Before anyone says “The confirmation of the Gulf of Tonkin conspiracy proves the POW conspiracy is also true” or some other nonsense, please recognize that what you are really saying is “This historical event with a tremendous amount of evidence and admitted by the perpetrators themselves is as valid as a theory without any tangible evidence.” The reason you think the Vietnam War was justified by the Tonkin incident and that POW's are still waiting to be rescued in Vietnam is because of state propaganda. That's the commonality. Not the vague concept of “conspiracy” in the abstract. POW's remaining in Vietnam post-war is the state lie - not the opposite. The state tried to make you think of unrecovered bodies as prisoners. The “conspiracy” is the opposite of what conspiracy theorists believe. Use your head, please.
I often have to explain some of these themes from the 80s Rambo movies, and often get a reply about Schwarzenegger doing their same thing. The one man army action films, may be similar, but Schwarzenegger has only fought generic enemies in most of his films, with the unarmed Dictator in Commando, or the terrorists in True Lies, being the closest to it. Chuck Norris and Stallone were fighting a specific country, and their alleged puppet(Russia), while also spinning that conspiracy of captive prisoners a decade after the war in Vietnam. I remember having arguments with kids about POWs still being in Vietnam, after I had read many books on the conflict and articles written about the conspiracies. None had any proof, nor did they ever feel it needed any, because for many 80’s kids, this idea was planted early and was told in many films, and TV shows such as Magnum P.I., which even had an old Russian adversary for a villain. Where I lived my school looked like a George Bush volunteer center. The city was so Red, that I only remember 2 teachers who weren’t actively talking about him and how important the election was, or very proud republicans. So many of those kids I grew up with just believed anything an “authority figure” told them.
@@jackskellingtonation It *can* be, and it is required for the US military to co-operate with filmmakers. If you see a movie with real US military equipment - warplanes, etc, you can know that the US military approved the script first.
Renegade Cut pow is an appeal to emotion- Kris of trineday revealed the drug angle yet we know several other ops were activated Popeye & Phoenix as well as a cottage industry including both sides of a manufactured dialectic- Jim Morrison family served as both a catalyst and remedy- culture creation perfected
Awesome critique but where’s Chuck Norris and the missing in action crapfest? I grew up in the 90s and watched a ton of 80s action movies as a kid, chuck’s movies left in an impression for me because of how good evil they made Vietnam seem.
I'm Viet, as someone who came from a family with a long history of fightting for the Vietminh, I'd like to quote my grandfather - a tank driver "I hate the US goverment, but not the people, they were just drafted to go a war in a strange country, I forgave them but I shall never forget what they have done".
Something that isn't brought up much when people discuss the American failure in Vietnam is how the Viet Minh had existed in some form since the 1920s or so. There had been an anti-French insurgency since shortly after World War I, the OSS even supported them when they briefly resisted against the Japanese in WWII. The Viet Minh/Viet Cong were not some rag tag band of rebels bumbling around in the woods, they had been pretty well organized for years.
This is popular stance on the subject from American point of view. That it was just some crazy tarzans that shoot coconuts from trees xd. But still, America aside I dislike framing Viet minh as just a victim. Totalitarian communism in vietnam is problem to this day, even if in a completely different form than in China or in Soviet Russia
yup. And not merely at a military lvl; the Viet Minh/Viet Cong had been deeply involved in political organizing, protest, local government, and civic services. They organized themselves as both an active opposition within the French colonial system, and an alternative government outside of it. Ken Burns's doc on Vietnam, somewhat inadvertently, manages to give probably the best sense of this available to mainstream US audiences just through its interviews with Viet Minh/Cong individuals.
I think that N. Vietnam became more totalitarian the longer the war dragged on. It's like the US went after a wild animal under the fiction that it was a monster, but in pursuing it and fighting it, N. Vietnam slowly turned it into the monster they were after in the first place, and by that point the US didn't have the stomach for it. If they had just avoided the whole conflict in the first place I don't think N. Vietnam would have become so totalitarian. The best thing would have just been to not intervene at all.
@@21Arrozito Vietnamese here, and yeah I don't like my authoritarian government at all, but it wasn't supposed to. Ho Chi Minh actually wanted nothing to do with China, he hated them more than even the French, because China had a long history of invading us (at one point we were practically one of their provinces for 1 thousand years). Indeed, Vietnam and China did go to war just a few years after the Americans left
"We're trying to make this as realistic as possible" Said Sylvester Stallone about a movie where he plays the invincible God of Machine Guns and Explosions, Ares wearing a headband
. . . and, in real life, Sylvester Stallone ran away, to avoid being drafted to fight the International Red Menace in Viet Nam; facts glossed over by TIME magazine when they reported about the movie star who spoke for combat vets.
Rambo is basically America looking itself in the mirror saying “you didn’t lose in Vietnam, you withdrew your troops, that’s not defeat technically. You don’t lose, you didn’t lose dammit😖”
Spitting at returning servicemen "at the airport" (Rambo's words from part 1). Took me a few years and an excellent Vietnam documentary to realize that this scenario itself is pretty much impossible. As a vet pointed out in that documentary, most (all?) servicemen didn't land at commercial airports when they returned home. Or at the very least wouldn't arrive like tourists at the airports they landed at. Where and how could those saliva-slinging protesters have gotten close to returning soldiers to be able to "spit at them at the airport"? Pretty sure the USAF don't let anti-war protesters (or any other random civilians) simply wander onto their airbases. Plus, as you've pointed out, the peace movement was all about "bringing the boys home" ... they were on the soldiers' side and, if anything, anti-government/anti-establishment. So why would they spit at regular soldiers, most of whom had been drafted and certainly hadn't gone to Vietnam "for kicks"?
This right here. This is one of those stories that adults would tell when you asked them about why the world is the way it is. The adults I grew up around, it turns out, all their world wisdom is full of shit. The really fucked up part, I can't be mad at them for lying, they don't realize that. But being gullible sacks of shit and going along with everything...
My stepfather has this whole story about he was spit on and a hippie stole his luggage. He punched the guy out and was taken to an examination room, where a mysterious man in a black suit let him off with a wink. That's not a joke. That's the story he tells over and over.
