the head honcho, make decisions!
What was pretty funny to me was how it was mentioned about how little he actually knew about the role of the Secretary of Defense for the United States. McNamara had to know at least something or had proper training in order to get that position and meet with the big heads of the United States. If that was the case that he got the position even though he didn’t know anything about the role, then maybe I can become Secretary of Defense one day. This was a weird presentation of McNamara because who believes that? The clip was put into the film in order to make the audience believe it. At the same time, it’s hard to trust but it was all to probably cover up McNamara’s mistakes. In other words, he’s saying at first that he wasn’t qualified and didn’t know what to do and he knew very little of the role of the presidents’ cabinets that even though he took the position, he made mistakes, and his cover up could be that, “I knew very little about my role” (not his quote, but just an example of what he could have said).
McNamara showed much knowledge and concern for the well-being of ALL humans living on this planet. The director put clips of conversations he had with President Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to portray this. I think this overall documentary/interview on McNamara was trying to not only show the background and behind the scenes of what the Presidents and his cabinet’s did, but mainly to show what McNamara did as Secretary of State and how people misunderstood and looked at him as.
I think the use of the dominos had great meaning in the documentary because for one it was kind of relating it to the Domino Effect of the war, but on McNamara’s standpoint, it could’ve even meant that mistakes will keep occurring unless we fix it. It so happens that the mistake (dominos) was all over Vietnam and the dominos were just tumbling over the country, because there were mistakes everywhere.
There were parts in the movie were they show disheartening words to portray McNamara. These words play into the screen right after McNamara told the camera that he made mistakes and how he was viewed as. As a part of the audience, I can’t help but sympathize for the man. He had a healthy and happy lifestyle with his family/wife, became president of the Ford Company, and then became Secretary of State. McNamara made it soak into me because the screen went blank right after he explained how he became president of the Ford Company and then said, “Then that’s when everything came down.” Right when he said that is when his role and part in being the Secretary of Defense played in. I thought from that moment, “Man, I’m gonna feel real sorry for this guy.” In the end I did, because the director used clips/interviews/speeches/conversations to show how very little it was McNamara’s fault in many of the mistakes. The director made it so that McNamara can say that he made mistakes so that we can sympathize, but nowhere in the film did I see, “Here, this is what McNamara did and it was horrible.” It was through McNamara’s words that let us know he made mistakes, he admitted it. The mistakes seemed to be directly pointing at Lyndon B. Johnson and the Chief of the military, but were never stated.
ps. something weird happened when I tried to italicize the names of the movies, so just pretend they're italicized =)
Fog of War
After watching Fog of War I couldn’t help comparing it to Hearts and Minds. It was a totally different set up multiple interview clips versus just one interview, yet I still feel I got an equal amount of information out of it. We believed Hearts and Minds because we saw the destruction of Vietnam through the actual video footage. Well, I believed McNamara because it was just hard not to, he played into many of the ethos tricks that Heinrichs talks about in Thank you for Arguing, and in turn he showed me a completely new perspective.
I think that the personal commentary and hindsight of McNamara boosts his credibility and also is humbling when he admits to his wrong doings. Along with his many credentials he was just as suited for the job as any Secretary of Defense. The one lesson I liked the most was “Proportionality Should be a Guideline to War”.
This lesson is also an underlying theme in the rest of the lessons, we should be more empathetic to the “enemy” and imagine ourselves in their shoes, on our soil. The documentary did a great job of exhibiting this idea when it showed the Japanese cities bombed and compared them with U.S. cities of equivalent size. To have half of every cities population wiped out is just unimaginable and at least makes me think twice about what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and their people. You would think that after imagining this kind of destruction people would be more cautious and selective with their feelings towards going to war. However, as McNamara explains in his final lesson war is human nature and when men get caught up in the “fog of war” it is very difficult to decipher what is right and wrong, even in hindsight.
What was so great about Fog of War was it’s inside view of what the executive branch was truly saying about the war. Which come to find out is nothing; so many times they didn’t even want to discuss it to the people because they didn’t even really know the full story of what was going on. Until now I thought that there was nothing but lies and persuasion coming out of the politicians , but now I can see it in a different light, and through the conversations between McNamara and Johnson, they were in some ways just as clueless as the public.
Fog of War
I found Fog of War to be better than Hearts and Minds because I got to understand from McNamara's point of view why we went into war. I don't agree with war at all but he explained how all these wars and economic situations in the U.S played into each other.
War is a horrible, ugly situation that countries have to face. It is sad that we have to make them an option whenever we cannot come into agreement with others. The way I see it, we don't like being pushed around and bullied by other countries, so I am sure they feel the same way. My solution would be to agree to disagree. There shouldn't be a reason to face death and destruction in order to win a conflict.
McNamara explained the difficult decisions and problems he had to face during World War II, Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam. Everyone within the White House staff always disagreed on ways to come out of a situation. It's hard to hear about choices our government had to do because there could have been a better way. He spoke about the lessons he learned through out his 85-year life experience and how he hoped that in the 21st century, we could learn from the mistakes we have previously made.
