Good Morning Phan Duc To
No Responses | Leave a Comment »
Movies in modern times have always been the most effective propaganda tool to “educate” the populace about the significance of certain events to the nation, especially wars. They have taught us how to feel about the country we call “home” and how to view our fellow (non-)citizens. Barry Levinson’s “Good Morning, Vietnam,” although a comedy, is no exception. The star, Robin Williams, is the protagonist who plays the innocent victim thrown into the middle of a pack of wolves in a country he will never feel at home in. He is cheered when he survives and America’s honor is reinforced when he exclaims that “We’re here to help this country!”
According to Barry Levinson’s account of the war in “Good Morning, Vietnam,” it seems that in 1965 everyone in Vietnam, especially the men on the front lines, is in need of a resident funnyman to make people forget about their woes and homesickness. That’s where Robin Williams, playing shock jock Adrian Cronauer, comes in. This irreverent, fresh-mouthed airman is supposedly not your typical soldier, but as soon as his feet hit the tarmac, he is chasing tail with the best of them.
“May Day! May Day! Dragon Lady with incredible figure at 11 o’clock. Stop the car! They’re quick and fast and small. I feel like a fox in a chicken coop.”
Whoops! (Ssshhh!) Sorry, that’s top secret. [Circle red, cross out.] The only thing the audience is authorized to believe is that Cronauer is just a likeable guy brought in to do a little radio show in the middle of a war. But, we can ill afford not to be critical of this G-man when he struts around thinking he can have any Vietnamese woman walking down the street. In fact, he sets his sights on Trinh, a young woman going about her business in a spotless, white ao dai, and follows her into an English language class where he promptly schemes his way to the front of the class just to hit on her. He wants her so bad that he superficially befriends one of the students, Tuan, who is conveniently Trinh’s brother.
Throughout the movie, Cronauer is lavished with sympathy and benefit of the doubt because he’s portrayed as a resilient man pitted against a couple of no-nonsense, humorless superiors. He becomes just one of the guys, a good-natured marshmallow like all the other young American soldiers out sun-tanning on the patrol boats or playing a game of football in front of ammunition crates. He speaks to them in a language they all have in common, the language of rock ‘n’ roll. But, in order to get the audience fully on his side, to help the viewers distinguish the good from the bad, the black from the white, the helpers and the helpless, a polar opposite is needed for Cronauer’s character. Enter Tuan, a.k.a. Phan Duc To, a.k.a. the Wonder VC: today your friend, tomorrow your enemy: “I no like you, sir. You’re phony, like American and French before you.”
Tuan is the real tragic hero in this movie, but you’d never know it because he’s given the role of garbage heap onto which the Americans can dump their insults, pettiness, ego trips and Teflon arrogance. He’s infantilized, like all the other Vietnamese in the movie, because Cronauer says, “If I don’t get to my class, there’s going to be a lot of Vietnamese speaking in short, choppy sentences.” Therein lies the seething prejudice of the American authority figures charged with saving this land from itself. Since the natives can’t speak the language of power, they are prohibited from speaking to the audience at all, thus stripped of any shared humanity. Cronauer continuously condemns his students to toddlerhood because of their “short, choppy sentences” and childlike incoherence when they try to communicate with him. On top of all that, he subjects them to his unmasked sarcastic contempt on the street, in local establishments and on the air, something that goes, unsurprisingly, over the locals’ heads. The irony is finally swept from the script when Cronauer arranges for the Vietnamese in his class to forgo their own language and customs and to adopt, instantaneously, the American Way, by playing baseball with melons headed for market. Cronauer and his sympathizers get to crack up and point at the cluelessness exhibited by the Vietnamese because of their complete lack of acumen and knowledge of the great American pastime.
If that’s not enough humiliation captured on celluloid, what’s with Cronauer using the nickname “Sparky” in place of Tuan’s Vietnamese name? Is “Tuan” too hard to pronounce? Or is he simply above proper modes of address? What a nickname, by the way. Kind of like “Corky” or “Gomer.” Let’s see, he uses Tuan to try to get his sister into bed, he makes fun of fish balls in his soup, once he tells Tuan he speaks like Tonto, and next he reserves the exclusive right to call his “friend” a name not fit for a stuffed toy. Sounds like a fair trade-off to me.
