- This might be useful Archived Message
Posted by Raskolnikov
on May 17, 2020, 8:22 am, in reply to "New blog posting, if I may..."
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https://thecriticalmassblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/violence-and-spectacle-in-apocalypse-now-1979/ Particularly this paragraph: This theme of an out of control military machine is epitomized by the scene in which Sgt. Kilgore’s helicopters attack a Vietnamese village while blasting Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” out of the loudspeakers. Kilgore explains to Lance, “We’ll come in low, out of the rising sun and about a mile out we’ll put on the music…I use Wagner, scares the hell out of the slopes. My boys love it!” Here, Kilgore is the creator of spectacle, carefully orchestrating a highly theatrical display of destruction and military power. Kilgore is keenly aware of his target audiences. He is using the aggressive, war-like music as a tool of psychological warfare to terrorize the Vietnamese, but perhaps more importantly, he is also using the music to get his men in the mood for killing. The music provides a diegetic soundtrack to the attack, transforming it into Kilgore’s own quasi-cinematic spectacle. In this way, Kilgore casts himself and his men as brave heroes in a war film, boosting their sense of their own superiority and battlefield prowess. This is ironic since these men are, in fact, characters in a war film and their brutal destruction of the Vietnamese town is far from heroic. The dissonance between how Kilgore and his soldiers would like to view themselves and how they actually act during the battle reveals their deluded state of mind. And even more so this paragraph: In addition, Kilgore’s musical selection of “Ride of the Valkyries” connects the attack helicopters to the valkyries of Norse mythology. These valkyries are flying supernatural beings who decide who will die on the battlefield. In this scene, the helicopters become angels of death that rain down god-like violence on the village in a show of power. The helicopters fire missiles at Vietnamese huts which explode in spectacular fireballs and machine gunners shoot at everything in sight on the ground below. Meanwhile, the Viet Cong defenders scramble around, largely helpless in the face of this vastly superior weaponry. The music effectively captures the bloodlust and battlefield ecstasy of the American soldiers who are experiencing a high of god-like power. Coppola further emphasizes the explosive emotional intensity of this moment through close ups on the faces of the American soldiers and their discharging weaponry. The soldiers have become completely absorbed in the ruthless killing frenzy. The close-ups also contribute to the atmosphere of excitement and the scene’s aestheticization of violence. The scene is shot predominantly from the perspective of the helicopters, encouraging viewer identification with the attacking Americans. For the soldiers in the air, the Vietnamese on the ground appear less than human. They are viewed more like insects that must be exterminated. This physical distance between the Americans and the Vietnamese makes it easier for the killing to spiral out of control. Even when the camera shifts to the ground, the Vietnamese are always kept at a distance and are never shown in close up. The attack plays like a scene from a bombastic propaganda film in which the excessive and disturbingly gleeful slaughter is fashioned into an act of twisted patriotism. However, the sequence is so over-the-top in its glorification and aestheticization of violence that it enters the realm of the absurd and becomes satirical and darkly comedic. |