The Vietnam War, which came to an end 50 years ago this week, has been followed by a similarly lopsided war of historical memory.
The Vietnamese war movie Địa đạo: Mặt trời trong bóng tối (“Tunnel: Sun in the Dark”) follows a Vietnamese revolutionary guerrilla unit engaged in a fierce asymmetric tunnel warfare against the overwhelming might of American bombers, tanks, and elite “Tunnel Rats.” Released ahead of the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the defeat of the southern Republic of Vietnam, Địa Đạo has become a box-office hit in Vietnam. The film itself is part of an ongoing asymmetric struggle – a war of historical memory in which Vietnamese voices seek to assert their interpretations of the past and imprint them into the global imagination.
This memory war mirrors the lopsided nature of the military struggle portrayed in Địa Đạo. American memories of the war are disseminated globally through the most expensive and visible media – Hollywood films, Western media, and video games – giving them disproportionate influence in shaping international perceptions of the Vietnam wars.
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