Vietnam Generation

Volume 1
Number 1 The Future of the Past: Revisionism and Article 7
Vietnam

1-1989

First Blood Redrawn

Don Kunz

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Kunz, Don (1989) "First Blood Redrawn," Vietnam Generation: Vol. 1 : No. 1 , Article 7.
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First Blood R ecIrawn

D on K unz

Nearly everyone speaking or writing about Am erica's Vietnam

soldier eventually feels compelled to mention Rambo. As David Morrell
notes with pride, the name of the character he created in his novel. First
Blood, has entered our nation's household vocabulary1. It resembles
in this case the title of Joseph Heller's World W ar 2 novel. Catch 22. and
the macho m ovie-star name of Marion Robert Morrison — John Wayne.
There is more at stake in the popular adoption of those term s than a
simple enlargem ent of the dictionary. The evolution of Rambo from
character to icon illustrates the fictionalizing process by which history
is accom m odated to myth.
Rambo is an ambiguous and contradictory epithet, its meaning
shifting as a result of an elaborate revision process still underway.
M orrell's protagonist has been appropriated variously as a symbol of
American patriotism , mindless savagery, the frontier hero, and
Frankenstein's monster. President Reagan has invoked Rambo as the
deus exm achina to his adm inistration's hostage crisis and tax reform
problem s2. Rambo has subsequently trickled down into parental
discussions of overly zealous Little League coaches, and to newspaper
headlines about Los Angeles freeway killers. In the sem antically
confusing aftermath of the Rambo films — Ted Kotcheff's First Blood.
Part I (1982), George P. C osm atos' Rambo: First Blood. Part 2(1985),
and Peter M acDonald's Rambo 3(1988) — David M orrell's 1972 novel
has almost been forgotten.
Critics have written about the Rambo films in relation to one
another and in relation to other films about Vietnam, ignoring the
original literary work. I intend to reestablish the importance of the novel
by a com parison of its setting, characterization, and theme to the
revisionary film adaptation. I will then demonstrate the ways in which
the two cinem atic sequels to First Blood, Part 1 continue the
transform ation of a provocative, engaging fiction into a fam iliar and
comforting myth.
The film adaptation and its sequels repackage and resell the
Vietnam experience as an entertainment com m odity for safe mass
consumption — a sanitized rerun of Am erica's first television war. In the
 First B lood R edrawn 95

films, David Morrell's complex and disturbing protagonist is simplified

and softened in order to transform the public's concept of America's
Vietnam veteran from psychotic loser to incorruptible and invincible
superpatriot;Sylvester Stallone's muscular incarnation of John Rambo
glosses over Morrell's profoundly troubling conclusions about America's
treatment of Vietnam veterans.
In Morrell's original story, protagonist and antagonist alike are
realistic extensions of the national character, reflecting the historic era.
Their suffering is psychological as well as physical; the conflict is more
tragic than melodramatic. Reading the novel, we are invited to
acknowledge the humanity of those who provoke the returned
veteran's violence. Asa consequence, we are unable to deny that to
some extent the antagonists represent us, ordinary Americans of no
great power or influence who nevertheless share responsibility for what
happened to the Vietnam veteran.
Morrell's Rambo returns to an America which is hostile territory
for anyone who looks different. The setting of the novel — Madison,
Kentucky — is apparently unremarkable except for being near the
heartland of America, for which it stands. Rambo, with his heavy
beard, long hair, and ragged, dusty, patched clothing, is nearly run
over by a car as he is hitchhiking in Madison, and a gas station
attendant quickly calls the police because he looks like a vagrant. The
Chief of Police, Wilfred Teasle, drives Rambo to the edge of town and
leaves him In the ditch, like a throwaway bottle. When Rambo returns,
Teasle tells him he looks like a drifter, a moocher, a drug pusher; he
stands out "like some black m an'3. Escorting Rambo to the city limits
for the second time, Teasle remarks angrily that his town is changing:
kids are hanging out on the street, littering, making noises that he
doesn't want to hear. Rambo should get a haircut, a bath, and a job.
Morrell makes it clear, when Rambo thinks to himself that Madison is the
fifteenth town he has been pushed out of, that this old Kentucky home
Is just like the rest of America in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In Morrell's America, blacks have been excluded from full
social participation, ghettoized out of sight; there is a generation gap,
an internal war between Establishment and counterculture. The local
police have obviously taken President Nixon's speeches about law
and order to heart. In fact. Chief of Police Teasle has made his home
in the police station; an old schoolhouse newly repainted red, white,
and blue. Rambo eventually dynamites the station along with the
courthouse, and Teasle thinks, "Christ, he's gone out of his mind.... He
wants to blow up the whole tow n'4. Synecdochically, the town is
America.
In contrast, Kotcheff'sfilm adaptation of Morrell's novel makes
96 V ietnam G eneration

