The release of Spike Lee’s new film is the latest reminder of why America can never escape the memories and lessons of the Vietnam War era.
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Spike Lee’s new movie Da 5 Bloods (June 12, Netflix) follows four African-American Vietnam veterans as they return to present-day Vietnam in search of their fallen squad leader and the promise of a buried treasure.
One of the first shots in the movie’s trailer is set in the Ho Chi Minh City nightlclub, Apocalypse Now.
I lived in Ho Chi Minh City for five years (2008-2012) after graduating from McGill University and went to that bar — which everyone called “Apo” — probably a 100 times.
With one of the city’s latest closing times for a nightlife venue (4am), Apo was usually the last stop for partygoers (“last stop” = “place where shit got real lit”).
In the US, “Apocalypse Now” obviously has a much different meaning. It is the title of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic (and extremely dark) 1979 Vietnam War film.
In Vietnam, “Apocalypse Now” can become a turnt nightclub. In America, “Apocalypse Now” is a reminder of America’s greatest geopolitical failure.
And, over the decades, America has had many reasons to be reminded of this failure in Southeast Asia.
As one of the few Hollywood productions about the Vietnam War told through African-American eyes, Da 5 Bloods is the perfect reminder for this moment. 1 A moment when protests against racial injustice and police brutality are sweeping across the globe.
During the Vietnam War, African-Americans often made up 25% of combat units despite being only 12% of the military (and 11% of the broader US population).
This gross imbalance — combined with the systemic racial inequality on US soil — was a key issue for civil rights activist including Muhammad Ali.
The boxing legend famously refused to be drafted by the US military. As a result, Ali was denied a boxing license in every US state (losing his prime athletic years, between 25-29) and was sentenced to five years in jail (a conviction ultimately overturned by the US Supreme court). 2
As the current period shows, the Vietnam War continually comes into and out of America’s consciousness.
Below is my brief (and very un-academic) recounting of this history.
(Listen to this podcast to hear me talk all things Apocalypse Now, the movie not the nightclub haha)
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1960s-2000s
In the 1960s, the Vietnam War was at the centre of a tumultuous decade (civil rights, anti-war, JFK, RFK, MLK Jr., student protests, ‘68 Democratic convention) that tore America apart and raised the very question of what an “American Empire” should look like.
In the 1970s, America paid for its misadventures (Watergate, Stagflation, Ford, Carter, Fall of Saigon) and limped through the decade a diminished power.
In the 1980s, America (mostly) left the ghost of Vietnam behind; its greatest foe, the Soviet Union, was embroiled in its own Vietnam (Afghanistan) on the way to a total implosion (the Berlin Wall fell in ‘89) while — under President Ronald Reagan — America was supposed to be the “shining city on the hill.”
In the 1990s, the US was the sole remaining global superpower and the world was at the “end of history.” With America’s decisive victory in the Gulf War and the normalization of relations with Vietnam in 1995, it looked like the country had finally moved on from the Vietnam War. However, memories of the Southeast Asian quagmire continued to haunt the country. This was most readily apparent in America’s failure to effectively intervene in the Balkans and Rwanda conflicts (fear of putting US troops on the ground led to genocides).
In the 2000s, Vietnam was front and centre again with the invasion of 2003 Iraq – yet another American overreach which continues to scar the country.
2010s to Now
The first half of the 2010s watched America recover from the Great Financial Crisis, with previous financial disasters serving as the key point of historical comparison.
Matters changed in the lead-up to the 2016 election. America’s polarization in the period just prior to and after Donald Trump’s election echoed the social upheavals of the 1960s. The investigations and White House scandals that followed brought back memories of Nixon, Kissinger, Watergate and the Pentagon Papers.
The first term of Trump’s presidency coincided with the 50-year anniversary of America’s escalation in Vietnam (under President Lyndon B. Johnson, US troop count increased from 17k in 1963 to 500k in 1968).
Fifty years is considered a sweet spot in historical analysis. We are far enough away from the event to have perspective but still get the benefit of primary sources.
Unsurprisingly, the late 2010s saw a lot of “revisiting” of the Vietnam War.
Viet Thanh Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for The Sympathizer, which looked at the war from the rarely seen perspective of a Vietnamese Communist spy. The New York Times ran a yearlong series in 2017 titled Vietnam ‘67. In the fall of 2017, America’s foremost documentarian, Ken Burns, released his ten-years-in-the-making PBS special, The Vietnam War.
When the coronavirus pandemic swept through America in February-April of 2020, the Vietnam War seemed as distant as ever. The Spanish Flu of 1918, Great Recession and Great Depression were top of mind.
But, since the murder of George Floyd and the global protests that have followed, memories of Vietnam are back.
As Spike Lee put it when speaking to CBS News: “What I’m seeing in the streets now [is like I saw in the 60s] — anti-war movement, civil rights movement, women’s movement — all these things coming together to move the country forward.”
With the protests showing no signs of slowing — and the 2020 US Presidential election less than six months away — expect comparisons to Vietnam-era turbulence to continue apace.
The Vietnam War matters. Again.