On "Apocalypse Now"

SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE AND DON'T WANT IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF THE PLOT REVEALED TO YOU DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER.

I decided to put in Apocalypse Now tonight because it's one of those movies all young men have to see, and we're doing the Vietnam unit so I figured it was relevant to class.

The movie is a work of art. It goes beyond a normal war film. Many war films do have some deeper meaning linked to them, but this one is just loaded with the deeper meanings, and for a movie that's thirty years old, the special effects are wonderful. This easily makes my list of top 10 best movies I've seen. With a cast so star-studded that Harrison Ford, Jon Voight, and Laurence Fishburne play minor roles, how could it not be?

Multiple themes and motifs emerged as I watched it. The main ones I spotted and will focus on were noise and the degradation of morals and civilization towards Hell.

First the noise: I noticed this even in class when we watched the scene involving the 1st of the 9th Brigade. Throughout the entire movie, there was all sorts of back ground noise that tells me the director is trying to overwhelm the viewer. During the early parts of the movie, there were helicopters everywhere; towards the middle, shots and flares were all over; by the end, it was just strange music. The music actually showed up often, and it creeped me out. The music described by Mitchell Sanders in The Things They Carried definitely seemed to be being played in the background of Apocalypse Now. I think the goal of overwhelming the viewer was a way to make the war even more real. It begins to wear on you and it actually takes a physical and emotional toll after about an hour, making the movie hellish.

The decay in humanity that was portrayed in the movie certainly goes along with the title and was certainly a purposeful method of embodying the immorality of the Vietnam War and war in general. The movie begins in Saigon with the main character, Captain Willard, drunk and in poor spirits, utterly depressed. This is shows a personal decay.

During the scene we watched in class, the colonel played by Robert Duvall is just nuts. He's got his crap together and is actually an excellent officer, but he's freaking crazy! A bad-ass, but crazy! This scene does a good job of showing an eccentric stage on the trail to insanity.

As Willard progresses on his journey with a crew of four on a small PT boat, they come across a few army outposts. At the first, the scene is a bit of a sensory overload, but then again the whole movie is. Starvation and desire for America and the licentiousness of America is portrayed at this outpost. The 500+ some troops at the outpost are treated to a USO show featuring Hugh Hefner and the best of the Playmates. Things get out of hand when the girls are dancing as the young soldiers have a hard time containing their lust. Nothing too much happens, but the message that they are being starved and are losing conscience is clear.

The next outpost they come across is not nearly as civilized. The soldiers can't even name their commanding officer and bombs, flares, and shots go everywhere. As the boat pulls through the river, soldiers swim after it crying "Take me home! Get me the #$%^ out of here!" It's absolutely shocking to watch. The horrors of this scene make it seem like a living Hell. The scene is filmed at night and only the erratic spurts of muzzle light and flares light the scene. As a viewer, I was rendered speechless and thoughtless. I could only think, "how terrible." When it was emphasized multiple times that there was no CO, it became clear that the reason this scene was there was to emphasize the incompetency of the American commanders and FUBAR situations that occured. I wondered if it could get worse.

As the boat proceeded down the river into Cambodia, they did. When Willard finally got to his destination, the true Hell became apparent. Dead, mangled bodies were everywhere yet there were hundreds of people to care for them and do something about it. The colonel Willard was instructed to kill, played by Marlon Brando, is a heck of a character. There are many strange people in the movie, but he is just insane. As you learn more about the character in the final scenes of the movie, you realize he seems to believe he's not taken steps backward on the continuum of humanity, but has transcended it. Early in the movie, you learn that this colonel, Colonel Kurtz, is a very intelligent and ambitious man but has gone renegade and likely insane. He has come to be a complete autocrat, a demigod more, of a tribe of native Cambodians. Having only watched the movie once and not being a psychology or sociology buff, I don't have much to say except that I was absolutely stunned by the Hell he created.

Besides "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," there are tons of great lines in the movie. Some are just a bit too corny, though. The narration seems to offer tons of cliches like "Oh man, the bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to stay above it. " or "charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500." There was one that stood out as particularly meaningful to the plot, though. "We had reached the end of the river." This just made it obvious that the brink between sanity and insanity had been reached and it was further than anyone thought.