the town which casts Rambo out seem atypical and fantastic. (The film
was shot in Nelson, British Columbia; the same otherworldly location
Fred Schepisi and Steve Martin used for Roxanne.) The neon sign at the
city limits proclaims, “Welcome to Holidayland'. A remote resort
surrounded by snow-capped peaks, this place seems special, not the
average American small town. In First Blood. Part /, a black family lives
beside a sparkling lake where children play happily together. The
Police Chief contentedly belches and pats his full belly as he emerges
from the station to banter good naturedly with the locals. The streets
are bathed in sunlight reflected from the majestic, snow-covered
mountains. This tow n's allegorical name is consistent with Kotcheff's
revision: Hope.
Kotcheff's Rambo returns to America with a set of expectations
which are soon dashed. Unlike Morrell's character, this Rambo is not
just passing through one more American town along an endless road.
Instead, he has come to Hope expecting to be welcomed; he has
come to look up Delmore, a black comrade, the only other survivor of
his Green Beret unit. In the opening scene, Delmore's mother bitterly
informs Rambo that her son died of cancer brought on by his exposure
to Agent Orange. Rambo is crushed to learn that there is no hope of
escaping the damaging effects of the war, even after being discharged,
and the sky actually darkens as he heads into town, looking for
someone to blame. Hope is a false promise. The town seems beautiful,
friendly, but it is actually a closed community harboring its own cancer;
a utopia maintained by violently repressive and sadistic forces, denying
access or understanding to outsiders. Kotcheff grants his film audience
license to regard this town, and especially its inept and villainous police
force as isolated from, rather than typical of, the nation at large.
In contrast, Morrell's Madison is just like the fifteen other town
Rambo has been pushed out of on his aimless journey through America.
The novel does not permit the readerto escape the unsettling conclusion
that rejecting the Vietnam veteran and denying him a place in the
society he fought for can only result in his decision to turn against
America, to bring the full horror of the Vietnam War home.
Neitherthe novel northefilm give much insight into the townsfolk;
it is the character of the police force which precipitates Rambo's
decision to reenact the guerrilla war. In the novel the police are
plausible civilian surrogates, representing America at home as the
soldier does in Vietnam. The policemen of Madison are ordinary
people who follow procedures, live routinely, think conventionally.
Rambo can anticipate and openly mock their cliched remarks: what
sex is he? and let's take up a collection to buy him a haircut. Chief
Teasle automatically assumes that Rambo is a fugitive because he
 First B lood R edrawn 97

does not carry any identification. The wounds which are revealed to
Teasle during his strip search of Rambo are assumed to be related to
civilian life rather than military service. Teasle and his men are wholly
unprepared to deal with an alienated, intelligent, skillful Green Beret
who once escaped a North Vietnamese prison camp and was awarded
the Congressional Medal of Honor. When an inexperienced policeman
named Gait shakily draws his gun (against Teasle's orders) Rambo
instinctively lashes out with the razor being used to shave him. The war
at home begins with the police force unaware that Rambo is a
veteran. In fact, they have been so conditioned to expect trouble from
the opposite end of the political spectrum — counterculture war
protesters — that they mistake Rambo for one.
Isolated and silent, ratherthan tribal and vocal, Rambo has not
returned from the war to join the ranks of the protesters against it. He
has, however, become a kind of dropout, scavenging, surviving off the
land, and rejecting the option of settling down with a regular job. The
badges of his status are his long hair, beard, and ragged clothing. The
way Rambo chooses to live after the war is implicitly a critique of the
establishment which sent him abroad to perpetuate its values. In
suggesting at least a superficial (countercultural resemblance between
the veteran and the antiwar protester, Morrell's novel invites our
conclusion that the Vietnam War pointed an entire generation in
roughly the same direction. Like us. the police officers of this typical
American town do not, at first glance, understand the situation. They
are average Americans of an older generation hostile toward a
younger one, ignorant about Vietnam and unable to imagine how the
war will have an effect on them.
The film adaptation depicts Hope's police as melodramatic
villains who are aware of Rambo's war service almost immediately;
they have read his dog tags. When a young policeman (Mitch) calls
attention to Rambo's scars, the older officer (Gault) says curtly, “Who
gives a shit?" Although Mitch can see Rambo is growing agitated and
tries to calm him down, Galt, as senior officer, mocks and tortures the
“soldier boy*. Without provocation or warning he strikes Rambo in the
kidneys with his nightstick, washes him down with a firehose while
laughing sadistically, and puts a choke hold on him when Rambo starts
to object. Galt's brutality triggers Rambo's flashback to torture in the
POW camp, and precipitates his violent escape. The cinematic
flashback clearly equates Hope's police force with the North
Vietnamese. AsElizabethTraube notes, “Domestic violence is modeled
on the represented foreign violence, and the film makes a manifest
attemptto identify the oppressive domestic forces with the Vietnamese
enem y'5.
98 V ietnam G eneration

Kotcheff's film adaptation transforms Galt from the least

experienced to the oldest veteran on the police force. In the novel,
Galt acts from ignorance and fear, as any of us might. In the film his
blatant disregard for the veteran's pain and his eagerness to abuse
Rambo make him hateful beyond the point of audience identification.
This reckless brutality is more characteristic of Hope's police
force than not. Teasle's chase after Rambo is a crazy, headstrong
charge off the highway, on to backroads, across fields and streams,
through closed pastoral gates, until the officer overturns his car on the
mountainside and crawls from the wreckage to fire a parting shot. The
police cruiser is not the only thing upside down here.
It is no wonder that Teasle describes the evil Gault as his oldest
and best friend: they are both corrupt authority figures who disguise
their sadistic tendencies by maintaining the pretense of a rule of law;
ironically, they provoke the disturbance which they are pledged to
guard against. This conspiracy envelopes other citizens of Hope, such
as the civilian whom Teasle employs to track Rambo with dogs.
Dobermans, he asserts, are better than Bloodhounds because the
fiercer dogs “can eat on the ru n '. Although Hope's police force wears
white cowboy hats, the officers are clearly not the good guys of this
cinematic melodrama. Theircrudedisregardforandsadistictreatment
of the Vietnam veteran justify the magnitude of the destruction which
he visits upon them and, more importantly, forestall any audience
sympathy.
The police officers' willfully callous abuse of John Rambo, their
disastrously ill-conceived search and destroy tactics, and obsession
with avoiding at any cost a publicly humiliating defeat by a presumably
inferior force might help the audience to the conclusion that these
men are small-town surrogates for civilian and military leadership
during the Vietnam War. But Rambo's prison flashback qualifies that
interpretation, inviting the audience to regard Hope's police force as
a quasi-foreign corruption of American civil and moral authority — the
metaphorical equivalents of his brutal North Vietnamese captors. As
such .they are justly punished by the Vietnam veteran who has returned
to protect us from them.
Morrell's Police Chief Teasle is a more complex invention than
his film counterpart. Though he orders the stranger out of town by
sundown (exhibiting the typical macho of the frontier sheriff), he also
offers him a ride to the city limits and, later, when Rambo returns, asks
him if he needs a job. Teasle's tough talk is softened by some paternal
gestures and an occasional smile which permits a glimpse of humanity
beneath the gruff professional exterior. His police cruiser accident is
not melodramatic but comic: Teasle is so astonished at seeing Rambo
 First B lood R edrawn 99

