Tigerland

There are many forms of GI resistance. Tigerland (directed by Joel Schumacher) portrays some bold resistance in a training context. This resistance has an impact on the whole group dynamic of the trainees.

The movie is set in 1971 - a time when significant disintegration was occurring within the U.S. military. Tigerland is the "state-side province of Vietnam," a realistic combat training area where troops are sent for a week of final training before infantry troops are shipped to Vietnam. This is the story of Pvt. Roland Bozz as seen through the memory of his buddy Pvt. Jim Paxton. Bozz hates the army and wants out without himself being crushed in process of fighting the system. He is constantly insubordinate, messing with higher ups and the system and helping and inspiring others. He carries around a copy of Johnny Got His Gun, to show people and to piss off the brass, but claims he's never read it himself. He is very conscious though not in a political-programmatic way. He walks away from a torture training session saying "why would I want to do that to another human being?" He's constantly under the threat that they'll court martial him, he keeps doing what he's doing. He's a "barracks lawyer" among other things. He finds ways to get people out.

Paxton is contradictory. He's "not for the war- maybe even against it" but he supports his country. He enlisted - this pisses Bozz off. Paxton wants to go to Vietnam, experience the war and write a book about it. Dealing with the reality of the training and with Bozz turns Paxton more and more against the army and the war. When a sergeant tells the troops they will need to shoot anything that makes a sound at night, no matter who or what it is and it doesn't matter who they kill this way Paxton asks, "You mean like at My Lai?" He eventually decides it's time to get out, except that someone else would be sent and possibly die in his place.

The racism and brutality of the military are exposed on multiple levels. This exposure is most concentrated in Sgt. Thomas, the brutal aide de camp to the commanding officer Captain Saunders, and in Pvt. Wilson, a gung ho racist trainee who's reactionary attitude borders on psychosis. Bozz and the people he helps get out are white. Interestingly, he develops significant unity with the Black trainees who don't fight the system the same way he does. Pvt. Johnson, a Black trainee who's brother was in Vietnam in '68, points out that the Vietnamese defeated the Chinese, then the French and are now going to defeat the U.S.

In addition to all the racism there is a constant misogynist undertone running through the training and the army life-style portrayed. The military is all about patriarchy.

Pvt. Johnson's point is central to this movie. The military was in fact undergoing some disintegration at this time and Tigerland is true to this. When Sgt. Thomas urges Capt. Saunders to court-martial Bozz, Saunders replies that "we are losing the war and the army is falling apart, why bother with one recruit?" There is a dialectic at work here. Setbacks for the U.S. and its military have reached a point where coming down on Bozz may not make much of a difference to the system's enforcers. On the other hand people like Bozz, and what they bring into the army from the wider society, are key elements in disintegrating the war machine in the first place.

Ironically Bozz ends up taking Paxton's place shipped out to Vietnam. The ending is ambiguous -- leaving open the likelihood that Bozz continues to resist.

Came out in 2000, on video, check it out.