Framing “the Other”. A critical review of Vietnam war movies and their representation of Asians and Vietnamese

By considering a variety of films, in chronological sequence, I tried to make understandable the representations of Asians, and especially Vietnamese, by European and American filmmakers. While the themes changed from general war movies, through the depiction of bloodthirsty veterans and patriots towards the view of the victimized service men, the representation of the Vietnamese did not change dramatically. Vietnamese soldiers and civilians are portrayed as cunning, cruel, even sadistic, ambivalent, and irresponsible. These articulations of latent and manifest Orientalism in American movies about the Vietnam War are clear manifestations of a discourse which had broader consequences for the way Asians, or for that sake, Vietnamese, have been depicted. Where earlier movies showed a worldview, in which the Asian participants are reduced to simple pawns in a chess game between the superpowers, the post-1975 Vietnam syndrome genre betrayed a stereotype, which reified the Vietnamese as devious and unchanging. Even the films, which are considered to picture the war in more realistic terms, did not change the framing of the Vietnamese substantially. What changed was a manifest Orientalism, symbolized by stereotypes of the Yellow Peril, but the representation of latent Orientalism of the so-called anti-war movies remained. Current American and French cinematic production on Vietnam is not coming to terms with the past. The re-issued Apocalypse Now, Redux is part of a cultural memorial to remember the war in contradictory terms. We were soldiers is not about the Vietnamese and their war, but about we and us. The Other remains an unknown Oriental.This article is derived from a larger contribution to be published by Ravi Srilata and Mario Rutten (eds.) Europe in Asia, Asia in Europe. ISEAS and IIAS, 2003.