Course: The 'Reel' Vietnam (OSH-REELNAM)
The US military has been involved in over a hundred campaigns, ranging from localized conflicts to major international wars. Many have been dramatized on film, and depictions of war, people who fought in them, and the home front changed over time. The Second Indochina War, known in the United States simply as the Vietnam War, lasted from 1955 to 1975. During that period, nearly three million Americans served, 58,000 died, and thousands more were scarred for life. Public support for the war peaked in the mid-1960s but collapsed after the Tet Offensive in early 1968. This course will examine how Hollywood's treatment of the war and its participants changed over time, reflecting America's gradual disillusionment with a conflict nearly 9,000 miles from its shores.