Premium Essay

Politics and Film Essay

In:

Submitted By mikyr92
Words 2039
Pages 9
The Vietnam War was the longest lasting military conflict in American History. What was originally fear of communist expansion became one of America’s most expensive and strenuous efforts, consuming over fifty eight thousand American lives. As casualties increased throughout the 1960’s, so did the domestic opposition to the war. In turn, large-scale protests and a lack of trust between government and its people rose. Today many of the war’s details remain unclear; however, Hollywood has had its hand at depicting what occurred. This paper provides an analysis of the Vietnam War, as well as its depiction in the 21st century film industry. “The Deer Hunter,” “Born on the 4th of July” and “Casualties of War” are three different interpretations of the war in both foreign and domestic settings. Each film offers a different point of view, varying from social, political, and military perspectives.
Following the Second World War, the French set forth an effort to regain their former colonial possession of Indo-China, which had been occupied by the Japanese throughout the war. After nearly a decade, the French were unable to establish a presence in what they called their “inheritance”, and as a result withdrew under the Geneva Accord in 1954. Meanwhile conflict within the regions of Vietnam created instability. A communist regime called the Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAVN), headed by Ho Chi Minh obtained power of the North. In contrast Ngo Dinh Diem established an interim government that eventually formed the Republic of Vietnam in the South. In an effort to conquer Diem and the South, the communists quickly gave support to their southern counterpart, the National Liberation Front (the NLF or Vietcong).
Throughout this entire period the Americans were becoming increasingly concerned over the situation in Vietnam. In an effort to avoid direct involvement, the Americans

Similar Documents

Free Essay

Term Paper

...1. Develop a thesis pertaining to the assigned film text and whether or not it, the film, in your view has the power to transform one’s political sensibilities. Your argument should express your point of view regarding the politics of difference, political sensibilities, and political transformation(s) as related to the film. Remember, you’re writing (developing) an analytical essay. Submit yourthesis statement in the box below:: The film Milk proves that one can alter his or her political sensibilities on any issue when he or she is presented with a new way of viewing things. 2. Develop three (3) topic sentences that articulate the major ideas that will comprise the body of your essay. Remember that your topic sentences should clearly state the argument or point to be made in the respective paragraphs. Submit your topic sentences in the box below:: 1. Milk demonstrated to Cleve Jones the responsibility that every person has as a citizen to help one's government and society grow and become better. 2. Harvey Milk guided the "boy from Minnesota" and helped him understand that no matter how anyone judges him, he is not in any way less than others simply because he is gay. 3. Milk showed Scott Smith that it is all right to be the first person to start a group to challenge something in politics, and that that group will soon gain popularity and appreciation. 3. Identify three (3) scenes from the film that support your thesis statement. Briefly explain.: 1. A young boy named Cleve...

Words: 550 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

End of Cold War

...TERM PAPER COMPARATIVE POLITICS By PRAKASH BHANDARI {SAU/IR (M)/2015/O8} Submitted to: Prof. Siddharth Mallavarapu Date of submission: 02/11/2015 Word Count: 3520 approx. (excluding bibliography) Table of contents S.No. | Title | Page no. | I. | AbstractIntroduction | 3 3 | 1. | Satyajit Ray: The Master Storyteller: | 4 | 2. | Maqbool Fida Husain | 6 | 3. | Arundhati Roy: | 8 | III. | Conclusion | 10 | Abstract: Basically, before the 20th century, the study of the politics was shaped by history, ethics, philosophy, and law, but from the late 19th century onwards, scientific approach to study politics gradually emerged. Comparative politics, in my view, do not study and analyze big issues of politics only. It also provides us the stage to study and analyze the political, social and economic situation of a particular society or state from the lens of art, literature, cinema, dramas, etc. Not only that, art and literature are the mirror of the society, so to understand particular society and political system, studying and analyzing art, literature is important. Being a student of comparative politics, here I have a good opportunity to study and compare three distinct images of a particular society. In this term paper, I am going to study three distinct pillars of Indian art and literature, which represent three different images and ideas. Satyajit Ray, MF Husain, and Arundhati Roy are an Indian film director, painter, and writer respectively...