He spoke like a tough man who had seen a lot in his lifetime. What touched me about his character was that he seemed to be sincerely sorry about the situations we have been though. He understand that many things could have been different if we, not just our country, had just worked at it without resulting in war. I was touched by how emotional he got whenever he spoke about the pilot that died whenever they were dropping fire bombs on Japan. He was sorry about the decision he made of sending him, but out of that one death came the fact that they beat Japan.
After all the wars that we have been through, it was obvious that human beings need to stop killing each other. Who is to say that they are right and others are wrong? No one will ever know so, to me, the best option is to agree to disagree.
War is a horrible, ugly situation that countries have to face. It is sad that we have to make them an option whenever we cannot come into agreement with others. The way I see it, we don't like being pushed around and bullied by other countries, so I am sure they feel the same way. My solution would be to agree to disagree. There shouldn't be a reason to face death and destruction in order to win a conflict.
McNamara explained the difficult decisions and problems he had to face during World War II, Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam. Everyone within the White House staff always disagreed on ways to come out of a situation. It's hard to hear about choices our government had to do because there could have been a better way. He spoke about the lessons he learned through out his 85-year life experience and how he hoped that in the 21st century, we could learn from the mistakes we have previously made.
He spoke like a tough man who had seen a lot in his lifetime. What touched me about his character was that he seemed to be sincerely sorry about the situations we have been though. He understand that many things could have been different if we, not just our country, had just worked at it without resulting in war. I was touched by how emotional he got whenever he spoke about the pilot that died whenever they were dropping fire bombs on Japan. He was sorry about the decision he made of sending him, but out of that one death came the fact that they beat Japan.
After all the wars that we have been through, it was obvious that human beings need to stop killing each other. Who is to say that they are right and others are wrong? No one will ever know so, to me, the best option is to agree to disagree.
Fog of War
I have to agree with the few others that chose Fog of War over Hearts and Minds. In Hearts and Minds, I found that to be very aggressive and gave me an uncomfortable feeling. Fog of War opened my eyes more by helping me understand why we go to war in the first place.
One of the quotes from the documentary that I found appealing was “Nobody really understands what is out there.” This is actually pretty true, in regarding that no one really does know and understands what is out there. For a good amount of the class, Hearts and Minds truly opened their eyes as to what happened in Vietnam. Seeing live footage of shooting villagers and prostitution, it was simply disgusting. Same goes for In the Lake of the Woods, Wade had a secret life in Vietnam that affected his political life once it was no longer a secret. I think “Fog” of the tittle refers to the blindness in any military conflict. McNamara furnishes examples of how the most thoroughly through-out, justifiable war plans and strategies turned out after the fact not only to have been utterly wrong and misguided, but also dangerous and destructive. This made me reflect back to today's war with Iraq.
Overall, this documentary made me think throughout while watching it. The domestic level of analysis for the Vietnam War called attention to the public opinion and demonstrations against the war putting pressure on the government to have a speedy resolution. This documentary gave different perspectives of the Vietnam War.
One of the quotes from the documentary that I found appealing was “Nobody really understands what is out there.” This is actually pretty true, in regarding that no one really does know and understands what is out there. For a good amount of the class, Hearts and Minds truly opened their eyes as to what happened in Vietnam. Seeing live footage of shooting villagers and prostitution, it was simply disgusting. Same goes for In the Lake of the Woods, Wade had a secret life in Vietnam that affected his political life once it was no longer a secret. I think “Fog” of the tittle refers to the blindness in any military conflict. McNamara furnishes examples of how the most thoroughly through-out, justifiable war plans and strategies turned out after the fact not only to have been utterly wrong and misguided, but also dangerous and destructive. This made me reflect back to today's war with Iraq.
Overall, this documentary made me think throughout while watching it. The domestic level of analysis for the Vietnam War called attention to the public opinion and demonstrations against the war putting pressure on the government to have a speedy resolution. This documentary gave different perspectives of the Vietnam War.
Avatar, Eh?
From time to time, The Awl offers its space to normal, everyday people with a perspective on national issues. Today, we're pleased to bring you this report by Maria Bustillos, who went to the movies this weekend.
So: Avatar. Here is a story with an alleged anti-corporatist message, underwritten by a huge corporation to the tune of $250 million plus. It preaches closeness with (outer-space) nature, but must have produced CO2 emissions at the rate of a dozen oil refineries. It alleges respect for women, who are shown to be uniformly, pornographically subservient to the alpha males. Its message is anti-violence, but it's also stuffed to the gills with the glorious super-lethal war machines from which toys and video games can and will be fashioned.
The whole of the planet Earth cringed when James Cameron shouted, "I'm the king of the world!" at the Oscars that one time. But did we learn our lesson? No, we did not. We gave this clown a quarter of a billion dollars to make an even more terrible movie. I am sorry Mary HK Choi et al, but I feel that you misled me gravely. What James Cameron knows about being a fanboy could be stuffed in a watch and rattled. He is entirely bereft of the crucial ingredient of fanboyness: humility.
