Gregory A. Daddis

Prior to this monograph, Daddis was best known for a trilogy examining the operational-strategic failures of the U.S. Army in Vietnam. This work, the seed of which was planted by teaching a class in war and gender at West Point, deals with the social-psychological failures of that war, via the lens of the men's adventure magazines of the Fifties and the Sixties, and how their message that war would make you a man collided with the realities of conflict in Southeast Asia. The short version is that the "advice" being handed out was probably a net negative, particularly in regards to contributing to collateral violence visited by American military men on the female population of Vietnam: Sobering stuff. Daddis, who retired a colonel from the U.S. Army, calls for healthier and more realistic avenues to develop character, but having been "there," knows that he's setting a tall order.

A personal note is that I can remember the tail-end of this period on the cusp of being an adolescent, when I'd go with my dad to the barber shop, and while there would be comics for the kids, they'd also be mixed with magazines like this. Since I always read ahead of my age group I think my response was "really?" Even then I knew wish-fulfillment when I saw it.

Highly recommended.… (mere)

At the very least the author has achieved his basic purpose, which is to have produced a credible defense of William Westmoreland's military professionalism. Call this the other side of the coin, after Daddis left behind the idolization that the West Point of his time as a cadet inculcated in regards to Creighton Abrams. That said, the long-term student of America's involvement in Vietnam is not going to find that many deep revelations here. Those folks who want to keep their cynicism nice and shiny might wish to read "The Myths of Tet" by Edwin Moise, a man who has made a career of critiquing the misconceptions and wishful thinking of all the parties to the conflict.… (mere)

Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men's Adventure Magazines by Gregory A Daddis is accessibly written research into the role that men's pulp magazines played in shaping men, masculinity, and in particular the negative aspects of both.

The examples are far more numerous and disturbing than I had expected even though I vaguely remember these magazines from my youth. Though Daddis makes clear, on more than one occasion, that whatever causality exists is just part of a larger cultural tapestry there is no doubt that the portrayals in the fiction and the "advice" in the nonfiction contributed to how many men of the period came to see masculinity, war, and women. These pulp images reflected much of the mainstream concern that men were being emasculated and society was being feminized, so to what degree these publications led or followed the concepts, they definitely contributed to bringing them to the blue collar and military men.

While many of the stories and columns were infuriating and startling, and I'm guessing that most readers will find the ones that speak to them the most, I found some of the material that masqueraded as advice or help columns to be most disturbing. For example, in a publication from 1966 a quote reads (this quote occurs early in the book and colored my reading of the rest of the book): "Many women, young ones in particular, are 'sexually reversed' in their actions, that is whatever they say can be taken to mean the opposite. 'I absolutely don't want to sleep with you' for example, means precisely the opposite." The quote is from the magazine itself, not Daddis paraphrasing. In other words, men are being encouraged to rape women, in popular national publications aimed at young men. 1966 folks, this is not ancient history and those same readers then raised boys of their own, so the cycle repeats, only the message has been reshaped and distributed with a bit more subtlety, though the results remain the same and have, over the past three years, lost any claim to subtlety.

This is highly recommended for readers who read sociological texts on masculinity as well as any reader who wants to better understand how to take in any form of popular culture actively rather than passively. While much of what Daddis does here requires the distance of time to grasp, the basic processes can and should be used when we watch, listen to, or read any type of popular culture. We can no longer be passive consumers molded by the work, we must engage and make conscious decisions about what we internalize and what we reject.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (mere)

While I’m completely sympathetic to the argument that you can have a good strategy and still lose, this revisionist account doesn’t stick the landing. Daddis shows that there were people in the military, including in high places, who said that they needed to do things other than continue shoveling bodies in/killing enemies, but does not contrast them to the number or power level of the people who ensured that mostly it was shoveling/killing or do more than gesture at the fact that the killing parts interfered with the nation- and trust-building parts.… (mere)