I got two interesting emails this morning. One from journalist and author John T. Edge who notified me that his story on Vietnamese crayfish restaurants in the United States was published today in the New York Times. After reading John T's terrific piece (yours truly was quoted!), I opened up an email from Tan, an editor at The Guide travel publication in Saigon. Tan sent a link to Sad Song of Yellow Skin, a documentary shot in 1970 in Saigon. Directed by Michael Rubbo, the film is now available from the Canadian National Film Board.
I was riveted to my computer screen. I called my husband over, even as he was rushing to go to work. Sad Song of Yellow Skin is one of the most compelling movies I've seen on pre-1975 Vietnam. The movie captures the experience of three young American journalists to tell the stories behind the lives of Vietnamese people. I caution you that the piece is disturbing at many points.
You'll see plenty of cooking going on -- catch the woman who blows air into a duck with her mouth! Not quite like my approach to blowing up a duck. It was a tough time, and Rubbo conveyed plenty of edgy tension and ambivalence. The Vietnamese were caught in an odd limbo, trying to stay afloat, trying to make sense of the chaos around them, trying to find peace.
After watching Sad Song of Yellow Skin, let know your thoughts to this question: Many
things have changed in Vietnam since 1970 but what has not? Did the filmmakers have a political agenda?
Don't hold back on the good, bad and not-so-pretty.
Jerry says
After more than 40 years (my last visit to Vietnam was early 1969), the documentary brings back many memories. Some good and some bad.
Vietnam and Saigon (sorry, it's never going to be Ho Chi Minh City to me) in particular seems to have resurrected itself to a vibrant city and Vietnam (both North and South) are slowly getting over the disaster U.S. left it with.
I recently watched Anthony Bourdain's visit to Vietnam on No Reservations and was pleased to see that food is still an important part of the culture.
Andrea Nguyen says
Jerry, thank you for contributing your thoughts. The faces and flavors seem the same from 1970 to 2010. The movie is definitely a poignant commentary on how resilient people are.
klum1971 says
Thanks for sharing! I couldn't help but think about the film from my 2010 eyes: The naivete and hubris of the filmmakers, the theme of the antiwar movement, the hippie phenomenom, and the possible pediophila of the director's co-worker (who seemed be high all the time). A very raw film that is also very honest. I keep thinking about the little boy with the hat who claimed he was 17. I wonder where he is now.
V says
Thank you for posting this video. I'm a Vietnamese American, and this part of history is something I haven't seen much of before. It's nice to see things in context. The Old Monk got his wish: the North and the South found peace after all.
Andrea Nguyen says
@Klum1971: I had the same vibe as you did. It was poignant when the director and the journalist admitted that the Vietnamese locals were not going to be anything but superficial to them. That was at the core of the situation at that time. The West's naivete was reflected in those parts of the movie. I wonder about the 17-year boy too. He was scrawny but tough.
The images of the young women in the white ao dais never fail to make me smile. It's part of the graceful beauty of Vietnam.
@V: Depending on your age, your reaction to this film will differ. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Mary says
Boy some things are the same: a family of six on a motor bike; the absolute pragmatism (but not greed) about money; the amazing strength of the women -- like the one whose husband drank all the profits from her bar, so she got on with things and opened a new business. When my family visited Vietnam in '07, the worst scars of the war had faded and Vietnam was a bustling, thriving place. There was plenty, plenty of poverty, but obviously nothing like the constant presence of war and fear lurking behind everything. Thank you for posting this powerful reminder.
Andrea Nguyen says
@Mary: Well, this is an astounding film in many ways. Thank you for watching and commenting. It is a reminder of many aspects of the human condition.
@Klum1971: The 17-year-old boy that you asked about died in the 1990s after a long battle with a particular sickness. I just learned about that through a friend who coincidentally recently met Dick Hughes (the man who housed the boys).
And to answer your other question, Dick Hughes is not a pedophile. Like many other young westerners in Vietnam at that time, they where hopeful, curious, and wanting to help.
twitter.com/bob_ferrapuhls says
Very interesting viewing this documentary, thanks for sharing. So much has changed there for sure, and yet so much has not. Let's hope the "right" things continue to change and stay the same.
The guy that appeared to be high throughout (and probably was) was John Steinbeck, son of "the" John Steinbeck. The son of actor Errol Flynn worked with him and Dick Hughes the Dispatch also.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck_IV
So many children of artists and celebrities spoke out against the war then (most famously of course, Jane Fonda). While their names brought them additional publicity, they were often ridiculed as clueless spoiled brats.
The role of the Dispatch publicizing the My Lai massacre story and it's effect on public opinion about the war can't be overstated.
Coincidentally, PBS aired a documentary about My Lai a couple weeks ago that is very well made, and well worth watching for anyone interested in that story.
It's available for online viewing as well (about 80min):
http://video.pbs.org/video/1475790127/#
Theresa says
Thank you Andrea! I'm short on time right now and cannot watch the whole thing but it was like getting sucked 27 years back. Thanks for sharing, I live in an Italian hamlet and would never have found this without you.