I don't say that Avatar is not beautiful to look at; it is. I saw it at a 3D IMAX theater and found the images dazzling, if Disneyfied. However, there is not enough beauty in the world to wallpaper over this writer-director's crude outlook. He is bully and a boor, graceless, swaggering, self-congratulatory, puerile. He has got the emotional nuance and literary sensitivity of spackle.
The worst thing about this movie is the pretend-not-glorifying of violence. Its lush, slow pleasures are taken in the final gasping breath of a fantastical beast, in long, loving strokes of the camera over scenes of annihilation, over explosions, and people impaled on poisoned arrows, over blue bodies exploding out of helicopters or off of psychedelic space-pterodactyls. These brutalities are expiated with a line or two of portentous Native Hokum every now and then.
The impression of complete hypocrisy was in no way lessened by the glossy war-porn recruitment commercial for the National Guard, produced in exactly the same style and character, that played before the movie (though with no aliens, I guess, and not, thankfully, in 3D).
But no, the really worst thing is the ham-fistedness of Avatar's alternate history. Okay, so this time the Native Americans are able to throw off the European oppressor. Note well, however, that l'homme sauvage, for all the purity of his Native Wisdom, is still quite helpless without a white man to show him what the hell to do. So what if this "hero" "goes native," just like in Dances With Wolves? (Even as he goes about gathering "the horse people of the plains" to assist him.) It still takes a white man to tame the really BIG dragon, and to outfox the enemy.
He will also take the "best" woman, the noblest, the highest born, the smartest, whose token resistance will dwindle its sorry way from faux-contempt to near-drooling adoration in a matter of days. Her former man will die, and her father will, too; her whole civilization will lie in ruins. She will pretty much get down on her knees to thank this white man, anyway (see Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies for a gruesome but believable explanation of the underpinnings of that whole business).
Notice how nobody-not the Marines, not the brilliant scientist, not the wise blue natives-can make a single successful move without this white guy. They are all completely powerless and vulnerable until he comes along with his fake self-deprecation and his blunt, forceful manner and his great big muscles. Pathetic. I can't believe more people aren't all grossed out, here.
p.s. How come the lovers don't mutually plug their ponytailed braid genital things together? They plug 'em into everything else.
Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.
Avatar and The Vietnam War
For those of you who have not seen Avatar, GO SEE IT! A. It is extremely awesome.
B. It's 3D viewing adds to its awesomeness
C. (Most importantly) it can be related to the Vietnam War!
So for those of you who have not seen it I will try not to be a spoiler. For the most part it is about normal people trying to take over, in a way that would destroy the country it is attempting to take over/move, for its own personal benefit. In Avatar I noticed that people invaded in on the native's land without even considering what it would do to the native people. They did not care if the people suffered great lose. They did not care what the people of the land may have held dear to their hearts or believed in. They did not care for anything, but creating a benefit for themselves. Sound at all familiar?
I feel this is in a lot of ways how Americans acted during the Vietnam war. We just walked in there without being asked, in hopes of not spreading communism and did not care if communism was what they believed in. America much like the american people in this movie stepped into Vietnam without even stopping to consider how much damage to all the Vietnamese families their actions would cause. Okay maybe they did "consider" it, but apparently that didn't stop them, much like it didn't stop the people in Avatar.
Again trying to avoid being a spoiler so I will leave it at that for those of you who have watched it to ponder further, and for those of you who have not watched it I suggest you do so that you can too link it with the Vietnam tragedy.
Fog of Culture
I didn’t like Fog of War as much as I liked Hearts and Minds. I just couldn’t ever really get into the movie. I feel like the music had a lot to do with that though. It was like ballet meets the war? and it just really threw me off. However, I did note some things that really peaked my interest. I really enjoyed Robert McNamara. He seemed to be pretty real and didn’t back down on his answers and when he said he wasn’t going to comment on certain questions he stood firm. Although many viewed him as “unqualified” for the job I feel he did as good a job as anyone else could have done. I feel he made strong points by using his hindsight of the events of the Vietnam War.
The phone calls between McNamara and Kennedy were also very interesting to me as was his relationship with LBJ. The interviewer straight up asked him if he thought the War would have played out differently if Kennedy had lived. McNamara is hesitant to respond. I believe the War would have been very different.
I also thought the artistic expression of the Domino Theory was really cool. Having the last domino fall on Saigon was another nice touch. This coupled with this music really did intensify and make the American fear of communism come to life.
“We didn’t know the well enough to empathize.”
“We saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War, not what they saw it as, the Civil War.”
This really reminded me of Susan Sontag and Trip to Hanoi. I am now a pretty firm believer that a huge contributing factor to us losing the War was our complete and total lack of knowledge of the Vietnamese culture and history.
Robert McNamara goes on to recount his conversation with one of the Vietnamese officials where he says if we have known the history of Vietnam would have seen that they were not an ally of China.
This movie, although it was difficult for me to watch, really had me thinking about how knowing your audience in both rhetoric and a war is so very important. If you don’t know your audience you really just can’t win at anything.
