Identity in Vietnamese Diasporic Cinema

Identity in Vietnamese Diasporic Cinema Irene Soldavini PhD School of Oriental and African Studies ProQuest Number: 10673133 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10673133 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 2 Abstract French and American cinema has portrayed Viet Nam and the Vietnamese in narratives which, broadly-speaking, are reflective of French and American ideologies. The Vietnamese, in these productions, have generally been presented as the object, and not as the subject. However, since the 1980s, an interesting and significant cinematic counter-narrative to the Western idea of Viet Nam has been constructed. This is because the Vietnamese diaspora in France and in the United States has started making films about its own experiences of French colonial rule, the Vietnamese-American conflict, the Vietnamese Communist regime, exilic journeys, contemporary Viet Nam, and the generational conflicts among the Vietnamese diaspora. The identities of the diasporic Vietnamese- particularly the younger generations- have, inevitably, been strongly shaped by these themes, but, at the same time, are also clearly influenced by the culture and values of the new countiy. The thesis demonstrates how diasporic Vietnamese film makers construct narratives which clearly express hybridized identity: their output presents both aspects of a traditional Western discourse and, significantly, elements not seen in American and French productions. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to express my thanks to my supervisor Dr Dana Healy for her guidance. Moreover, without her practical assistance, I would also have been unable to locate some vital sources for this work. I would also like to express my gratitude to Maria D’Ambrosca, David Hill and Professor Giacomo Beltramini. 4 Contents I. Overview 8 II. Introduction 11 • Cinema and the Myths of Viet Nam 12 • French and American Films on Viet Nam: Viet Nam without Vietnamese 12 • Vietnamese Films on Viet Nam 14 • French-Vietnamese and American-Vietnamese Cinema 15 III. The Vietnamese Diaspora in the United States of America and France: Different Nations, Different Credo, Same Aim 17 • Brief Facts 17 • French Viet Kieu 17 • Vietnamese in the United States of America 20 • Vietnamese and Displacement 21 • Theories on Diaspora 24 • The Diaspora: Globalisation and Mediation 27 • Displacement and Deterritorialization 29 IV. Themes in Vietnamese Diasporic Cinema 32 • A Quest for Diasporic Vietnamese Identity through Diasporic Vietnamese Cinema 32 • Food, Film and the Vietnamese Diaspora 33 • Women in Vietnamese Diasporic Film 35 • The Male in Diasporic Vietnamese Cinema 37 5 • Vietnamese Diasporic Film and Family 39 • On Film Analysis 39 • Method 42 V. The Synesthetic Experience: Why Food and Eating are Essential to Diasporic Film Analysis 44 • The Categorization of Senses: From Plato to the Present Day 45 • Food in Film 47 • Food Symbolism 49 • Tasting the Other, Polluting the Soul 50 • Feeding the American Hero 52 • Food, Sexuality and Effeminacy 55 • Food and the Shaping of Vietnamese Identity 57 • Fighting French Colonization with Food 58 • The Vietnamese Communist Regime and Food 64 • On Food, Identity and Memory 68 VI. Literature Review 77 • Vietnamese Diasporic Cinema 77 • Other Vietnamese Diasporic Writing 78 • Key Theoretical Texts 80 • Film Studies 83 • Food in Cinema 83 • Food: Symbolism and Memory 84 6 VII. Identity in French-Vietnamese Film 86 • Tran Anh Hung 88 • The Married Woman of Nam Xuong 90 • The Waiting Stone 99 • The Scent of Green Papaya 107 • Cyclo 129 • At the Height of Summer 162 • The Essence of Tran Anh Hung 183 • Lam Le 185 • 20 Nights 186 • Summary 205 VIII. Identity in American-Vietnamese Filin 207 • Catfish in Black Bean Sauce 209 • Tony Bui 225 • Three Seasons 226 • Timothy Lin Bui 247 • Green Dragon 247 • Victor Vu 269 • First Morning 269 • Spirits 289 • Ham Tran 305 • Journey from the Fall 305 • Summary 324 IX. Conclusions 327 Filmography 335 Bibliography 338 8 I Overview In the past twenty years or so, individuals of Vietnamese ancestry residing in France and the United States have started to make films about Viet Nam and the Vietnamese diaspora. Until quite recently, these received very little attention from either film critics or, especially, academics in the English-speaking world. Even now, they are very much a minority interest. The first production to attractsome media attention was The Scent o f Green Papaya, following its critical success at Cannes in 1993. However, critics