Depicting Vietnam, Hollywood films and the US-Vietnam War policy (1964-1973)

This thesis seeks to analyze Vietnam War films produced by Hollywood during the Vietnam War and how they helped produce political messages for the U.S. government’s war policy. The selected films include: To the Shores of Hell (1966); The Green Berets (1968); and The Visitors (1972). The films will be analyzed to further the understanding of implication of war policies by the Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon’s U.S. presidential administrations from 1964 to 1973. The thesis will use two methods to explicate the Hollywood Vietnam War films’ impacts on U.S. war policy. First, I will use textual analysis based on critical theory to understand how the films were able to produce pro-war political messages that contained the war policies by the U.S. government for the American public. Second, the political approach film production will be applied to examine the relationship between film industry and the government. Popular Culture framework serves to analyze possible mechanisms that lead to the usage of film for promoting war policies. This thesis argues that Hollywood Vietnam War films produced messages containing U.S. government war policies for the public to consume during the Vietnam War.