Know Your Enemy
Robert McNamara seemed to play the role of a hardass from the beginning of The Fog of War when he stared coldly at the annoying interviewer. McNamara did not act like any 85-year-old I have ever seen or met. His personality was sharp, his memory was perfect, and he was extremely emotional and honest through his “live and learn” theme about the United States military involvements.
The Fog of War provided the deepest insight of Vietnam that I have seen thus far. McNamara certainly knows more about it than anyone, and I found his phone call recordings with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson absolutely fascinating. Aside from the war in Vietnam, McNamara made me realize how close we came to Nuclear War, or, World War III. Highlighting Lessons 1-11 was very effective because it structured the documentary around specific points. I found the most interesting lesson to be Lesson 1, which stated “Empathize with your enemy.” What is ironic about this is that John Kennedy and his Executive Committee were able to see the Cuban Missile Crisis through the eyes of the Cubans and Soviet Union, which eventually prevented World War III from ever occurring.
As McNamara explained, the Kennedy Administration initially wanted to destroy Cuba upon learning about the missiles they had facing the United States. However, they were advised to negotiate with Khrushchev because some felt that if he prevented the US from destroying Cuba, he would feel victorious…and sometimes that is enough. This showed that the United States was capable of solving a major problem without war, but they were unable to do the same in Vietnam simply because we were too ignorant to understand their reasons for fighting. McNamara explained that he eventually learned through a dinner with a former Vietnamese government official that they saw us as another version of the French, who they just defeated. Vietnam had a clear reason for fighting, whereas the US seemed confused for years. Even LBJ and JFK seemed confused when it came time to address the public about Vietnam.
I also noticed that McNamara was truly sorry for some of the mistakes he made. His job was considered extremely stressful for obvious reasons. I believe he really did want the troops out of Vietnam, but because of the different perspectives he had with LBJ and other government officials this did not happen while he was Secretary of Defense. However, over the course of the documentary I learned that many people respected McNamara and thought of him as someone with all the answers. I was confused how this was possible since he did not even consider himself qualified for the position after being president of Ford Motor Company. I got my answer toward the end of the film when McNamara says “Don’t ever answer the questions asked of you; answer the questions you wish they would have asked.” The man must have been such a convincing speaker that people went along with him. I am not saying he was manipulative because he does not come across that way, but he was definitely intelligent enough to not allow the country to go completely out of control.
Overall, this film provided stellar footage from various US conflicts, and director Errol Morris intensified the interview scenes by focusing solely on McNamara. It is interesting that the annoying guy in the background was never shown. Perhaps this is because he probably did not know a damn thing compared to McNamara. The close up coverage of McNamara made me feel personally connected to him because it was as if he was talking to me in particular.
The Fog of War provided the deepest insight of Vietnam that I have seen thus far. McNamara certainly knows more about it than anyone, and I found his phone call recordings with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson absolutely fascinating. Aside from the war in Vietnam, McNamara made me realize how close we came to Nuclear War, or, World War III. Highlighting Lessons 1-11 was very effective because it structured the documentary around specific points. I found the most interesting lesson to be Lesson 1, which stated “Empathize with your enemy.” What is ironic about this is that John Kennedy and his Executive Committee were able to see the Cuban Missile Crisis through the eyes of the Cubans and Soviet Union, which eventually prevented World War III from ever occurring.
As McNamara explained, the Kennedy Administration initially wanted to destroy Cuba upon learning about the missiles they had facing the United States. However, they were advised to negotiate with Khrushchev because some felt that if he prevented the US from destroying Cuba, he would feel victorious…and sometimes that is enough. This showed that the United States was capable of solving a major problem without war, but they were unable to do the same in Vietnam simply because we were too ignorant to understand their reasons for fighting. McNamara explained that he eventually learned through a dinner with a former Vietnamese government official that they saw us as another version of the French, who they just defeated. Vietnam had a clear reason for fighting, whereas the US seemed confused for years. Even LBJ and JFK seemed confused when it came time to address the public about Vietnam.
I also noticed that McNamara was truly sorry for some of the mistakes he made. His job was considered extremely stressful for obvious reasons. I believe he really did want the troops out of Vietnam, but because of the different perspectives he had with LBJ and other government officials this did not happen while he was Secretary of Defense. However, over the course of the documentary I learned that many people respected McNamara and thought of him as someone with all the answers. I was confused how this was possible since he did not even consider himself qualified for the position after being president of Ford Motor Company. I got my answer toward the end of the film when McNamara says “Don’t ever answer the questions asked of you; answer the questions you wish they would have asked.” The man must have been such a convincing speaker that people went along with him. I am not saying he was manipulative because he does not come across that way, but he was definitely intelligent enough to not allow the country to go completely out of control.
Overall, this film provided stellar footage from various US conflicts, and director Errol Morris intensified the interview scenes by focusing solely on McNamara. It is interesting that the annoying guy in the background was never shown. Perhaps this is because he probably did not know a damn thing compared to McNamara. The close up coverage of McNamara made me feel personally connected to him because it was as if he was talking to me in particular.