11:38 Someone might've coined this statement before me, but I often say it: "Anything that does not support a conspiracy theory becomes a part of the conspiracy." And this is why it is so goddamn hard to shake the faith of anyone who believes in a conspiracy theory, no matter how far-fetched and disproven the theory is.
@@jaspervanheycop9722 "Who knows? But they're clearly hiding it for some reason." Thus the conspiracy is rendered unassailable. The reason for the conspiracy is naturally as hidden as the conspiracy itself. The only think I can think of is countering it with another conspiracy theory, that is to suggest that the original conspiracy is merely a smokescreen for another conspiracy, which it is.
I do wonder if it's even possible for an American film to show the trauma of the Vietnamese victims of the war, at least not yet. Maybe fifty years or more from now, but even then... Speaking as a English woman, I know many people have pride in the British Empire's exploits throughout history, and that the idea that we were wrong in what we did is seen as offensive. The specter of the Empire still haunts us, drags us down with pride. Perhaps off topic, but I can't help but see parallels.
The documentaries do and many books on the subject on how America should have not gotten involved and if we did it would have been better to support Ho Chi because Ho Chi actual use to work in a bakery in Boston he understood America.
you’re very right with the British empire exploits & the brutal reality of colonisation by the british as a nigerian, one of the many countries formerly part of the british empire
@@kappadarwin9476 oh he understood united States better than most white politicians then.he had an deep understanding of the situation of African Americans in US.
Given how the warmongers and "humanitarians" are acting in America right now, they seem to regret not bombing Afghanistan into the neolithic time period like a pack of psychopaths. Any lessons that we could of learned, out the bloody window much like Vietnam.
I saw Rambo 2 in the theatre with my mom when it came out. She was actually disappointed that Rambo didn't kill the Brian Keith character at the end. Couple of other things...James Cameron wrote the original script for Rambo 2, but he's famous for saying that Stallone rewrote huge chunks of it, "The action is mine, but the politics are all Sly's." He said much of the psychological drama that Sly threw out, James used in Aliens. Also, they actually turned Rambo into a kid's cartoon cuz 80's.
Rambo the kids cartoon was class he had a flame thrower. I would love it to be remade, rambo would go in and bust up strikes assassinate anyone trying to start up a union.
@@user-jn1wm3tb8v listen I know people like to talk shit about the United States and rightly so. But don't think for a moment the United States did nothing in World War 2. That is flat out ignorant and stupid.
@@mickeyg7219 on the other hand, the more a superhero movie uses military assets the more jingoistic it is. Remember Iron Man and the narrative of "the only reason we are doing such a bad job of winning in the middle east is because they are stealing our high tech guns!"
Right wingers think that anything that isn’t conservative is political. They’re so stubborn and stuck in their ways that they don’t understand or see that ANYTHING can be political or say some kind of message.
I kinda get the impression that the politics of the book may have been a bit different from the politics in the movie, First Blood. In the book, Rambo is a far less sympathetic character. Sure, you root for him because he is the protagonist and you see things through his perspective. But in the book, he actually murders one of the police officers when escaping the jail and his inner monologue reveals him to the reader as someone suffering from serious psychological issues who intentionally continues his clash with the town sheriff more out of preserving his own ego than anything else. There is also no monologue at the end where he talks about protesters. Rambo in the movie is sympathetic and heroic. Rambo in the book is a tragic character that causes mayhem because of the monster that war has turned him into. His character in the book is more similar to the antagonist in The Hunted, who is very clearly the bad guy, despite being kinda sympathetic.
I had a friend who was a Vietnam vet and people would often thank him for his service. He'd then say "things sure have changed from back in the day." Apparently, he believed this myth about servicemen being mistreated after Vietnam.
I believe I somewhat remember reading from my U.S. History textbook in my Junior year of high school that the "spitting on servicemen" was not a myth and that it "did happen." I’m not too sure about it now, but learning recently how it was all a myth really put a distaste in my mouth.
Somehow this makes the Simpsons episode "The Principal and the Pauper" all the more insidious as the "real" Seymour Skinner being a POW for decades in Vietnam perpetuates the myth of POW being trapped there.
“We promised this would not be another Vietnam. And we kept that promise. The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula.” GHW Bush 1991
It’s funny (not really), but the “spitting on the Vietnam vets” myth even exists here in Australia. Just goes to show that Aussie governments need not come up with their own propaganda, just sit back and let the Yankee propaganda do their work for them.
Didn’t know the “Peace Protestors Spitting on the Vets” was actually a myth. Puts a sour note on a movie I like. Great video though, looking forward to the next one as always
The book is better ... and has a pretty different message than the movie. Stallone's big speech at the end of part 1 makes that film cringe-worthy for me these days.
The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now and Platoon are all great films. Even if they do only show one side of the conflict, they all have some unique things to say about the conflict and those involved. And they speak some truth about how stupid The war was. And then there’s Rambo... a film that is only full of slightly less crap then John Wayne’s The Green Berets (*gag*). Wonder how some people don’t see the obvious political allegory. Maybe their distracted by all the big explosions.
sadly for all the conservative call out about Hollywood liberal elite pushing political messages, they still cheer leader hollywood elite when it suit them.
@@ryanpyle9822 thank you very much for making me look that Chomsky tidbit up, bro; sincerely. Here's the video (see video timestamp 41:29): ruclips.net/video/82XBmo0a6r4/видео.html
My favorite film about the Vietnam War, that actually sees it from the point of view of the vietnamese, is Heaven and Earth. It's a great film to watch as a juxtaposition against Rambo. Also, please make a video about Top Gun and how it single handedly recruited scores of people into the airforce and maybe about to do it again.
Not only was the spitting on servicemen an urban legend, it was obviously an intentional, hand-crafted piece of propaganda meant to discredit the peace movement.
