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The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War) Paperback – January 1, 1998
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- Print length351 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniv of Massachusetts Pr
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1998
- Dimensions6.25 x 1 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-101558491333
- ISBN-13978-1558491335
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Product details
- Publisher : Univ of Massachusetts Pr; Subsequent edition (January 1, 1998)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 351 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1558491333
- ISBN-13 : 978-1558491335
- Item Weight : 1.25 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1 x 9.5 inches
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In establishing the war narrative as a discursive device, Engelhardt argues, “Triumphalism was in the American grain” (pg. 3-4). The war narrative could not take on an aggressive tone, however. Engelhardt writes, “From its origins, this war story was essentially defensive in nature, and the justness of American acts was certified not only by how many of <i>them</i> died, but by how few of <i>us</i> there were to begin with” (pg. 5). Americans could justify most actions in war as long as they conceived of themselves as underdogs. After World War II, however, “shadowed by the bomb, victory became conceivable only under the most limited of conditions, and an enemy too diffuse to be comfortably located beyond national borders had to be confronted in an un-American spirit of doubt” (pg. 6). This narrative, and its upset, plays a key role in Engelhardt’s insight into the Cold War.
The upset, however, took time to develop. Engelhardt explores both the joint role that the military industrial complex and consumer culture played in upsetting that narrative, writing, “The arms race and the race for the good life were now to be put on the same ‘war’ footing” (pg. 77). The media repackaged the war narrative through film and television and toys for children that sold Americans the narrative in a time of increasing uncertainty. Engelhardt writes, “The United States was involved in a global ‘war,’ yet Americans were militarily unmenaced” (pg. 87). This conflict of ideas spread throughout American culture since, “in 1950s America, the worlds of consumer arcadia and global fear, of twenty-four-hour-a-day television and twenty-four-hour-a-day airborne nuclear-armed bombers coexisted” (pg. 87). Finally, McCarthyism, HUAC, and containment on a global scale obliterated the us-versus-them dichotomy because they “helped transform America’s enemies into beings who looked indistinguishable from ‘us’” (pg. 122).
Writing of the impact of Vietnam on American culture, Engelhardt argues, “Because it was impossible to ‘see’ who had defeated the United States and hence why Americans had lost, it was impossible to grasp what had been lost. So American victimhood, American loss – including the loss of childhood’s cultural forms – became a subject in itself, the only subject, you might say, while the invisibility of the foe who had taken the story away lent that loss a particular aura of unfairness” (pg. 180). Vietnam obliterated the narrative of American certainty without an identifiable enemy. Engelhardt writes, “Vietnam was like an ambush that refused to end and for which no retribution proved satisfying” (pg. 194). Even when Americans could fight back, it was not satisfying. According to Engelhardt, “Victory somehow meant defeat, for to win you had to destroy what you ‘won,’ and to destroy what you won – the villages, towns, and cities of Vietnam, not to speak of its livestock, land, and people – was to ensure the enmity of those in whose name you fought” (pg. 206). This led to atrocities that flipped the script with which American soldiers grew up in the early Cold War of the 1950s. Without a clear explanation for the change that occurred in their cultural narrative, Americans sought desperately for an answer in the late 1970s through the early 1990s.
Engelhardt argues that George Lucas’ "Star Wars" led the cultural charge against the upset to the victory narrative. He writes, “In deepest space, anything was possible, including returning history to its previous owners. Once again, we could have it all: freedom <i>and</i> victory, captivity <i>and</i> rescue, underdog status <i>and</i> the spectacle of slaughter” (pg. 267). Further, the American military placed the blame for the troubles of Vietnam on the media and carefully orchestrated and choreographed Grenada and Desert Storm in order to prevent the public outcry that accompanied American actions in Indochina. Engelhardt argues, “In the new version of victory culture, the military spent no less time planning to control the screen than the battlefield, and the neutralization of a potentially oppositional media became a war goal” (pg. 290). Despite this choreography, however, the war story no longer offers the comfort it once did when facing the future.
One element was to exaggerate the atrocities committed, meaning that yeah, some of it happened, but not in the large scale depicted by the white leaders to drive home the point that we had to kill these unholy, ungodly, <insert enemy race here>. Colonist Mary Rowlandson's accounts on her captivity and the massacre she survived was the archetypal demonizing of the "enemy."
Victory culture nestled itself cozily in new visual media--the movies and television. Basically, the enemy performed some horrible atrocity on innocent whites, and it was up to the heroes to punish the enemy. The enemy would be defeated, more often than not killed, and everybody would live happily ever after. Straight and simple. It was in straight black-and-white (the issues as well as the early programs before colour TV and film came into being).
Engelhardt argues that between 1945 and 1975, the ends of WW2 and Vietnam respectively, that victory culture ended
Pearl Harbor gave plenty of opportunity to dehumanize the Japanese as an enemy, along with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
The Cold War was where it all went into overdrive. The Communists were now the enemy, and that paranoid ideological struggle into the unknown carried through not only into Korea and Vietnam, but into movies, TV shows (Twilight Zone), comic books (Tales From The Crypt, MAD), and even toys (GI Joe).
A new dynamic also came, of the enemy hiding behind some citadel or bunker, such as the Forbidden City or Kremlin, with only large posters of the leader representing the human face of the enemy. Thus the enemy couldn't be destroyed.
Vietnam demonstrated once and for all that we were fallible, and for a while, we were in a funk. And with My Lai, WE became the massacring enemy, the Vietnamese the colonists. The concept of victory culture was turned on its head with that event. And think about it: we lost Vietnam for the same reasons the British lost the American War for Independence. History has come full circle to America.
This book came out in 1995, and early on in the book, Engelhardt makes a well-worn but important point: "with the end of the Cold War and the loss of the enemy, American culture has entered a period of crisis that raises profound questions about national purpose and identity." Ponder that passage, and what's going on today in the world.
The main thing to ask today is, do we really need to have an enemy and a war to unite the people together? Peace and harmony can do the same thing. We do not need victory-for-one-side culture anymore. What we need is victory-for-all culture.




