Personal Statement for a History course

I was first introduced to the Vietnam War through film and music, and this sparked my interest in the perceptions of the war. As the first TV broadcast war, I found that many opinions focused on the experiences of US soldiers and the loss of American life - a representation that I wished to challenge in my EPQ. I examined the war crimes against Vietnamese civilians and prisoners of war perpetrated by the US military, and concluded that atrocities such as the My Lai massacre were the rule, rather than the exceptions, and that the crimes were a direct result of the aggressive, sexist and racist policies of the American army. I found the investigative research by historian Nick Turse extremely compelling from a humanitarian aspect, due to the interviews with Vietnamese survivors; I felt that it was essential that the suffering of the Vietnamese should be made common knowledge and incorporated into media representations of the war, rather than focusing solely on the American experience. During my research, I decided to see if I could draw comparison between the incidents in Vietnam with other crimes from American wars, which led me to research the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in the Iraq war. The most intriguing article I read was titled 'Exposure' in the New York Times, which was an interview with the photographer of the infamous pictures, as it challenged the reader to consider if the pictures are really so shocking when the dominant symbol for Western society is the image of Christ being crucified. I have seen the relevance of history in my other hobbies, including drama. When I performed as Eliza in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Shaw's critical comments of the Edwardian class system became more obvious to me after discovering that Shaw had visited the USSR in 1931 and became an "unashamed apologist" of Stalin, as writer Terry Philpot labelled him. For my Grade 8 Acting LAMDA exam, I studied Brecht as my chosen practitioner, and learnt how he fled Germany in 1933 as Hitler took power. I saw a strong rejection of fascism when watching a production based on Brecht's own 'The Threepenny Opera', and knowing about the context really enhanced my understanding of the theatrical techniques.