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Not sympathetic enough
DENNIS BROE puts into broader context The Sympathiser, a novel HBO series which attempts to insert more objectivity into the depiction of the US during the Vietnam war, its aftermath and its lingering mythologies

HBO’s The Sympathiser from the Pulitzer Prize Winning Novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen opens with a quote: “All wars are fought twice, once on the battlefield and the second time in memory.”

It’s not simply memory that the book and the series are concerned with though; it’s “representation,” that is social memory refracted through in this case a hostile media which often exists to “correct” the sins and failures of bloody imperial overreach.

“On the battlefield,” Vietnam was lost by the US and its tiny number of — by the conclusion of the war — collaborators, although the cost was high with over one million Vietnamese killed for the crime of wanting to free their country from first French and then US domination.

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