Well not all films in the 80s where right wing Propoganda Full metal jacket was a satire on Vietnam, Terminator was a critique on the military industry & corporatism, Robocop was a satire on Corporatism & Violence with the police like it didn't take it's self too seriously, The Star Wars Sequels (including the Ewok Movies) where critiques on Vietnam where the Rebels were the Vietmanese, The Empire were the Americans & Palpatine was Nixon, Indiana Jones is about Stopping Nazis from invading areas & Stealing treasures (Mostly because Steven Spielberg was Jewish & his Dad fought in WW2), They Live calls out the Bull$hit with Ronald Reagan same with Escape from New York you could also say That She-Ra was an anti Imperialism show (Although the Netflix Reboot did a better job with this especially with its pro LGBTQ+ themes) & Etc so the 80s had leftist/liberal (Maybe liberalism IDK) & not just right wing or far right movies/show but I get what you mean.
Did you read about (or hear, I heard it on 99% Invivisble) the fact that the "unknown soldier" placed in the Tomb of the Unknown to represent the VIetnam War was in fact totally known, but the government wanted the show of adding a body to the tomb so they didn't tell his family what had happened to him for decades?
I have a theory: during the events of first blood, rambo was critically wounded during his standoff with the police at the roof of the police station and was put in a coma and afterward the events of the other rambo movies were all just a coma dream because in real life a lone soldier would be unable to take down the entire soviet or vietnamese army.
You want to know something funny about that idea? In the book that the Rambo film, the first one, is based off of. Well....Rambo dies at the end. There are no sequels of books, at all. So it's actually quite plausible that idea could be true.
@@Namkify Come on wake up America has always been the bad guy and History proves it...look on how the so called nation began,with an act of genocide kmt
On a related note to Rambo 3, I do wonder what would have happened had we helped rebuild Afghanistan after the end of the Soviet pull out. For those wondering where this comment comes from, look up Charlie Wilson's War which is about the covert helping of the Afghan resistance.
--- Correct, because victory in and against Viet Nam is merely an extension of the U.S. slave-state preserved by HRH Richard the Nixon, King of the World.
Thank you again for this amazing video series. Honestly I thought you would include that last horrible travesty of a movie as well (last blood) I ended up feeling rather sick at the end of watching that... For both the message and the first being all over the place with quality.
Also under King Reagan, our only military victory since WWII ( and that was mostly the Russians as our Allies, ironic isn't it ) was the heroic rescue of medical students on the island of Grenada. Eastwood was in a movie about it, yes, Clint, Speaker To Empty Chairs, who served bravely as a lifeguard while screwing the base commander's daughter. I'll end with this: remember Lee Marvin ( The Dirty Dozen, etc. ) he was wounded in the Pacific Campaign and was haunted by the deaths of his fellow Marines because he wasn't there. Lee was also one of the Biggest Liberals in Hollywood, I always smile when Rush rants on about 'Liberal Hollywood', I picture Lee in my mind. Excellent analysis of what Rambo truly represents.
@@renegadecut9875 Funny. The "people" quote is what I thought I remembered and had it typed in my response before I edited it. Then I googled the dedication, found the pic and thought I had mis-remembered or that the production company had perhaps altered the dedication. Turns out I was wrong, thanks for pointing that out. :)
thanks for this; Us under 40 lefties didn't grow up with this stuff so we need to be able to refrence and counter the media our elders or gen xer's know. I will wait when I can tell a liberal or righter 'you didn't win this time'
I'm 1000% certain I had subbed to this channel and rung the bell. And yet, I had be notified on facebook about this new video only to find out I had magically been unsubbed.
Correct; with the draft-dodging dullard Donald Trump, we are living in Nixon's police-state 'Murica, with Reagan's honest-guy racism, and Joe McCarthy's forked tongue defining who is 'Murican and who is American.
Thanks for the in-depth analysis, Leon. I had always thought the spitting on soldiers was something that had happened once or twice despite never having seen footage of it. It seemed a lot more likely than the monk burning himself alive. So perfect example of cultural osmosis, I guess. The image having been used so much I kinda assumed it was based in fact. It's been over 20 years since I last saw the First Blood films, always though the first one was the best (2&3 always seemed off to me as a kid, didn't have the frame of reference for it, but in the first one the conflict is foisted on Rambo and he is more of an underdog I guess). I doubt I'll ever revisit the films though.
Commenting before I watched the video, but I'll say this: First Blood is a great movie. The Rambo sequels are kind of offensive and garbage. Here's hoping I don't feel shame watching this! 🙏
I don't think you need to be ashamed of enjoying a movie with some problematic elements XD if so, I'd have to be ashamed of many of my favorite movies...
@@Gloomdrake It did a bit. 🙁 Mainly the realization that the sympathy I feel towards Rambo's mistreatment by the society he came back to was really uncommon, and kind of misdirects the guilt of Vietnam towards the civilians dissatisfied with it, instead of the government that should have never been there in the first place.
Thanks for another great video. I really appreciate how you go through movies (especially older ones). It is fascinating how Hollywood is supposed to be against traditional values but so many support government propaganda and conservative values
For what it's worth, this is why I always cringe whenever someone mentions how Jim Cameron's Aliens (1986) was supposed to be an allegory of the Vietnam war. Aliens clearly cashed in on Hollywood's Vietnam revisionism of the '80s, but it doesn't reflect a genuine understanding of the war at all.
Yeah having the opponents be hideous monsters that lack eyes and kill by tearing humans apart is probably not the best way to portray Vietnam allegorically.
if they didn't spit on him back in his homeland, did gloria even send him pictures of his boy?? IS EVERYTHING A LIE also, i had lumped the first rambo in with the others based on my early memories of them, and how i learned about the cultural impact of the movies growing up... which really makes me want to rewatch the first one (or read the book, as the comments seem to talk it about it having an even more different message than any of the movies.) this was one of those videos that put... into very real terms which would stand in a discussion, something i'd just always felt i'd 'known' about right wing propaganda in the 80s. i enjoyed it, thank you very much and nice work
Cannot hate Rambo II. It's Apocalypse now meets raiders of the lost ark. Cannot hate Rambo III. It's Lawrence of Arabia meets Last crusade. Cannot not hate Rambo IV and V,though
I'm always conflicted because I recognize that the Rambo movies are really problematic, but I can't also help but be sort of entertained by them. I'd be interesting to hear what you or others think about liking problematic things, knowing that they are problematic.
