From: eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: This isn't: BC in the movies [still diverging] it real (end)
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 17:35:55 GMT

First off, thanks to all those people who agreed; it was appreciated,
however, I noted the film Hearts and Minds where this footage can be seen.
I rented this film and saw it for the first time since 1976 or so when I
first saw it.  I didn't fast forward most parts, it was riviting to me,
it won the 1974 Academy Award for Best Documentary.  While it might be
a little biased, I think it is ONE good documentary to try and understand
the war.  It does have a few backcountry aspects and it is relevant to
this day 11/11 (Veterans day) around many parts of the world.

Another recommended film is Kurosawa's Rashomon on perspective.  

You guys get hung up on some strange points, but I "enjoyed" seeing
a quality documentary again to prove a point.  Certain comments cannot
go under answered (some of you guys clearly have a morbid fascination).
Discussion not for the weak of heart follows.  You deliberately read
beyond this point (otherwise hit 'n'):


Dave Huhta  huhta@phys31.phsx.ukans.edu writes:
>Correct.  The event WAS filmed, but a bystander walked in front of the
>movie camera at the moment the shot was fired
>The still photograph was taken at the
>precise instant the gun was fired and is, I think, the most widely pub-
>lished photo from the war.

Yes.  What's your point?  Are you focusing on the the very impact of the
bullet or something?  I hate to tell you this but the six other posters
and letter writers I saw aren't concern with that.  We saw either in 1968
or in documentaries the foaming protoplasm of this man's brain gushing in
"real life" not the Holywood movies.  This is like the difference between
the wearers of digital watches and analog watches:
	"It's quarter after one."
	"It's precisely 1:14:35."
If the issue is Cimino's film, there was only one inaccuracy: the bullet
entering the cranial cavity over pressures and foams up the tissue while it
creates the entry cavity, but that's picking nits.  It is the difference
between a moment and an event of some duration.  Don't take it personally.

Capturing still images like the Spanish Civil War photo of a soldier
getting hit with a bullet existed long before this photo.

The mostly widely publicized image of the War in my mind was the dropping
of Napalm and the little girl who emerged seconds later with all her clothes
burned off and skin drapping off in parts.  This is also in Hearts and Minds.

>>It was quite horrifying !!
>Indeed, but if you read the accounts of what others in his situation went
>through before being killed, he was really rather lucky.

Lucky?  Really?  Or are you speaking of the policeman pulling the trigger?

>Sincere apologies for the misuse of r.b bandwidth.

Look, no need to apologize, that's your opinion and your observation and you
chose to post it on r.b.  Now posting a GIF in the rec hierarchy is an abuse.

In article <1992Nov5.173338.24671@news.arc.nasa.gov>
watson@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (John S. Watson - FSC) writes:
>In article <1992Nov4.224225.44410@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
scvax@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>>>It was quite horrifying !!  
>The Horror. The Horror.

To tell you the frank truth, I was not horrified when I first saw the
event on TV.  I was angry.  It was the real world.  You have to
understand the events of the time.  A huge attack was in progress
over all of South Vietnam.  The policeman lost his wife and family hours
earlier.  BTW: in American terminology, the dead man was a "SUSPECT."
I also have other images of dead American MPs neatly lying in the street
(this is a clue) during the Tet offensive with other soldiers huttling
behind cover and preparing to advance.

>I don't know why, but films of REAL executions are the 
>most horrifying thing I can think of.   How can you stand
>there with another fellow human, then pick up a gun and kill them.
>And, how can you just stand there and film it?  

If you can find it, get the music video by the Rolling Stones:
Under Cover.  This is the music video filmed in Central America
where they portrary a police-state style execution (bags over heads).
This is one of the reasons why the wife of the new vice-president
wants labels on records and videos.

I can easily see situations where I will not only pick up the gun
but pull the trigger as this man did.  As many generals have said not just
Patton:
	When you put your hand in the goo which a moment before was your
	best friend's face, you will know what to do.
The difference is that we have made killing easier.  Much harder with
a bow, a sword, a knife or bare hands  (I took some time a few years
ago and learned the latter four).  It was the apparent casualness
of the policeman (who lives down in south CA), effortlessness which
shocks man people, but that's just the physical world.  To deny such a
fascination with this is probably like denying masturbation.
That's why the great second scene in the Deer Hunter while Michael as an
audience member.  Why would he be there?  It means more the third time.

Film it?  Sure, that's my job as a cameraman/journalist.
Remember the footage of numerous cameramen: El Salvador, Jonestown,
etc. where the newsman was shot and killed.  Our SUSPECT was just up close.
It makes the best journalists.  If every cameraman etc. broke down in such
moments, we would not have such moments.

>It's the premedition that seems to make the difference.

I can remember that time, it was a Hell everywhere in the world.
As a kid at the time I was still in favor of the war: the year before I
was wondering why we weren't lobbing Polaris missiles with conventional
warheads on Hanoi, and I was writing to the Pentagon and other places to
learn about organophosphate compounds (nerve gases) and why we didn't
use these in the tunnels mazes.  And you could guess I was thinking
that the dumping of tons of 2,4D and 2,4,5T (Agent Orange, Blue and Yellow)
were good things.  A few years later, I would see the stupidity of war
and not because of draft age.  I don't view the men who went over there
as crazy and I don't have hard feelings to the men who left the country.
Each did what they had to do.  I had my options, and I was lucky enough
to just get to go to college without strings.

>I wonder if it would bug me as much if I worked in a slaughter house?

Perhaps.  You can find out.

>I wonder if ordered to, I could do it?  Probably, 
>given the right (wrong) set of circumstances, which bugs me even more.

But you see that is your humanity.  It is that you realize that fine line.
Depending on the army, if I were your officer, it would be my decision
whether to shoot you, to send you back and courtmarshall you, or other thing.
And if it were Vietnam, you might have fragged me.

Take a moment today, pause and honor vets.  And hope it doesn't happen again
and no one has to get involved.  [It doesn't happen that way, but
all people have ideals.  Remember: "Peace on Earth, good will toward men?"]
If you rent and view Hearts and Minds you have done this.

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  Resident Cynic, Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers
  {uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
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A Ref: Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning, vol. 1, G. Polya
Newsgroups: rec.backcountry