Fog of War
I gained so much knowledge for Fog of War. So far, the movies and documentaries we have watched have been more entertaining and appealed to emotions more than anything else. Although Fog of War was not as entertaining as the others, I thought it was much more educational. It covered so much information of the "behind the scenes" and pointed out things that were going on that we didn't know about.
I didn't have a clue who McNamara was before watching this documentary but I can definitely see why he was so controversial when he was Secretary of Defense and why he had so many critics. A lot of times we look at government officials jobs and criticize them and tell them how bad they are at what they are doing but we never put ourselves in their shoes and think about how hard their job is so it was good to see someone who played such an important role in the war their story and how they handled everything. I have a lot of respect for McNamara. He went through everything that happened, good and bad and didn't show one side of it. At the end of Fog of War he talks about how he feels very accomplished for what he has done but also deeply sorry for the mistakes he has made. He explains that he is thinking in hindsight when talking about everything for this documentary but when he was actually going through it and making these difficult decisions, he didn't have hindsight. He made the best moves he could with what he was dealt with.
The lessons that were outlined by McNamara were effective because it emphasized the key points and they were good ones at that. Lesson 9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil. This lesson is what I think Americans today lose sight of somewhat. I liked how he believes this but at the same time he says, "Human beings must stop killing other human beings...At times you will have to engage in evil, but minimize it." McNamara was dead on with this statement, we have to find some middle ground with this lesson. A lot of people blamed McNamara for everything bad that happened during that time, but he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. His job was to help the President get what he wanted carried out and accomplished. This was not a problem with Kennedy because they were on the same page, however when Johnson became President a lot of things changed. McNamara respected Johnson greatly but they did not agree on our position in the war. He was fired/resigned from the job and awarded the medal of freedom which says a lot about McNamara's character. The quote that best sums up the documentary for McNamara is "I'm damned if I do, I'm damned if I don't, I'd rathe be damned if I don't." He had many decisions and positions to make and he did the best he could at the time. I think he did exceptionally well at being Secretary of Defense and although many criticize him, could they have done a better job? I think no matter what happens, there will be those people who love you and those who hate you.
I loved the domino effect. Nothing was said about them but the metaphor was there and it was bold and it was a great addition to the documentary rhetorically speaking. As little kids, we all play with dominos and line them up and see all of them fall one after another just by pushing the first one. They were lined up in one line and then split into two different lines. This is a great way to think about war. When you make one decision, you may not realize what all is following but it leads to this huge train of decisions and at some points you choose to go one way over another, but in the end, it's all over and all there is left to do is pick up the damage that you caused.
Fog of War
Out of all the movies we've watched so far, this was my least favorite. I think it's interesting to see what McNamara's overall strategy and justification of the war, but it didn't interest me enough to hold my attention. When remembering the movie, the first thing that comes to mind is the soundtrack. I really liked how the music went along with the interview. It was a change since other documentaries I've seen had no background music. It really made everything much more dramatic.
When lesson one (Empathize with your enemy) was revealed, I did not expect the lesson to be a military strategy. I found it interesting that McNamara used empathy as a way to get inside the enemy's head and see how they see America. I learned about a similar method in my sociology class as well but never related it to wars. I always viewed empathy as a good thing that showed how kind a person is but McNamara gave it a negative meaning because he used it so that Americans could win. This really contrasted with my view of empathy and I wish he would have used another word.
McNamara seems like a tough, opinionated man but I was glad to see a softer side of him when he got all choked up about Kennedy's death. It really made him more human in my eyes and not just a general-like figure focused on just winning. He also seemed more appealing to me because he admitted that the U.S. government was partly responsible for Diem's coupe. He also seemed to truly believe that America was fighting communism and not just there for financial purposes because he mentioned that Vietnam was an element of the Cold War. Seeing the pictures of his family also softened my view of the man because it reminded me that he was also a father and a husband. It made me think about my own father and what it would be like if he had to carry this heavy responsibility.
I found it admirable that McNamara actually went to Vietnam and met with a former prime minister. It seems like the other major American players involved didn't go to Vietnam and that they just dealt with the situation from a distance without really knowing everything because they hadn't actually gone to Vietnam. I may be wrong. The presidents and other important people might have gone but I do know that McNamara went and I respect him for that. He mentioned that the prime minister argued that Vietnam just wants independence and said they fought China for many years. This gave me a flashback to the beginning of the semester and how accurate my research was.
McNamara made some points that I had never thought of before. He said that he made the decisions he made to avoid other big things like war with China and a nuclear war. I had never considered how the Vietnam War affected America's relationship with other major countries such as China. China seemed like it had little to do with what was going on in Vietnam so I was surprised when he pointed this out. I guess the war could have escalated to something a lot worse and it made me wonder how the whole world was affected by this war - the rest of Asia, Europe, Latin America - or if they were even affected at all.
In one part of the movie, a speaker claimed that the Vietnam War was a war against tyranny and this is exactly what I remembered from watching the news after 9/11 happened and we declared war. It's a scary thought and as I watch more of these movies, I notice more similarities between the Vietnam War and the current one.
