Review by Choice Review
Franklin, whose radicalism cost him a tenured position at Stanford during the Vietnam War, presents a series of riveting essays exploring the impact of that conflagration on US culture. He opens with an examination of how American fighting images from the Civil War to Desert Storm have been framed through literature, photographs, movies, and television. As for US machinations in Vietnam, the author claims that denial characterized by deception and delusion has papered over those antics. In a similar vein, the antiwar movement that challenged such involvement has been stereotyped negatively or forgotten altogether. Forgetting is something that the author is incapable of doing, as remembrances of the US's "napalm campaign" still haunt him. Authentic accounts of both the war abroad and the one that threatened to unfold at home, Franklin insists, can be found in the underground press of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The unwillingness to acknowledge as much appears to be associated with the cultural wars that the US is still enduring. Franklin concludes with a powerful indictment of how public figures in the US have garnered political capital from the POW/MIA issue. Recommended for graduate students and professionals. R. C. Cottrell; California State University, Chico
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
In the early 70s, Franklin lost a tenured appointment at Stanford University; the advisory board that fired him argued that his active opposition to the Vietnam War reflected a "perception of reality" so different from the Stanford consensus that he could not remain. Franklin has written on other subjects over the years, including Melville and prison literature, but Vietnam has inspired some of his most probing work. This volume synthesizes Franklin's earlier work, representing his attempt to confront "the fantasies that made the war possible as well as those myths, celluloid images, and other delusory fictions about `Vietnam' that in the subsequent decades have come to replace historical and experiential reality." Franklin opens with an analysis of war images, from Revolutionary War paintings and Matthew Brady's Civil War photographs to the "virtual reality" of the Persian Gulf War "smart" bombs. He then takes up such subjects as "plausible denial," the antiwar movement, the interaction of war and technology in culture (Star Trek and science fiction) and politics ("Star Wars"), and the history and meaning of the POW/MIA campaign. Cogent cultural criticism. --Mary Carroll
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"Human memory," Primo Levi once wrote, "is a marvelous but fallacious instrument." Memories change and reconstruct the past, and in this provocative study, Rutgers cultural historian Franklin argues that the American memory of Vietnam has left fact and experience behind so that what remains is myth and denial. The Vietnam War, says Franklin, was an imperialist war of aggression built on lies and deception. But as this is an unacceptable truth, we have had to create images in films, books and the popular imagination to dispel such a notion. In film, lone heroes like Rambo battle both the VietnameseÄportrayed as heartless monstersÄas well as timid American bureaucrats to win a war we could not win for real. Cynical politicians, Franklin says, perpetuate the myth of the "POW/MIA." War protesters have been demonized as mindless dupes; the "alternative press" of the 1960s, which, Franklin contends, covered the war more honestly and deeply than its mainstream relatives, is now all but forgotten. More subtly, he argues, cultural conservatives battle in academia to restore "Western" values that were shaken and challenged by America's participation in and loss of the war. Franklin thus wanders far afield in exploring the unreality that is now called "Vietnam." His analyses are at times strained, his conclusions overwrought, but he is never uninteresting or timid in challenging accepted wisdom. Though not always successful in its argument, this is an honest attempt to remember the complex legacy of Vietnam. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A former antiwar activist and author of M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America, Franklin (English and American studies, Rutgers) offers an all-inclusive cultural history of the Vietnam War and its continuing impact upon contemporary American society. Like Fred Turner in Echoes of Combat (LJ 11/15/96), Franklin shows how the proliferation of books, plays, films, and television programs whose scenarios reflected the conflict in Vietnam influenced a generation raised on superheroes and John Wayne stereotypes. Not just obvious examples such as the Rambo films or Coming Home but war-era sf such as Star Trek and underground comics are viewed in a Vietnam context. Franklin also demonstrates how mythmaking influenced support for the warDeven in the face of the harsh realities of what Vietnam had becomeDcausing a generation to protest government policies. Often citing underground sources and other antiwar activists, he shows how the divisive schisms took place within the power structures of government. This well-documented study presents another facet of this important and controversial period of American history and its cultural aftermath. Recommended for academic and large public libraries with lively Vietnam collections.DGeral Costa, Brooklyn P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