back in town that he stops short in traffic and get rear-ended by one
of the local citizens. Fending off public embarrassment, he gives the
man a ticket because “the law says the car in back is always wrong.
You were following too close for an emergency'6. The episode depicts
Madison's Police Chief more humanely, and serves as ironic
commentary on his pursuit of Rambo — Teasle follows him too closely,
unable to anticipate the accident he is about to cause. Morrell's
Teasle is complex because we have access to his consciousness. We
see him worrying about the wife who has left him, remembering his
father's death in a hunting accident, and considering how to renew
relations with his surrogate father, Orval. Although Teasle denies it,
even Orval (and. hence, the audience) recognizes that it is displaced
anger that compels Teasle to pursue Rambo. Teasle is unable to
separate his personal and professional life, creating a dangerous and
volatile situation.
In Morrell's novel. Teasle and his police force are not evil men;
they are simply unfamiliar with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),
dulled by small town life and official procedures, and overly protective
of their authority. They are not prepared to cope with the emergency
which the Chief's routine rousting of Rambo provokes. Most importantly,
they show no initial malice toward Rambo, and have no suspicion of his
veteran status. The police of Madison are simply implemented of
America's domestic law-and-order agenda. Morrell makes it difficult
to hate these policemen and easy to believe they are only average
men making natural mistakes which must inevitably trigger Rambo's
violent backlash. Madison's policemen are family men.
The guerrilla war which Rambo brings home to America in
Morrell's novel is, finally, a family affair. Rambo is the son Teasle wanted
but could never have. Morrell has carefully constructed Rambo's
entrance to coincide with the departure of Teasle's wife: Teasle
wanted a child; his wife didn't want the “trouble*7. Teasle is old enough
to be Rambo's father and, even after he learns Rambo's name,
continues to refer to him only as “the kid' — an epithet which the rest
of his men adopt. Teasle and Rambo are very much alike; they have
matching temperaments. Both are proud, independent, macho
personalities, men without the softening influence of women. Neither
likes to receive advice or take orders or negotiate.
The novel's protagonist and antagonist have been shaped by
similar experiences. They are heroic veterans: Rambo is a Congressional
Medal of Honor winner .Teasle is a recipient of the Distinguished Service
Cross for his conduct in Korea. Both men have macho foster fathers
(Orval and Trautman) who they have grown to resemble and whose
authority they have challenged in rites of passage to adulthood. Both
100 V ietnam G eneration

men are alienated: Teasle returning from Korea to be Chief of Police

in his hometown, "except it was no more home, just the place where
he had grown u p '8, and Rambo returning from Vietnam to wander,
homeless, from town to town. The personal war between Teasle and
Rambo continues the cycle of rebellion against a harsh fatherfigure in
whose Image a boy has been raised. Morrell uses family violence as a
trope to explain the blind ferocity and self-destructive nature of a
tragic action replicated on a national scale. The war between father
and son is prologue to , and rehearsal for, foreign war. And now the war
has come home again, the family enlarged, the epilogue written.
As Teasle's battle with Rambo unfolds in Morrell's novel, it
becomes more personal, more intimate. He enlists Orval's help in
tracking Rambo, and then loses all professional perspective when
Orval is shot: "... Teasle was vowing to track the kid forever, grab him,
mutilate him... No more because of Galt.... Personal now. For himself.
Father, fosterfather. Both shot. The insane anger of when his real father
had been killed, wanting to strangle the kid until his throat was crushed,
his eyes popping'9. The Vietnam War has come home for Teasle,
threatening first his professional reputation and his pride in keeping
order in his hometown, and then threatening his personal relationships
and his ability to control and order his family life.
Although the State Police and the National Guard become
involved in hunting Rambo, Morrell focuses primarily upon the
developing intimacy between Teasle and his prey. Each crawls
painfully through a thicket of brambles to escape the other (Teasle in
the mountains and Rambo in town); each experiences chest pains
(Rambo because of broken ribs,Teasle because of heart trouble); both
want to end their war but cannot, caught in the escalating struggle
which moves the war from the mountainous wilderness into the town
itself.
The plot moves to resolution as they fire reflexively and
simultaneously, wounding one another with pistols. And, significantly,
each experiences mysteriously transcendent moments which precede
the catastrophe. Rambo's transcendence occurs at a level which
"the native allies in the war had called ... the way of Zen. the journey
to arrive at the pure and frozen moment achieved only after long
arduous training and concentration and determination to be perfect.
... the moment could not be explained. The emotion was timeless,
could not be described in time, could be compared to orgasm but not
so defined because it had no physical center, was bodily everywhere'10.
Teasle's moment occurs first as a dream in which he foresees exactly
how Rambo will escape the trap set for him by detouring through a
"graveyard' of junk cars and stealing a police cruiser, and, then, after
 First B lood R edrawn 101