I love Gone With the Wind. It’s a brilliant movie. But as we should all recognize, it’s depiction of slavery is problematic as all get out!!! It’s place in movie history is undeniable and it is very good overall. It’s okay to like something but completely ignoring problematic things about them is a disservice to those the movie misrepresents. At least that’s my thought. Oh and that marital rape scene hasn’t aged well either.
I grew up watching John Wayne movies in the seventies. I think I was about eight the first time I saw "The Green Berets". I was two young at the time to realize it was just propaganda. For Much of my life he was my favorite actor. As I got older not only did I come to understand how conservative he was but later saw some old racist quotes from him about African Americans and Native Americans. I still have to deal with some mixed emotions about how horrible his politics were but still love some of his films.
It's frustrating to think how much of US foreign policy has been driven by this desire to "re-litigate" and "recontextualize" Vietnam. The idea that "we'd have won if we just fought right/let ourselves win" is pretty explicitly the motivation behind COIN doctrine, and the motivating impulse behind it's biggest proponents in the US mil.
Me: Except maybe Apocalypse Now Redux these films do play up "us" not winning due to X at home instead of just being wrong. Reminds me of why I love the game Spec Ops: The Line, I won't spoil it but tho the setting is different it's inspiration isn't. Also Me: 14:48 Make me jingoistic, muscly PTSD daddy!
I have a vague recollection of reading the novel of First Blood in the mid 1980s. If I recall correctly, Rambo dies in the novel. His old commanding officer comes in to talk him down, and then blows his brains out as a sort of mercy killing. I preferred that version.
My old work was mostly bad, and every so often, I go through my early videos and set them to private because I'm unhappy with the conclusions I reached or the research sources. I did that to about a dozen or so videos the other day. If I wanted it available, it would be available. I will not be changing my mind.
Before anyone says “The confirmation of the Gulf of Tonkin conspiracy proves the POW conspiracy is also true” or some other nonsense, please recognize that what you are really saying is “This historical event with a tremendous amount of evidence and admitted by the perpetrators themselves is as valid as a theory without any tangible evidence.”
The reason you think the Vietnam War was justified by the Tonkin incident and that POW's are still waiting to be rescued in Vietnam is because of state propaganda. That's the commonality. Not the vague concept of “conspiracy” in the abstract. POW's remaining in Vietnam post-war is the state lie - not the opposite. The state tried to make you think of unrecovered bodies as prisoners. The “conspiracy” is the opposite of what conspiracy theorists believe. Use your head, please.
Hollywood, just another arm of the military industrial complex.
I often have to explain some of these themes from the 80s Rambo movies, and often get a reply about Schwarzenegger doing their same thing. The one man army action films, may be similar, but Schwarzenegger has only fought generic enemies in most of his films, with the unarmed Dictator in Commando, or the terrorists in True Lies, being the closest to it.
Chuck Norris and Stallone were fighting a specific country, and their alleged puppet(Russia), while also spinning that conspiracy of captive prisoners a decade after the war in Vietnam.
I remember having arguments with kids about POWs still being in Vietnam, after I had read many books on the conflict and articles written about the conspiracies.
None had any proof, nor did they ever feel it needed any, because for many 80’s kids, this idea was planted early and was told in many films, and TV shows such as Magnum P.I., which even had an old Russian adversary for a villain.
Where I lived my school looked like a George Bush volunteer center. The city was so Red, that I only remember 2 teachers who weren’t actively talking about him and how important the election was, or very proud republicans.
So many of those kids I grew up with just believed anything an “authority figure” told them.
@@jackskellingtonation It *can* be, and it is required for the US military to co-operate with filmmakers. If you see a movie with real US military equipment - warplanes, etc, you can know that the US military approved the script first.
Renegade Cut pow is an appeal to emotion- Kris of trineday revealed the drug angle yet we know several other ops were activated Popeye & Phoenix as well as a cottage industry including both sides of a manufactured dialectic- Jim Morrison family served as both a catalyst and remedy- culture creation perfected
Awesome critique but where’s Chuck Norris and the missing in action crapfest? I grew up in the 90s and watched a ton of 80s action movies as a kid, chuck’s movies left in an impression for me because of how good evil they made Vietnam seem.
I'm Viet, as someone who came from a family with a long history of fightting for the Vietminh, I'd like to quote my grandfather - a tank driver "I hate the US goverment, but not the people, they were just drafted to go a war in a strange country, I forgave them but I shall never forget what they have done".
Something that isn't brought up much when people discuss the American failure in Vietnam is how the Viet Minh had existed in some form since the 1920s or so. There had been an anti-French insurgency since shortly after World War I, the OSS even supported them when they briefly resisted against the Japanese in WWII. The Viet Minh/Viet Cong were not some rag tag band of rebels bumbling around in the woods, they had been pretty well organized for years.
There were OSS agents telling the State Department to support Ho Chi Minh but muh communism overruled all rational thought.
This is popular stance on the subject from American point of view. That it was just some crazy tarzans that shoot coconuts from trees xd.
But still, America aside I dislike framing Viet minh as just a victim.
Totalitarian communism in vietnam is problem to this day, even if in a completely different form than in China or in Soviet Russia
yup. And not merely at a military lvl; the Viet Minh/Viet Cong had been deeply involved in political organizing, protest, local government, and civic services. They organized themselves as both an active opposition within the French colonial system, and an alternative government outside of it. Ken Burns's doc on Vietnam, somewhat inadvertently, manages to give probably the best sense of this available to mainstream US audiences just through its interviews with Viet Minh/Cong individuals.
I think that N. Vietnam became more totalitarian the longer the war dragged on.
It's like the US went after a wild animal under the fiction that it was a monster, but in pursuing it and fighting it, N. Vietnam slowly turned it into the monster they were after in the first place, and by that point the US didn't have the stomach for it.
If they had just avoided the whole conflict in the first place I don't think N. Vietnam would have become so totalitarian. The best thing would have just been to not intervene at all.
