A salutary treatment of media mythmaking, this incisive book shows how portrayals of Vietnam POWs in movies and books often diverge from the reality of the POW experience. Gruner, who teaches at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, suggests that the image of the POW has been used to "rehabilitate all Vietnam veterans and romanticize the Vietnam War." He analyzes how POW autobiographies promote this myth, finding that the more commercially successful ones downplay negative experiences. Though the film The Hanoi Hilton ...
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A salutary treatment of media mythmaking, this incisive book shows how portrayals of Vietnam POWs in movies and books often diverge from the reality of the POW experience. Gruner, who teaches at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, suggests that the image of the POW has been used to "rehabilitate all Vietnam veterans and romanticize the Vietnam War." He analyzes how POW autobiographies promote this myth, finding that the more commercially successful ones downplay negative experiences. Though the film The Hanoi Hilton draws on autobiographies, it distorts them to emphasize POW resistance and to demonize the North Vietnamese, he argues. He shows how advertisers such as Philip Morris exploit the image of the heroic POW, and emphasizes the sexism in most narratives. Most accounts, he notes, focus on the individual's triumph over adversity and not on the politics and destructiveness of the war. He concludes by analyzing how Americans tried to fit POWs from the Gulf war into the frame of Vietnam, wanting them to "conform to certain preexisting notions of conduct, sexuality and image."
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Seller's Description:
Rutgers University Press, 1993. Very good., Paperback, Octavo, 245. Bright, clean, tight. 245 pages. Communications, Media, and Culture Series. Packed and shipped with care.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good+ 0813519314. Perfect bound illustrated softcover, sharp and square. Book is firm in its binding, 245 pages include Index, with b&w photographs and illustrations. Light underlining to approx. 20 pages. Else--Free of any markings, not ex-library.; Communications, Media, And Culture; B&W Phototographs; 8vo 8"-9" tall; 245 pages.