The most disturbing part of the film, apart from Staff Sergeant Marty Dreiwitz yelling at a Vietnamese MP, “Look, jerk off, we’re here fighting for your country!” is the fight scene in the GI bar. All three grotesque Asian stereotypes converge at this Orientalesque hang-out for American personnel. You have Jimmy Wah, the “Oriental leprechaun” who’s “light in the loafers,” the Vietnamese bar girls out for beaucoup bucks, and the VC man-child disguised as Cronauer’s guide and friend. [Traitor.]
“Who brought the fucking gook?”
Tuan is invited to sit with the privileged few, the ones who are running his country into the ground. Jimmy Wah’s bar represents a small piece of American Shangri-La, respite from the reality going on just outside those doors. Tuan personifies the emasculated “little Vietnamese kid,” a brown-skinned foreigner who finds himself at a table full of run-of-the-mill American DJ nerds. Cronauer eventually calls over to the prostitutes, Tuan’s fellow citizens, or “gals” as Garlick likes to call them, with a fist full of dong held out as bait. Tuan watches with a bemused expression on his face as the silk-clothed women slink on over and ease themselves on the mens’ laps, and the men waste no time in consuming their fantasies - “How come I don’t get one?” - hoping for more than just getting their egos stroked. However, the two slighted thick-necked ubermenschen whose toys were taken away from them come ambling up to the table and predictably unleash a torrent of racist barbs. Tuan, without a word (quiet on the set!), is carelessly pushed to the floor and, in order to assume his role of the White-Man’s-Burden hero, Cronauer wields his witty sarcasm to poke fun at the soldiers’ bigotry. For an encore, his sweaty forehead butts into the nose of one of the soldiers. [Beer bottle smashes to the floor. Cut! Mission accomplished.]
In the end, Adrian Cronauer finds out that all this time his “friend” Tuan was really his, and by extension America’s, nemesis, Phan Duc To. Cronauer’s pained expressions of betrayal take center stage as he fixes his regal imperial gaze on surly, gaunt and alien male faces and bodies [Cut. Print. Cut. Print. Cut. Print.] in search of the Judas hiding among them. Meanwhile, Tuan remains elusive, his voice echoing and surrounding the disoriented Cronauer when he shouts brash retorts to the Americans’ dismayed jabbering.
“I fought to get you into that bar. And then you go and blow the fuckin’ place up! I gave you my friendship and trust. Now they tell me that my best friend is the goddamn enemy!”
This is too much for Tuan and he suddenly appears in a doorway and delivers an impassioned monologue in which he credibly shreds the Americans’ goodwill gesture, blames them for indiscriminately killing his relatives and neighbors (”We’re not human to them.”) and throws it in Cronauer’s face. However, as this movie is Robin Williams’ star vehicle, Tuan’s words once again fall on the radio personality’s deaf ears (”Wait a minute. We’re here to help this country!”), and then as soon as his tear-bloated face appears from behind an anonymous wall, Tuan is taken out of the equation because, gosh, what a killjoy, you know? Mr. Levinson wouldn’t want this character to become an impediment to Operation Rolling Chuckle, so thanks for the face time, little man, but take your bag and exit stage right.
Easy as it may be to downplay a character’s impact, though, it is near impossible to quell the rising tide of history and deny the cyclical swelling of submerged memories. When it’s obvious that Cronauer no longer wants to listen to how Tuan’s life has changed since the Americans started digging in their heels and to his reasons for why he is opposed to American involvement in his country’s affairs, then that sounds the death knell for Tuan’s/Vietnam’s experiment in self-determination. Cronauer is a selfish, self-made man (”This will not look good on a resume!”) who makes the classic American mistake of needing to feel and appear successful and vindicated, despite the reports to the contrary on the ground.
Leave a Comment »
Share
Entries (RSS)
