abelard
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So, the Ken Burns Vietnam War series debuts tomorrow.
Apparently there is a 10 hour “International” version that will air in Europe (not sure why it needed to be cut from the original 18). And interestingly, it will run uncut and uncensored in Vietnam on the PBS website, with Vietnamese subtitles. Young people there will definitely watch.
I’ve seen an advance copy of the full edit, and it’s pretty good
If you’re at all interested in Vietnam, or military history, or the Cold War, or US politics, or Vietnam itself, you should watch. I’m pretty confident almost everyone who does will learn quite a bit.
Historians (but who cares about them) will rightly criticize the film for brushing over French colonialism and the war against France too quickly, and for almost completely ignoring Laos and Cambodia, where all the horrors of the Khmer Rouge were enabled by Vietnamese and American invasions, and above all, the death of some 600,000 civilians by US airstrikes.
You will also probably see a lot of reviews like this from old school lefties who are miffed that the war shown here is rather more complicated than the one they thought they’d spent much of the 60s and 70s protesting. You can safely ignore this sort of thing – people like Thomas Bass are ignorant and far too lazy to do anything about it. The war for them is an ongoing argument about American politics, and only loosely based on Vietnam’s actual history.
And of course, conversely, “conservative” history of the American variety is almost by definition garbage, and on Vietnam they are even worse than usual. From them, you can expect a lot of the usual whingeing about how the film isn’t basically just the plot of Rambo: First Blood II, because of political correctness.
This documentary is certainly much better and more thoughtful than either of these sorts of response suggest.
One of the things it does particularly well, at least by American public history standards, is to incorporate Vietnamese perspectives. Of course, it is still mostly the story of what Vietnam means to Americans, but it’s more balanced than most, and they were never going to get 30$ million in corporate funding for a film in which the main characters are all named Nguyen.
Still, you get a sense of how complicated and divided the country was, both between and within North and South, but also town and country, military and civilian, Buddhist and Catholic etc. It does not shy from communist atrocities (something the lefties I describe above have always hid from), and it contains some surprisingly candid admissions about this, from perpetrators. It also shows that the North was far from a monolith – there were deep divisions beneath the surface about tactics, motives, or ideology, and considerable soul-searching about what was achieved, and at what cost.
The film also shows that South Vietnam was no puppet; that the notion and initial prospects of an anti-communist Vietnam were real; that this enjoyed significant (though mostly urban and never unified) popular support; and that it was in no way doomed from the outset. Anti-communist South Vietnamese were, however, thoroughly betrayed not by the US, but by the South Vietnamese government itself - which was staggeringly corrupt, inept, authoritarian, and guilty of every horror perpetrated by the communist side and so, so much more (though devoid of Hanoi’s administrative competence, determination, anti-colonial prestige, or subsequent economic stewardship).
The United States could not possibly have done more to help the clowns running the show in Saigon, and the defeat was entirely theirs – and not the Democrats' or Congress, as people who interpret history entirely through the lens of post 9/11 US politics will tell you. Washington even effectively broke the Gold Standard trying to pay for the war, which was a significant factor in the subsequent economic “malaise” of the 70s. At the time, anti-communist South Vietnamese well understood this, though they’ve since mostly crammed it back down the memory hole, and settled for scapegoating everyone else.
In any event, the film at least attempts to go beyond the lingering “Cold War proxy” notion of the war, and gives a hint of the nuance and complexity of the conflict, between and within both Vietnamese sides. Like I say, you will almost certainly learn from it.
It isn't trying to impose any particular point of view, but rather, to explain why people on all sides acted as they did. That's not to say it shies from criticism though either. There are no "talking heads;" only people who were involved in some way are interviewed, which is smart. Some of these are incredibly moving, and poignant.
It is still probably too American-centric. In fact, for all the US extravagantly and preposterously lavished on the world-historically venal and incompetent South Vietnamese military, Washington was always more the supporting cast than the main protagonist. And the Vietnamese were always the lead acts in their own drama, though historians are only now shedding past biases and acquiring the language proficiency needed to grasp this.
Still, about 25% of the interviews are Vietnamese (with English-language subtitles), likely unprecedented given the state of the average American television audience. They did over 80 interviews in Vietnam, but only 25 or so made the cut.
Tellingly, Ken Burns himself apparently thought they could do without Vietnamese interviews altogether
– though thankfully, it was the unheralded Lynn Novick who actually made the film, and she saw that they spoke to the right people. (Ken is actually much more the brand than the brains, in charge of marketing, and especially, fundraising - cheers, Koch Brothers!)
Anyhow, if you’re at all a history buff, you should watch. It’s probably available to stream for free via PBS. And it would certainly be worth your time.
Anyone planning to watch?