Words: 3878 - Pages: 16

Free Essay

Philosophy

...collects a series of essays that link new developments in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and recent trends in contemporary cinema. Though Lacanian theory has long had a privileged place in the analysis of film, film theory has tended to ignore some of Lacan’s most important ideas. As a result, Lacanian film theory has never properly integrated the disruptive and troubling aspects of the filmic experience that result from the encounter with the Real that this experience makes possible. Many contemporary theorists emphasize the importance of the encounter with the Real in Lacan’s thought, but rarely in discussions of film. By bringing the encounter with the Real into the dialogue of film theory, the contributors to this volume present a new version of Lacan to the world of film studies. These essays bring this rediscovered Lacan to bear on contemporary cinema through analysis of a wide variety of films, including Memento, Eyes Wide Shut, Breaking the Waves, and Fight Club. The films discussed here demand a turn to Lacanian theory because they emphasize the disruptive role of the Real and of jouissance in the experience of the human subject. There is a growing number of films in contemporary cinema that speak to film’s power to challenge and disturb the complacency of spectators, and the essays in Lacan and Contemporary Film analyze some of these films and bring their power to light. Because of its dual focus on developments in Lacanian theory and in contemporary film, this collection...

Words: 532 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Annotated Bibilography

...Television in different countries with different cultures and languages. The reception of the film can be seen as a “cultural process” or Cultural globalization which is the intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe . Academic Sources 1) Mollet, T. 2013. “With a smile and a song …”: Walt Disney and the birth of the American fairy tale.” Marvels & Tales 27 (1): 109-24. In this journal article, Mollet reviews on how Walt Disney’s production is now being seen as crucial to the construction of the modern American society through his contribution to the formation of a new United States nationalism . The author approaches the topic using cultural studies and textual analysis ofn Disney fairy tales to exemplify how they reflect the dominant (?) culture of America. Her research focuses on analysing Disney films such as “Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs”, “Three Little Pigs”, “Wizard of Oz” and how these films and their characters portray the unstable society and culture of America during the great depression and other different time periodslines. The journal is useful for my topic as Mollet explains how Disney films are produced to reflect the culture of the American society. In relation to my case study, I seek to explain how Disney’s FROZEN reception can be seen as a global (?) “cultural process”. The limitation of this journal is that it only mentions three of the Disney films dating back to the early 1930s, thus there is a need for...

Words: 3008 - Pages: 13

Free Essay

Argo Essay

...Analytical Essay Assignment, CPOL128 BB0, Politics and Film, Summer 2013 (Revised) Grade Weight: 20% of your final grade in this course. Due Date: Wednesday July 24th, 2013, hard copy to be submitted in class. IF you run into computer or printer problems, you may ask for permission to submit the essay by email before 11:59 pm that same day. This will be possible ONLY with advance permission, otherwise electronic versions of the essay will not be accepted. Essay Specifications: 5 to 6 pages, double spaced, 12 point font (the Title page and Works Cited should be on separate pages and do NOT count in the page count). Please submit it WITHOUT any cover (plastic or otherwise) stapled together (a stapler will be provided on the due day if you do not have one) with a cover page and Works Cited (neither of which page will be part of the page count). The minimum length is 5 full pages; the maximum is 6. If you submit an essay that is less that 5 pages or more than 6, you risk losing ½ % per half page over or under. Late essays will only be accepted with a doctor’s note or similar documentation to explain and support the late submission. HOWEVER: If you find yourself nowhere near finished as the deadline nears, please inform me; a one or two-day extensions may be granted if requested in advance. Don’t just give up and decide not to submit your essay. No one can afford to lose 20% of their final mark. Without documentation (described above) or without an extension...

