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"Beauty, bullets, and ice cream": R...

Lair, Meredith H.

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"Beauty, bullets, and ice cream": Reimagining daily life in the 'Nam.

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	"Beauty, bullets, and ice cream": Reimagining daily life in the 'Nam./
Author:	Lair, Meredith H.
Description:	295 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-09, Section: A, page: 3537.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International65-09A.
Subject:	History, United States. -
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=3147644
ISBN:	9780496067282

"Beauty, bullets, and ice cream": Reimagining daily life in the 'Nam.
Lair, Meredith H.

"Beauty, bullets, and ice cream": Reimagining daily life in the 'Nam. - 295 p.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-09, Section: A, page: 3537.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Pennsylvania State University, 2004.

In this book, I document the non-combat experiences of American soldiers in Vietnam as a way of examining the social and cultural context in which the Vietnam War was fought. Most representations of the Vietnam War focus on combat and its after effects, excising comfort, recreation, and fun from the picture. I have done the opposite---painted a picture of the Vietnam War in which "beauty" and "ice cream" take precedence over the "bullets," as they often did for Americans who served there. This version of the Vietnam War is about shopping and television, about hot food and cold beer, about American soldiers' desire to improve their lives amidst chaos and disruption, and about the U.S. military's willingness to provide the means for them to do so. It is a story about making do, doing more with less, and making the best of it, but it is seldom about doing without. In that sense, the typical tour of duty in Vietnam reflects the essence of mid-century America.

ISBN: 9780496067282Subjects--Topical Terms:

1017393
History, United States.

"Beauty, bullets, and ice cream": Reimagining daily life in the 'Nam.
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245 1 0 $a "Beauty, bullets, and ice cream": Reimagining daily life in the 'Nam.
300 $a 295 p.
500 $a Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-09, Section: A, page: 3537.
500 $a Adviser: Nan Elizabeth Woodruff.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Pennsylvania State University, 2004.
520 $a In this book, I document the non-combat experiences of American soldiers in Vietnam as a way of examining the social and cultural context in which the Vietnam War was fought. Most representations of the Vietnam War focus on combat and its after effects, excising comfort, recreation, and fun from the picture. I have done the opposite---painted a picture of the Vietnam War in which "beauty" and "ice cream" take precedence over the "bullets," as they often did for Americans who served there. This version of the Vietnam War is about shopping and television, about hot food and cold beer, about American soldiers' desire to improve their lives amidst chaos and disruption, and about the U.S. military's willingness to provide the means for them to do so. It is a story about making do, doing more with less, and making the best of it, but it is seldom about doing without. In that sense, the typical tour of duty in Vietnam reflects the essence of mid-century America.
520 $a In the 1950s, Americans abandoned the austere, work-centered urgency of the Depression and World War II and embraced a culture that was consumption-driven and leisure-oriented. When the children of the baby-boom grew up and headed for Vietnam, they took with them expectations of war informed by popular representations of combat in World War II. Upon discovering that the Vietnam War would deliver relatively few opportunities for heroism and glory, American soldiers stationed at rearward bases adjusted their John-Wayne expectations to include comfortable living conditions, ample recreation, and the ability to consume mass-produced goods. Military leaders in Vietnam, like cultural elites in civilian life, struggled to reconcile their own values and expectations of war with those of the younger generation. Ultimately, they capitulated to soldiers' demands out of fear that troop morale---already damaged by inequities in the draft and in military assignments---might collapse and imperil the war effort. As a result, the U.S. military abandoned the concept of citizen-soldiers embracing their patriotic duty in favor of a new model: soldiers-for-hire grudgingly fulfilling their service to the state. In the process, the soldiers themselves developed antagonisms for one another as the lavish American war machine created its own caste system of well-fed, well-protected rearward personnel who were deeply resented by beleaguered combat troops struggling for their very survival.
520 $a Casting the American way of war in this light is uncomfortable, accounting for the public's desire to remember Vietnam in terms of heroism and sacrifice. The combat memory of the war, embodied in literature, popular media, and commemorative sites like the Wall in Washington, DC, belies the true nature of most Americans' service in Vietnam. Vietnam veterans themselves abetted the conflation of "Vietnam" with "combat" when they closed ranks after the war to demand recognition from an indifferent public and compensation from a miserly Veterans' Administration. Above all, combat persists in the public's mind as the dominant experience of the war because it frames veterans' service in terms of traditional values like diligence and thrift. By casting veterans' service in this light, Americans may situate Vietnam on a comforting continuum of heroic, nation-defining struggles that extends, in the public's imagination at least, from the snow-capped battlements of Valley Forge to the windswept deserts of the Middle East.
590 $a School code: 0176.
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650 4 $a History, Modern. $3 516334
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