Thursday, February 6, 2020

Week 6_Melanie Manuel_ASA 114


Melanie Manuel
ASA 114 001
6 February 2020

In reading Professor Valverde’s “Defying and Redefining Vietnamese Diasporic Art and Media as Seen through Chau Huynh’s Creations” and watching Saigon, USA, the most striking phenomenon was the use of “communist,” not only as an insult but as an identifier for folks not following the normative ideology. There is something so jarring in seeing the way that the Vietnamese American community was so quick to go against Chau Huynh and the Nguoi Viet Daily. Somehow, I find the immediate responses to be unproductive in the grander scheme of keeping peace i.e. keeping communism as bay. I understand that the community members reacted as they did, because the war has negatively impacted them in such a way that it has caused them pain, trauma, anger, resentment, but I also don’t see how inciting fear in those they deem as “communists” is the way of going about maintaining whatever “peace” they’ve created in the United States. Having a freedom of speech is a large part of the United States’ appeal, social media spaces are no stranger to outlier views, so it makes me wonder how such displays akin to Chau Huynh’s work would hold up in this modern age. 

Somehow, I don’t think it would so much, considering how up and arms folks are on the Internet one moment and then switching sides on the argument the next. It feels like the nuances would make themselves evident, and these notions of being a “communist” would not hold the same weight as the once did a decade ago.

I’ve included the only photo of Chau Huynh’s “Pedicure Basins” that I could find. 


Works Cited
Valverde, Kieu-Linh Caroline. “Defying and Redefining Vietnamese Diasporic Art and Media as Seen through Chau Huynh’s Creations.” Transnationalizing Viet Nam: Community, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora, 2012, pp. 90-112.

Image Used
https://www.ocregister.com/2008/12/31/little-saigon-protests-raise-questions-about-freedoms/

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