Latent Image - Fall 1991

Born on the Fourth of July and the Rebirth of the Male Melodrama

by Jacqueline Joyce
Emerson College

The recent commercial success of films depicting the Vietnam War has been an issue of interest and debate among film theorists and critics. Critics argue about the authenticity of these films. Are their representations historical or a historical, realistic or exaggerated? Theorists wonder what type of ideological statement these films are a result of. Do they glorify the Vietnam
soldier or do they serve to advocate anti-war sentiment?

Popular Vietnam films, such as Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Born On the Fourth of July, have caused theorists to question even the genre of these films. Can they he considered as classic Hollywood combat narratives (which focus on the soldier as a member of the fighting machine) or as classic drama narratives (which feature the soldier as a man with individual emotions and needs)?

Feminists have added to the confusion by critiquing the representation of women in this recent series of Vietnam films. Is it just a case of misogyny that the majority of these films characterize the female as the prostitute, the unwanted distraction or even the "castrating bitch." Or are these negative representations a case of displaced male aggression as a result of a war which the U.S. lost?

As a feminist, I am most concerned with the discursive nature of women as represented in Vietnam films. Within the process of researching this topic, I have discovered that the issues of genre and gender ideology are crucial areas of study in the effort to reach any conclusions as to why Vietnam films present such a critical problem as well as why women are portrayed so negatively in them.

By examining Born On the Fourth of July as an example of a Vietnam film, I will argue that Vietnam films, on the whole, can be categorized as melodramas due to their rare portrayals of male victimization I will also demonstrate that Born On the Fourth of July typifies how the resentment of the male victim is taken out on the female image (in this films case, the mother) and that she is subversively blamed for the failure of the US intervention in Vietnam.

In an initial viewing, the film Born On the Fourth of July appears to be a model example of the popular classical Hollywood narrative. Its pretense is one of classic realism; it has been, described as a "realistic portrayal of Vietnam... one to set the record straight" (Seidenburg 29), in an interview with the autobiographical film's subject, Ron Kovic.

However, in a closer, subtler reading of the film, the structure of a family melodrama within the text becomes apparent. Through an examination of gender roles within the film's depiction of Kovic's family, more specifically, the family's reversal of gender roles, it becomes possible to parallel the film's structure with that of the melodrama. I will argue that this gender reversal serves as a device to mask the melodramatic tendencies of the film. In doing so, the film presents the mother as a repressive, patriarchal figure and ultimately places the blame and burdens of the Vietnam War on her.

In establishing the connection between the genre of melodrama and the Vietnam film, the issue of victimization becomes centralized. Though the melodrama has been classically coded as "feminine" (due to the genre's focus on the female and emotions) as opposed to the "masculine" arena of warfare in the Vietnam film, the two are drawn together by the similar effects that victimization has on each genre's narrative protagonist.

The woman of the melodrama is usually portrayed as a victim of bourgeois patriarchy. The female protagonist is often pitted against ideology and the roles it has created for her (the ideal wife, mother). Likewise, the soldier of the Vietnam film is often portrayed as a victim of "had leader or mistaken policy.., that led to an unworthy or overly cruel war" (Cawley 69). Films such as Born On the Fourth of July and Platoon "address the obvious shift in recent war movies involving the image of the male hero" (Blake 62). The classic portrayal of the WWI and WWII soldier as the invincible warrior seems obsolete in comparison to "today's delicate, boyish heroes.., who appear as victims as much as heroes" (Blake 63). The soldiers of many Vietnam narratives are portrayed as sacrificing their innocence and lives for the sake of the war.

Another similarity between the melodrama and Vietnam film is a common focus on the emotions of the individual within an institution or superstructure. In the melodrama, the "individual personality becomes identified with emotional states and psychic relations.., the family, as a psychic institution locks into unconscious desires and emotions" (Gledhill 32). In the Vietnam film, "war becomes a personal battle, with combat's impact on the individual as the primary constituent of the film's critique" (Selig 190). The institution of the family is also prevalent, but in quite a different and unique way.