Words: 1241 - Pages: 5

Free Essay

Land Without Bread

...There are numerous ethnographic surrealist films that have an intriguing relationship to aesthetics and politics. A film that exemplifies this relationship is “Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan” (Land Without Bread). This film is only 27-minutes and is directed by the infamous Luis Bunuel in 1933. Bunuel was a Spanish filmmaker of the 1920’s to the 1970’s. He is often attributed to being one of the major contributors to the surrealist movement of the 1920’s. “Ethnographic surrealism is a utopian construct, a statement at once about past and future possibilities for cultural analysis.”(Clifford, 119) ‘Land Without Bread’ has a clear connection between politics and aesthetics. It uses many techniques, specifically the narrator and soundtrack, in order to enhance the ostensible political meaning of the film as well as link it to the ethnographic surrealist movement. Many ethnographic surrealist artists turned their attention to the problem of representing otherness. “Bunuel identified what he saw as a Surrealist tendency to “use” bourgeois society’s ‘other’s’ to negate the cultural status quo while never giving these others their due”(Lastra, 55). Land Without Bread is considered one of the earliest forms of ethnographic surrealism. Fatimah Rony describes Ethnographic cinema as “above all a cinema of the body: the focus is on the anatomy and gestures of the indigenous person, and on the body of the land they inhabit”(Rony, 111). While many film scholars describe “Land Without Bread” as...

Words: 1384 - Pages: 6

Free Essay

Student

...GEOGRAPHY OF THE MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA Geog 209 - Fall 2014 T-Th 12:00-1:20  Plus Discussion Section and evening films McKenzie 240A Prof. Shaul Cohen Condon 107G Tel. 346-4500 Office Hours Tuesday 12:00-1:00 OBA scohen@uoregon.edu GTFs Ashley Wall Jennings Office Hours M 1:00-2:00 ajenning@uoregon.edu Christine Carolan ccarolan@uoregon.edu   Purpose: This course explores the geography of the Middle East with an emphasis on politics, culture, and regional cohesion. Through a variety of sources including modern literature, film, images of landscape, traditional academic texts and the daily news, we will pursue an understanding of those elements that characterize the region, as well as those features that are distinct and mark different peoples and places. We will examine local, sub-national, national, and international issues relating to identity and status, history, environment, economy and other topics, in an attempt to create a portrait of daily life in the many venues of the region, whether they be urban or rural, coastal or desert, North African or Asian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Arab, Israeli, Turkish, Iranian, and so on. Our goal will be to use the information available to us to discern patterns in the region that allow us to grasp its richness and complexity, to gain a sense of its past, contextualize current changes, and to anticipate future directions. Resources: For this course we will work from a number of selected writings, and...

Words: 2186 - Pages: 9

Free Essay

11th Hour

...Below is a free excerpt of "The 11th Hour Reflection Paper" from Anti Essays, your source for free research papers, essays, and term paper examples. Leonardo DiCaprio narrates this empowering documentary that describes the history and impact of human beings to our planet, Earth. The film features some awe-inspiring footage that inspires one to rethink their lives and the impact that they have on the world. The many scientists, and other authorities on the topic, open the film by discussing some of the core issues that we are seeing all over the world. Such topics cover everything from ocean pollution to deforestation as well as the Global warming crises caused by Carbon dioxide emissions. The film stresses that because of our attitudes -which are based of selfishness, economic situation, politics etc. - we are living in disharmony with the planet. World renowned environmentalist David Suzuki reaches the conclusion that “We live in a human created environment where it’s easy to think that we are different from other creatures; were smart, we create our own habitat and grow up to believe that we don’t need nature”. In our eyes it’s the economy that’s the most important thing; we have yet to realize that as we destroy nature we are destroying ourselves. In order to make any real change to our world we have to change the mindset that humans are superior to nature. As the film continues, Author Thom Hartmann addresses the extreme rise in population. In the past our population...

