Professor Bui's Research Response

            In Professor Bui’s lecture she focuses on how Americans see Vietnamese women as representation of Vietnam.  Since Bui is Vietnamese herself, she took a very intimate research approach.  She examines three films, Heaven and Earth, The Quiet American, and Three Seasons, which are all supposed to be an example of a Vietnamese woman.  In each, the main character woman is representing Vietnamese women and their culture.  Bui goes further to examine why the movies had the effect they did on Americans. 

            As we learned in class, framing is when certain parts of a “perceived reality” are highlighted in order to make people notice it.  Bui says that one of the only ways American’s will understand what is happening to people in other countries is when they are able to witness a sort of victimization.  This is the kind of thing we latch on to and continue to watch.  I think framing best describes what the directors were trying to do.  This is something all three directors had in mind.  They broke down the main female Vietnamese character they wanted and put together a woman that represents Vietnam with fear, and victimization in order to get the effect they were looking for from the Americans and other countries.

In the three films Bui talks about each main character is the victimized female Vietnamese woman who is unable to gain control of her life.  People see on screen a woman who is displaying faces of terror, sadness, and needing others to help her.  They also see these women resorting to a sexual image such as prostitution, lust, and marriage.  Also in the films most of the Vietnamese women have a longing to return back to Vietnam.  Bui stressed that this is a very romanticized idea of Vietnam and the directors were making it look like a heavenly place. 

One of the most important things I gathered from Bui’s research is that viewers of these movies are not given a chance to see a true Vietnamese woman.  These women do not represent all Vietnamese women.  A few of the directors chose Vietnamese women whose stories are so similar to the characters stories that they are hardly even acting.  The only difference is we cannot see the future plans and dreams the woman has.  We can only see a version of a girl from Vietnam who has been tortured and hurt, but even after that still wants to return to Vietnam.  So this is a difficult schema to break because it has been built up through films like these.