Introduction xix fantasy for the loss in Viet Nam, Red Dawn (1984) deploys a similar motif: here, untrained teenagers from Colorado take on the entirety of the Soviet military machine and win. Fighting these kinds of wars—and winning them—these fi lms argue, is part of Americans’ DNA it just needs to be catalyzed by the right experience of oppression and tyranny to be brought to the surface. Th ese gifted American warriors must, however, to be true avatars of freedom and justice, fi ght “just” wars, governed by both a morally justifi ed cause (“jus ad bellum”) and a morally correct conduct in the act of fi ghting (“just in bello”). Almost universally, American guerilla fi lms strive to depict both of these concepts by depicting their protagonists struggling against a demonstrably evil enemy. Th is is particularly present in Ameri- can Revolution fi lms, where the Tories, Redcoats, and their Indian allies attack civilians and commit war crimes ( America , Drums along the Mohawk , Revolution , Th e Patriot ) with impunity. Th e heroes in these fi lms, conversely, are honorable and strive to “fi ght fair,” at least for the most part. A bit more muddy is the justifi cation for American guerilla fi lms of about the Civil War, fraught as they are with the moral bankruptcy of slav- ery and Southern white supremacy. Th e Birth of a Nation demonizes blacks and Northerners as an existential threat to the town of Piedmont, from which the Klan is the noble savior Santa Fe Trail (1940) 25 turns abolition- ist John Brown into a marauding fanatic that burns villages and exploits the enslaved for his own personal glory. Th e brutality of the Nazis and Japanese is a mainstay of nearly every World War II combat fi lm Ameri- can guerilla narratives are no exception. Atrocities like the Bataan Death March are never far out of mind in fi lms like Manila Calling , Back to Bataan , China , and even the silly Salute to the Marines , as are the Nazi death camps in Edge of Darkness , Th e Moon Is Down , Th e North Star (1943), and Th is Land Is Mine . Th e protagonists of these fi lms, however, never resort to “terror” attacks on civilians or cause needless death. Rambo , Missing in Action , and other “back to Viet Nam” fi lms frame their refi ght- ing of that war in “just war” terms as well: rescuing prisoners of war from heartless “savage” captors is the narrative core around which those fi lms are built. Th e combination of these conventions in this body of fi lms is a powerful one, celebrating the act of resistance by everyday people as a quintessen- tially American ideal. Many of these narratives not so subtly argue that American citizens of conscience outside the military establishment, inde- pendent of government infl uence or control, are naturally attuned to fi ght- ing against oppression. Armed with a history of “Indian fi ghting” against overwhelming forces of tyranny and evil, Americans almost cannot help but be successful. More importantly, however, these continual refl ections and imaginations of Americans as underdog guerillas, naturally driven by
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