Good Morning Vietnam, Is It True?

Good Morning Vietnam is a popular Vietnam War era movie, about a radio host named Cronauer is brought in to Vietnam and entertains soldiers with his controversial sense of humor, when he makes friends there, he finds his closest one is a terrorist and a spy for the Viet Cong (terrorist group). This particular piece of American culture is relevant to what we’re talking about because it tells a war story. Although this wasn’t controversial, I think it’s relevant to how society views war today. I think this because at the end of the movie, Tuan explains how the war tore apart his city, family, and life. I believe that when we view war, we see the numbers, who died, did we win, etc. We really don’t look at what it does to people on both sides.

I think that this movie, despite being released in 1987, still holds weight today and helps shape the ideology that when looking at war, we should look more towards the people and not just at the numbers. For the sake of this argument, let’s take a look at the character Tuan. The Vietnam war has broken the city he lives in, many members of his family have been killed because of it, and his life has been consumed by it. Tuan tries to explain this to Cronauer, before taking off. I think that this opened some eyes of the viewers. People don’t really see that both sides get hurt. This is the ideology that I think this movie reinforces even today.