Introduction
Movie genres are classified as combat, comedy, romance, horror and many others. By watching a movie, the audience can tell the genre by examination of the themes, setting and characters. For a movie to belong to a certain genre, it must follow the conventions of that genre. However, a movie can belong to a certain class but fail to conform to the norms of that class. They …show more content…
The movies produced consisted of highly trained and organized army units. The units were depicted as having ultimate military discipline and soldiers who were glued to their mission. The movie genre, however, changed during the post-Vietnam war period. The movies run continuously on the television presented a tough and highly subverted combat war film (Basinger, 2003, pp. 201). Go tell the Spartans is no better. Produced in 1978, the movie followed the corrupted genre misrepresenting the real situation in the battle field. Although the movie was not the usual shooting-and-killing typical of contemporary military films, it was equally inverted and subverted in most of its part. However, as Neale writes, the movie follows the two classic phases of war films: an apparent state of peace followed by an outbreak of war (Neale, 1991, pp …show more content…
However, it displays some characteristics that say about the attitudes of soldiers in the battlefield. The men and women fighting in Vietnam War were not only low motivated, but also lacked sufficient combat skills to tackle a tough Viet Cong. Corporal Lincoln is on drugs most of the time; Cowboy is sadistic while Major Baker is perhaps too old for the job. On institutional authority, the film presents poorly coordinated army units and unrespectable commanders. Hierarchy of power is attributed to deaths encountered in this film rather than the enemy (Neale, 1991 pp. 40).Generally, the authority of military department is not practiced in full, as shown by understaffing of Muc Wa’s outpost. According to Basinger, 1960s combat movies illustrated counterculture as opposed to conformity (Basinger, 2003, pp. 201). Go tell the Spartans is typical of counterculture at work. The behavior of the army personnel, the government and the international community did not conform to the norms of diplomacy and non-involvement. In the first place, US engagement in war was uncalled for, and it was utterly against its long standing policy of