The soundtrack's influence on the portrayal of the Vietnam War in Battlefield : Vietnam

Abstract

This paper analyses the specific effect of a particular set of songs that form the soundtrack for Battlefield Vietnam [10] and the role that this plays in influencing particular aspects of the perception, identity, and associations connected with the Vietnam War. The game features historically accurate settings, alongside a soundtrack composed of songs released during the conflict, such as Surfin’ Bird by The Trashmen [47], Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane [22], War by Edwin Starr [42], and many others. In this sense, the game engages not just with the military aspect of the conflict, but also with the rock-n-roll musical movement that shaped the cultural interpretation of the Vietnam War. Battlefield Vietnam also associates itself with an already existing line of Hollywood movies, which have previously used the same songs in similar contexts, such as Forrest Gump [57] and Full Metal Jacket [28]. The paper delves into the concept of associationism as a mechanism through which a soundtrack exerts influence on a player's experience in video games. The Congruence-Associationist Model (CAM), proposed by Cohen [6] and van Elferen's Affect-Literacy-Interaction (ALI) model [49] have already shown that exposure to previous media (or, in other terms, media literacy) builds an association between music and visual elements. In this case, while the featured songs in Battlefield Vietnam present contrasting sentiments about the conflict, the research argues that the soundtrack references a partial, Western-oriented perspective. The player's prior exposure to Western media and Hollywood productions about the Vietnam War is the primary factor affecting the experience of the historical events, determining specific, problematic associations.