Rambo shoots him. in a moment when “it was all reversed, him outside
of himseif, but everything out there within him.... He had never seen
anything with such distinct clarity'1'. Teasle has become Rambo's
secret sharer.
What the two veterans have suffered together has made them
reluctant antagonists. After he has wounded Rambo, Teasle admits. 'I
shot him and all at once I didn't hate him anymore. I was just so n y '12.
Similarly, Rambo “squinted to clear his vision, looking down the mound
where Teasle lay flat in the brush. Christ, he had hit him. God, he had
not wanted th a t'13.
Theirdeveloping intimacy in the novel is publicly acknowledged
just before death. As Teasle lies wounded, “the one policeman shook
his head queerly. 'Hethinkshe'sthekid.'.... 'He'sgone crazy,' the other
sa id '14. Teasle is perceived by observers not justas having lost his mind
like Rambo, but having, in a sense, become Rambo. Killing Rambo is
like killing himself. When Teasle continued to stalk Rambo despite his
own mortal wound, he argued with Trautman about who had the right
toendit: “He's m ine,'says Teasle. “Notyours. He wants it to be m e '15.
As he was tracking Rambo, Teasle thought, “There was blood here on
the fence. The kid's. Good. He would be going over where the kid had.
His blood dripping on the kid 's....'16
But it is Captain Trautman, who finally kills Rambo, taking off the
top of “the kid 's' head with a shotgun blast as the dying Teasle
watches: “He thought about (his wife) again, and she still did not
interest him. He thought about his house he had fixed up in the hills, the
cats there, and none of that interested him either. He thought about
the kid, and flooded with love for him, and just a second before the
empty shell would have completed its arc to the ground, he relaxed,
accepted peacefully. And was dead'17. The tragic conclusion of the
personal war between Rambo and Teasle is couched in the intimate
terms of a belated reconciliation between estranged father and son
whose life experiences mirror one another.
In Morrell's novel, the body count from Rambo's guerrilla war at
home is a staggering 200 kills18, indicating the extent to which the
Vietnam veteran succeeds in making his fellow Americans experience
the pain and suffering of the conflict which they had exported to
Southeast Asia. Like America's policy makers, the Madison police
force pay an enormous price for steadily escalating the conflict. But in
this tragic novel's catastrophe, Rambo manages to make civilian and
military authorities recognize the pain of the Vietnam veteran who was
the instrument of America's destructive policy abroad and a casualty
upon his return. Teasle and Trautman, who serve as Rambo's civilian
and military foster fathers, discuss the murder of their “son': “'What's
102 V ietnam G eneration

it like for you?' 'Better than when I knew he was in pain.' 'Y e s " '’
Ted Kotcheff's film adaptation spares its audience the pain of
any such discussion of strife between fathers and sons. For one thing,
neither Teasle nor Rambo die on celluloid. Instead, Trautman talks
Rambo out of killing the sadistic and obsessive Police Chief of Hope,
and then leads him off to prison. Trautman and Rambo march side by
side through an assembled crowd, through flashing lights that seem
more awed tribute to a returned Vietnam veteran's victory over evil
forces than an arrest — a belated parade in which he has compelled
them to march. This Teasle is not like Rambo: he is not a war hero, or
even a veteran. This private war is not structured sothat the experiences
of the combatants reflect one another. There is no mutual respect in
their final orgy of destruction.
Kotcheff's Teasle is a ghoul in a horror movie, the bad guy in a
western — a sadist who wants “to kill that kid so bad he can taste it'.
The scene where Teasle and his police force pursue Rambo in the
wooded mountains is a cinematic hybrid. Rambo. garbed like an
American Indian, ambushesand cripples each white-hatted deputy in
turn. The techniques he uses seem to come from the latest manual of
guerrilla warfare. Resurrected from his tragic end in the novel to
become a muscular romantic film hero, Rambo rises mysteriously from
the forest floor, leaps from trees; he stabs one deputy in the leg, lashes
another to a tree with a garrote, impales another on punji sticks.
Lighting flashes, thunder booms, and each wounded deputy screams
for help. Rambo finally pins Teasle against a tree and holds a knife to
his throat: the savage delivers a civilized warning: “In town you're the
law; out here its me. I could have killed them all. Let it go or I'll give you
a waryou w on't believe. Just let it g o .' And Rambo disappears silently
back into the forest darkness.
The film First Blood. Part 1 is a revisionist Western like Ralph
Nelson's Soldier Blue (1970) or Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1971),
inverting our sense of who is savage and who is civilized. Teasle and
Rambo are intimate, but opposite. Rambo is a modem version of the
prototypical American hero: the Green Beret, like the Indian Fighter,
adopts the alien other's costume and tactics in the service of fighting
for progress along a frontier poised between savagery and civilization.
In Vietnam, the Green Beret used the small-band guerrilla tactics of the
Viet Cong, and now he has returned home to use those same skills on
the war-making savages who masquerade as righteous representatives
of law and order. Like the mythic American frontier hero, the Green
Beret is distinguished from the savage antagonist whom he resembles
not only by the progressive mission which his savagery serves but also
by the civilized restraint which exercises.
 First B lood R edrawn 103

