There are cultural expectations
shaped as much by mass consumption entertainment as they are by lived
experience. The collectives that societies form normalize attitudes,
beliefs, and behaviors that are enforced, consciously or otherwise.
People that live with the memories of something too far outside of
those expectations can find themselves silenced either by trying to
speak to ears that refuse to hear, to minds that can not understand,
or sometimes with mouths that are unable to express themselves.
Military veterans, by the very nature of service, might find
themselves on the wrong side of cultural expectations.
Three veterans returning from
World War II gaze out of the nose of a bomber flying to their home
town, the rolling countryside slowly becoming more familiar to them
as they get closer to home. The Navy Petty Officer Homer Parrish
(Harold Russell), demonstrates the use of the hooks that have
replaced both of his hands by lighting the cigarettes of the Air
Force Lieutenant Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), and Army Sergeant Al
Stephenson (Fredric March).1
After disembarking the three share a cab back to their old lives, or
whatever they could make out of them; Homer not able to bring himself
to embrace his sweetheart. Al Stephenson, unrecognized by the doorman
at his own apartment, surprises his wife and children, but quickly
finds out that his kids have grown up significantly, and his wife's
social circles have changed. While dealing with mental traumas, Fred
attempts to find the woman he married just before he departed, but
when he does his marriage quickly sours as they party away the last
of his savings. He is reduced to taking up his low paying pre-war job
in a drug store, his military experience having no bearing on the
civilian world. The film The Best Years of Our Lives
might look a bit dated to a
modern audience, as the acting and narratives of 1946 were more
stylized than today's
viewers are used to, but at
the time it was praised for its realism.2
The basic narrative of
returning veterans trying to put their lives back together is
made more poignant by the two-Oscar-winning
portrayal of Homer
by Army veteran Harold Russell (Best Supporting Actor, and a special
award for “bringing aid and
comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion
pictures”).3
Fred's
inner conflict is resolved only when he is divorced from the
wife that
cannot understand why he is unable to put the war behind him. He
finds work scrapping
the very types of planes he used to fly, and in
the final scene of the movie proposes
to Al's daughter at Homer's
wedding. Keith's conflict,
which places him moments away
from committing suicide,
comes
to a close when a stray dog he took
in brings
him back to the present moment by licking his face.
Films
and television are far from the only media to impact the collective
understandings. However, even
when turning to works written by witnesses themselves,
the act of writing carries
with it a set of normalized behaviors, things which the
author likely knows the audience expects, “chronology, description,
characterization, dialog, and above all, perhaps, the invention of a
narrative voice” which forces disjointed memories into what seems
to be a sequence.8
Lawerence Langer suggests that the narrative voice, with its
teleological interpretation of memories, allows the split observer of
personal memories, the part of the individual that remembers and the
part that relates the memory, attempts “to recreate a moment held
hostage by time” in order to “retrieve”
the truth.9
However, in the process of
writing a teleological narrative there is a separation between the
“abstractness” of the story and the “concreteness of an
experience moment.”10
This can be seen in the
survivors of other traumatic historical events, like the Holocaust.
Even in the middle of her
historical
present recollection, writing as if at
the time she was standing in
a concentration
camp, in attempting to
understand her own story Charlotte Delbo's
narrative voice ascribes back
onto that memory of the camp
her
current
meaning of her past actions
in Auschwitz in the form of a
inner monologue
affirming
that she would survive.11
This kind of retrospective
appeals because it is what is expected. However, it is not the truth,
strictly
defined, and Delbo rejects the constructed
reality the narrative voice makes
out of the memory in her very next statement: “And this would be
false. I did not say anything to myself. I did not think anything.”12
Much
like with Holocaust survivors, veterans attempting to communicate the
“truth” of their experiences cannot help but examine the memories
from a far distant vantage point of the present
and are forced to speak with a split voice.
No truth can be told without
it being re-imagined
by the speaker, which will change the content, but that does not mean
that witness testimonies are less valuable than factual reports.13
Splitting all information into “fact” and “fiction”
categories encourages the receiver
to think that anything that is not strictly factual is fantasy, but
the truth is something that is constructed by the mind, by
psychology and the facts,
and it
must be interpreted.14
The
author, the storyteller and
the audience are all familiar
with the social conventions of providing closure to a story. A
hard-luck marriage proposal filled with both acknowledgement of
future difficulties and true love. A
stray dog licking the disoriented veteran back to the present moment.
