Flight of the Valkyries

When I first read our blog on propaganda this week, I immediately had in mind an idea that I wanted to write about. For this week, I chose to write about Flight/Ride of the Valkyries by Wilhelm Richard Wagner and its uses in depicting the Vietnam War and the effect it had on later wars. Flight of the Valkyrie has a very powerful sound which brings out mixed emotions in most cases. In Western pop culture this song was intended to evoke images of epic battles as well as military badassery in iconic helicopter raids. The example above shows how we would depict Flight of the Valkyrie to be used. In many of the armed forces today, as well as dating back a while, they use movies and clips with this song in them to inspire courage and bravery. I believe most would say this is one of the most ominous pieces ever written.