@@21Arrozito Vietnamese here, and yeah I don't like my authoritarian government at all, but it wasn't supposed to. Ho Chi Minh actually wanted nothing to do with China, he hated them more than even the French, because China had a long history of invading us (at one point we were practically one of their provinces for 1 thousand years). Indeed, Vietnam and China did go to war just a few years after the Americans left
"We're trying to make this as realistic as possible"
Said Sylvester Stallone about a movie where he plays the invincible God of Machine Guns and Explosions, Ares wearing a headband
. . . and, in real life, Sylvester Stallone ran away, to avoid being drafted to fight the International Red Menace in Viet Nam; facts glossed over by TIME magazine when they reported about the movie star who spoke for combat vets.
Fuck stallone , i hope he bwcomw villain in next movie with horrible death
Rambo is basically America looking itself in the mirror saying “you didn’t lose in Vietnam, you withdrew your troops, that’s not defeat technically. You don’t lose, you didn’t lose dammit😖”
Spitting at returning servicemen "at the airport" (Rambo's words from part 1). Took me a few years and an excellent Vietnam documentary to realize that this scenario itself is pretty much impossible. As a vet pointed out in that documentary, most (all?) servicemen didn't land at commercial airports when they returned home. Or at the very least wouldn't arrive like tourists at the airports they landed at. Where and how could those saliva-slinging protesters have gotten close to returning soldiers to be able to "spit at them at the airport"? Pretty sure the USAF don't let anti-war protesters (or any other random civilians) simply wander onto their airbases.
Plus, as you've pointed out, the peace movement was all about "bringing the boys home" ... they were on the soldiers' side and, if anything, anti-government/anti-establishment. So why would they spit at regular soldiers, most of whom had been drafted and certainly hadn't gone to Vietnam "for kicks"?
And all this time, I was confused about those stories of vets getting spit on by protesters who wants them to return.
This right here. This is one of those stories that adults would tell when you asked them about why the world is the way it is. The adults I grew up around, it turns out, all their world wisdom is full of shit. The really fucked up part, I can't be mad at them for lying, they don't realize that. But being gullible sacks of shit and going along with everything...
My stepfather has this whole story about he was spit on and a hippie stole his luggage. He punched the guy out and was taken to an examination room, where a mysterious man in a black suit let him off with a wink. That's not a joke. That's the story he tells over and over.
What was the documentary? Ive been looking for a good vietnam war doc
Jasmine Kelley then that was a plant, hmm... still technically untrue
11:38 Someone might've coined this statement before me, but I often say it: "Anything that does not support a conspiracy theory becomes a part of the conspiracy." And this is why it is so goddamn hard to shake the faith of anyone who believes in a conspiracy theory, no matter how far-fetched and disproven the theory is.
@@jaspervanheycop9722 "Who knows? But they're clearly hiding it for some reason." Thus the conspiracy is rendered unassailable. The reason for the conspiracy is naturally as hidden as the conspiracy itself. The only think I can think of is countering it with another conspiracy theory, that is to suggest that the original conspiracy is merely a smokescreen for another conspiracy, which it is.
I do wonder if it's even possible for an American film to show the trauma of the Vietnamese victims of the war, at least not yet. Maybe fifty years or more from now, but even then...
Speaking as a English woman, I know many people have pride in the British Empire's exploits throughout history, and that the idea that we were wrong in what we did is seen as offensive. The specter of the Empire still haunts us, drags us down with pride.
Perhaps off topic, but I can't help but see parallels.
Very interesting comparison. Glad you shared
The documentaries do and many books on the subject on how America should have not gotten involved and if we did it would have been better to support Ho Chi because Ho Chi actual use to work in a bakery in Boston he understood America.
you’re very right with the British empire exploits & the brutal reality of colonisation by the british as a nigerian, one of the many countries formerly part of the british empire
@@kappadarwin9476 oh he understood united States better than most white politicians then.he had an deep understanding of the situation of African Americans in US.
"We left a few women and children alive in Vietnam and we haven't felt good about ourselves since." - Carlin
-- Too true.
RIP George Carlin you were 1 of my favorite comedians
I cried everytime your country said they are good and they cared
Given how the warmongers and "humanitarians" are acting in America right now, they seem to regret not bombing Afghanistan into the neolithic time period like a pack of psychopaths. Any lessons that we could of learned, out the bloody window much like Vietnam.
I saw Rambo 2 in the theatre with my mom when it came out. She was actually disappointed that Rambo didn't kill the Brian Keith character at the end. Couple of other things...James Cameron wrote the original script for Rambo 2, but he's famous for saying that Stallone rewrote huge chunks of it, "The action is mine, but the politics are all Sly's." He said much of the psychological drama that Sly threw out, James used in Aliens. Also, they actually turned Rambo into a kid's cartoon cuz 80's.
So was the A-Team and Robocop
@@PancakemonsterFO4 That's a good mention! Robocop starts as a R-rated satire on corporatism, got turned into corporate merch for children!
That was Brian Dennehey
In Rambo 2, that was Charles Napier as Murdock, not Brian Keith.
Rambo the kids cartoon was class he had a flame thrower. I would love it to be remade, rambo would go in and bust up strikes assassinate anyone trying to start up a union.
I believe that a childhood friend of mine made the best description for the rambo series: "It's war porn for conservatives."
US: Are we the baddies?
US: No, it's everyone else in the entire world who's wrong!
The World: Kinda,yes.
@@user-jn1wm3tb8v listen I know people like to talk shit about the United States and rightly so. But don't think for a moment the United States did nothing in World War 2. That is flat out ignorant and stupid.
well yes, but actually depends
Right Wingers: "get politics out of movies!"
Me: * points to Rambo *
Them: "but how is that political!? It's not SJW!"
Me: * face palm*
LOL! don't even bring up politics is superhero movies...
Didn't you hear? Media can only ever be "political" if it involves women and minorities in non-stereotypical roles!
And keep politics out of sports (as Trump takes a lap around the Daytona speedway in his limo).
@@mickeyg7219 on the other hand, the more a superhero movie uses military assets the more jingoistic it is.
