ABSTRACT
The Vietnam War film We Were Soldiers replaced the WWII foundational family with a new familial foundation for American morality: the brotherhood of Christian soldiers. The challenge of such films as Behind Enemy Lines and Black Hawk Down is to resecure American morality in its post-Vietnam era sons by converting their waywardness into morally meaningful actions; this is precisely what both films do. This chapter recounts the story these films tell when read together. It begins with America's moral awakening through its soldierly son in Behind Enemy Lines; the soldierly son's moral quandaries and their resolution in Black Hawk Down; finally considering how Kandahar against the intentions of its director and star was used by the Bush administration to construct the feminized object of rescue this young generation of male humanitarian warriors needed to rescue their own moral sense of self. It concludes by considering what these films tell post-9/11 subjects about who we really are.