The
handshake of a brother-in-arms bringing
day-to-day life back into the picture.
The
post-hoc conclusion of a past
destiny fulfilled by the very
paragraph it is recorded in.
Each
provide a means to communicate that no matter how dark the journey
might have been, there is hope. This is a important tool for the
narrative as it provides the
audience a safe return to the normal from the dangers encountered
within the mental framework of the tale.
Most
American have never been caught up in warfare as civilians. Thus it
is hard for most of us to grasp the effect of combat duty—of
continual danger and anxiety—on the human body and the human mind.
Many of us may never fully
know what it must feel like to face death in a situation, other than
illness, over which we have little if any control. … To understand
these veterans' reactions … to understand the narrators of this
history—it is important to put ourselves in their shoes. … In
Achilles in Vietnam,
[John] Shay asks his readers to “respond emotionally to the reality
of combat danger in order to make rational sense of the injury
inflicted when those in charge violate 'what is right.'15
While
it might seem like common sense that researchers ought to try to
understand individuals through their own experiences, the disparity
between normality and extreme situations requires that the
researchers shift their points of view beyond any of the normal
conventions. With a written text there can only exist a one-way
communication from the page to the reader, which forces the reader
“into silent collaboration
with the narrative,” but
with an oral history two-way
communication allows the interviewer to impose an interpretation onto
the narrative.16
Langer highlights the effects of preconceptions and “culturally
nourished moral expectations” on a Holocaust survivor's testimony
when a pair of interviewers talking with Hanna F. concluded that she
had lived through the
Holocaust because of “pluck”
and “guts” against her insistence that she had lived because of
“luck” and “stupidity”.17
Their outright dismissal of her adamantly held belief that she was
not, in effect, the hero of her story, ended only when they
laughingly stopped
the interview. She had
violated cultural expectations, and
they rejected her truth in favor of their own comfortable
explanation.
For
transitioning veterans the body of films sets some of the cultural
expectations about the difficulties they face returning home.
Combined with the expected culture shock, veterans carry with them
the ever-present memories of the often violent past, the realities of
of combat dangers,
which Shay encourages readers to emotionally engage with in order to
understand. However, civilians, intellectually fed by a stream of
facts about military and
conflict, may not be prepared
for the truths veterans bring with them.18
“'A
dead buddy's some tough shit,'
quips an unnamed soldier in Dispatches, 'but
bringing your own ass out alive can sure help you get over it.'
Rarely within these works is appreciation for life or gratitude for
survival mentioned without a corresponding reference to the dead.”19
Jen Dunnaway
argues that the dead take on a complex role within the oral history,
where they function not only as a sort of purified wisdom, but as
living people resurrected within the narratives and “are able to
exert a continuing presence” because
of the stories.20
As our memories make up a
portion of who we are, how we
self-identify, veterans feel
the lingering presence of the dead, not just in their stories, but in
their own selves, even when
survival allows them to “get over it”.
Accounts
made for popular consumption, like movies and television ads, form
expectations about veterans that do not generally include a “dead
buddy” living within the memories. Those that do present them as a
mental illness, as Keith's flashbacks or Fred's nightmares. If this
is the cultural lamp directed into the darker recesses of veterans
oral history, then the living presence of the dead will rob the
veteran of an appreciation for life, as the laughter of Hanna's
interviewers took the legitimacy of her own voice. The
silent or silenced voice
can carry serious consequences, as the suicide of Norman Bowker
demonstrates.21
Bowker
approached Tim O'Brien, as
soldiers they
served together in
Vietnam, about recording his
story.22
Because of the war Bowker
felt that he had become unable to relate his experiences in any way,
and needed help. O'Brien
feared the project and dredging up
his own memories,
nevertheless
he committed to
the first published version of “Speaking of Courage”. Feeling
that he failed to capture the
experience completely, he
sent a copy to Bowker anyway.
Months later
Bowker killed himself.
O'Brien's own interpretation was
that his apparent failure
caused
Bowker's death. Dunnaway contests that
telling, offering that
“Bowker was suffocated by his own silence, his inability to be
heard either through his own initiative or through an appointed
storyteller.”23
Dunnaway's view might lend some insight into how important the
autonomous voice of the witness and survivor can be, but it can also
be seen as
a culturally biased understanding of O'Brien, both
as a storyteller and a
veteran. He violated the cultural expectations in his narrative by
claiming responsibility of the death of his brother-in-arms,
and he gained another “dead buddy” that exerts a living presence
in his narrative.
