All posts filed under: History

Beyond Black Ops: Laos in Video Games

Published by littlelaosontheprairie

November 15th marks the anniversary of Operation Commando Hunt. The goal of the operation was to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail, through Laos into South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and coincidentally very close to the 73rd birthday of the AK-47, which was on November 13th. November 13th is also the anniversary of the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. This is a small point of trivia to note as we saw the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops, Cold War on November 13th, which has a mission in Laos set in 1968. This will be another entry in the Call of Duty: Black Ops series, which began in 2010. Some of us will be watching with interest in the zombie option for many of the maps. One trailer seems to confirm that players will be able to fight zombies during the Vietnam War-era with weapons of varying realism levels. Players in the past have been able to modify many variables in these games, but not …

MIA Erasure, My Reflection

Published by Bryan Thao Worra

To much fanfare, the exhibit Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965-1975 opened in Minnesota at the Minneapolis Institute of Art this month and will run until January 5th, 2020. It’s billed as a way to look at “the innovative ways artists talked back, often in the streets and other public venues. The exhibition presents nearly 100 works by 58 of the period’s most visionary, provocative artists.” For Southeast Asians of Vietnamese, Hmong, Laotian, and Cambodian descent, and active military veterans, you can even see the exhibit for free. It’s been a long time since I’ve been given free admission to an art exhibit to witness the complete erasure of my community’s perspective and reactions to the Vietnam War, the Secret War, and the Killing Fields. For Minnesotans, who arguably have one of the most deeply tangled relationships with Southeast Asia than almost any other US state, this ought to be a stirring and profound exhibit: one filled with so many heartbreaking memories and reflections on themes and issues addressed over four decades ago, …