Le prigioni fantasma della guerra del Vietnam. Note sul mito americano dei prigionieri di guerra
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2019.i14.440Abstract
In the early 1990s about 70 percent of Americans believed that some 2,000 US Army soldiers were still being held captive in secret prisons in Vietnam, despite there being no proof that any prison camps had survived in South East Asia after the Fall of Saigon (1975). Elaborating on the limited bibliography available, this essay examines the strategies adopted by the Nixon Administration, some independent organizations, and the future Presidential candidate Ross Perot, to shift the focus from the people actually fighting and dying in the Vietnam War to these imaginary prisoners. These strategies involved politicians of both major parties, celebrities from the star system and the media. It will also be seen how a substantial part of American popular culture helped to disseminate the myth of the Prisoners of War (POWs) and the Missings in Action (MIAs) through fiction, cinema, TV and comics (and later video games). Only the great works of literature generated by the Vietnam War (e.g. by Tim O’Brien and Michael Herr) abstained from taking part in this major falsification plot.References
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Harvard University Press, 2018.
Born on the Fourth of July (Nato il quattro luglio). Oliver Stone, Universal Pictures, 1989.
Braddock: Missing in Action III (Rombo di tuono III). Aaron Norris, Cannon Films, 1988.
Cartosio, Bruno. New York e il moderno. Società, arte e architettura nella metropoli americana, 1876-1917.
Milano: Feltrinelli, 2007.
Coming Home (Tornando a casa). Hal Ashby, United Artists, 1978.
Dog Tags (Il collare della vergogna). Romano Scavolini, Cinevest Entertainment, 1987.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Riti di sangue. All’origine della passione della guerra. 1997. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1998.
Evans-Pfeiffer, Kelly e Stanley I. Kutler. “POW/MIA Controversy.” Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War. A cura
di Stanley I. Kutler. New York: Scribner’s, 1996. 442-444.
Forgotten Warrior. Nick Cacas e Charlie Ordoñez, Monarch Home Video, 1986.
Franklin, H. Bruce. M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America: How and Why Belief in Live POWs Has Possessed a
Nation. 1992. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993.
---. “Missing in Action in the Twenty-first Century.” A Companion to the Vietnam War. A cura di Marilyn B.
Young e Robert Buzzanco. Malden, MA e Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2002. 317-332.
Full Metal Jacket. Stanley Kubrick, Warner Bros., 1987.
Gardens of Stone (Giardini di pietra). Francis Ford Coppola, TriStar Pictures, 1987.
Gibson, James William. Warrior Dream: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1994.
Jeffords, Susan. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1994.
---. The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1989.
Lanning, Michael Lee. “Stripes and Bars: The POWs.” Vietnam at the Movies. New York: Fawcett
Columbine, 1994. 119-126.
Leonard, Frances Arlene. “Prisoners of War, Missing in Action.” The Vietnam War: Handbook of the
Literature and Research. A cura di James S. Olson. Westport, CT e London: Greenwood Press, 1993.
469-482.
Missing in Action (Rombo di tuono). Joseph Zito, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1984.
Missing in Action II – The Beginning (Missing in Action). Lance Hool, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1985.
Newman, John. Vietnam War Literature: An Annotated Bibliography of Imaginative Works about Americans
Fighting in Vietnam. Lanham, MD & London: The Scarecrow Press, 1996.
O’Brien, Tim. Going after Cacciato. New York: Dell, 1978
Olson, James S. “Prisoners of War.” Dictionary of the Vietnam War. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.
376-377.
Operation Nam/Cobra Mission. Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis), Delta, 1986.
P.O.W. The Escape/Behind Enemy Lines (Vietnam la grande fuga). Gideon Amir, Cannon Films, 1986.
Rambo: First Blood Part II (Rambo 2). George P. Cosmatos, TriStar Pictures, 1985.
Rosso, Stefano. Musi gialli e berretti verdi. Narrazioni Usa sulla Guerra del Vietnam. Bergamo: Bergamo
University Press, 2003.
Testi, Arnaldo. Stelle e strisce. Storia di una bandiera. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003.
The Big Chill (Il grande freddo). Lawrence Kasdan, Columbia Pictures, 1983.
The Deer Hunter (Il cacciatore). Michael Cimino, Universal Pictures, 1978.
Uncommon Valor (Fratelli nella notte). Ted Kotchef, Paramount Pictures, 1983.
Van Der Kolk, Besser. Il corpo accusa il colpo. Mente, corpo e cervello nell'elaborazione delle memorie
traumatiche. Milano: Cortina, 2015.
Van Dyke, Jon M. “Nixon and the Prisoners of War.” New York Review of Books 7 gennaio 1971.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1971/01/07/nixon-and-the-prisoners-of-war/.
White Ghost (La sporca guerra). B.J. Davis, Trans World Entertainment, 1987.
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