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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE SYMPATHIZER TAKES ON HOLLYWOOD’S VIETNAM WAR STORIES  
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Li Zhou
May 29, 2024
Vox
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_ HBO’s new miniseries centers Vietnamese voices — and reframes
the consequences of war. _

The Captain (Hoa Xuande) helps advise a director making a Hollywood
film about the Vietnam War.,

 

Li Zhou [[link removed]] is a politics reporter
at Vox, where she covers Congress and elections. Previously, she was a
tech policy reporter at Politico and an editorial fellow at the
Atlantic.

_____

_The Sympathizer, _a new HBO series adapted from Viet Thanh
Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, demonstrates why perspective
is so important when telling historical stories of conflict and
warfare. 

“All wars are fought twice,” an opening slide of the show reads
[[link removed]].
“The first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.”
That idea — penned by Nguyen — is central to both the novel and
its adaptation, which highlight how US portrayals of the Vietnam War
often omit the views of Vietnamese people, and undermine their
humanity and agency by doing so.

Tellingly, the HBO series, which is helmed
[[link removed]] by
famed South Korean director Park Chan-wook, is one of only a handful
of mainstream US films or television shows that center Vietnamese or
Vietnamese American perspectives while chronicling the war and its
aftermath. By featuring these voices, the show reframes the
consequences of the war, explores different Vietnamese stances on the
conflict, and deepens viewers’ understanding of what the war’s
refugees endured.

“So many books have been written about the Vietnam War, so many
movies have been made about the Vietnam War, but from the point of
view of the outsider,” Kieu Chinh, 86, an actor in the miniseries
[[link removed]] who herself fled Vietnam around the fall of
Saigon, told Vanity Fair. “_The Sympathizer_ was written by a
refugee himself. I think it’s about time that a story like this
should be told.”

_The Sympathizer _series comes as Hollywood continues to grapple with
the fundamental question of perspective, and the way it changes how an
event is depicted and perceived. As Jason Asenap wrote for Vox
[[link removed]],
Martin Scorsese’s _Killers of the Flower Moon_ was scrutinized for
recalling the killings of members of a Native American tribe from the
vantage point of the white killer instead of a Native American person.
Similarly, Christopher Nolan’s _Oppenheimer_
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failing to include any Japanese viewpoints
[[link removed].] and
solely conveying the consequences of the bombing from the American
scientist’s view. 

_The Sympathizer _confronts these issues directly in both its
examination of perspective and how the show is presented. As the
response from some Vietnamese American viewers
[[link removed]] indicates,
it, too, offers just one of many positions people hold about the war.
And though its ideas don’t always translate as well onscreen as they
do in the novel, the series further underscores why the point of view
a story is narrated from is critical. 

HOW HOLLYWOOD HAS SHAPED AMERICANS’ VIEWS OF THE VIETNAM WAR

Hollywood has been wrestling with the Vietnam War
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since the US withdrew in the 197os.  

Although many films condemned US involvement — a break from past war
movies — they focused heavily on soldiers’ experiences and the
trauma they dealt with in combat.

“Depictions of the war have tended to be pretty American-centric. So
it’s been said that when Americans talk about the war, they’re
really talking about themselves, you know, how they suffered, how they
were divided as a nation,” says Duy Nguyen
[[link removed]], a University of Houston
world culture and literature professor who has specialized in
Vietnamese studies. 

As such, major films like _Apocalypse Now _and _The Deer
Hunter_ — though they eyed the war critically — were often deeply
lopsided. 

“The films about the war don’t really give Vietnamese people a
voice at all. And that’s, I think, one of the tragedies,”
says Phuong Nguyen
[[link removed]], a
historian at Cal State Monterey Bay who has written a book about
Vietnamese refugee resettlement in the US. 

Instead, as Viet Thanh Nguyen, the author of _The Sympathizer_
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written, Vietnamese characters were frequently reduced to props who
were “killed, raped, wounded, silenced, demonized, or rescued while
we serve as the backdrop for American moral dilemmas.”

In_ Casualties of War,_ a 1989 movie directed by Brian De Palma, for
example, a Vietnamese girl is raped by American soldiers and “as a
character is just rendered as pure, anonymous victimhood,” George
Mason University historian Meredith Lair notes. “The Viet Cong are
literally depicted as shadowy, faceless mole figures in a tunnel.”

Tropes about the Northern Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers frequently
emphasized how vicious they were, removing any humanizing nuance. And
American depictions of the Southern Vietnamese government suggested
that they were incompetent and corrupt puppets of the US, depriving
them of agency in their own decisions. 

“Vietnamese communists are typically portrayed negatively in films
as ruthless, ideological enemies posing a threat to American
values,” says Alex-Thái Đình Võ, a historian at Texas Tech
University. “In contrast, the Republic of Vietnam and its
associates, America's main allies during the war … are portrayed as
either victims of war or, more often, as inept and corrupt allies,
sometimes implicated in war crimes.”

_The Sympathizer _confronts these clichés with a subplot featuring
the main character advising a clueless Hollywood director who is
making a film about the Vietnam War. The auteur — played by Robert
Downey Jr. and modeled after Francis Ford Coppola — initially
attempts to deny speaking parts to any Vietnamese people before he’s
convinced otherwise. (A running joke in the series looks at how many
ways one Vietnamese extra, played by the main character’s friend, is
able to die in the film.)

