Vietnam War Film Ideology - Masculine Identity - Essay Example

The paper "Vietnam War Film Ideology - Masculine Identity" is an outstanding example of a finance and accounting essay. Since their respective releases, Michael Cimino Deer Hunter and Rambo, First Blood (1982) have enjoyed remarkable popular and critical success. But their wide recognition as contemporary cinematic masterpieces has been accompanied by a corresponding controversy regarding their thematic significance and coherence. In addition, none of the commentaries on either of these two epic-scale films about the Vietnam War has searched for possible connections between them.

Hypothesis

My first purpose in this thesis is to show that each film draws its design from a popular American narrative formula, with the separate formulas providing the basis for the differences between The Deer Hunter and Rambo, First Blood (1982)as interpretations of the Vietnam War. I further wish to demonstrate that a link between those formulas establishes an underlying relationship between the two films, embodying their essential aesthetic strategy. The much-publicised release of Rambo: First Blood signalled new visibility for the muscular hero of the action cinema.

Rambo

The image of Sylvester Stallone as Vietnam veteran John Rambo, brandishing a rocket-launcher whilst parading his musculature, became an icon of American masculinity in the mid-1980s. As the decade went on, though, Stallone was displaced in popularity by the even larger figure of ex-Mr Universe Arnold Schwarzenegger. These two stars provided the most publicised, most visible image of the figure of the muscular male hero who had come to dominate the American action cinema of the 1980s. Many critics saw the success of Stallone and Schwarzenegger as a disturbing sign, signalling the evolution of a previously unseen cinematic articulation of masculinity. At the same time, these figures echoed unsettling images from the past, through their implicit invocation of a fascist idealisation of the white male body. Combining an ability to signify both concerns about the future and the horrors of the past, the box-office appeal of the male bodybuilder provided a resonant image for the mid-1980s.