Before I close, there's one more thing I'd like to bring up. The idea of truth and true war stories. We've seen this mentioned in TTTC, but I definitely seems to spread to other Vietnam media as well. If someone tried to tell me that Apocalypse Now actually happened, I would refer them to a doctor. The movie is wacked-out, man! Just FUBAR. Then again, maybe that's why it could be true.

Without seeing Apocalypse Now, there's no way you could ever understand it. It's so powerful and so provoking that it would take three or four viewings to really get it. These are only half of the reactions I got from it in one viewing. I don't think I'm going to sleep tonight...half because I'm thinking about the depth of the movie, half because it scares me a bit too.

Drawing the line on jokes

Earlier this week, we learned briefly about the use of humor in writing, particularly satire. I tend to enjoy using humor in my writing. Usually, I don't use it in the papers that I am really involved in already. Instead, I tend to use it as a relief while writing something I really don't want to be writing. If I have the energy for it (which I often lack, as I do now), these works can become massive satires while just barely serving their actual purpose.

Humor and satire can be used to distract a reader from an otherwise lacking paper. I find myself searching for jokes to tell when I run out of things to say. This goes for conversation as well as writing. Luckily, I have some time to think about what I'm going to say while writing so I don't make a fool of myself by telling a terrible joke. By making a reader laugh, you can make it seem like you're saying a lot more than you actually are.

On the other side of this, I sometimes find it difficult to incorporate humor into papers about topics on which I feel strongly. If I intend to poke sarcastic fun at something I use humor, but unfortunately I'm losing this wit as I try to make my arguments stronger and attempt to use rhetorical strategies beyond my humor that had been signature throughout middle school and early in high school.

Note must be taken, however, that humor is not always appropriate. The line has to be drawn somewhere. Serious topics can have jokes. Those jokes have to be in the right tone to work otherwise they can be construed as disrespectful attempts at making-fun.

It is important to word your passion carefully. A single joke might make an argument collapse on itself if it is not told tactfully.

I had always considered humor to be important in writing. It helps keep the reader awake and interested. Recently, I've felt like I'm failing to do this. Am I getting too mature? Am I losing my touch for humor in writing? From here on out, I am going to try to make my writing a little lighter when I can and use my wit to help my arguments rather than disregarding it.

On "Times have changed for student protestors"

This article was really intriguing to think about after watching "Two Days in October" and learning about the UW-Madison protests during the Vietnam War.

I have to say, I'm not at all surprised that things have changed and become this way today. I'm not one to protest wars, but I'm not usually in fervent support of violence either. However, I think that people who feel that they are truly against the war should be stepping up to make their point known. They aren't apathetic; we know that because they do voice an interest in the topic. Yet they aren't empathetic on the topic either.

Recently, it seems that I've come across a lot of reading about the apathy of today's young people and they ways our generation likes to take the easy way out. I agree that we often do this. In the case presented by this article, though, it is not a case of apathy, but rather a lack of action. People have opinions and are apparently willing to voice them. That's much better than apathy. But there is a problem because we now need people not just to be willing to voice their opinions, but to actually take action to do so.

The social effects of the Vietnam War were certainly greater than that of those of the Wars on Terror. We aren't affected daily and at home by these conflicts by drafts, protests, enormous death tolls, and living-room footage as much as the Americans of the 1960s and 1970s.

Still, it is sad that something like "Grey's Anatomy" would infringe on the ability of students and citizens to exercise free speech and the right to assembly. Certainly media networks are not actively trying to take these rights away (with the exception of FOX), but they are passively breeding latent civic emotion.

We cannot continue to allow the things in our life that really don't matter all that much to take over the things that do matter. It's not too much trouble right now in the situation of war, but what about other things that might escalate to be massive social problems. If people shut off their televisions, looked up from their text messages, and removed their ear buds to take in the world around them and do something about it, we might see some amazing social movements. I can guarantee that there are millions of Americans out there who have ideas to help mend our economy or the environment (they don't have to be big ideas either), but citizens have a loss of efficacy that makes them feel like their opinion won't do anything. As a result, rather than taking action, we open a bag of Doritos and look for the latest developments in the relationships of our favorite celebrities.

What are you going to do about it?

The Civil Rights Movement briefly touched upon

Since we've been talking in class about the civil rights movements and African-American culture so much, it's been on my mind. The Letter from Birmingham Jail certainly expanded these thoughts.



