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8 Eur. Rev. Int'l Stud. 3 (2021)

handle is hein.journals/epnrvwo8 and id is 1 raw text is: ESOP EUROPEAN REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 8 (2021) 3-21 eri BRILL bril.com/eris Tokens for Reconciliation? The Place and Role of Veterans in The Vietnam War Documentary Series Simon Desplanque Institut de sciences politiques Louvain-Europe, Universite catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium simon.desplanque@uclouvain.be Abstract In 2017, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick released their latest documentary series, The Vietnam War, with a clear goal in mind: proposing a narrative that would heal the wounds generated by the war in the United States. This paper dwells on the role devoted to the Viet' vets in this series. We argue that these veterans played a crucial role in this reconciliatory undertaking since they served as main conveyors of a critical vision of the war, close to what some scholars have called the orthodox school. In this regard, the emphasis put on them is indicative of a much broader mutation: the sacralisation of these Viet' vets in official narratives and their progressive rehabilitation in U.S. popular culture. Keywords The Vietnam War documentary series - Vietnam War memory - Viet' vets - veterans in U.S. society Introduction' More than forty years after its conclusion, the Vietnam War remains a con- troversial issue in the United States. Even though the conflict has lost its immediacy, the debates that it triggered remain vivid. In this context, various 1 The author would like to thank Thomas Laloux and Valerie Rosoux for their precious feedbacks on the first draft of this paper. © KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2021 1 DOI:10.1163/21967415-BJA10036