Dee Em Zee
Even Americans no longer young
know Korea only as a television backdrop
for an Alan Alda story
actually about
Vietnam
all the shots fired
in California.
The soldiers who fought there
can’t communicate:
They didn’t fight the Big One
or the Bad One
but the other one.
So now a caricature commandant
pushes the button
into his son’s chubby hands
and we see only animé
that should just be erased
since most of us are too unhip
for such graphic novels.
Breaking the code: Didn't think this one was evasive, but comments do not lie. Ahem. Setting that last thing aside....
This is about the fact that Americans generally (myself included) have only a vague sense of what Korea is. And that makes the very real problem over there seem like a cartoon to us, one we choose not to care for, so we remain in the dark.
Neon: Yep, I know MASH is "about Korea" in the most visible sense, but its creators admit they used that as a smoke screen for a sore still too fresh to touch: Vietnam.
http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=mash
Even Americans no longer young
know Korea only as a television backdrop
for an Alan Alda story
actually about
Vietnam
all the shots fired
in California.
The soldiers who fought there
can’t communicate:
They didn’t fight the Big One
or the Bad One
but the other one.
So now a caricature commandant
pushes the button
into his son’s chubby hands
and we see only animé
that should just be erased
since most of us are too unhip
for such graphic novels.
Breaking the code: Didn't think this one was evasive, but comments do not lie. Ahem. Setting that last thing aside....
This is about the fact that Americans generally (myself included) have only a vague sense of what Korea is. And that makes the very real problem over there seem like a cartoon to us, one we choose not to care for, so we remain in the dark.
Neon: Yep, I know MASH is "about Korea" in the most visible sense, but its creators admit they used that as a smoke screen for a sore still too fresh to touch: Vietnam.
http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=mash