This summer I had the opportunity to take a class in Washington D.C. on American history and politics that focused largely on civil rights. As expected, the texts for the class included essays and speeches like The Ballot or the Bullet by Malcom X, the famed I have a Dream by Dr. King, and many others. The final exam for this test involved an essay section. One of the possible essays was "According to Martin Luther King, what are the goals of the civil rights movement and why do they justify non-violent civil disobedience? What is Malcolm X's criticism of King's goal and his approach?" This was an excellent essay question, but I don't recall if I actually answered this one. In any case, I think it is important to understand the relationship between Malcolm X and MLK.

The two men disagreed over the idea of integration. In King's mind it was important to integrate the negro race into society and not just desegregate. King claimed that civil institutions and legislation could only break down racial barriers so far. Cities and states could choose to desegrate and therefore whites and blacks would be using many of the same facilities and such, but this did not mean the races would get along or love each other. The white American was apathetic to the civil rights cause. Most didn't care whether things were desegrated or segregated. King made the call to sensitize the white man to understand that de jure desegregation wouldn't be enough. It needed to be de facto, or through natural means--"color blindness." Integration would mean that blacks and whites weren't just putting up with each other, but actually interacting socially with each other for personal enjoyment rather than state order. King hoped to achieve this by positive action and encouraging whites and blacks alike to welcome each other through community involvement and good character.

Malcolm X on the other hand was not so happy a singer of Kum-bay-ah. He said that civil rights and the argument over integration came down to two things: the ballot, or the bullet. As it sounds, this was the idea that blacks would gain rights either through civil action or they would eventually take them by force. Black Nationalism was Malcolm X's argument against integration. He felt that black and white could never live together in true harmony and therefore they shouldn't try to do so. X didn't even consider himself American, he considered himself a Negro. In this idea, the government was nothing more than a conspiracy to retard the Negro. X doesn't condemn non-violence either, but instead says that "I'm non-violent with those who are non-violent with me." Black Nationalism required the creation of black communities that did not deal with white society. For some time, these communities thrived culturally. However, their economies were lacking and underground activity, particularly drugs, began to ruin them. While Malcolm X wasn't intending to be violent, he was certainly radical and willing to attain rights through any means in a Machiavellian manner.

History tells us that MLK won this argument, but perhaps we can learn from the seperatism of Malcolm X. Also, reading essays and speeches of both these men give us examples of some of the best rhetoric on the most fiery topic of the 20th century. If you don't know much about the civil rights movement I pity you. If you think you do, look deeper because there is SO much to learn from it.

Definition

I'm sitting in my dining room right now getting ready to write my definition essay. I was sidetracked by the realization that I hadn't done a blog post yet this week so I hopped on to write this.

The essays we read in class for examples were all very interesting. The two poverty ones and the music one were my favorites.

As I sit here trying to figure out what I should write about, I come across a few topics. One that seems to come to mind immediately is virtue and value. I'm sick of writing about that though. In the past three weeks, I've written three college essays on that topic and used a definition argument on virtue in my DBQ for AP Euro this Friday.

Another possibility is music. I thought about this topic a little bit last night at the Homecoming dance but decided I didn't have a good argument for it. Perhaps this was just the result of too many distractions and too little sleep impairing my critical thinking ability.

Last night brought up some more issues for definition as well. The lines between acquaintances, friendships, and relationships for some seemed to be so prevalent and bolded at the dance while for others these lines became so blurred that they are probably in need of redrawing today or over the next week. I have so many thoughts on these definitions flying through my head I can't seem to form an articulate point about any of them yet. Hopefully I will overcome the throbbing bass-induced headache, and 1.5 hours of sleep I've had in the past 54 hours to be able to write a coherent paper on this subject.

So here goes...

Not five minutes after initially posting this, I have already come back and decided that this topic is going to be difficult to write about. Any anecdotes I have to share are ones that I don't know if I'd be comfortable sharing. Maybe I'll overcome this and go for it anyway, but this brings up a new thought:

If the essay is just for an English class, and only a few others in your class and your teacher will be the ones reading it, does it matter what you are divulging?
Or is it easier to divluge personal information to a wide audience of people who don't know you on a personal level and don't really care about you?