Whether
it is factually accurate to say that O'Brien's failure caused
Bowker's death doesn't matter as much as the meaning that O'Brien
gives to the event. In the end, because it “can never be absolutely
realized,” O'Brien insists that his collection
is a work of fiction.24
Like The Best Years, The Present Trauma, and
Alone, the act of
telling a story is never fully unmotivated. Bowker wished to be
heard. Despite his own misgivings,
O'Brien decided to assist his buddy. There is a limited perspective
that any document can present, and a reason for it to be made. What
falls to the interviewer is that the autonomy of the person providing
an oral history be respected.
The
difficulties of military service continue to shape the lives of
veterans for as long as they carry the memories, like the survivors
of any traumatic chapter of history. The
further
from normality their military experience, the more difficult it might
be for them to relate their stories back into a society that has not
shared the same hardships. This can be made exceptionally more
difficult when memories of dead buddies not only live as a part of
the identity of the veteran, but when it is also bound to their
appreciation of life. To respect the autonomy of veterans while
attempting to record their oral histories necessitates that the
interviewer approach the topic with ears that are willing to hear,
and minds that are open enough to try to understand as best as
possible. To respect the
veterans' welfare requires
that the interviewers
not dismiss their
apprehensions.
Bibliography
Alone.
Iraq
and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
2008;
New
York City, NY:
Ad
Council.
Streaming
Video.
Accessed
March 7,
2015,
<https://youtu.be/fDbqLul97Fg>.
The
Best Years Of Our Lives.
Directed
by William Wyler. 1946; Hollywood,
CA: The Samuel Goldwyn
Company. Released
by Warner Home Video. DVD.
Encyclopaedia
Britannica Online. “Harold
John Russell.” Accessed
March 9, 2015,
.
Kozloff,
Sarah. The Best Years Of Our Lives.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan on Behalf of British Film Institute,
2001.
Langer,
Lawrence. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
The
Present Trauma. Directed
by Mark Manalo.
2013;
New York City, NY:
HBO Project
Greenlight. Streaming
Video.
Accessed
March 1, 2015,
.
Soldier
Talk: The Vietnam War in Oral Narrative. Edited
by Paul Budra and Michael
Zeitlin. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2004.
Stacewicz,
Richard. Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War. New
York: Twayne Publishers, 1997.
1 The
Best Years Of Our Lives, directed
by William Wyler (1946; Hollywood,
CA: The Samuel Goldwyn
Company, released by Warner
Home Video), DVD.
2 Sarah
Kozloff, The Best Years Of Our Lives,
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan on Behalf of British Film Institute,
2001),
8-9.
3 Encyclopaedia
Britannica Online, “Harold John Russell”, accessed March 9,
2015,
http://www.britannica.com/Ebchecked/topic/860661/Harald-John-Russell.
4 The
Present Trauma, directed by
Mark Manalo
(2013;
New York City, NY:
HBO Project
Greenlight),
streaming video, accessed
March 1, 2015,
http://www.projectgreenlight.com.
5 Alone,
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans
of America (2008;
New York City, NY:
Ad Council),
streaming video, accessed
March 7, 2015,
https://youtu.be/fDbqLul97Fg.
6 Kozloff,
9.
7 Kozloff,
83.
8 Lawrence
L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of
Memory, (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1991), 41.
9 Langer,
42.
10 Langer,
42.
11 Langer,
42-3.
12 Langer,
41.
13 Soldier
Talk: The Vietnam War in Oral Narrative, edited
by Paul Budra and Michael
Zeitlin, (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2004), 28.
14 Soldier
Talk, 29.
15 Richard
Stacewicz, Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War (New
York: Twayne Publishers, 1997), 3-4.
16 Langer,
63.
17 Langer,
63-4.
18 Soldier
Talk, 29.
19 Soldier
Talk, 40.
Italics in the original.
20 Soldier
Talk, 40-1.
21 Soldier
Talk, 44.
22 Soldier
Talk, 44-45.
23 Soldier
Talk, 45.
24 Soldier
Talk, 45-6.
No comments:
Post a Comment