The Mystification of Vietnam: David Rabe's "Sticks and Bones"

Abstract

The reason for the relative success of Sticks and Bones as a representation of Vietnam is that it directly addresses the problem of the mystification of Vietnam: in the sense of not knowing, of refusing to know or repressing and denying what is known; in the sense of never having been there or of having been there and no longer being there; in the sense of lack or inability to produce an adequate image or representation of the meaning of Vietnam; and finally, in the sense of spectacle itself as the sustaining illusion of American ideology, as in Guy Debord's definition of its absolute fulfillment in the spectacle, where the tangible world is replaced by a selection of images, which exist