But Kotcheff is also making a horror film. Harvey Greenburg

notes that First Blood, Part 1 can be considered a 'b rid g e ' film which
connects earlier works depicting the Vietnam veteran as an urban
vigilante (a kind of post-modern Western) to the spectral lunatic
haunting 'slic e and dice' thrillers20. This first Rambo film is an updated
Frankensteinv/tth Rambo as the rejected m onsterandTrautm anasthe
scientist-creator 'com e to reestablish control over the dangerous
power that he has unleashed'21. In the novel Jeasle sends forTrautman;
in the film Trautman mysteriously appears immediately after Teasle
exclaims, 'W hat ever possessed God in Heaven to make a man like
Rambo?' 'G od didn't make Rambo. Id id /sa ysTra utm an. Trautman
speaks of Rambo as if he were not quite human, but rather a sort of
bomb that needs to be ’ defused'. Through its mixed homage to two
of cinema's melodramatic forms, the Western and horror genres, the
film First Blood, Part 1distances its audience from the conflict between
the returning Vietnam War veteran and his countryman; by its
conventional fictionality.the adaptation forestalls consideration of the
troubling conclusions to which the more inventive novel leads its
readers.
In Kotcheff's film, Rambo brings the guerrilla war home simply
because he Is brutalized by police so sadistic they seem foreign. In the
novel his motives are complex and disturbing. When Morrell's Rambo
breaks out of jail he is not being tortured but being made to look like a
solid citizen: bathed, clean-shaven, and short-haired. Morrell's Rambo
has gotten himself into jail in the first place as a matter of principle. He
maintains that he has the right to dress, eat, sleep, and go where he
chooses. This Rambo sees himself first as an American civilian entitled
to basic liberties that have been systematically denied to him in the last
fifteen towns he has passed through. He feels strongly that his wartime
service also entitles him to respect. Finally, Morrell's Rambo admits that
he misses the war and is hungry for some action. This matrix of motives
inevitably conspires against peace when the Vietnam veteran returns
to an America divided between respect for authority and preservation
of liberty. As a result, everyone is drawn plausibly into an insanely
escalating conflict which resuits in the winner of a Congressional Medal
of Honor getting killed for demanding his basic civil rights and a minimal
veterans' benefit — respect. Morrell's story poses a challenge to
America's sense of innocence, righteousness, and invincibility.
Kotcheff'sfilm does not dramatize the Vietnam veteran's painful
homecoming in terms which would lead the audience to seif-scrutiny.
The film focuses on special effects excitement — exploding helicopters
and massive firepower. It is almost as If the filmmakers set out to
eradicate traumatic memories of the Vietnam era in the same way
104 V ietnam G eneration

that policy makers tried to win the war itseif; with a technological fix.
Only in the m ovie's final scene is the veteran allowed much more than
a sullen expression to articulate his feelings about the war and its
aftermath. In a rambling monologue, Rambo responds to Troutman's
assertion that "this mission is over'. Rambo answers that the war cannot
simply be turned off by those who turned it on. Although repelled by
the horror which he experienced in war, the civilian life to which Rambo
has returned is nothing without the code of honor by which he lived in
Vietnam. He wants to "go h o m e ', but where is that? The war is officially
over, but Rambo cannot hold a job, or even talk to anybody "back in
the W orld'. The film adaptation urges us to conclude that the Vietnam
veteran's real home is not with us but in the military. Infact.Trautm an
tells Rambo he has called a helicopter to fly him back to Fort Bragg.
With the wildman/monster back on his military reservation, and the
quasi-foreign, police-state authorities killed-in-action or hospitalized in
intensive care,thetheateraudiencecan escape any lingering concern
about everyday issues like non-violent abridgement of civil liberties or
PTSD.
Cinematic revision of Morrell's novel facilitates assimilation of
the Vietnam "experience' into the popular consciousness in a non­
threatening (or even self-congratulatory) way. Richard Crenna recently
referredtothe Rambo film phenomenon as "an audience participation
cartoon'22. Through such mass-audience entertainments we escape
the spectres of the Vietnam War and the turbulent 1960s. Personal
betrayal, military failure, and moral bankruptcy can be attributed to
corrupt authority figures. In First Blood, Part 7the audience can identify
with the Vietnam veteran as a victim who exacts violent poetic justice
upon a police force so brutal that they represent corruptions of
American civil and moral authority. We do not recognize them as part
of our national family, but as quasi-foreign infiltrators who are destroying
the country from within.
The second Rambo film, George Cosmatos' Rambo: First
Blood. Part 2. presents the comfortable spectacle of the Vietnam
veteran's return to Southeast Asia for a rematch against the North
Vietnamese. Rambo wins a belated victory by destroying a prison
camp and liberating a small band of American POWs. Because the
North Vietnamese are assisted by Russians, there is the additional
satisfaction of seeing American fighting mettle tested successfully
against the Evil Empire... almost as a preview of coming attractions.
More importantly, the enemy soldiers are depicted as both foreign and
familiar: the North Vietnamese wear distinctive “A sian' uniforms, but
the beret-clad Soviets look western; both use technologically
sophisticated weaponry and employ massively superior numbers in
 First B lood R edrawn 105

either conventional front line assaults or search-and-destroy missions.

