Soldiers V. Hippies
Partner: Cody Mondale
Initially after me and Cody partnered up we began listing the first sets of opposites that came to our head. We decided on war vs peace. After we came to that conclusion I realized that we had jumped into some pretty deep waters. After our search for clips began I began to see a narrowness occurring in our presentation and we settled on the idea that we were presenting a battle between hippies and soldiers (their ideology, not actual battle tactics for as mentioned on the night we performed, the winner would seem obvious). Whether it was because we were raised in the USA or because when we searched for sounds for hippie songs and war chants all the results were from American moments in history, our focus was the dispute between Soldiers and Hippies in America (although one clip of battle sounds was from a movie made about an Australian war).
I took the side of the soldier because initially I thought of how my husband was enrolled in ROTC and had plenty of camouflage wear laying about the house that I could use for the presentation. However, when I brought this plan to his attention he thought it would be disrespectful to use an Army certified uniform for a presentation. However after much persuading, and after all the badges were removed he gave in and came to watch the performance.
When piecing together the clips for our assignment me and Cody tried to create a basic story arch for our piece. We found that presidents declaring war to congress would be a good place to start and slowly build by demonstrating the reactions, of our two opposing sides, to the events that naturally occur in war time. As we researched further I thought of the movie Forrest Gump (1994) and how it presented the views of both soldiers and hippies during the Vietnam war. We followed Forrest as he fought battles in the war zone and the sacrifice soldiers were giving for their country, and we followed the peace movement and the frustration at the amount of bloodshed being spent by young American men. I kept this in mind when thinking of the essential elements Cody and I needed to include in our battle. We played guns shooting, rioters yelling, presidents speaking, and songs to correlate with our justification of what each side represented and why they were in the right. Ultimately when we decided to change our overall theme from war v. peace to soldiers v. war, it was because of a clip Cody found where rioters were chanting "we're not against the soldiers, we're against the war!" Instantly we both thought, THAT'S the message we want to get across. Nobody likes the idea of war and misery, but the soldiers feel a duty to protect their country and "hippies" feel that solutions should be dealt with peacefully in discussion.
Watching my husband prepare to enlist and go to basic training this summer and seeing all the benefits he gets from being a part of this organization, I see that it is tough, but our country generally treats their soldiers well. Of course the first thought that comes to mind when someone joins the army is "they're gonna die," but really? Really? As brilliantly stated in the movie What About Bob? (1991) "everyone's going to die." If you die in the service of our country then that is a life well spent. I hold my stance in the argument that following orders and protecting your nation in times of turmoil is more productive than protesting the progression of a nation.
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