Since an important characteristic of the Vietnam film is the elimination of the woman from the arena of warfare, "families" created within the soldiers' infantry/division are taken over by men. Chris Taylor in Platoon, says at one point that he feels like the son of two fathers (his sergeants- Elias and Barnes). Susan Jeffords suggests that "warfare becomes the male appropriation of reproduction" (107), combat as the control over life and death. The masculine appropriation of reproduction negates all necessity for the existence of the woman (therefore the threat of femininity is gone). It also allows the male to metaphorically "give birth to himself as a technologized body in which the individual is an extension of the equipment he carries" - equipment, as in the phallic gun (Jeffords 109).

A final, important connection between the melodrama and the Vietnam film is both genres' ability to subversively question dominant ideology. The dramatic excess used in the melodrama serves to question patriarchy/dominant order while appearing to subscribe to it. The contradiction lies within the melodrama's exaggerated portrayal of a "utopian" society and the inability of the protagonist (the woman) to live up to its standards. In fact, "formal contradiction became a new source of critical value because it allowed apparently ideologically complicity films to be read against the grain' for their covert critique of the status quo" (Gledhill 6). Vietnam films achieve this in that they "tend to show how trapped the country is in its wholesome perception of WWII" (Cawley 70). Films like Full Metal Jacket do not attempt to hide the disillusionment of the young Vietnam soldier. They enhance the horrors of war, work on our emotions of fear and failure, and portray a sense of purposelessness. As a result, the text opens up to controversy surrounding the U.S. policy in the war and a questioning of those responsible for it. "Vietnam was simply inexplicable, portrayed as a place nobody really understood" (Haines 94). In these ways the Vietnam film debunks the authority figures of the time (the govt.) and questions the concept of the American myth.

The theoretical analyses presented in this article have served to explain and explore the genre of melodrama and films depicting the Vietnam War. In doing so, a number of comparisons have been made between the two. The major difference lies within the ideological genderization of the melodrama as "feminine" and the Vietnam war films as "masculine . I argue that it is because of this reason that a "masculine" Vietnam film such Born On the Fourth of July disguises its melodramatic tendencies within its classical Hollywood narrative structure.

In fact I will argue that the film in many ways, is a family melodrama but masks this structure through a reversal of gender roles within the film's depiction of the protagonist's family. ho verify this argument, a textual analysis of Born On the Fourth of July will focus on the text's oppositional construction of the family, the loss and reclamation of the protagonist's manhood (the catalyst of this melodrama), and how the film uses melodramatic elements to criticize ideological stances on the war, patriarchy, the institution of the family, and gender issues. The textual analysis will also point out how the film's image of the mother is distorted and that she is subversively blamed for her son's victimization (symbolized in the protagonist's "feminization" /castration) as well as for the war itself.

An examination of the film's construction of the family is crucial in decoding the melodrama within the text. The family of the traditional melodrama is set up as follows: the father role is recognized as the patriarchal figure, the leader, the representative of ideology. The rote of the mother is identified as weak, passive, submissive and maternal. The protagonist is (usually) female arid victimized by a patriarchal society. The closure of the melodrama will recoup the woman back into her ideological place in society that she once attempted to break from. The family of Born On. . . is set up in the same fashion; however, the genders of the character roles are reversed.

The father role of the film is taken over by the female, Ron Kovic's (the protagonist's) mother is portrayed as the dominant force in the family, the patriarchal figure. It is the mother who has control over the family. Many scenes depict her disciplining Ron (for hiding pornographic magazines under his bed and yelling at him to watch his language). His father is never shown like this.

His mother is also portrayed as the representative of dominant ideology. In one particular scene, the family is shown gathered around the television to hear John F. Kennedy speak the famous tine, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." The camera focuses on the mother's face, mystified by the words of J.F.K. She then pulls the young Ron onto her lap to relay to him her dream that one day Ron would "talk to large crowds and say great things." The shot then returns to the black and white TV screen as the image of J.F.K. fades to black.

The maternal role of the film's family is taken over by Ron's father. He is portrayed as weak, passive, and domestic. He is depicted washing dishes and being ignored by Ron and his siblings. His build is small and his character is worrisome. In one scene we see him watching the nightly news, hoping that the recently enlisted Ron would get shipped to Europe where he would he safe. To this sentiment Ron explodes, claiming that he loves his country and will die in Vietnam to defend it. At this point the mother re-enters the room to reaffirm that "Ronny is doing the right thing, Communism most be stopped." As she stands over the seated father, her compliance and reaffirmation of dominant ideology overshadows the father's questioning of it. The scene culminates as the mother turns the channel of the TV She turns off the news report of anti-war (anti-dominant ideology) protests and onto an episode of Laugh-In.