The screenwriters have constructed a fiction in which the historic
image of the Vietnam-era American soldier is linked (through uniforms
and berets) to one so foreign and sinister that we are pleased to see it
eliminated. Similarly, the fictional American and South Vietnamese
forces (Rambo and his native intelligence contact, Co) are costumed
and deployed as guerrillas: without uniforms; vastly outnumbered;
relying upon primitive weaponry or what they can steal; and practicing
deception, harassment, and hit-and-run tactics on fixed defensive
positions. The image of the Viet Cong has been projected onto the
fictional allied forces in a way which makes the fantasized American
victory more plausible. This first sequel revises history by a fictitious role
reversal. The implication is that Americans could have won the
Vietnam War if we had relied less on technology, superior numbers,
and conventional tactics.
Ultimately, this conclusion is an indictment of American
leadership, a shifting of blame away from the many individual veterans
with whom we share the movie theater, and onto a few more distant
political and military decision makers. This Rambo. then, rehabilitates
the reputation of the Vietnam veteran by demonstrating that he could
have won the war, and by identifying a scapegoatwho prevented
him from winning.
Cosmatos' sequel starts by clearing Ram bo's former
commanding officer, now “Colonel'Trautman,of anytaint of betrayal.
In the opening scene, we see that Rambo has not been flown back to
Fort Bragg, as Trautman had promised, but has been condemned to
hard labor on a prison rock-pile. Trautman comes to the imprisoned
Rambo and asks him to believe that he tried to prevent this punishment,
but was over-ruled by higher authorities. Moreover, Trautman has
been instructed to offer Rambo immediate release from prison, a
temporary reinstatement in the Green Berets, and a possible Presidential
pardon in exchange for his services on a covert reconnaissance
mission. Rambo asks only one question: "Sir, do we get to win this
tim e?' Trautman replies, “This time it's up to you.'
But it isn't. The sequel asks us to believe that the same “higher
authorities' who kept us from victory in Vietnam are also preventing the
recovery of American POWs. This time “they* have conspired to use
Rambo and Trautman in a scheme to cover up the existence of
American prisoners in Southeast Asia. Rambo isto be sent to reconnoiter
a POW camp that American authorities know will be empty, so that
when this notorious war hero and defender of veterans' rights reports
that he found nothing, a potentially embarrassing and costly political
issue will be convincingly closed. The Vietnam veteran has been
106 V ietnam Generation

seduced back into his country's service under the illusion that he will be
freed from debilitating restraints imposed by devious or cowardly
leaders and so be given an opportunity to conclude the w ar's unfinished
business honorably. In Cosmatos' film, the betrayal of the Vietnam
soldier is compounded, the stakes doubled, the potential for cathartic
revenge increased.
The covert mission is directed by Marshall Murdock, a man who
identifies himself as Head of Special Operations in Washington, and
who alludes to his committee's interest in resolving the POW-MIA issue.
While Murdock tells Rambo that he himself served in Vietnam and
cares passionately about finding and rescuing POWs, he later explains
to Trautman that it is doubtful any POWs will be found and that the
whole mission is a public relations strategy to pacify special interests.
Before being deployed, Rambo tells Trautman he knows Murdock lied
about serving in Vietnam, and that Murdock is not to be trusted.
Because of mis-timing, Rambo does discover a handful of American
soldiers being held prisoner by the South Vietnamese and, instead of
simply taking pictures, he actually brings a prisoner back to the pickup
point. Murdock then aborts the mission — abandoning American
soldiers as a sacrifice to political and economic expediency. Returning
from witnessing the aborted pickup, Trautman confronts Murdock
about the mission, shouting, ”It was a lie I Just like the whole damn war!'
Murdock's reply is that Vietnam w asn't his war; he is just there to clean
up them ess.b ringittoa conclusion, and indulge in some “bureaucratic
ass covering*. Once this conspiracy is revealed fully, Trautman has to
be restrained and arrested to prevent him from assisting Rambo, and
Rambo, even while being tortured by Russians, vows to return to “get*
Murdock.
In Murdock the screenwriters have created a comfortable
scapegoat. He is a politician accustomed to acting out of expediency,
not principle; he is a bureaucrat quickto absolve himself of responsibility
by pleading that he only follows the orders of those higher up; he is a
technocrat who augments his own feeble powers with the most recent
sophisticated computers, communications devices, and weaponry.
Obviously, he is a foil for Rambo who lives by a personal code of honor,
gladly assumes responsibility for winning “a war someone else lost*,
and relies on his own mind and muscle. While Rambo gets tangible
results by taking aggressive action in the jungle, Murdock manufactures
false, image-saving political solutions in the comfort of his artificial
environment. It is worth noting that Rambo is so burdened by the
technological weaponry which Murdock provides that it nearly kills him
at the beginning of the mission. Literally cutting himself free of this
technological baggage in order to depend upon more primitive
 First B lood R edrawn 107

devices and his philosophy that "the mind is the best weapon', Rambo
authentically completes the mission that Murdock's dependency on
artifice would have doomed to failure.
In First Blood. Part 2, protagonist and antagonist conform
closely to the familiar conventions of American myth. Rambo is the
archetypal American hero: his German/American Indian ancestry is a
literal mingling of immigrant and native characteristics. His hometown
in Arizona, his costume (bare chest, headband, necklace), his weaponry
(bow with flaming arrows, Bowie-like survival knife), and his penchant
for physical violence controlled only by a personal code of honor are
clear reminders of the frontier experience which shaped the American
character. And Murdock is a familiar antagonist for the frontier hero.
He is from the city (Washington, D.C.), costumed in a white shirt and tie
(a man of ideas, not action), dependent upon the artificial brains of his
computers for decisions (and thus has no personal honor), and relies on
the weapons of his functionaries for protection (shrinks from participating
in physical violence).
Susan Jeffords argues that this sharp contrast between
protagonist's and antagonist's style, behavior, and values in effect
constitutes gender stereotyping: “Surrounded by comforts, computers,
and loyal personnel, Murdock marks a clear feminine to Rambo's
expanded masculine'23. In fact, the film's shot composition repeatedly
supports this assertion. The Rambo character is photographed with
angles, distances, and lighting which enhance Sylvester Stallone's
well-developed musculature and place particular emphasis on his
biceps and pectorals so that the physical aspect of his masculinity is
exaggerated to the level of a cartoon figure like that of Arnold
Schwarzeneggar in the Conan films. Moreover, when he returns to
"g e t' Murdock he enacts a symbolic rape. First Rambo destroys
Murdock's computers with gunfire while Murdock cowers in an adjoining
room. Then Rambo bursts through the door, throws Murdock down
across a desk, draws his knife, and lying on top of Murdock plunges the
knife down next to his ear. Jeffords concludes that "this overtly sexual
display confirms the defeat of the weak feminine by the phallic
strength that is celebrated in all these recent Vietnam film s'24.
Feminizing the scapegoat is yet another facet of re-enacting
American myth, specifically the flight of the male hero from civilization
associated with the female and the restraints she entails. In this sense.
First Blood. Part 2 is about reestablishing the masculinity of the Vietnam
veteran, cast in doubt by the loss of the war. In this fictional resolution
of the trauma of emasculation, the veteran reclaims the manhood
deviously stripped from him by those "fem inine' influences which
constrained him from winning the war and recovering his captured
108 V ictimam G eneration