Overall, the movie seemed heavily biased in America's favor. McNamara made several arguments and justifications that made me feel more empathic for the American cause but not enough to make me personally feel that we had the right to be in Vietnam because I still don't. The organization of the movie into lessons was effective for me. It made everything more understandable and I knew what the overall message was for each particular section. I liked that this movie showed a different point of view and made me consider new ideas about the war in general. Still not my favorite, but still a good movie.
When lesson one (Empathize with your enemy) was revealed, I did not expect the lesson to be a military strategy. I found it interesting that McNamara used empathy as a way to get inside the enemy's head and see how they see America. I learned about a similar method in my sociology class as well but never related it to wars. I always viewed empathy as a good thing that showed how kind a person is but McNamara gave it a negative meaning because he used it so that Americans could win. This really contrasted with my view of empathy and I wish he would have used another word.
McNamara seems like a tough, opinionated man but I was glad to see a softer side of him when he got all choked up about Kennedy's death. It really made him more human in my eyes and not just a general-like figure focused on just winning. He also seemed more appealing to me because he admitted that the U.S. government was partly responsible for Diem's coupe. He also seemed to truly believe that America was fighting communism and not just there for financial purposes because he mentioned that Vietnam was an element of the Cold War. Seeing the pictures of his family also softened my view of the man because it reminded me that he was also a father and a husband. It made me think about my own father and what it would be like if he had to carry this heavy responsibility.
I found it admirable that McNamara actually went to Vietnam and met with a former prime minister. It seems like the other major American players involved didn't go to Vietnam and that they just dealt with the situation from a distance without really knowing everything because they hadn't actually gone to Vietnam. I may be wrong. The presidents and other important people might have gone but I do know that McNamara went and I respect him for that. He mentioned that the prime minister argued that Vietnam just wants independence and said they fought China for many years. This gave me a flashback to the beginning of the semester and how accurate my research was.
McNamara made some points that I had never thought of before. He said that he made the decisions he made to avoid other big things like war with China and a nuclear war. I had never considered how the Vietnam War affected America's relationship with other major countries such as China. China seemed like it had little to do with what was going on in Vietnam so I was surprised when he pointed this out. I guess the war could have escalated to something a lot worse and it made me wonder how the whole world was affected by this war - the rest of Asia, Europe, Latin America - or if they were even affected at all.
In one part of the movie, a speaker claimed that the Vietnam War was a war against tyranny and this is exactly what I remembered from watching the news after 9/11 happened and we declared war. It's a scary thought and as I watch more of these movies, I notice more similarities between the Vietnam War and the current one.
Overall, the movie seemed heavily biased in America's favor. McNamara made several arguments and justifications that made me feel more empathic for the American cause but not enough to make me personally feel that we had the right to be in Vietnam because I still don't. The organization of the movie into lessons was effective for me. It made everything more understandable and I knew what the overall message was for each particular section. I liked that this movie showed a different point of view and made me consider new ideas about the war in general. Still not my favorite, but still a good movie.
War is complex and confusing.
I feel as though as we go deeper into war in general, not even the Vietnam War (because the Vietnam War seems to be the most confusing of them all), that I've began to lose what little interpretation of war I had when I started this class. I think Fog of War not only made me think and rewind more than any other movie we've watched so far but for it to be basically about one man is just amazing to me. For one person to have such a huge impact on our history, even more so than the president's he served, just blows my mind.
To start off, since our RA is about truth, I'm going to tell the truth about what I felt about the documentary. I felt that this documentary was much different from hearts and minds since it revolved around one person and though the content itself was similar it wasn't painting a bad picture of either side, it stayed relatively neutral throughout most of the movie. With that being said, I struggled to stay awake at some parts. Not that the movie was not interesting but I think some parts just put me to sleep, because I was very intellectually intrigued with what McNamara was saying.
The format in which the documentary was laid out I think was one factor that I liked about the movie, like Erica said, it gave you an initial preview of what was to be talked about or what we could gain from this part of the movie. The style in which the documentary was filmed was similar to Hearts and Minds with the interview followed by the footage but only one person was being interviewed, but that was more than enough. The way that McNamara spoke about his past definitely made it feel like he was talking to me, he would smile and be excited or laugh at something he thought was funny, or slow down and speak calmly about a serious matter, or choke up and pause at stories that were heavy on his heart.
As I was watched the movie the beginning scenes talked about his life, where he grew up, how he met his wife, his reasons for abandoning Harvard, etc. so I figured it would be like an autobiographical movie, but as the film progressed, it was so deeply rooted in politics that I completely forgot that it was still about his life, but it still was about his life, his life had become consumed by politics. I think this is when I began to realize that even with a former Secretary of Defense who was THERE during all of this, the Vietnam War, Cuban Missile Crisis, etc., detailing out what had happened, I was still having a hard time registering everything being thrown at me. I thought it was amazing how a man in his 80's could remember so much down to every detail of America's history in the past 40 years. Because he remembered everything else so clearly, it made me wonder about the Agent Orange since when questioned he said he forgot, which is believable for a man in his old age but after he just told us his life story from memory, he wants to imply that he forgot about a major decision that killed hundreds of civilians and deformed many more?
