I first saw Platoon when I was in the fifth grade. It kickstarted three things I became fascinated by ever since: The Vietnam War, Oliver Stone and Willem Dafoe.
History to me at that age was more about the basics. The Constitution, the founding fathers, the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln. All were filtered through an institution that insisted America was always on the right side of history. It was as if history didn't apply to America. Platoon challenged this perspective. To see such a moral failing on the part of US soldiers shook me. These were the good guys yet none of their actions reflected it. The scene in the village is what did it.
A civilian is executed point blank by Sgt. Barnes. The mother of a child. A child Barnes threatens with death to the village chief unless he tells him where the location of the Viet Cong are. An accusation the chief fervently denies. "Barnes!" Elias yells. "You ain't a firing squad you piece of shit!" Elias punches Barnes and the two brawl to the ground. The fight is broken up by Lt. Wolfe. At that moment, the roles of Elias and Barnes are clear as day: Elias is the hero, Barnes is the villain. A prelude to this horror is the moment when the protagonist Chris Taylor makes a one legged man hop by shooting at the ground is an act of cruelty only further exacerbated by the outright murder of the man by Bunny beating him to death with the butt of his rifle.
Lt. Wolfe denies seeing what is an act of cold blooded murder and goes as far as answering "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about" to Elias's urgent question of "why the fuck didn't you do something?" A few scenes later we see the Lieutenant already enmeshed in the gears of a cover up.
The scene itself can be viewed as a microcosm of the My Lai massacre which itself was not an isolated incident. As Nick Turse says in his book, Kill Anything That Moves
"the War Crimes Working Group files alone demonstrated that atrocities were committed by members of every infantry, cavalry, and airborne division, and every separate brigade that deployed without the rest of its division- that, is, every major army unit in Vietnam."
The chain of command lies were augmented by administrative lies- failure to report illegal military conduct, refusal of officers to initiate court martial, dismissal of court martial themselves of obvious crimes and the systematic destruction of documents and records of thousands of criminal incidents. The atrocities committed were tolerated as long as evidence to the contrary was denied, suppressed and ignored.
The Lie that Stone often zoomed in on is looked at as the root of our failure in Vietnam. In combat reports, in movies, we made everything bigger than it was- counting civilian as soldiers in body counts. This is not to say there wasn't heroism. It was just rarer than what the salesmen at the Pentagon would have us believe. As early as 1965, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara saw the war as unwinnable. In order to continue the Lie, they had to pump out propaganda about the heroics and cover up the truth. And so it went.
This harsh truth stung but was a necessary wake up call. I soon became fixated on the man who wrote and directed the movie. A trip to Best Buy would have me bring home a box set of all of Stone's works from his first film Salvador up through Any Given Sunday. He would examine the JFK assassination, Richard Nixon, Jim Morrison, Ron Kovic, Wall Street, the media's obsession with serial killers, shock jocks, George Bush, Alexander the Great, 9/11, and Edward Snowden. All encompassing the career of a director who, when he was on, he was unstoppable. But when he was off, it was cringey.
As of now I prefer his more cubist, expressionist films like JFK and Nixon. Born On the Fourth of July topped Platoon as my preferred 'Nam flick from him. Natural Born Killers has gone from a film I loved to one that has found itself somewhere in the mid tier of his catalog. Talk Radio has climbed the ladder and I need to revisit U-Turn to see where I stand with it. Even though He hasn't made a movie that has excited me since Nixon, his commentary on current affairs and his documentary work still resonate.
My fascination of the Vietnam War continues to this day. I did my college thesis on Vietnam War and the Media. How it was the first war televised to the nation on such a mass scale. Journalists and media, who had been censored from WWII, had been allowed access to document what was happening. The movies released during the war were the likes of The Green Berets. John Wayne fluff where the US were the good guys. The films released after the war was over told a different story. Time and distance from an event create clarity.
The pro- empire propaganda being sold became harder to sell when events like My Lai surface. It's only become harder. Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently the genocide in Palestine done on behalf of Israel backed by the United States. New York Times headlines are being debunked within 15 minutes through footage taken on the ground in Gaza. Polls have shown public opinion is for a ceasefire.
Platoon helped me look at not just the war film a certain way, but historical and future events a certain way. What am I being told and who is telling it? Is the account unflinching and honest? In the case of Platoon, I knew Oliver had been to Vietnam. He experienced first hand what happened. Names were changed. Barnes and Elias were both based on Sergeants he knew. So when I do watch the film, I'm with Chris, Barnes, Elias and the rest of the platoon in the jungle. And the indifferent stars that hung above them.
