It don't mean nothing !


Just watched this for the first time since it came out. Do not care much for this picture. I was burnt out on hearing the phrase "It don't mean nothing. "
There was the scene where the two black soldiers used it over and over, that was enough. However through the rest of the movie it was used many more times by various soldiers. WOW, I am glade it is over and will never sit through it again. Oh well, I guess my opinion don't mean nothing !

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So what? It was a phrase they used at the time.

you were born a pig farmer.
you'll always BE a pig farmer.
And now, you will DIE a pig farmer.

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Welcome to the Vietnam war.

Try, for a moment, to watch the film from the perspective of being one of the soldiers. At what point would you have become burnt out by the whole damn war?

But, you can't go home. You're not going to commit suicide. What is left to do? Try and cope, not lose your mind, try to save your brother's life because they just saved yours? Sit around and curse your fate, reminisce about a girl who's no longer going to write you because her educated college friends tell her it's immoral to support you? Talk about what you're going to do when you get back to America, and just pretend the odds are not 10-1 that you will only return to America in a body bag (if they can find enough of your pieces or identify what's left of them)?

Welcome to the Vietnam war.

Glad it's over. Ah, but there's the radio. Some voice far away has just told your sarg that you're not getting a lift-out, you've gotta take the hill. It ain't over. Back we go, more hamburger coming back down. Your brothers, no arms, no legs, no heads...the ones you get to before they breathe their last in your arms are no longer coherent, mumbling jibberish as life slips from their grasp, but you can't turn away because their eyes are locked on yours, as if they're trying to suck some of your life out of you and into them...

Government is out of touch. The enemy just keep coming (where do they come from? Where are their supply lines?). When you want to sleep, claymores and shells explode all around. When you think there are no more, there are more... you get on that annoying radio and call for help that ain't coming...and you know, deep down so you can hopefully avoid thinking about it, that the folks back home don't care that you are dying here. In fact, caught up in their socio-political upheaval, they celebrate your death as proof that being here at all is wrong. Your death is a trophy for anti-war protest.

And it dawns on you - all this don't mean nothing. Hopefully, death will be quick enough that you never have to face your mortality. Just a flash, a bang, and I'm gone. Gone where? Heaven? Hell (hey, I've been in the Vietnam war, how much worse is hell gonna be?) Or, just nothingness, a state of non-existence so deep I won't even know I no longer exist, and will never know I once existed. In which case (say it together now) it (this, this war, this life, any sense of meaning or value, anything to learn, anything to know, or think, or do...) - it don't mean nothing.

Welcome to the Vietnam war.

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I have owned and watched this film for years , and love watching it. I could not have expressed my sentiments any better than you. Kudos!!

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Brilliantly said.

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Bravo Dogart.

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You are outstanding! I loved your narrative.

Are you a veteran of Vietnam, or do you simply have a gift with words?






El Paso, Texas...ever heard of it?

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Damn well said. Hat's off to ya.

Friendly fire. Your family dying. Fighting wounded and in great pain because you won't leave your family. Hamburger Hill was apt. Those men lived, in every sense of the word, in that meat grinder.

Don' mean nuthin' was a phrase that fit a lot of things in The Machine.

Welcome to War.

"What does it do?" Do? "It doesn't DO anything. That's the beauty of it." Jacques Heim/Louis Reard

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RIGHT ON!

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Excellent post DGARTS! Thanks for your insight and service. It does mean something!

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This just might be the best post I've ever read on imdb.

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To all who tipped their hat to me (former IMDb profile name: dgarts), I salute you all as well.

No, I never served. I'm Canadian, and only faintly remember news of the fall of Saigon as a little kid.

But, when I watch movies like these, I really do try to immerse myself in the milieu of the times and, more helpfully, in the view of the story being told. Movies are more than just entertainment, for me - particularly, movies about this horror of a time. I want to hear what the story teller wants to tell, I want to feel what they felt, because that's where the story if found.

I have met Vietnam vets. None of them have regaled me with stories. They never offered. I never asked. But, I listened to the silence, and I heard them. Unlike their fathers in "the great war", there was no sanitizing, no romanticizing this war, no wrapping it within the warm embrace of any noble narrative, any point. And that may hurt the most - for all they gave, for all they suffered, for how they died, and how they are haunted to this day...it. meant. nothing.

One thing those vets did mention - of all the Vietnam films they've seen, two are mentioned the most: this one, Hamburger Hill, and We Were Soldiers. And, more often than not, when they mentioned them as "getting it", they were choking back tears.

What prompted me to reply here after all this time? Well, in May 2016, I was part of the Fort McMurray wildfire evacuation. When the city started to burn on Tuesday May 3rd, I stayed "on-site" (60km north of town at one of the mining sites). The roads closed, we couldn't drive south. By Friday, smoke had reached where we were, and I slept with a dust mask on my face, wondering if I'd die in my sleep of smoke inhalation; on Saturday morning, smoke alarms woke us up at 6am; people pounding on the lodge doors, running with what possessions they had...the fire had moved through town, mostly, enough that police could escort vehicles southbound through town to get on down the road south to Edmonton/Calgary or wherever.

At around 2pm,the police let our cohort go to return northward to escort more vehicles. I was out of Fort McMurray, and would make Edmonton by 7pm that evening.

Many people on Facebook started sharing their experiences, including how edgy they were, not sleeping, jumping at the sound of emergency vehicles/sirens, feeling anxious every time a chimney billowing smoke was seen...always seeming at the ready to take off...it was found that we were suffering mild forms of post-traumatic stress disorder - from an ordeal that essentially lasted 5 days.

I can't imagine what it must have been like to endure a battle theatre like Vietnam, but there is no macho cowboying up. Pain is real. And these movies attempt to help us, fortunate enough to not have had to experience it, try, even just a little bit, to understand what those who did come back are hard-pressed to remember, or forget, let alone share.


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Trying real hard to be the shepherd.

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Mate that was some of the best stuff i have ever read! Your a champion!

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i agree great post

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one of the best posts ive ever read on imdb!!

"she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever."

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