Remember Iron Man and the narrative of "the only reason we are doing such a bad job of winning in the middle east is because they are stealing our high tech guns!"
Right wingers think that anything that isn’t conservative is political. They’re so stubborn and stuck in their ways that they don’t understand or see that ANYTHING can be political or say some kind of message.
I kinda get the impression that the politics of the book may have been a bit different from the politics in the movie, First Blood. In the book, Rambo is a far less sympathetic character. Sure, you root for him because he is the protagonist and you see things through his perspective. But in the book, he actually murders one of the police officers when escaping the jail and his inner monologue reveals him to the reader as someone suffering from serious psychological issues who intentionally continues his clash with the town sheriff more out of preserving his own ego than anything else. There is also no monologue at the end where he talks about protesters. Rambo in the movie is sympathetic and heroic. Rambo in the book is a tragic character that causes mayhem because of the monster that war has turned him into. His character in the book is more similar to the antagonist in The Hunted, who is very clearly the bad guy, despite being kinda sympathetic.
I never knew the 'spitting on servicemen' trope was a myth. I'd always heard it preached somewhat as a belief growing up.
I always thought it was about the US government just kinda dumping Vietnam veterans back into society, with no assistance at all.
I had a friend who was a Vietnam vet and people would often thank him for his service. He'd then say "things sure have changed from back in the day." Apparently, he believed this myth about servicemen being mistreated after Vietnam.
Same here. I've heard that since I was old enuff to know what Viet Nam was.
I believe I somewhat remember reading from my U.S. History textbook in my Junior year of high school that the "spitting on servicemen" was not a myth and that it "did happen." I’m not too sure about it now, but learning recently how it was all a myth really put a distaste in my mouth.
Rambo is just “American exceptionalism, the movie”
Somehow this makes the Simpsons episode "The Principal and the Pauper" all the more insidious as the "real" Seymour Skinner being a POW for decades in Vietnam perpetuates the myth of POW being trapped there.
“We promised this would not be another Vietnam. And we kept that promise. The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula.” GHW Bush 1991
This video is dedicated to the brave Mujaheddin fighters in Afghanistan
Jeeves Anthrozaur that is fake; there has been no version of the movie with this. There's a video out there that debunks this myth
And then Frank Stallone sings a cover of The Hollies' "He Ain't Heavy, He's my Brother" (Rambo III end credits). Ah, propaganda!
It was dedicated to "The gallant people of Afghanistan"
Big fucking oof
This has not aged well at all.
I've talked to Vietnam vets and the only instance of "civilian abuse" I heard of was one was demanded to leave a diner while wearing his uniform.
It’s funny (not really), but the “spitting on the Vietnam vets” myth even exists here in Australia.
Just goes to show that Aussie governments need not come up with their own propaganda, just sit back and let the Yankee propaganda do their work for them.
Didn’t know the “Peace Protestors Spitting on the Vets” was actually a myth. Puts a sour note on a movie I like.
Great video though, looking forward to the next one as always
"Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go."
This has one of the most concise explanations of why we went to war in Vietnam. Good job.
I always liked the first Rambo. I think it's a great movie by Stallone.
your takedown of the second film is spot on. Conservative 80s propaganda.
The book is better ... and has a pretty different message than the movie. Stallone's big speech at the end of part 1 makes that film cringe-worthy for me these days.
This is our "Stab in the Back Myth"
The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now and Platoon are all great films. Even if they do only show one side of the conflict, they all have some unique things to say about the conflict and those involved. And they speak some truth about how stupid The war was. And then there’s Rambo... a film that is only full of slightly less crap then John Wayne’s The Green Berets (*gag*). Wonder how some people don’t see the obvious political allegory. Maybe their distracted by all the big explosions.
sadly for all the conservative call out about Hollywood liberal elite pushing political messages, they still cheer leader hollywood elite when it suit them.
Hamburger Hill is a good one too, just saw that one the other week.
Uncle Ho will live for ever, in the struggle of people!!!
A lot of Americans these days think Vietnam was a victory
It was a victory, the goal was to destroy Vietnam then leave. Chomsky talks about it
who? I've never encountered these people. but then again, I live in a very progressive leaning place.
Otto: "We did not lose Vietnam. It was a tie!"
@@ryanpyle9822 thank you very much for making me look that Chomsky tidbit up, bro; sincerely.
Here's the video (see video timestamp 41:29): ruclips.net/video/82XBmo0a6r4/видео.html
@@mickeyg7219 very cool millenials!
I had no clue the POW/MIA flag is literally promoting an ahistorical conspiracy. Excellent essay.
I love the videos you do, sometimes they are uncomfortable as they make me face my lazy thinking.
My favorite film about the Vietnam War, that actually sees it from the point of view of the vietnamese, is Heaven and Earth. It's a great film to watch as a juxtaposition against Rambo. Also, please make a video about Top Gun and how it single handedly recruited scores of people into the airforce and maybe about to do it again.
I'm sorry, but I don't take requests.
He did one about homoeroticism in 80-90's action movies and included a bit on Top Gun.
Navy, Top Gun is navy. Not air force
Not only was the spitting on servicemen an urban legend, it was obviously an intentional, hand-crafted piece of propaganda meant to discredit the peace movement.
It wasn't just propaganda to the Americans but also to the world.
The 80s was all about propaganda films!
The 2000s and 2010s as well: London has fallen, American sniper, etc.
Black hawk down is a grotesque propaganda movie.
Well not all films in the 80s where right wing Propoganda Full metal jacket was a satire on Vietnam, Terminator was a critique on the military industry & corporatism, Robocop was a satire on Corporatism & Violence with the police like it didn't take it's self too seriously, The Star Wars Sequels (including the Ewok Movies) where critiques on Vietnam where the Rebels were the Vietmanese, The Empire were the Americans & Palpatine was Nixon, Indiana Jones is about Stopping Nazis from invading areas & Stealing treasures (Mostly because Steven Spielberg was Jewish & his Dad fought in WW2), They Live calls out the Bull$hit with Ronald Reagan same with Escape from New York you could also say That She-Ra was an anti Imperialism show (Although the Netflix Reboot did a better job with this especially with its pro LGBTQ+ themes) & Etc so the 80s had leftist/liberal (Maybe liberalism IDK) & not just right wing or far right movies/show but I get what you mean.