I think now that I reflect on the lessons of war that McNamara detailed, I think their connection to war is solidly connected to rhetoric as well. For instance, the first lesson, empathize with your enemy, that's basically knowing what your audience's background is and presenting your argument with their background in mind to get what you want. Like McNamara said, we knew nothing about the Vietnamese, we couldn't empathize with them and thus arguing with them our standpoint that they didn't believe in was useless and we didn't listen to their side so it was a big communication barrier. This is further shown when McNamara visits Vietnam later in his life after the war and has lunch with the Vietnamese and the Vietnamese man (whom I forgot his name..) questioned if McNamara had ever read a history book and that their goal was for independence the whole time, revealing a clear misconception between Vietnamese and US powers.
To start off, since our RA is about truth, I'm going to tell the truth about what I felt about the documentary. I felt that this documentary was much different from hearts and minds since it revolved around one person and though the content itself was similar it wasn't painting a bad picture of either side, it stayed relatively neutral throughout most of the movie. With that being said, I struggled to stay awake at some parts. Not that the movie was not interesting but I think some parts just put me to sleep, because I was very intellectually intrigued with what McNamara was saying.
The format in which the documentary was laid out I think was one factor that I liked about the movie, like Erica said, it gave you an initial preview of what was to be talked about or what we could gain from this part of the movie. The style in which the documentary was filmed was similar to Hearts and Minds with the interview followed by the footage but only one person was being interviewed, but that was more than enough. The way that McNamara spoke about his past definitely made it feel like he was talking to me, he would smile and be excited or laugh at something he thought was funny, or slow down and speak calmly about a serious matter, or choke up and pause at stories that were heavy on his heart.
As I was watched the movie the beginning scenes talked about his life, where he grew up, how he met his wife, his reasons for abandoning Harvard, etc. so I figured it would be like an autobiographical movie, but as the film progressed, it was so deeply rooted in politics that I completely forgot that it was still about his life, but it still was about his life, his life had become consumed by politics. I think this is when I began to realize that even with a former Secretary of Defense who was THERE during all of this, the Vietnam War, Cuban Missile Crisis, etc., detailing out what had happened, I was still having a hard time registering everything being thrown at me. I thought it was amazing how a man in his 80's could remember so much down to every detail of America's history in the past 40 years. Because he remembered everything else so clearly, it made me wonder about the Agent Orange since when questioned he said he forgot, which is believable for a man in his old age but after he just told us his life story from memory, he wants to imply that he forgot about a major decision that killed hundreds of civilians and deformed many more?
I think now that I reflect on the lessons of war that McNamara detailed, I think their connection to war is solidly connected to rhetoric as well. For instance, the first lesson, empathize with your enemy, that's basically knowing what your audience's background is and presenting your argument with their background in mind to get what you want. Like McNamara said, we knew nothing about the Vietnamese, we couldn't empathize with them and thus arguing with them our standpoint that they didn't believe in was useless and we didn't listen to their side so it was a big communication barrier. This is further shown when McNamara visits Vietnam later in his life after the war and has lunch with the Vietnamese and the Vietnamese man (whom I forgot his name..) questioned if McNamara had ever read a history book and that their goal was for independence the whole time, revealing a clear misconception between Vietnamese and US powers.
A New insight with Fog of War
I agree with Cameron on the fact that Fog of War shows us a new way to look at it and I also enjoyed the insightful comments of McNamara. I liked seeing the lessons learned outlined in the beginning of each new section of the documentary. I thought that was an interesting way to do the documentary to prepare the viewers for what they were about to see. Going along with this I see differences between this documentary and Hearts and Minds. Although this documentary was also told by a certain side of the situation I did not feel it was as biased or as pulling in on direction as the other. I felt like it was stating facts that we learned from, while questioning the truth and moral reasoning of the situation to see whether what we did was right or wrong. With the headings of the lessons we felt that America did learn from mistakes made and now seem to understand why the mistakes were made in the first place.
I felt this documentary goes along with the truth that we are studying much like many others do. It makes us feel that truth is what is presented to us in this documentary and makes us see how Americans thought rather than the bashing of Americans seen through Hearts and Minds. Truth to McNamara could very well be different than others seen, proved through the director of Hearts and Minds. When seeing Hearts and Minds before this one we saw the differing of viewpoints from what McNamara says, but because McNamara saw what went on in the inside of US operations we are likely to sympathize with him and see what he says as being the truth even if it may be a stretch from it.
Overall I liked the documentary because I felt like I saw a new prospective from the America side, which I had grown to hate. It was nice to see one of the men involved on our side of the war explaining what went on behind the scenes on our stance. It also made me dislike Johnson though, but that could possibly be because of the bias McNamara had for him. In the end it was insightful to view.
Oh My Dear, Did You Hear What That Website Said?
Are random statistics on websites rhetoric? Even if most of those websites have not built up their ethos individually, I believe the access to so much information with just a click of a button or a tap of a key has built up ethos enough for the internet as a whole. For this reason, even though they are all just statistics on different pages of the internet, don’t they do a lot to convince us to believe something? For example, for one of my observations, I pointed out that 17,000 married men died in the Vietnam War.