The character of Ron Kovic can he equated with the melodramatic role of the victimized female. Though he is male, he is symbolically "feminized" by the process of castration, a result of the paralysis he suffered after being shot during combat. In Maria LaPlace's essay, "Producing and Consuming the Woman's Film" she claims that in female fiction books (in relation to film, the melodrama) the hero (protagonist) "must be feminized", that is he must abandon his position of control and dominance and take up a position of equality to the woman (106). The loss of his penis marks the loss of the phallus (the Freudian signifier of masculinity/power/control). In this way he is equated with the female and her lack of the phallus. The distorted familial structure sets op the melodrama of the text, whose main objective now becomes the reclamation of the phallus and the achievement of manhood.

The opening scenes of this film state its objective. We first hear the voice of Tom Cruise (as the adult Ron Kovic) narrate that when he was a child his "backyard was turned into a battlefield, filled with little boys playing war, dreaming that someday they'd become men." The suggestion made here is that in order to become men, they must succeed in battle and win their manhood. The following scene is a foreshadow of Ron's fate; we see him getting "shot dead by his pals." He is shown lying on his hack on the ground (wearing an over-sized WWII helmet - a suggestion of the over-glorification of previous wars which the U.S. won). His friends loom over him chanting "Ronny's dead! Ronoy's dead." The association of losing battle with failure/not achieving manhood is formulated by this scene, This allows the film to shift more towards the quest for manhood and away from combat. In fact, the only battle scenes depicted in the film are those that directly endanger his manhood (mistakes - Ron's accidental shooting of his squad member, the massacre of the village women and children, Ron getting shot).

With the film’s main objective established as the quest for manhood/regaining of the phallus, the text opens up to an Oedipal reading. It implies that Ron needs to regain his masculinity (become a man) to regain the love/acceptance of his mother. This is set up within the first half hour of the narrative, during a wrestling match in which Run's mother is expecting him to become the next stale champion. These scenes depict Ron putting up a strong fight, but eventually he loses. The referee's hand comes down on the mat like a judge's sentence. Ron is devastated; a shot of his mother in the crowd shows usher look of disappointment (even disgust). The scene fades to black and then in on a high school assembly. The boys of Run's high school are being addressed by the Marines (who "challenge boys to become men"). Tom Berenger (as a Marine sergeant) dares the boys to "come and find out if you can become a man." The next scene follows Ron to a diner, in which he decides to enlist.

The juxtaposition of these scenes (mother encouraging Ron to win the match, Ron losing the match, Marines recruiting, Run deciding to enlist) strongly suggests that by losing the wrestling match, Ron has to prove his manhood to his mother. Here manhood is equated with success (thereby, failure is associated with femininity). The Marines serves as a place that Ron can earn/prove his manhood by serving his country. The implication here is that the country is equated with Ron's mother. If mother=country, then Ron can prove his manhood to both simultaneously. This can he achieved only through success on the battlefield.

The fact that Run was shot and paralyzed marks his failure in combat. His ensuing castration strips him of his masculinity, emphasizing his association with the female (and failure). The larger statement that this film is making is quite powerful. If the mother is equated with the country as a whole, then Ron can represent Vietnam soldiers in general. This film suggests that the loss of the war "feminizes" the Vietnam soldier/veteran, therefore it reaffirms the "femininity of failure. The film goes one step further in portraying the mother as the force that encouraged Ron to go to Vietnam, to succeed. As a result, the film blames the mother for Ron's castration/feminization and ultimately, it blames motherhood in general for the failure of the American soldiers to win the Vietnam War.

In accordance with melodramatic format, the conclusion of the melodrama involves a recouping of the female/victim back into her allotted place in society. I argue that Born On . . . has two conclusions. Since the film works within the constraints of the classical Hollywood narrative, it ends in a typical CHN manner - the achievement of the protagonist the "happy ending." By the film's conclusion, Ron has reached his goal (during his speech at the Democratic Convention). He fulfills his mother's prediction that he will "talk to large crowds and say great things."

