The Vietnam War was one of the most divisive conflicts in American history. Within the controversy was the question of, ôHow many people does one have to kill before one becomes a killer?ö Such valuations are often ignored because of ethnocentrism and the creation of an ôother,ö and ôotherö that is devalued in order to justify the destruction of life in combat. As Windschuttle argues, ôThe construction of identity in every age and every society involves established opposites and æothers.Æ This happens because the development and maintenance of every culture require the existence of another different and competing alter ego,ö (31). In Francis Ford CoppolaÆs Apocalypse Now, we see the Vietnamese from the American perspective, that is, the perspective of the inferior ôother.ö Such a perspective justifies the wholesale killing of the Vietnamese, since they are portrayed as evil and a threat to ôAmericansö and the American way of life.
The West, led primarily by Europe and the U.S., has primarily been imperialistic and ethnocentric in its treatment of other cultures. To reinforce the values of the West as superior, such relations often mirror other cultures as inferior. In his discussion of the diplomacy and the politics of the Kissinger era, Said writes, in Orientalism, that such perspectives also enable the wholesale takeover of other cultures for self-gain and validation of self-aggrandizement. As Said writes, ôBoth the traditional Orientalist and Kissinger conceive of the difference between cultures, first, as creating a battlefront that separates them, and second, as inviting the West to control, contain, and otherwise govern (through superior knowledge and accommodating power) the Other,ö (47-48). In the revisionist account of history observable in the film Apocalypse Now, great affirmation of SaidÆs theory can be found.
In the film we see the West pitted against East, with little distinction among di...