IIn retrospect, it’s clear why America’s imperial project in Vietnam failed in the 1960s: you can’t win a war when your army doesn’t want to fight. In desperate need of soldiers to send into battle, the establishment of the project seemed the only option for the US military, when in reality this choice is more like their great defeat.
Strengthening thousands of men and forcing them to send in fear of arrest, instead of their own ideological will, she created an unusual fighting force, in contradiction with herself, unenthusiastic, resentful and directly subordinate. Many of the ordinary boys who were not already enlisting against their will soon joined the internal counter-cause after realizing that they had been pawned in a conflict fought over obscure financial imperatives, rather than any claim to justice. . To die face down in a rice field that defended capitalism simply did not have the noble brilliance to support all that was right against the filthy Nazis; The Americans understood Vietnam as the country’s first “bad war”, in which the alleged protagonists of the West came to suspect that they could be villains.
The FTA Show took shape as an inevitable consequence of this unrest in the country and abroad. Led by Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, with the support of popular activist musicians such as Len Chandler, the extravagance of the anti-USO variety channeled the bitterness and frustration of the moment into a subversive protest entertainment. (The title track clarifies the four-letter profanity directed at the military.) A little-screened documentary from 1972, under the truncated title of ALS, followed the tour of active bases in Hawaii in the Philippines and Japan, each show being full of traps with I’m eager to hear an alternative to the rah-rah party line of their “jailers,” as Fonda joked. The film spent only a week in cinemas before quietly disappearing from the program; director Francine Parker claimed that the distributor, American International Pictures, gave back on receiving a direct call from the White House. But now, a brand new 4K restoration has finally received a public release, sounding a once evasive defiant call for everyone to hear.
The hippie band, radicals and cheerful pranks, tried to turn Bob Hope’s “political vaudeville” with satirical songs and skits that undermine the chain of command. Detainees often detested their law-abiding officers, a contempt that could easily be translated into MAD Magazine-style punch lines. In a comical interstitial corner, a general asks one of his troops for a quarter, which he offers with a “Sure!” Informally, the senior soldier chews his subordinate for familiarity and asks for the quarter again, this time receiving a heartfelt “No, sir!” In this case, as in many others, the spirit of disobedience compensates for the rather gentle humor, not as noisy as Laughter, but 10 times more dangerous. A musical number like Nothing could be better than being in Indochina! it is more uplifting than anything else, shouting what many considered indescribable from the top of the singer’s lungs.
Extensive segments of the interview support the bold ideology with testimonies from people on the ground and from both sides of the conflict. Among the most controversial elements was an introductory sheet stating that the film was produced in cooperation not only with IG, but also with their “friends” whose “lands they currently occupy”. The camera crew had no problem finding Americans and Japanese united in the desire for the armed forces to liberate Okinawa and leave the island, or the Filipino protesters who express a common desire with the IGs to bring them home. The military seems to alienate its people along any personal line, regardless of race (black soldiers discuss the discrimination they face in their ranks and the hypocrisy of the struggle for a country they could not care less than they), gender (Fonda’s song I’m Tired of Fuckin ‘Over Me villains calls it sexism and harassment) or class (volunteers from poor communities in the dirt realize they risk their lives to enrich rich people).
The reduced moments with the right face – Sutherland reading an excerpt from Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, musicians from Okinawa singing gloomily in their mother tongue – emphasize that the zealous show aspires to more than just the challenge. The opposition came from a place of compassion, a position not of hatred for the soldiers themselves, but for the powers of establishment that compel them to act against their own interests. The film has a sense of dissonance that forced conservatives at the time to wonder why “Hanoi Jane” wouldn’t leave America unless she hated it so much. With the 20/20 retrospective, we can see that precisely because she and her comrades loved the country, dedicated their energies and risked their reputation to improve it, their criticism being the final act of patriotism.