Words: 359 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Strangelove Essay

...Dr. Strangelove Essay Relating Dr. Strangelove to International Politics As a class last week we watched a comedic satire on the context of mutual assured destruction between the U.S/Soviet Union during the Cold War. The movie is titled “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” by Stanley Kubrick. Throughout the film there are many situations in which the topics we have been studying in world politics are discussed in a comedic yet thought provoking way. The two most prevalent issues I saw displayed were the issues of information asymmetries/incomplete information, and the overwhelming presence of patriotism/nationalism themes displayed by the film to create a rally effect. I will discuss how these issues arose in the film and how they relate to international relations. There are many situations that arise in the film that incorporate a failure to communicate information. This actually seems to be the prevailing idea of the film. Information asymmetries occur when one side has more information than the other, giving more influencing power to the information holder. The first case involving information asymmetry occurs early in the film when General Ripper radios his orders to the bombers to drop hydrogen bombs on Russia (unconstitutionally), using a discrete three letter prefix that only he knows. He also requires all radios be confiscated, as they might be used to “issue propaganda” from the enemy. In doing this Ripper has created an information...

Words: 858 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Burden of Representation in Film

...implies a visual component to this act. In terms of minority groups, such as women, people of color, all non-normative sexualities, the issue of representation is one that many film theorists and filmmaker’s struggle to contend with. Both the scarcity and the importance of minority representations yield what many have called " the burden of representation". Since there are so few who have the means and access to the "apparatus of representation", they are often burdened with the responsibility of "speaking" for their whole group. Furthermore, as Kobena Mercer and bell hooks explore in their respective essays about black gay men and black females, the perspectives amongst the subaltern are not uniform and universal. The problem with the "burden of representation" is to determine who is the voice of the subaltern and how to infuse it in with mainstream culture. In their essays, Mercer and hooks explore the perspective of gay black men and women, respectively, as spectators whose view has been shaped by their marginalized status and provide a context to tackle the problem of representation. Mercer and hooks use aesthetic and spectatorial strategies, such as oppositional gaze, in their attempt to provide these oft ignored spectators with an empowering perspective that will enable them to transform the film experience. -------------------------------------------------              The ‘gaze’, as described by hooks, is a powerful mechanism among blacks, who have long been discouraged...

Words: 1146 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Red, White, Blue and You

... BLUE AND YOU Or, The Color of Politics An Essay by Charles Ebeling Presented at the Chicago Literary Club Election Eve, November 5, 2012 Copyright 2012 Charles Ebeling Dedicated to the memory of my good friend and neighbor Marshall J. Goldsmith Who was my guest at the Literary Club, October 24, 2011 Some us recall a great 1986 film called “The Color of Money,” and no, cynics, it wasn’t about politics. That film earned Paul Newman the Oscar for Best Actor as a pool hustler and stakehorse, who enjoyed a glass or two of J.T.S. Brown Kentucky bourbon, my favorite beverage from college days. But, unless I’ve missed a documentary or foreign film along these lines, I haven’t yet seen a dramatization called “The Color of Politics.” Yes, there is such a thing as “The Politics of Color,” but as social commentary, not as a film title. “The Color of Politics” is equally real though, and has a long history. I first dabbled in the palette of politics on election eve, 2008, when I presented before the club on that occasion an essay I’d titled “One Collage Too Many,” painting a picture...

Words: 2285 - Pages: 10

Free Essay

Work

...social change and a weapon of political liberation. This use of film as a social and political force emerged first in Latin America and spread to Africa and China, while also emerging in the First World countries including the U.S.S.R. and United States. The counterculture and the New Left were examples of an international politics of youth that focused on opposition to American involvement in Vietnam, critique of post-World War II capitalist society, and social-protest movements focused on equality of diverse groups. Eventually, radical leftism declined in the mid-1970s, but engaged filmmaking remained central to the micropolitics of the era. A June 1979 alternative-cinema conference in New York assembled over 400 political activists working in film and video in the United States. In some countries, government liberalization led to funding for militant film. The new Labour government in Britain assisted Liberation Film and Cinema Action, while the regional Maisons de la Culture allotted money for local media groups in France. Some parallel distribution and exhibition circuits proved successful in promoting films about nuclear power, day care, ethnic rights, and similar issues. In the United States and Great Britain, feminist filmmaking pioneered the turn to issue-centered, grassroots problems. By 1977, 250 women’s films had been produced in the United States alone. As the international women’s movement grew, films on rape, self-defense, and housekeeping were paralleled by explorations...