comrades.
What, then, are we to make of Co, the female intelligence
contact who guides Rambo to the POW camp and rescues him from
his Russian torturers? Her first words to Rambo are, “You did not expect
a woman, no ?' And, indeed, women are excluded from the masculine
universe of Ted Kotcheff's First Blood. Part 1and do not appear in Peter
MacDonald's Rambo 3. Co is an anomaly. She fulfills the conventional
role of the woman in the Hollywood epic of male adventure, nursing
Rambo when he is injured, cheering for him when he escapes death,
providing an audience to whom he can explain his values and by
whom he can hearthem confirmed, and, as a love object, she acts as
something immediate and tangible for him to value and protect. But
in her tenacious loyalty, her readiness to fight physically, and her
courageous rescue of American POWs, Co assumes those desired
masculine characteristics which Murdock's feminized character lack.
Because Cosmatos locates evil in the feminine, Co can be a sympathetic
character only if she is masculinized. Through the alchemy of fiction.
First Blood. Part 2 projects masculine characteristics upon the female,
andfeminine characteristics upon the male just as it projected American
costume and tactics upon Soviet and Vietnamese soldiers, and the
guerrilla behavior of the Viet Cong upon the American hero and South
Vietnamese heroine. Cosmatos offers us a fiction which seems to
reflect history's reverse image: the historical negative is projected as a
fictional positive.
The result of the process by which fiction revises history into myth
is the creation of closure. As a South Vietnamese still loyal to the cause
for which her father died (preservation of a non-Communist state), Co
reaffirms for Rambo the validity of his earlier trials in Vietnam. In her
desire to leave Vietnam (which she defines as a place of death) and
go with Rambo to America, she reconfirms that the values which the
United States tried to export to Southeast Asia may not have taken root
there but are still prized and worth fighting for. When Co is killed by the
North Vietnamese, Rambo dons her good luck charm, vows not to
forget her, and sets out with renewed determination to free the
American POWs not only for the sake of US honor, but also in memory
of those South Vietnamese who relied upon American promises and
support. Rambo: First Blood, Part 2 provides a victorious surrogate
closure to all of the unfinished items of business entailed in the Vietnam
War: loyal South Vietnamese are brutally murdered and then properly
avenged; POWs are rescued; the Vietnam veteran's manhood is
restored; and, the effeminate politicians responsible for the w ar's loss
are identified and brutally threatened.
The third Rambo film, Peter MacDonald's Rambo 3. moves the
 First B lood R edrawn 109

Vietnam War into the present by recreating it in Afghanistan. Stallone,

who co-wrote the screenplay with Sheldon Lettich, rejected David
Morrell's initial suggestion to set the story in Nicaragua, presumably
because Americans were so divided on US covert involvement there25.
Once again Morrell was interested in facing up to the complex and
disturbing legacy of Vietnam, but the filmmaker preferred a less
troubling scenario.
As Rambo 3 opens, the twice-betrayed veteran has retreated
to find peace in a Buddhist monastery. When Colonel Trautman arrives
to request his assistance in a covert mission in Afghanistan, Rambo
declines. He tellsTrautman that “it'snot my w ar,' and refusesto believe
that his involvement would make a difference. Only when Trautman
is captured in Afghanistan does Rambo reluctantly join the war effort.
The theme of the veteran'sabandonment by cowardly, lying American
bureaucrats runs as strongly through this film as it does through its
predecessor. An American embassy official, Griggs, helps Rambo
infiltrate Afghanistan, but telsl him, “We can't do anything about it. Not
officially. If you are captured, we will deny your existence.' Rambo
replies, “I'm used to it.' Similarly, when his native guide, Mousa, tells
Rambo, “If you fail, I will accept no responsibility,' Rambo remarks
laconically, “Sounds familiar.' This time Rambo has taken on the POW
rescue mission for reasons more personal than patriotic: Rambo 3 is a
buddy film.
Despite its continued scapegoating of American politicians
and bureaucrats, this film offers an even fuller opportunity for the
audience to revise the negative image of America which is the
historical legacy of involvement in Vietnam — this time by projecting it
more completely and explicitly onto the Soviet Union. As Colonel
Trautman tells his Soviet counterpart. Colonel Zaysen: “We already
had our Vietnam. Now you're going to have yours.' The Green Berets,
Rambo and Trautman, advise and assist the oppressed natives, who
are victims of Soviet atrocities. These mujahadeen guerrillas ride
horses, lurk in mountain caves, and fire primitive weapons against a
massive Soviet army of occupation, which conducts genocidal search
and destroy missions with helicopters, rockets, napalm, and automatic
weapons. But once Trautman and Rambo have killed an enormous
number of Soviets and have escaped the rest with the help of the
mujahadeen, they decline any further participation in the war and ride
off together in a jeep, sharing a joke about getting soft. The war is
recognized as the proper responsibility of not only indigenous but also
younger males like Little Hamid, who self-consciously imitates Rambo's
super-masculine heroics. (It is possible that we are only one sequel
away from Son ofRam boj. In Rambo .3the screenwriters have recast
110 V ietnam G eneration