Did you read about (or hear, I heard it on 99% Invivisble) the fact that the "unknown soldier" placed in the Tomb of the Unknown to represent the VIetnam War was in fact totally known, but the government wanted the show of adding a body to the tomb so they didn't tell his family what had happened to him for decades?
"We're going to win this time." Sounds like, "It will be different this time."
I was a military brat and when I was growing up in the 80s Rambo movies were crazy popular on the base. I even had the toys and the videogame.
I have a theory: during the events of first blood, rambo was critically wounded during his standoff with the police at the roof of the police station and was put in a coma and afterward the events of the other rambo movies were all just a coma dream because in real life a lone soldier would be unable to take down the entire soviet or vietnamese army.
--- You are too kind; excellent allusion to Ambrose Bierce. Thanks.
You want to know something funny about that idea?
In the book that the Rambo film, the first one, is based off of. Well....Rambo dies at the end. There are no sequels of books, at all. So it's actually quite plausible that idea could be true.
Amazing video. The historical and modern context you add to your videos makes them timeless.
Weird to see Stallone use words like " pertinent" and " validity" on set while still shirtless and wearing his badass headband
Are we the baddies
You havn't been listening to cominform propaganda. Of course they're gonna say we're the bad guys!
@@Namkify Come on wake up America has always been the bad guy and History proves it...look on how the so called nation began,with an act of genocide kmt
I really love your work. Makes me want to do my own videos that focus on such things from a black POV.
--- Excellent idea. I look forward to such a perspective of U.S. imperialism.
On a related note to Rambo 3, I do wonder what would have happened had we helped rebuild Afghanistan after the end of the Soviet pull out. For those wondering where this comment comes from, look up Charlie Wilson's War which is about the covert helping of the Afghan resistance.
--- No, you are wrong; Mr. Wilson's war was about personal profit, not about helping Afghanistan.
@@marianotorrespico2975 can you explain?
You would have fucked the country the same way you did Iraq
It's fascinating to compare this to Watchmen, where the US does win Vietnam but that just makes things worse.
--- Correct, because victory in and against Viet Nam is merely an extension of the U.S. slave-state preserved by HRH Richard the Nixon, King of the World.
How about the Missing in Action trilogy, those are almost like an advertisement for "Vietnam 2"
I think the first two missing in Action films are far better then Rambo 2 and 3.
This was great, would love to see you cover the very odd US media framing of our intervention in Yugoslavia
14:51 - getting swole 😂😆🤣😁😅😄😃😀
Thank you again for this amazing video series. Honestly I thought you would include that last horrible travesty of a movie as well (last blood)
I ended up feeling rather sick at the end of watching that... For both the message and the first being all over the place with quality.
I think there is one scene in Rambo 3 where Trautman says to the Soviet commander that Afghanistan will be their Vietnam.
I totally forgot that Rambo helped start the Taliban.
The Mujahideens are not the Taliban.
@@darimiwamubarak they're kinda linked tho
al qaeda
You went in on this one. Good shit man
Also under King Reagan, our only military victory since WWII ( and that was mostly the Russians as our Allies, ironic isn't it ) was the heroic rescue of medical students on the island of Grenada.
Eastwood was in a movie about it, yes, Clint, Speaker To Empty Chairs, who served bravely as a lifeguard while screwing the base commander's daughter.
I'll end with this: remember Lee Marvin ( The Dirty Dozen, etc. ) he was wounded in the Pacific Campaign and was haunted by the deaths of his fellow Marines because he wasn't there. Lee was also one of the Biggest Liberals in Hollywood, I always smile when Rush rants on about 'Liberal Hollywood', I picture Lee in my mind.
Excellent analysis of what Rambo truly represents.
RAMBO 2 was the BIGGEST thing in 1985 Cinemas,
Worldwide people loved it.
I took a science fiction course at Rutgers University that was taught by H Bruce Franklin, he was a cool dude
So Rambo helped the Taliban?
the US created it.
"Dedicated to the gallant Mudjahideen fighters" ... according to the end-credits. Yeah... that line didn't age well ... :D
i.redd.it/5whaj2kr4wi31.jpg
The mujahideen of the 70s and 80s were succeeded by the Taliban, who kinda hate their predecessors.
The "dedicated to the mujahideen" thing is a myth. Photoshop. Mandella effect. It was always "gallant people of Afghanistan" at the end.
@@renegadecut9875 Funny. The "people" quote is what I thought I remembered and had it typed in my response before I edited it. Then I googled the dedication, found the pic and thought I had mis-remembered or that the production company had perhaps altered the dedication. Turns out I was wrong, thanks for pointing that out. :)
Loved the historical perspective you gave.
thanks for this; Us under 40 lefties didn't grow up with this stuff so we need to be able to refrence and counter the media our elders or gen xer's know. I will wait when I can tell a liberal or righter 'you didn't win this time'
I'm 1000% certain I had subbed to this channel and rung the bell. And yet, I had be notified on facebook about this new video only to find out I had magically been unsubbed.
I feel like we’re going thru a worse version of Reagan + Nixon right now.
Correct; with the draft-dodging dullard Donald Trump, we are living in Nixon's police-state 'Murica, with Reagan's honest-guy racism, and Joe McCarthy's forked tongue defining who is 'Murican and who is American.
Thanks for the in-depth analysis, Leon. I had always thought the spitting on soldiers was something that had happened once or twice despite never having seen footage of it. It seemed a lot more likely than the monk burning himself alive. So perfect example of cultural osmosis, I guess. The image having been used so much I kinda assumed it was based in fact.
It's been over 20 years since I last saw the First Blood films, always though the first one was the best (2&3 always seemed off to me as a kid, didn't have the frame of reference for it, but in the first one the conflict is foisted on Rambo and he is more of an underdog I guess). I doubt I'll ever revisit the films though.
* sees this * * automatically thumbs up before watching 5 seconds of the video *
Commenting before I watched the video, but I'll say this:
First Blood is a great movie. The Rambo sequels are kind of offensive and garbage.