Words: 2878 - Pages: 12

Premium Essay

Film 7

...please answer the following short answer questions. All responses to questions should be one to two paragraphs, composed of five to seven sentences, in length. Your responses should include examples from the reading assignments. 1. Compare and contrast the "revolutionary" cinemas of Cuba and Argentina. Argentina was part of third world revolutionary cinema, Solanas and Getino’s “Third Cinema” manifesto essay set the agenda for Argentina’s film making, Solanas explained that not all big productions were necessarily first cinema. Writing later in 1970s, Getino noted that “the force and cohesion of the popular movements in Argentina –were not as strong as we had imagined” (Octavio Getino, “some Notes on the concept of a ‘Third Cinema,” in Tim Barnard, ed., Argentine Cinema [Toronto: Nightwood, 1986], p. 107). In Cuba, feminist filmmaking pioneered the turn to issue-centered, grassroots problems. As the international women’s movement grew, films on rape, self-defense and house-keeping were paralleled by explorations of women history which are epitomized in the U.S. films Union Maids (1976) and with babies and Banners (1978) by Women’s Labor History Project. During the next decade, minority women also played an increasing part in the changes in experimental cinema. 2. What factors influenced the development of militant black African cinema in the 1960s and 1970s? Global cold war tensions increased as political turmoil turned to violent conflict in developing Third world...

Words: 1199 - Pages: 5

Free Essay

Syllabus Latin America Today

...This course satisfies the DEC category J This course satisfies the SBC category GLO, HCA Course Instructor: Joseph M. Pierce Section: 01 Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday 1:00-2:00 PM, or by appointment Instructor contact information: Melville Library N3013, joseph.pierce@stonybrook.edu COURSE DESCRIPTION An introduction to a continental perspective of 20th-century Latin American culture. Latin America's political, historical, and cultural developments of this century are studied. Latin America | Today This course proposes to study the events of today by tracing the social, political and economic structures of the past. On the one hand, the region under study is comprised of a dramatic variety of cultures, geographies and politics. On the other, it shares a history of colonization from “discovery” to independence to modernity based on its particular geographic and historical location. In order to interrogate this conjunction, we will pay special attention to the social groups that are often marginalized from the pages of “the official history”: Indigenous communities, Afro-Latin organizations, gay, lesbian, and trans activism, immigrant groups. We will pay special attention the discourses of belonging and identification that mark their relationships with the region, as well as the ways in which “Latin” America becomes a concept in relationship with these groups in the context of globalization. Thus, race, class, gender, sexuality, and coloniality are some of the...

Words: 1802 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

Feminism Club Community Analysis

...Feminism club plays a crucial role in my life because it provides me with a platform to further the rights of minorities like myself. Within the club, I strive to create a safe space for members to comfortably talk about problems revolving around body image, sex trafficking, LGBTQ rights, and other prominent issues. As the president of feminism club, I am responsible for curating the discussions and activities that take place each week. In order to create a well-rounded plan for each meeting I incorporate projects that each member can get involved in. The work that we do even extends beyond our school walls. The current political climate inspired our most recent project. As a result, I encouraged the students within the club to engage in politics in whatever way they could. As a group we wrote letters to Senator Gillibrand to help further her policy of human trafficking within America. Specifically, we emphasized how important it is that victims of trafficking be treated with respect and not stigmatized for surviving their circumstances. We also recommended that police departments require first responders to take part in training courses to help them identify women that are victims of trafficking or at risk. Furthermore, leading the feminism club is a vital component of my life because it teaches me how to be an activist, a supporter, a mediator, and more importantly an advocate for those that do not have the confidence or ability to speak out on certain issues. 2. Describe a...

Words: 1195 - Pages: 5