Am erica's role in a foreign war to illustrate that we have transcended

the mistake that was Vietnam. American are shown acting in
accordance with their mythic sense of self: peace-loving people who
make war reluctantly and only for a righteous cause which ensures
their triumph.
John Hellmann argues, in American Myth and the Legacy of
V/efnam,thatourmore “realistic* national literature aboutthe Vietnam
War illustrates profound disillusionment with the fundamental myth of
our culture. Specifically, the lesson that the American Adam learned
in Vietnam is “that his parentage ties him to a fallen past, that he is not
an exception to history and the fallen world of time, but is rather a
limited, fallible person whose destiny is in profound d oubt'26. The myth
of the American hero, who defines himself by fleeing from feminine
civilization into a masculine wilderness where he is regenerated by
violence exacted according to a code of personal honor, is challenged
by many Vietnam novelists. David Morrell, in First Blood, contributes
significantly to the restructuring of this myth. Morrell's Vietnam veteran
returns home to demonstrate what he has learned abroad in a limited
war presumably fought for reasons of national security. The code of
machismo locks us into a sadomasochistic cycle of unregenerative
violence — an unreasonably escalating use of physical force visited
back upon the father by the son to whom he taught it — an American
family engaged in mutually assured destruction.
Ted Kotcheff'sfilm adaptation of First Blood is a step backward,
reaffirming the failed American myth by denying the history of the
Vietnam War. In the film, a more restrained violence is justifiably visited
upon a scapegoat by a heroic veteran who uses the guerrilla tactics
he learned in Vietnam to restore America's lost innocence. Cosmatos'
sequel, Rambo: First Blood, Part 2, is yet another step backward; one
in which the veteran is elevated to a mythic savior whose special
mission is to illustrate that America could have won the Vietnam War
and still can free its soldiers from foreign captivity if it will only throw off
the feminine influences which hold its masculine heritage enthralled.
The retreat from history continues in Peter MacDonald's Rambo 3. in
which Americans are shown that a war like Vietnam could only be
perpetrated by the Evil Empire, and that it is the natural tendency of
Americans to join with freedom fighters against oppression.
All three cinematic spinoffs exaggerate the masculine
characteristics of the American hero and link him in a variety of ways
to a conventionally fictive version of our country's frontier heritage. The
second (and most popular) Rambo film most fully perverts Morrell's
message by blaming Am erica's failure in Vietnam on feminine rather
than masculine failings. The third film inverts Morrell by showing Rambo
 First B lood R edrawn ill

blissfully bequeathing the American macho legacy to a foreign

surrogate son. More than one analysis of recent political events
suggests that such artistic revision supporting the myth of American
power and innocence are not only eagerly sought out, but also acted
out: 'Americans especially tend to live in a timeless and mythical world
in which reality is not allowed to intrude very much upon the Walt
Disney epic which insists that we are heroes, the defenders of freedom
and justice, and the protectors of the weak and oppressed'27.
In 'Reporters of the Lost W ar.' Thomas B. Morgan concludes
that in telling the Vietnam story 'rewriting history is the alternative to
facing up to it.... To come to terms with what happened in reality, not
nightmare or illusion, remains a debt of honor'28. The successive
cinematic transformations of David Morrell's fictional but believable
Vietnam veteran, John Rambo, deny the importance of any search for
historical accuracy. In this case, American popular culture actively
encourages the decision not to face up to the limits of America's moral
and military power by providing a barely qualified .fantastic reaffirmation
of belief in the myth of American innocence, righteousness, and
invincibility.

’ Barr, Robert. "Returning Veterans Were Inspiration for Rambo Author," Providence
Sunday Journal (22 May 1988): 13.
2 Traube, Elizabeth G, "Redeeming Images: The Wild Man Comes Home,'
Persistence o f Vision 3/4 (1986): 71-94.
1 Morrell, David. First Blood (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1972): 18.
4 Ib id .: 232.
6Traube: 74.
* Morrell: 26.
2 Ibid.-. 79. •
■ Ibid.-. 92.
9 Ibid.: 111.
’° Ibid.: 215.
" Ibid.: 239.
12 Ibid.: 244.
11 Ibid.: 254.
14 Ibid.: 244.
16 Ibid.: 246.
16 Ibid.: 252.
17 Ibid.: 256.
’• Barr: 13.
19 Morrell: 256.
20Greenburg, Harvey R. "Dangerous Recuperations: Red Dawn, Rambo. and
the New Decaturlsm,” Journal o f Popular Film and Television 15 (1987): 65-66.
21 Traube: 76.
112 V ie tn a m G ener atio n

22 Janusonls, Michael. ‘ Crenna Defends Rambo Violence.' Providence

Sunday Journal (22 May 1988): I 3.
23 Jeffords, Susan. 'Th e New Vietnam Films: Is the Movie O ver?' Journal o f
Popular Rim and Television 13 (1986): 192.
24 Ibid.
26 Janusonls, Michael. 'Sly's a Sensitive G uy,' Providence Journal (22 May
1988): 13.
24 Hellmann, John. American Myth and the Legacy o f Vietnam (New York:
Columbia University Press) 1986: 217.
27 Bellhouse, Mary L.; Utchfield. Lawrence. 'Vietnam and Loss of Innocence:
An Analysis of the Political Implications of the Popular Literature o f the Vietnam
W a r,' Journal o f Popular Culture 16.3 (1982): 158-159.
n Morgan, Thomas B. 'Reporters o f the Lost W a r,' Esquire (July 1984): 50,60.