“Not just the songs we sang, but the music we listened to had an impact on the antiwar feelings more and more people had. In 1968, there wasn’t much going on in music that was not antiwar” (We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, 99).
This archive focuses on 15 works of art that directly and indirectly commented on the Vietnam War. These include paintings, sculptures, movies, and music. Through culture, people can better explain themselves and shift public perception by highlighting or criticizing the things around them. I chose the topic of art and music because of the ways in which popular culture has an influence on the public. Whether through a direct statement as often seen in music, or through more subtle and interpretive approaches like in many works of art, the artist uses their voice to project an opinion into public perception. The combination of visual and narrative elements in the form of movies provided a way for the American public to consume info about the Vietnam War and process what happened while remaining removed from the war itself.
These 15 works of art are important to the Vietnam War and to American culture in general because they helped establish a growing protest movement never before seen in the American public. Anti-war sentiment reached new heights during the Vietnam War and it became crucial to find ways to express ones dissatisfaction in a manner that helped spread awareness and passion. In this way, art and music was crucial to the anti-war movement in America, as it spurred forth the idea that American citizens should speak out against what they disagree with. In modern times, protests against war take many forms and can easily be taken for granted. It is important to me that we as a collective group look back at history and see the ways in which society fought for what we assume is a given. As a result, I think looking back to the Vietnam War is crucial in understanding dissent and protest in modern American culture.
In looking at pop culture, and especially the entertainment aspect of it, there is rarely any scholarly work that discusses issues like music or movies and their relation to society. Wikipedia was used only to gather information about release dates for films/songs, box office/music charting success, and the years the artists/singers/directors were active. Outside of this, I pulled from books and articles that analyzed art on the Vietnam War, reviews of films, and books on antiwar/protest songs and their effect on pop culture.
One book I looked at a lot was Doug Bradley and Crain Werner’s We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War. This book, along with various other sources used for this archive, look at the way songs and movies were reacted to at the time, suggesting something about the way we remember history. I argue that this archive is not just a list of Vietnam War pieces of entertainment, but rather a look at how we have historically sought to understand the world around us. Things like movies have a profound effect on how the average person interprets historical events, and it is critical to look at such things not only as being about the Vietnam War, but as ultimately being the Vietnam War in our understanding so many years later. Pop culture’s influence on memory is strong and it is important to include it in order to understand how people react to difficult subjects and the ways through which people express themselves in times of crisis and fear.
Pop Culture & the Vietnam War 