Baudrillard and 'Apocalypse Now!'
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 เม.ย. 2021
- In this episode, I present Baudrillard's analysis of 'Apocalypse Now!.'
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You are, what some have said, the bomb.
I wasn't aware of Baudrillard's analysis of the film before now, but it's really interesting to me because it runs completely contrary to my own interpretation of the film (and in a really interesting and suggestive way). I always interpreted the film as positioning Kurtz as this kind of revelatory figure, that he kind of figures an underlying truth of the phenomenon of the war (and war in general), and I think there's stuff in the film that points towards that interpretation: it's an interpretation of Heart of Darkness, and there's this whole metaphor of the river system as the circulatory system of this massive kind of horrific sprawling psychotic hyperobject that everyone is involved with, with Kurtz and the phenomenon around him, this kind of regression to an archaic colonial absolute domination, at the centre of it. Most of the people encountered in the films are just sort of going with the flow of this thing, and you have all these moments where the film is showing American consumer culture and counterculture just kind of playing out in the setting of Vietnam, but there's this weird kind of bond or symmetry between Kurtz and Charlie Sheen's character, as if they're somehow the same in some underlying sense, and for me it's that they're the two "conscious" characters within the whole phenomenon: Kurtz tries to make sense of the whole thing, to make it all make sense, to resolve the double binds he's placed in in his role as a commander (caught between two incommensurables: the phenomenon of war as it truly is entailing combat unto death, the annihilation of the enemy, the will to dominate etc., and the kind of sanitisation and regulation/codification of war in the norms governing the US military) and is ultimately driven mad and driven to atrocity in the attempt, whereas Sheen retains his sanity and some sort of humanity by remaining detached, but they both have this shared experience that all the others do not of having seen this thing the war as what it is (and therefore it's dramatically appropriate and somehow philosophically or spiritually appropriate to Kurtz that Sheen is the one to kill him). This Baudrillard interpretation is really stimulating to me tho, and I'm really unsure whether it's a contrary or complementary read to my own. Thanks very much for making the video!
@alysrowe4766: Excellent interpretation.
As a filmmaker and philosophy lover this is incredible!! As a law student I would love coverage of some legal philosophy (Holmes, Hart, Dworkin, etc.)
Part of my interpretation of the chapter is sort of how Vietnam becoming this big shame for americans (both in the sense that they lost AND in the sense that they comitted atrocities) ends up hogging the spotlight away from both the victors and the victims of the war (the vietnamite people), amplifying American's emotions (trauma, shame, even the jingoism thats being parodied) to the rest of the world as the one valid narrative. I think it shows how the old maxim "history is written by the victors" is perverted in simulacra, in which it isnt war that must be won, but public opinion. And maritizing yourself through public opinion counts as a victory.
Because when you think about it, there arent many movies about the vietnam war made by vietnamite people. The classics are movies like Full Metal Jacket, Good Morning Vietnam, Apocalypse Now and even recently, Da 5 Bloods.
Like, the whole "Talk good or talk bad, at least talk about me"
Thus, the movie, when it doesnt present any of the "enemy", it doesnt matter if they keep introducing critical charicatutes of america, they are still reinforcing that we should on some level pity them. And thats how they win
Well said.
This film is also inspired by Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
you should go into teaching!
love you dawg
Have you seen the movie War for the Planet of the Apes? It seems to be a modern remake of Apocalypse Now with the Kongs (apes) representing the Vietcong.
At one point in the movie there is writing on a wall that says Ape-ocalypse Now! Haha
I just discovered your channel and absolutely love your content! Watch it every day ❤️
I understood Baudrillard's interpretation of American intentions as making the enemy predictable through military surveillance and number crunching. It's been a while since I read it though.
I'd be really interested to hear your take on Baudrillard's "The Final Solution". I was introduced to it via Lee Edelman's book 'No Future', but it would be good to hear your perspective, too, on this slightly mystifying text!
You're helping me going through new stuff in articles more than the university did, thank you!
Please, can you do a video on desiring-machine.
Did Baudrillard live through the high-point of hyper reality, because nothing has come close to the flawless brilliance of that era in terms of movies
You couldn't say the US has scored any cultural victories in terms of war movies for decades. Three Kings or Jarhead certainly didn't repeat the military loss/ cultural victory hypothesis.
Maybe hyper reality is in decline, or perhaps the 70s marked one of those fascinating moments when one world ended and a new one began.
Was Apocalypse Now really the beginning of hyper reality, or the last gasp of the truth?
this
@@philippewegscheider3054 Baudrillard claimed movies had become perfect, too perfect. Better than all the movies ever made, movies that couldn't be bettered - viz Barry Lyndon.
But I'd say that's no longer the case. Most movies these days are trite and banal.
I prefer Apocalypse Wow!
'course there were conflicts'. Way to play it down. The country was at war with itself.
The South Vietnamese lost the war. It wasn't America's fight, at least not at first, and even then they didn't need to win. The North winning the war meant that they could go on and build the society that they wanted for the whole country, at the cost of the South, people who were locked up, disappeared or sent to 'reeducation camps' after the war, the North Vietnamese were responsible for plenty of their own atrocities too. The resultant society failed economically and so they gave up and became a capitalist consumer society and Socialist/communist only in name and retaining the one party state. So frankly, everyone lost. Problem is we don't get the South Vietnamese account of the story very often, it gets drowned out by the Americans and the North Vietnamese and contemporary Vietnamese versions that make out the war was America against Vietnam as a whole.
wow, there is a lot to unpack here… First of all, the north and the south weren’t two distinct societies or identities. Large majority of the (whole) country was on the side of the revolutionaries and the atrocities didn’t happen “at the cost of the South”, but the persecution was aimed at the collaborators of old colonial and new puppet military regimes. “South Vietnamese account of the story” is a really nonsensical proposition since pretty much the only people identifying with “South Vietnam” were the Diem junta itself.
@@cyrilmrazek6649 people continuing to erase these people and make justifications. It sickens me.