Mark's Pages

September 16, 2004:

Reversals.

• It's not us who burn and massacre villages; it's the other side.
• Villagers come willingly into the government concentration camps. Seeking protection from the baddies, natch.
• It's not our allies who behave with racism toward Montagnards; it's the other side.
• We're not the invaders; it's the other side.
• It's not our troops and those of our allies who are notorious throughout the country for committing rape; it's the other side.
• It's not our leaders who underestimate the enemy; it theirs who underestimate us.

Freud defines the principle of negation as one of the simplest mechanisms of the unconscious. Simply flip something. The emotional pole: sad becomes happy. The answer: yes becomes no. The actors: executioner becomes executed.

H. Bruce Franklin has a very strong discussion of these reversals in his interesting Vietnam and Other American Fantasies. He documents the way the famous image of General Loan's execution of an NLF prisoner is transformed over time into fictional images of American prisoners executed in The Deer Hunter and elsewhere. It's not us, it's them.