Thesis (M.A. (Applied Language and Literary Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

This dissertation attempts a Bakhtinian analysis of the polyphonic dialogue between Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Karel Schoeman's Na die Geliefde Land and Jason Xenopoulos' Promised Land. Specific Bakthinian concepts are employed to determine whether the films are "apt" adaptations of the literary texts; how the stylistically hybrid texts engage in conversation with different movements, genres and trends; how the polyphonic conversations between different texts and discourses, such as literature and film, or colonialism and postcolonialism, can provide insight into the variety of discourses, textual and ideological, of a postcolonial, post-apartheid South Africa; and how identity crises experienced by key characters can be explained using the notions of hybridity, "The Marginal Man" and liminality. All four texts have key characters that experience identity crises that spring from cultural hybridity; their cultural hybridity has the potential to either render them marginally stagnant or lead them to liminally active participation within their imagined communities. This dissertation argues that even though there are major differences between the films and the literary texts they are based upon, they are relevant to a specific target audience and therefore enrich the ur-texts. Salient characteristics of realism, symbolism, impressionism, modernism, postmodernism, postcolonialism and the apocalyptic dialogise one another within the four texts, thereby liberating the texts from one authorial reading. The dialogue between the discourses of literature and film supplement an understanding of the dialogue between war, imperialism, colonialism, postcolonialism and the Will to Power. / Thesis (M.A. (Applied Language and Literary Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006

The Vietnam War has become an important symbol and signifier in contemporary American culture and politics. The word "Vietnam" contains many meanings and narratives, including both the real events of the American War in Vietnam and the fictional representations of that war. Because we live in a reality that is composed of both lived experience and simulacra, defined by Baudrillard as a hyperreality, fiction and simulation are capable of representing particular realities. Vietnam was shaped by simulacra of Vietnam itself as well as simulacra of previous American conflicts, especially World War II; however, the hyperreality of Vietnam differed largely from that of World War II. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried are highly fictionalized texts that accurately portray particular realities of Vietnam. These texts are capable of presenting truth about Vietnam through their use of specific metafictional techniques, which continually remind readers and viewers that the story being told is not reality but a story. By emphasizing the fictional elements of their narratives, Apocalypse Now and The Things They Carried point to the constructed nature of reality and empower readers to recognize the possibility of truth in different, even conflicting, narratives.

Le présent mémoire aborde les problématiques morales de la scission corps-esprit chez les soldats de la guerre du Việt Nam telles que représentées à travers certains films traitant de cette guerre. Notre démarche sera centrée sur le travail individuel que propose le film Apocalypse Now, plutôt que sur la representation de la guerre. Nous postulons que ce film met les individus devant les contradictions inhérentes d'une société qui prétend justement pacifier le monde en faisant la guerre, et qui plus est, comme ce fut le cas au Việt Nam, au moyen d’un déchainement de violence qui dépasse l'entendement (torture, massacre de masses, napalm et Agent Orange). Notre hypothèse est que le film, à travers son personnage central, nous propose une « voie » qui n’empêche pas la guerre, certes, mais permet du moins d'entreprendre une demarche de distanciation et de redefinition morale individuelle permettant de survivre au(x) temps de guerre(s). Cette mutation morale, chez le personnage principal, s'acquiert au bout d'un voyage réflexif à tout point de vue « au coeur des ténèbres » – de la jungle, tout autant que de son être. / This master’s thesis addresses some moral issues of the body/spirit dichotomy, induced in the military training, in the Vietnam War vets as portrayed in several films on that war. Our work will be centered on the work of the individual as suggested in Apocalypse Now, rather than on the depiction of the war. We contend that this film puts the individuals in front of the contradictions of a society that pretends to pacify the world using war, and inasmuch, as was the case in Vietnam, using a conspicuous outburst of violence (torture, mass murder, napalm, Agent Orange). We hypothesize that the film, through its main character, propose a “way” which doesn’t eradicate war, but suggest that we can take a step to redefine our moral standpoint in front of ourselves to heal the wounds caused by Wars. This individual moral mutation, in the main character, is the result of a reflexive process, on all accords at the “heart of darkness”, of the jungle as much as of his soul.