However, the melodrama within the CHN ends during Ron's triple Mexico. Mexico takes on a quality of "another world," isolated from the U.S. culture. It is here that Ron is allowed to fulfill the objective of the melodrama. Though he lacks the male sexual organ, he achieves in giving a female Mexican prostitute an orgasm-thereby reclaiming the long sought after phallus. The reclamation of the phallus restores Ron's masculinity, situating him hack into his place in society-a male. In fact through scenes depicting Ron and other disabled veterans taking over the Democratic Convention as if it were a battlefront (symbolic of his second chance to succeed in war), Ron seems to be reproduced (as S. Jeffords would put it) as a through the empowerment of the regained phallus (the "equipment", the extension of himself). His success at the "battle" of the convention compensates for his failure in the battle of the war, allowing him to finally complete the rile of passage into manhood.

Though the film ends in a classical Hollywood narrative style, the appearance of the melodrama within the text results in an extreme amount of openness and room for counter-readings. The film never resolves the family conflict; the mother/son relationship is never cleared up. This can he read as a result of the subversive manner in which the mother is blamed for the war. The film seems to criticize not only the mother, hut more importantly, the bourgeois ideology she served to represent.

There are many suggestions within this film of contradictions within dominant ideology. A comparison of the two Fourth of July parades portrayed in the film (one before the Vietnam Conflict, one after) point out an ideological shift in the attitudes of Americans as a result of the lost war. The first Independence Day parade occurs during Ron's childhood. The parade is held in honor of WWII veterans. As the camera pans over the crowd, we pass by a happy-faced clown who entertains the clapping, proud bystanders. The camera looms in on a disabled veteran in a wheel chair. The scene then closes in on the young, mystified Ronny, waving the American flag. The excess of "Americana" - the flag, references to baseball (Ronny's Yankees cap), the music ("Rock Around the Clock") all serve to exaggerate the idealized America of the 1940s and 50s. The excess suggests that this glorification of the ideological American myth (that war is glorious and should he celebrated) and the iconography of the WWII soldier caused disillusionment among the young Vietnam soldiers who went into a war that they were not prepared to fight.

The second Fourth of July parade (of 1969) is a powerful critique on the ideological shift of Americans towards war and the war veteran. This parade does not feature patriotic music and "Americana", but rather blatant commercialism. Sixties pop songs are blaring and "hippies" are protesting the war. There is no honor, no misty- eyed patrons to idolize the returning soldiers; instead the young men and women on the sidelines greet the veterans with insults and middle fingers. Even the clown wears a sad face. There is a slow- notion shot of a young boy in a Yankees hat (an
echo of the young Ron) who shoots at Ron with an imaginary gun. Ron and the disabled vets do not parade in their wheelchairs; instead they are seated in the hack of a convertible, as if America does not want to acknowledge the damage the war has done to them. The differing portraits of the parades serve to open up the text, allowing for criticism of American ideology and the contradictions within it.

One of the intentions of this articles has been an attempt to clarify the critical chaos surrounding the rise of the Vietnam film. By classifying the Vietnam film as a melodrama, I hope to eliminate the tendency to genderize films into restrictive senses of "masculine" and "feminine." Perhaps once the sexes are neutralized, there will be no state of patriarchy and no devaluation of women to protect it. Perhaps then a mainstream film such as Born On the Fourth of July will not have to resort to a tactic like displacing the blame of the Vietnam tragedy unto women and motherhood when the fault lies within a patriarchal ideology that views imperfection as a threat to "masculinity" instead of an element of human nature.

WORKS CITED

1. Blake, Richard. "The Tide of Pomp: Images of War." America 27. January, 1990: 62-5.

2. Cawley, Leo. "The War About the War." From Hanoi to Hollywood, L. Dittmar and C. Michaud. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990.

3, Gledhill, Christine. "The Melodramatic Field: An Investigation." Home is Where the Heart is. London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1987.

4. Haines, Harry. "They Were Called and They Went." From Hanoi to Hollywood. Eds. Linda Dittmar and Gene Michaud. New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1990.

5. Jeffords, Susan. The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1989.

6. LaPlace, Maria. "Producing and Consuming the Woman's Film.'' Home is Where Heart Is. Ed. C. Gledhill. London: British Film Institute, 1987.

7. Seidenberg, Robert. "In Hell and Back." American Film; 15.4 (1990): 28-32.

8. Selig, Michael. "Genre, Gender and the Discourses of War: The A/historical in Vietnam Films."