Let us start with the website’s rhetoric. They know that people so easily access the internet and that many people are too lazy to look for actual and credible sources. So they can put any kind of statistic they want, and stray us in their direction. As long as it makes sense. 17,000 married men could have easily died in the Vietnam War from what I know. What makes that number weird or odd? Nothing. It is plausible. Therefore, it is “correct.” Mission Accomplished.
Now, there is another way the website could have made their info a little more believable. Something that we have been taught over and over again to use in our rhetoric, and that is our opinion or our analysis. In my observation, I not only pointed out that 17,000 married men died in the Vietnam War. I also pointed out that if half of those married men had at least one child, that is 8500 children without a father. By elaborating on the point, it no longer is an assumption. Instead, the assumption is that half the men have children. The audience is now wondering if that postulation is true, and has already accepted the first one.
Also, I have created a sense of pathos, not for myself, but for the children without a father. This draws the audience in even more, and now, instead of focusing on if it is true or not, they start feeling bad for the kids who will be deprived of a father. And just like that, they are convinced that 17,000 married men died in the Vietnam War. Now, the most powerful weapon in rhetoric will be used, and that is the word of mouth. Pretty soon, everyone thinks that there were 8500 children out there without a father during the Vietnam War.
If I wanted to make it even juicer and more plausible, I would have gone into detail about how that might have affected the children’s lives. That was excessively easy. So the point of all this is that maybe, instead of trying to change the rhetoric used, we should analyze the rhetoric we read, watch, and hear about. Try to form our opinions.
Fog of War a new perspective
The Fog of War helped to show a different viewpoint on the Vietnam War from Hearts and Minds. I liked being able to hear what Secretary Mcnamara had to say about his entire life and espcecially his comments on the war and what went on when he was Secretary of Defense. Also with the balance of recorded conversations that involved him and the President helped to really create the mindset that our highest leaders were in at the time. I liked how Mcnamara was quite honest about the Tonkin Gulf and other aspects about the Vietnam era and how he described his life up till then too. Especially his time during WWII and at Ford Motor Company helping to show that this man was not a warmonger that most people thought he was but instead showed he was a normal man that was very smart who got stuck in a sticky situation. Along with this he shows mistakes that happened by how he reveals that Tonkin did not happen, but was overreaction by radar officials and military officials. This helped to reveal how Vietnam from the start was being started by mistakes that helps to lead to more and more mistakes.
These mistakes and the realization of many of these are expressed when Mcnamara describes when he was in the meeting in the 1990's with North Vietnamese leaders how they told him they were fighting for independence and the unity of Vietnam while he expressed his thoughts that U.S. was fighting to preserve democracy helped to really show that neither Vietnam or the United States understood each other what so ever. This helped to play in with some of the lessons he learned and through this helps to show why the U.S. was always doomed to fail in Vietnam. No matter how many air or ground campaigns we used the Vietnamese would fight on to gain their independence especially since they have been fighting foreign invaders for so many years. The movie also had scenes such as the dominos lined up knocking one down at time helped to illustrate the idea of the domino effect of communism that the United States believed in that helped to lead to engagements such as the Korean War and eventually the Vietnam War. I liked how the director was able to put a scene like this to help illustrate how this one idea helped to spread so much war across Southeast Asia and further showed how American leaders were completely wrong about their strategy in Vietnam by how Vietnam did not spread communism to the area, but instead they just wanted their independence. The people of Vietnam wanted to be finally free from foreign aggression and thats all they cared about. Mcnamara really helped to put everything all in perspective with his thoughts on the war and how he told through his on mind what was going on in the Vietnam era, his interview helped to contrast greatly with Hearts and Minds and showed an American leaders perspective.
These mistakes and the realization of many of these are expressed when Mcnamara describes when he was in the meeting in the 1990's with North Vietnamese leaders how they told him they were fighting for independence and the unity of Vietnam while he expressed his thoughts that U.S. was fighting to preserve democracy helped to really show that neither Vietnam or the United States understood each other what so ever. This helped to play in with some of the lessons he learned and through this helps to show why the U.S. was always doomed to fail in Vietnam. No matter how many air or ground campaigns we used the Vietnamese would fight on to gain their independence especially since they have been fighting foreign invaders for so many years. The movie also had scenes such as the dominos lined up knocking one down at time helped to illustrate the idea of the domino effect of communism that the United States believed in that helped to lead to engagements such as the Korean War and eventually the Vietnam War. I liked how the director was able to put a scene like this to help illustrate how this one idea helped to spread so much war across Southeast Asia and further showed how American leaders were completely wrong about their strategy in Vietnam by how Vietnam did not spread communism to the area, but instead they just wanted their independence. The people of Vietnam wanted to be finally free from foreign aggression and thats all they cared about. Mcnamara really helped to put everything all in perspective with his thoughts on the war and how he told through his on mind what was going on in the Vietnam era, his interview helped to contrast greatly with Hearts and Minds and showed an American leaders perspective.
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