The Green Berets was supposed to be a win-win situation for everyone:

• Good for the government because it would stir up support for the Vietnam War
• Good for John Wayne because it bouy his career, which had been sagging of late
• Good for the movie industry because it would lead to more popular films about the war

So what happened on the way to paradise?  Why was the film such a failure?

Aesthetics vs. Ideology

Some would argue about why the film is such a failure in terms of its aesthetics, of which you could point to several things that make the movie obvious, heavy-handed, and down right clunky.

The problem with "aesthetic" answers, as I will be arguing all semester long, is that they have a tendency to close down inquiry as to the ideological operations of the film and the relationship between those ideological operations and the audience they address.

What this discussion hopes to demonstrate is that the relationship between the film's aesthetics and the ideologies engendered there provide a far richer answer to what happened to this film--and with films in general.

In addition, this provides a more intricate look at the film's relationship to the genre--which I would argue is fairly formative, despite its failures.

In attempting to analyze The Green Berets for the relationship between its aesthetics and the ideologies they engender, this discussion will specifically address two of the courses goals:
 

• To determine the familiar formulas and the interrelated components that comprise the genre
• To analyze the films in terms of the cultural conflicts/contradictions they articulate

Familiar Formulas

In discussing the familiar formulas of the genre, Michael Anderegg's article makes the following significant points:

• The Vietnam war was the most visually represented war in history, existing to a great degree, as moving image, as the sight of a specific and complex iconic cluster.
• The war became a television event: a tragic serail drama stretched over thousands of nights in the American consciousness
• Those nights presented Vietnam as a tactile video-audio construct, a tight matrix of specific, easily recognized signs:  the sight and sound of Huey helicopters, the green of dense jungles, the helmets with plastic bottles taped to their sides, villagers in conical hats.

The limitation to that causality is that it ignores why those icons were important or significant (or successful) to television coverage to begin with:  because of the manner in which their meaning served an ideological function:

• Hueys functioned as a sign of American technological prowess that was connected to images and ideas of the calvary rescues
• The dense of green jungles performed a dual function of articulating the "exoticness" and hence "otherness" of Vietnam, while at the same time conjuring up the image of nature that needs to be subdued, much like the American frontier.
• Villagers in conical hats also functions as a polyvocal sign.
• It's stylistic difference helps promote the image of "otherness" so crucial to the racial discourse
• It's simplicity and natural fibers composition helps convey the "primitiveness" of the Vietnamese
• It's pointed top plays into a long-standing iconic tradition of pointed heads as back-ward or unintelligent.

Rather, the film keeps setting itself in pine forests which fail to convey the "otherness" of Vietnam.

The film is also ambivalent about the Huey as signifier par excellance of American technological prowess:  the helicopters never really save the day (the jet fighter does) and indeed, the Huey ends up being shot out of the sky. The function of shooting down the Huey is to prove how tough the soldiers are that they can just roll out of a helicopter crash and keep on fighting, but the end result is that the film fails to engage the ideological function of an important icon.

In addition to the Huey, the film fails to engage the ideological function of other familiar icons and formulas as well.

The most glaring, of course, is the figure of the Green Beret himself as the rugged American frontier hero--a fighting man who can outfight the savage on his own terms.

• Except for one scene, the Green Berets fight in a group, rather than as the solitary hero--this makes them fairly indistinguishable from regular army. 
• The film never really lives up to its own internal expectations of the Green Berets as ultimate butt-kickers--especially since they fail to win, as in the raid on the base (now there's a biggy!).

The film also fails, however, because it does not successfully manage the cultural conflicts/contradictions that it articulates.

In this respect, the introduction from H2H makes very important points.  It argues that:

• At issue is partly the nation's embattled assessment of the ideals of patriotism, heroism, and sacrifice (all invoked in the name of freedom and democracy) as against a material reality [or what I would term social reality] deeply implicated in racism, masculinism, imperialism, and class oppression.
• Thus, one of the aspects of the narrative that differentiate it from other films that will appear as "critical" of the war is that The Green Berets does not set up a conflict between patriotism, heroism, and sacrifice over and against racism, masculinism, imperialism and class oppression.
• Indeed, the film can be seen to conjoin patriotism et al with masculism and racism, though awkwardly with the latter.
• This process can be clearly seen in Kirby's rebuff to the journalist about never having been to Southeast Asia.
• The failure of this process to function effectively with respect to race can be seen in the impalement of the Vietnamese soldier on the branch of the tree.
• The film can not "motivate" hating the Vietnamese based purely on race because it has to persuade the audience to side with the South Vietnamese people.
• The gruesomeness of the death is thus not contained well or justified by the signifier and discourse of race, because race can not function as "pure" signifier, like it could with WWII films and the Japanese.

• At issue is also the relation between military production and the cultural artifacts that sustain it.

• By constructing a narrative trajectory that will result in "converting" the ultimate critic, the film ends up privileging that character over and above an important cultural process of sustaining military production: the guided tours of military bases and training for "regular folk".
• The film also unwittingly undermines the signifier of military production in its "loss of the base" scene.
• Prior to this scene the narrative is full of images of military production: bases full of military hardware, Pedersen swiping a load of tin roofing with the help of a helicopter, Huey's being outfitted with missiles, Seabees clearing "jungle" with bulldozers.
• Despite all this military hardware, however, the Americans cannot hold a base against bamboo ladder bearing Vietnamese.

• For Americans, the legacy of the Vietnam war is a legacy of lies, errors, and impotence.  It is a legacy of futile sacrifice, and glaring inequalities, of ideals coming up short against reality, and of defeat that is so unacceptable that it cannot be named.

• A legacy of lies vs. trust and obedience to authority.
• A legacy of errors vs. always having  the solution
• A legacy of impotence vs. a victorious military history--the country that never lost.
• A legacy of futile sacrifice vs. the sacrifices made to make the world safe for democracy
• A legacy of glaring inequalities vs. the image of America as a free and equal society

• The fallen Huey, as noted before, articulated impotence rather than military prowess.
• The failure to "hold the base" also articulated impotence.  Even though its function was to demonstrate the resolve of the soldiers despite having to fight a war "with one hand tied behind their back" the failure to "hold the base" nonetheless shows impotence against the will of the Vietnamese.
• The aftermath or retaking of the base gives image not to resolve, but rather to futile sacrifice: the image of the base is nothing but bare dirt and sand bags littered with corpses.  It is so futile a sacrifice that the narrative has to jump out of it and into its "covert operations" trajectory.