A Journey into the Jungles of ‘Pulp Vietnam’

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

PULP EPIC. MALE. MAN’S ILLUSTRATED. MAN’S ADVENTURE. BRIGADE. VALOR. You’ve seen these magazines before. You either grew up with them or you’ve seen their bizarre covers online. There’s always a man with rippling muscles, sometimes he’s fighting a pack of weasels, other times he’s eying a scantily clad dame. Sometime’s there’s a Nazi, sometime’s there’s a woman in an SS uniform with a few buttons missing.

The Pulp magazines of the Cold War shaped the culture and thinking of an entire generation of men. The sons of World War II veterans learned a fantasy version of the war from lads mags and then took those fantasies with them when they rushed headlong into their own war: Vietnam.

Here to tell us all about the Pulp magazines and how they shaped our perceptions of the Cold War and Vietnam is Gregory A Daddis. Daddis is a retired Army Colonel who served in both Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He’s a professor of history and the USS Midway Chair in Modern History at San Diego State University. His new book is Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines.

Recorded 10/29

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature
0:05.1	It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. That women are attractive but they're also dangerous and because the feminist movement is posing a challenge to
0:25.0	gendered hierarchies in Cold War America that you know I think that contributes to
0:30.4	this understanding of women being dangerous and using their bodies as weapons of war.
0:36.5	And I think the exotic oriental narrative, I think again, is just a longstanding cliche and
0:42.0	trope that far predates the Cold War magazines,
0:46.2	that these sexist attitudes of women from darker races being forever sexually available as obviously wrong-headed as that is, I think has long been a part of Western European culture and probably has its roots in you know European imperialism and colonialism.
1:10.3	One day all of the facts about 30 years time will be published.
1:17.0	When genocide has been carried out in this country almost with impunity
1:22.0	and when it is near-combritionally people talk about
1:25.8	intervention.
1:26.8	They will be best with fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before. So, Hello, welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Matthew Gault. And I'm Jason Field.
2:10.0	Hulk Epic male, Mans Illustrated, Man's Adventure, Brigade, Valor.
2:15.1	You've seen these magazines before.
2:17.1	You either grew up with them, or you've seen their bizarre covers online.
2:20.6	There's always a man with rippling muscles. Sometimes he's fighting a pack of
2:23.6	weasles, other times he's eyeing a scantily clad dabe. Sometimes there's a Nazi.
2:28.0	Sometimes there's a woman in an SS uniform with a few buttons missing. The pulp magazines of the Cold War shaped the culture and thinking of an entire generation of men.
2:37.0	The Sons of World War II veterans learned a fantasy version of the war from Ladsmags
2:42.0	and then took those fantasies with them when they rushed head long into
2:45.0	their own war, Vietnam. Here to tell us about the Pulp magazines and how they shaped our perceptions
2:51.0	of the Cold War in Vietnam is Gregory A.
	...

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