Here's hoping I don't feel shame watching this! 🙏
Let us know
I don't think you need to be ashamed of enjoying a movie with some problematic elements XD if so, I'd have to be ashamed of many of my favorite movies...
@@Gloomdrake It did a bit. 🙁 Mainly the realization that the sympathy I feel towards Rambo's mistreatment by the society he came back to was really uncommon, and kind of misdirects the guilt of Vietnam towards the civilians dissatisfied with it, instead of the government that should have never been there in the first place.
And Hollywood hasn't change til this day.
I love Rambo, but this is great.
The Rambo movies are fun but yeah I've never had any illusion about what they are
Thanks for another great video. I really appreciate how you go through movies (especially older ones). It is fascinating how Hollywood is supposed to be against traditional values but so many support government propaganda and conservative values
--- Correct, because most folk deliberately ignore that "Hollywood" is a business, nothing more.
I can only recommend Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War for a vietnamese perspective.
Preach it brother 👏🏻
The name 'First Blood: Part II" is so weird.
If I remember correctly there was a Chuck Norris movie, where he goes to Vietnam after the war to recover the lost PoWs
Great vid! Good job 👍
18:54 - is Perfection.
Take my comment as tribute oh great algorythmo bless this channel with your dark powers!
For what it's worth, this is why I always cringe whenever someone mentions how Jim Cameron's Aliens (1986) was supposed to be an allegory of the Vietnam war. Aliens clearly cashed in on Hollywood's Vietnam revisionism of the '80s, but it doesn't reflect a genuine understanding of the war at all.
Yeah having the opponents be hideous monsters that lack eyes and kill by tearing humans apart is probably not the best way to portray Vietnam allegorically.
It'd be a cool twist if the Xenomorphs were only doing what they do in order to avoid extinction by the human industrial complex.
Even John Rambo can't escape police brutality in America.
if they didn't spit on him back in his homeland, did gloria even send him pictures of his boy?? IS EVERYTHING A LIE
also, i had lumped the first rambo in with the others based on my early memories of them, and how i learned about the cultural impact of the movies growing up... which really makes me want to rewatch the first one (or read the book, as the comments seem to talk it about it having an even more different message than any of the movies.) this was one of those videos that put... into very real terms which would stand in a discussion, something i'd just always felt i'd 'known' about right wing propaganda in the 80s. i enjoyed it, thank you very much and nice work
....the voice changed!!!! I cant sleep no more...
Cannot hate Rambo II. It's Apocalypse now meets raiders of the lost ark.
Cannot hate Rambo III. It's Lawrence of Arabia meets Last crusade.
Cannot not hate Rambo IV and V,though
I'm always conflicted because I recognize that the Rambo movies are really problematic, but I can't also help but be sort of entertained by them. I'd be interesting to hear what you or others think about liking problematic things, knowing that they are problematic.
I love Gone With the Wind. It’s a brilliant movie. But as we should all recognize, it’s depiction of slavery is problematic as all get out!!! It’s place in movie history is undeniable and it is very good overall. It’s okay to like something but completely ignoring problematic things about them is a disservice to those the movie misrepresents. At least that’s my thought. Oh and that marital rape scene hasn’t aged well either.
I grew up watching John Wayne movies in the seventies. I think I was about eight the first time I saw "The Green Berets". I was two young at the time to realize it was just propaganda. For Much of my life he was my favorite actor. As I got older not only did I come to understand how conservative he was but later saw some old racist quotes from him about African Americans and Native Americans. I still have to deal with some mixed emotions about how horrible his politics were but still love some of his films.
Very smart. Well done.
Fan edit challenge: Make a deepfake edition of Rambo: First Blood II with Ronald Reagan's face on Stallone's body.
Are you going to make a video about the two newer Rambo films ?
I love the sovietwave music in the background
It's frustrating to think how much of US foreign policy has been driven by this desire to "re-litigate" and "recontextualize" Vietnam. The idea that "we'd have won if we just fought right/let ourselves win" is pretty explicitly the motivation behind COIN doctrine, and the motivating impulse behind it's biggest proponents in the US mil.
Me: Except maybe Apocalypse Now Redux these films do play up "us" not winning due to X at home instead of just being wrong. Reminds me of why I love the game Spec Ops: The Line, I won't spoil it but tho the setting is different it's inspiration isn't.
Also Me: 14:48 Make me jingoistic, muscly PTSD daddy!
A movie about Vietnam form the Vietnamese perspective? That would sick!!! Yo, Oliver Stone, I know how you can rebuild your film career!!
THE POW FLAG THING IS ABIUT THE VIETNAM WAR!!! tbh I didn’t know anything about it
My GFs Grandfather was also a Vietnam Vet, but he doesn't get a military discount.
I guess people don't like winners any more, Sad.
I have a vague recollection of reading the novel of First Blood in the mid 1980s. If I recall correctly, Rambo dies in the novel. His old commanding officer comes in to talk him down, and then blows his brains out as a sort of mercy killing. I preferred that version.
Maybe I'm just snotty, but I'm always vaguely surprised when Sylvester Stallone uses multi-syllabic words like "pertinent" and "validity".
good video
Where did your 'Inland Empire' video go? I watched it the other day ):
My old work was mostly bad, and every so often, I go through my early videos and set them to private because I'm unhappy with the conclusions I reached or the research sources. I did that to about a dozen or so videos the other day. If I wanted it available, it would be available. I will not be changing my mind.
@@renegadecut9875 Thank you for clarifying! Loved this video btw, keep up the good work
Any chance of a follow up on the 4th and 5th movies?
5 especially is just... yikes.
You should definitely watch the new DC Harley Quinn cartoon when it's done!
Awesome Video! Would like to hear your thoughts on the fourth Rambo movie, too. Also, please do the X Files.
I'm sorry, but I don't take requests.
8:26 It even appears in The Simpsons.
I wonder if there are any hollywood vietnam movies from the vietnamese perspective.
Well done.
And then they made another one that was basically just Rambo themed Death Wish.
--- Careful, "Death Wish" (1974) is above reproach.