FTA
Francine Parker’s “FTA” tells two different stories- one is of the political troupe performances by celebrities such as Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland as they tour military bases in the Pacific during the Vietnam War, and one is of the soldiers whom they are going to perform for, and their increased vocalization of their dissent against the war they are fighting. Restored after almost 50 years, “FTA” reminded me of Questlove’s recent “Summer of Soul,” which touched on Black culture and ideas of America in the late ’60s through the prism of the long-forgotten Harlem Cultural Festival. Except for a new intro recorded by Fonda at the beginning, this isn’t a retrospective look at the FTA shows, but the original film that Parker made, and like the best documentaries, it feels like a time capsule that captures the feelings of the age it is about.
I’ve always been a big fan of Michael Wadlaigh’s “Woodstock,” and I’ll continue to be, but watching “FTA” and “Summer of Soul” in the past few months has illustrated how limited that film is in its capturing of the Zeitgeist of the time. Yes, Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” is famous as a form of rock protest, and there are antiwar sentiments throughout the film, but the lack of Black perspective of the times, which both “FTA” and “Summer of Soul” give in spades, is sorely missing, I find, when I think about the film in conjunction with these two. In “FTA,” especially the view of the Black soldier, being forced into a war to try and “bring democracy” to a foreign country when- even after the Civil Rights Movement- they would still face racism and discrimination from their own government at home, is bought to the film in a way that makes it almost more important a portrait of the times than “Woodstock.” It’s good to see it brought back to the conversation.
To many, Jane Fonda will always be loathed for the controversial picture of her on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, but watching “FTA,” you see her activism against the war was more than just that infamous photo. She created the FTA tour with Sutherland not just as an irreverent way of entertaining troops and locals alike in a way that was not sanctioned by the military like the USO show, but in hopes of inspiring soldiers to speak their own dissent against the war, which she had started to see in articles in major publications. (FTA, by the way, means “Fuck The Army,” a play on the Army’s slogan, at the time, of “Fun, Travel and Adventure.”) We only get glimpses of the show itself; for Parker, it’s the larger story of why the show was put together that matters. Their perspective was right, and it’s why “FTA” feels so alive and important even 50 years later.
