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WACO — Did ya ever get caught up in a mistake you couldn t get out of?— “PlatoonFrom the moment the story begins, you want out of it. From the first ants which beset the neck of a jungle intruder to the final firefight. the viewer shares the young soldier's breathless plea.Get me out of here.And yet you are glued to your seat, as if vines have wrapped around your legs or the last helicopter has left, and you have nowhere else to go.Platoon is the first movie that has taken Americans into Vietnam, left them there in blank confusion and gotten them out only after they ve fully felt the true horror of war.By the time they pull away from the jungle they have begun to smell mildew in their clothes and feel festering sores between their toes. They have served with young innocents who kill and die for a foggy purpose.More than a setting, the jungle serves as a player in this drama. The Americans forge paths that close behind them. The further they penetrate. the less it seems they have penetrated. After a time it seems as itNamJOHNYOUNGOpinionthese young men. rather than conquering the elements, are in fact clinging to a giant living beast — ants on its neck, so to speak.The jungle stands as a metaphor for the war itselt. Where was the enemv?*rWho was the enemv? Where was the*juncture at which victory could be claimed? How did we get in? How do we get out°Another allegory is at work here within the platoon itself, a divided camp torn to the point of combat between fellow soldiers. It is a reflection of the struggle back at home as the countrv wrestled with itself.wWriter and director Oliver Stone, a decorated Vietnam vet. won't do any promos for the armed forces. His is the vantage point of disillusionment over an unwinable war.Port Arthur News 5AaswasToo often we see wars as control rooms where strategists place pins on maps. In “Platoon we concentrate on the shadow of one of those pins, and see truth magnified. Then we step back to realize that in Vietnam the mighty efforts of American fighting forces may have been no more than a pin prick.In the climactic battle the men are left in the lurch at a desolate outpost, live bait for the night stalking Viet Cong. The Americans fight like madmen in defending their patch of ground, taking hordes of VC down with them as thev are overwhelmed.The captain finally calls in an air strike on his own position as the only hope left, leaving those lucky survivors at risk of catching it from friendly fire. As fighter jets arrive in all their killing power, the noble infan-trymen s u d d e n I v b e c o m e redundancies. Why were they there in the first place?When the dav dawns after the battle, the jungle is still there, dripping withindifference.“Platoon has drawn fire from some for its depiction of drug use and brutality by Americans. This mav notbe the Vietnam that some vets saw.If the dark side is exaggerated to emphasize the strain that this war placed on young men. few will challenge the strain depicted. It is clear to see whv some Americans cracked and*some found chemical means of escape.They were fighting a war without a public mandate, with a formless enemv. and without a clear-cut mis-*sion. By the end of the ’(0s. Americans were being sent over to fight a war the president had promised to end, and which we were trying to hand over to the South Vietnamese. Kemember “Vietnamization of the war?And so as we see a young man pulled into this conflict, we feel regret over having assigned him to do something we weren't sure of ourselves.Whv relive the Vietnam War? Because we need to understand what it is we do when we commit American lives to battle.Vietnam was a war fought far. tar away. “Platoon dumps us there, and we have no choice but to see what it was we asked of others.John Young is editorial page editor of the Waco Tribune Herald, a Cox Enterprises Inc newspaper.
Newspaper Details
Port Arthur News
Port Arthur, Texas, US
Mon, Feb 09, 1987
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Jon C.
NJ, USA 15 Jan 2020
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