Gordon B. Arnold Conspiracy Theory in Film, Television, and Politics (2008)(1)

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United States had acted damaged both America s perceptions of itself and the
way the nation was perceived around the world, all was not lost. He asserted
that Americans could overcome this unfortunate legacy by understanding
the war in a different way. He argued that the Vietnam War should not
be regarded as a quagmire or as an unwinnable or immoral military action.
Instead, to escape from the malaise of the Vietnam syndrome, Americans
needed to think about the Vietnam War in a wholly new way.
Accordingly, Reagan argued that it s time that we recognized that ours
was, in truth, a noble cause. Added to the fact that he believed the American
116 Conspiracy Theory in Film, Television, and Politics
military could have prevailed if it had been allowed to, he asserted that regard-
less of the unfortunate outcome, the war was something noble. Americans
had no reason to feel ashamed. If shame existed, in this view, it was reserved
for those elements in government and society that had shackled the war effort.
For everyone else which Reagan apparently thought was a large proportion
of the public the way to escape the Vietnam syndrome was to recognize
these reasons for the war s loss and correct them as the nation moved for-
ward. There were, of course, very different ways of looking at the war, but
Reagan s view resonated with many people.
The conspiracy theory thread in American thinking dovetailed conveniently
with both of the important themes that Reagan had articulated. In terms of
the general argument that the government is a problem, this view had
already become established in the way the popular culture represented the
conspiracy theory theme. Movie articulations of this theme, in which the
government was implicated in conspiratorial actions, had become especially
prominent in the preceding years.
Meanwhile, Reagan s second theme, focusing on the Vietnam War, fit
squarely with emerging conspiracy ideas regarding the fate of some Americans
soldiers that had fought in that war. Specifically, Reagan s line of thinking, in
which some part of government had refused to let the military win, coincided
with the developing notion that the U.S. government had not revealed the
truth, or the whole truth anyway, about the fate of American missing-in-action
soldiers (MIAs) and those prisoners of war (POWs) whose fate remained
unknown.
According to this way of thinking, some government officials, who already
had betrayed missing American service personnel by not adequately support-
ing them in a time of war, had betrayed them again by abandoning them after
they had gone missing. Now sweeping the whole matter under the carpet, the
new conspiracy thinking about MIAs and POWs focused on the thought that
perhaps, contrary to government assertions, there were still living American
soldiers in captivity. Those holding this view began to think that a conspiracy
of silence and cover-ups existed within some quarters of American govern-
ment. According to this way of thinking, it was dedicated to suppressing
knowledge rather than see the past misdeeds uncovered. It seemed like the
stuff of conspiracy movies, and soon it was.
RAMBO-ERA FILMS
A group of films in the 1980s promoted these ideas about the government
as a potentially malicious force that cared little for its military personnel.
The movies that most captured these sentiments were Missing in Action and
Missing in Action 2, featuring the martial artist-turned-actor Chuck Norris,
and the widely popular Rambo movies that starred Sylvester Stallone, who
already had risen to fame in the movie Rocky.
Vision and Re-Vision 117
The first of these to appear was First Blood, director Ted Kotcheff s movie
that introduced film audiences to fictional Vietnam veteran John Rambo.1 In
this 1982 outing, Rambo appears as a drifter, a man who is clearly still recov-
ering from his experiences in the Vietnam War. An alienated loner, Rambo
has an unfortunate encounter with law enforcement officials while passing
through the American northwest. The movie does not necessarily imply a
conspiracy theory reading at first glance, but its underlying narrative intro-
duces, for a mass audience, the idea of the Vietnam veteran as the victim of
secretive and malicious officials. This powerful cultural theme would develop
into a more specifically conspiratorial narrative in several subsequent films.
The story of First Blood is that of an antihero, and on the surface it seems to
be mostly an action-revenge drama. In the narrative, Rambo is the victim of a
series of mistaken beliefs and misunderstandings, and he soon finds himself on
the wrong side of the law. His biggest problem is with the local sheriff, Will
Teasle (played by Brian Dennehy). The sheriff has little tolerance for people he
regards as vagabonds and tries to run Rambo out of town. The movie shows
the magnitude of Rambo s mistreatment by local law enforcement with a
scene in which the hero is viciously beaten. Dazed from his mistreatment at
the hands of people sworn to uphold law and order, all Rambo can manage
is to escape into the wilderness that surrounds the town.
As audiences soon discover, Rambo is no ordinary veteran. Wrongly ac-
cused, he tries to disappear in the wilds of the countryside as he is pursued by
an ever-increasing number of law enforcement personnel. Soon, the National
Guard is called to assist with the pursuit of the hero, and Rambo must use his
extraordinary cunning and superheroic combat skills to elude capture. This
action takes up much of the movie.
As the dramatic incident becomes known, Rambo s former superior officer,
Col. Samuel Trautman (Richard Crenna), arrives and tries to help. Knowing
that Rambo possesses superior skills as a guerilla fighter from his days as a
Green Beret, Trautman tries to convince the sheriff to back off, but to no avail.
In the end, the veteran-turned-vigilante hero escapes death several times.
He causes much mayhem and destroys part of the sheriff s town. Just as
Rambo confronts the sheriff, however, Trautman intervenes. It is clear that
Rambo s freedom will come to an end.
Although billed primarily as an action movie, First Blood clearly pushed
the conspiratorial idea that government misdeeds had obscured truths about
the Vietnam War. As an emblem of the American soldier, Rambo s amazing
physical prowess and fighting skills suggest that the American military was not
the problem in Vietnam, reinforcing at some level the idea that Vietnam was a
war that some power did not let them win, as Reagan had said. Moreover,
Rambo s mistreatment by the system can be interpreted as a symbol for
the nation s poor treatment of all Vietnam War veterans, who, according
to Reagan s re-visioning of the war, had been sent into harm s way by a
118 Conspiracy Theory in Film, Television, and Politics
government that had no real intention of supporting them during or after the
fight.
This theme of the alienated-veteran-as-victim is developed into a narra-
tive with more overt conspiracy theory underpinnings in movies that fol- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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