such as Ebert classified this and other French-Vietnamese films as ‘art-house’, and, outside of France, they found no more than the limited audience that such a designation (with the inevitable subtitles) usually entails. What has - to some degree- popularised the genre is the participation of famous Hollywood actors in more recent American-Vietnamese productions allied to the existence of a larger American diaspora. My first encounter with diasporic Vietnamese film was, perhaps unsurprisingly,The Scent of Green Papaya (1993). At that point, I was unable to find more than one academic article written about that film, and more generally, very little academic research on Vietnamese diasporic cinema. More recently, academics - perhaps stimulated by the higher profile of US-based productions - have started to take more of an interest in Vietnamese diasporic cinema. However, somewhat ironically, the academic discussions and articles are mostly focused on French-Vietnamese cinema. The European art-house and post-colonial aura surrounding these films seems to attract more academic interest than the rather less “arty”, war and drama focused American-Vietnamese productions. 9 The main reason for choosing to research in Vietnamese diasporic cinema is, firstly, this lack of an academic counterpoint to the ‘traditional’- and in some respects clicheed- discourse proposed by Hollywood and European cinema towards Viet Nam. Secondly, I have also been veiy impressed by the overall quality- particularly the authorial style and strength of screenplay- of most of these diasporic Vietnamese films, a quality that, to my mind deserves a more thorough investigation than has hitherto been the case. I have distilled my interest into a set of research questions focused on the broad issue of identity and its expression in Vietnamese diasporic film. Specifically, the following questions are addressed to Vietnam-focused works produced by filmmakers from the two largest (and, to date, only film-producing) Vietnamese diasporic communities: those in France and the United States: 1) How does the Vietnamese diaspora portray Viet Nam, the Vietnamese and themselves in their movies? These questions can themselves be sub-divided into the following issues: • Why is food so represented in these films? For which purpose? • WTiat is the role of the family in Vietnamese diasporic movies? • Is Confucian culture represented in Vietnamese diasporic movies? How are Confucian values portrayed by diasporic Vietnamese film directors? • In which manner do Vietnamese diasporic movies portray women? 2) What are the main differences - if any- between American-Vietnamese and French- Vietnamese films? 3) Are Vietnamese diasporic films post-colonial/ post-war films? While this thesis can no doubt still be seen as a product of a Eurocentric discourse (as is Postcolonial Studies more generally) and cannot claim to be inclusive of all the aspects linked with the diasporic Vietnamese filmic experience, it aims to offer an in-depth elucidation of 10 identity in the works of these filmmakers: how Vietnameseness is both expressed and reshaped by the diasporic experience. 11 II Introduction In Western fiction filmic productions and narratives, Viet Nam and the Vietnamese have hitherto been represented in a very particular way. The Vietnamese have generally been portrayed in an Orientalised way as either exotic and seductive or effeminate, with the countiy itself usually being characterized as a dangerous and dark jungle. The overall aim of this thesis is to analyze the techniques and manner by which French-Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American film directors1 with their Vietnamese-Western hybrid identities have transformed and re-imagined the Vietnamese, Viet Nam and its diaspora in their diasporic film productions. The first of these productions,Poussiere d ’Empire, by director Lam Le was produced in 1983. The 1990s and early 21st century have seen a steady increase in the number of Vietnamese diasporic film productions. Not all of these productions are accessible but, fortunately, a sufficient number are. The thesis will analyze the available fictional feature films made by the French and American Vietnamese diaspora between 1980 and 2006. While the diaspora stretches beyond these two countries- China and Australia and Thailand also have sizeable diasporic populations- cinematic productions to date (in contrast to literature) have come from those elements of the diaspora which have settled in

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