Collective Memory and the Vietnam War Era: The Shifting Image of the Vietnam Veteran through Personal Narratives and Televisual Reproductions
Abstract:
The collective memory of the Vietnam War is updated with every story, memory, reproduction, and memento that is publicly shared. The dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial sparked an emergence of personal narratives that were invaluable to the collective memory of the Vietnam War. The personal narratives that emerged contributed to a change in the public’s perception of the Vietnam veteran. No longer was the Vietnam veteran perceived in the same negative light as in the immediate years after the Vietnam War had ended. Rather, there was now a focus on framing the veterans in as heroes rather than as villains. This new, positive, perception made way for an opening in the discourse and collective memory surrounding the war. Women, and specifically nurses, began to share their stories. The use of personal accounts of nurses that served in Vietnam added to the collective memory by including a whole new type of experience within the war. This new information made way for reproductions based off of the experiences of women in Vietnam, the most popular of which is ABC’s China Beach that ran from 1988-1991. An analysis of China Beach’s main character, Army nurse, Colleen McMurphy, is included. This analysis served to observe the portrayal of McMurphy in comparison to the nurses’ actual accounts, in an effort to see the impact that the show had on the collective memory of Vietnam and nurses in particular.