Given the ties between pop cultural portrayals and real-life
prejudices
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the one-sided depiction of Vietnamese people in Hollywood after a
bitter war may have contributed to the hostile attitudes that many
refugees encountered
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America, as well as enduring anti-Asian racism. 

In a 1975 Gallup poll, [[link removed]] more
than half of Americans — 52 percent — opposed the resettlement of
Vietnamese refugees in the US.

WHAT _THE SYMPATHIZER_ DOES

_The Sympathizer _reframes these narratives by centering a Vietnamese
protagonist who offers insights into the perspectives of people in
both North and South Vietnam, as well as a window into the refugee
experience in America. 

The lead character, referred to solely as Captain (Hoa Xuande), is a
communist spy for the North working undercover in South Vietnam’s
secret police. The show picks up shortly before the Fall of Saigon in
1975 and captures the chaos and terror as Southern Vietnamese people
attempt to escape. It then follows the Captain as he and his close
friends and colleagues navigate the refugee resettlement camps and
related hardships in the US. The Captain continues his espionage on
behalf of North Vietnam, though he begins to question his own
allegiances as the narrative progresses. 

By telling this story with these characters, _The
Sympathizer_ highlights the toll the war took on Vietnamese people
and how diverse Vietnamese viewpoints were about the war. It also
features Vietnamese characters as the principal actors in the
conflict, rather than as supporting characters to Americans. 

Documenting the chaos and horror of the Fall of Saigon from the
vantage point of Vietnamese people trying to escape captures how
traumatic that experience was, and what people lost when they fled. In
one of the series’ most devastating scenes, Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan),
one of the Captain’s best friends, mourns his wife and child when
they are killed abruptly by an airstrike on the tarmac. 

Subsequent episodes depict the dismal conditions that the characters
have to deal with as they enter the US to live in refugee camps
crawling with maggots, roaches, and rats. 

Such perspectives help close the distance that has existed in
portrayals of the war by making the stakes more accessible and
intimate. 

“They’re looking at regular people like Bon who just gave birth to
a kid. And him and his wife are trying to figure out what his first
words are,” says Phuong Nguyen. “These are people [who] have hopes
and dreams, like every one of us.” 

In chronicling refugees resettling in a new place and struggling to
adapt, the show reminds the audience of how US actions have fueled
waves of immigration from other countries
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It captures, too, the casual racism that many refugees encountered
including racial slurs, vandalism, and exoticization by the people
around them. 

“Americans like to imagine war stories featuring their heroic
soldiers, sailors and pilots. The reality is that refugee stories are
also war stories,” Viet Thanh Nguyen has written
[[link removed]]. 

Because the story’s lead character is a spy and embodies a duality
of political views, he also conveys how Vietnamese views on the war
were far from monolithic and pushes back on how they’ve been
generalized in the past. Supplementary characters, including two of
the Captain’s friends, flesh these nuances out more.

“Shows tend to portray the war as one fought by the US against the
communist North Vietnam and their southern allies, the Viet Cong,”
says Van Nguyen-Marshall
[[link removed]],
a historian at Trent University. “However, the war was more
complicated than that. It was first and foremost a civil war between
Vietnamese themselves over the political configuration of their
country. Vietnamese on both sides of the war fought and died in
numbers that dwarf those of the US.”

WHY THIS MATTERS

By featuring Vietnamese characters as the arbiters of their
narratives, _The Sympathizer_ throws the horrors of war into even
sharper relief. 

“This is one of the things that makes _The Sympathizer _so
powerful. The Vietnamese [people] speak for themselves in many
different voices. They have different interests, different dreams, and
different ways of dealing with the war and its legacies,” says
Robert Brigham, a historian at Vassar College. 

By providing these varying perspectives, the show forces a broader
reevaluation of the conflict. 

One of the biggest takeaways from Nguyen’s novel is how all parties
are complicit in it. As well as holding the US accountable for its
role, the novel does not shy away from critiquing the actions of both
the Northern and Southern Vietnamese governments, and their role in
perpetuating the harms of war against their own people. In showing the
impact of war on people on different sides of it, including civilians,
the series emphasizes its price. 

“Vietnamese people have been represented as victims in dominant
discourses, but this series will show us that we all participate in
this monstrosity or the killings of others,” says Quynh Vo, a
lecturer at American University who studies Vietnamese literature and
culture. 

Notably, the novel and series are also still only a slice of the many
Vietnamese viewpoints that exist about the war. As the Los Angeles
Times reported
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some Vietnamese American viewers were troubled by what they initially
perceived as the show’s favorable depiction of communism, which some
of them had fought against. In both the novel and the show, male
characters are also far more dominant than female ones, many of whom
are underdeveloped, subject to violence, and given much less
attention.

Still, _The Sympathizer_ takes a powerful stand by expanding the
scope of war stories. 

“Centering Vietnamese characters and experiences in narratives about
the Vietnam War is fundamental to shifting our understanding of the
conflict,” says Đình Võ. “It allows for a deeper exploration of
the human cost.”

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* the sympathizer
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* Vietnam War
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* HBO
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* Viet Thanh Nguyen
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