"The Deer Hunter" (ePub)

The movie The Deer Hunter was released in 1978; three years after the end of
the Vietnam War. During the war, the American public had received censored
information by the mass media concerning the war. The American sense of
mission and patriotism hovered above and disguised uncomfortable topics such
as the cruelties inflicted on Vietnamese civilians by GIs or less palatable the
justifications for the U.S. intervention in the war. It therefore left no space for
any respect towards the Vietnamese as an individual being part of an ethnic
group with its own culture. Although stereotypes about the Vietnamese are
adopted and developed in The Deer Hunter so much so that even critics stood
up for the former "enemy" and condemned the depiction as "racist" - the
enemy is not, unlike in several other movies produced at that time, simply an
excuse for demonizing particularly the Vietnamese; it serves as a rather
symbolical threat to a community of "war buddies" and could be replaced by
any other enemy.
In this paper I will argue that labeling The Deer Hunter as "racist" is
misconceived, since the adoption of the Vietnamese as an enemy image has to
be reduced to the threat itself. The first two chapters will explain how the
attitude of the American public towards the Vietnamese as their "enemy" was
shaped and why the issue of Vietnam became a central to the plot. This will
show that the emphasis is laid on something else: human relationships within
the group and not, as it at first seems to be, on the enemy itself. Therefore, I
will explore the significance of community in this particular case and compare
the relationships within the group before, during and after the war. It will
become clear that the original hierarchy of the group dissolves when the group
is threatened. The group¿s war experiences lead further to an inability to take
part in the social life at home. Since the original group is shattered, the new
group is challenged to refer to the former bonds that have always kept them
together in order to establish a new identity. Ironically, this new identity is
based on the patriotic phrase "God bless America".