Andrea Nguyen says
@bob_ferrapuhls: Thank you so much for elucidating the connection with Steinbeck, Dispatch's impact on reporting on My Lai, and the PBS link. What a interesting time that was. I'll watch it soon!
Ciao @Theresa: My pleasure.
Retro Jordans says
I love blog, because any person can blog in their own feelings and to share things with. But i suppose the blog could only be improved if you posted more often.
Mike rubbo says
Hi folks, it is quite weird to read all this and be the guy who made the film. It seems so long ago and yet so fresh an experience. I'm glad someone chimed in about Dick not being strange. Quite true, a lovely guy, too good too sincere for these times perhaps, but he fitted into that crazy world, I thought.
The film was one of the first personal documentaries ever made. Nowadays the film makers journey is a common thread, but was not done hack in 69. Lots of stories I could tell, but another time
I miss Steve Ehrhart, the more cynical of my guides, especially. He died soon after. I delivered a copy of the film to a small house in San Jose, Calif, where his mum lived. He's the one who spoke about about the opium lady. "And she was once a dancer"
Steve and I recorded his thought track in an old hotel on the waterfront. Deep in the bowels of the decaying building, we found a clammy room to which the sounds of taffic, the constant honking, did not quite reach I guess we smoked and let our thoughts drift.
I've never been hack to Vietnam. I want to go and soon . Anyone want to give me contacts since I like all my trips to be dicoveries and filmic.
These days I'm into stately bicycles and I tell their story on my blog http:situp-cycle.com.
So esp Bike stories in Vietnam would be perfect. Thant for all the comments, Mike Rubbo
Simon Bao says
I know I am watching this and commenting on it long after most other folks. But I need to add something to what the film depicts.
About the displaced and poor folks living in the Saigon cemetery, and all the Mama-Sans, and the Bar Girls with their pale-skinned Amerasian children. Those little children are grown up now, those women are much older and frailer, and some of those folks are here today, in America, living and working among us. As neighbors, and as fellow Americans. I see in the faces of the film's Mama-Sans and Bar Girls and Amerasians many of the folks I will be celebrating Tet with again this year.
Some viewers may not realize that many years later, long after the Americans left Vietnam, America decided to "Give" once again. American lawmakers passed the Amerasian Homecoming Act in 1988, and starting in 1989 gave an opportunity for Vietnam's Amerasians and some of their family members to come to America.
That Act did not make it *easy* for Amerasians to come to America - the Act didn't make it easy to gain approval to come here, or make it possible to pay all the bribes that were necessary. Typically, Amerasians could come only if they were willing to say farewell to grandparents, to older siblings, to *most* of the family they knew. The Act usually forced any adult Amerasians to choose between bringing a spouse to America, or bringing Mom - it didn't allow one to bring both.
But tens of thousands of us did come. Many of us came with mothers who were certainly NEVER any kind of Bar Girl or Mama-San. And many of us came with mothers who certainly had been.
Countless Amerasians remained behind in Vietnam, because their applications were rejected, because they didnt' want to force their own mothers to choose between which of her children to be with, because they didn't want to choose who they would leave behind... for many reasons.
Folks who were impoverished during the war remained so after the war. A number of impoverished Amerasians only made it to America by leaving everyone behind, and traveling in the company of a Faux Family of people they had no relationship with whatsoever - but the Faux Family were people who wanted to get the hell out of Vietnam, and they had the financial means to pay all the bribes and expenses.
And once here, Amerasians and any family members discovered what all the other Vietnamese refugees and immigrants had already learned, and kept secret from folks at home. The chance to come to America was a great "Gift," but was nothing more than an opportunity. No guarantees, no promises, and not much real help once here. America, it turned out, could be a land of rewards, it could be a land of struggle, America could be a land of hellish, nightmare existence - different from but just as difficult as life in the Saigon graveyard. Not everyone "survived" the transformation that was necessary in order to "come to America," and not every soul prospered after.
But, as I write this, I am preparing to celebrate the New Year that arrives this week, Tet. And I will be celebrating it with lots of my Amerasian peers who were infants and children when this film was made, who arrived in the 1990s. Many of those who had to come to America without their moms have since brought their moms over. I'm proud to say that I know and am inordinately fond of a number of elderly, gray-haired one-time Bar Girls, and a few former Mama-Sans. There are gray-haired moms of every kind of background, but many who were Bar Girls and Mama-Sans also turned out to be fiercely devoted parents who raised outstanding offspring with noble character. And their Amerasian sons and daughters, and their American-born grandchildren too, form a reasonably tight-knit and reasonably caring community here.
And every year we celebrate Tet in one another's houses, with the frail, gray-haired Moms doing most of the cooking, wives doing some cooking and a lot of laughing and gossiping, the guys gambling and drinking, with lots of Vietnamese karaoke for everyone, and with the next generation off in another room playing Dance Dance Revolution or Rock Band or whatever's on the Wii
Happy New Year everyone!
juicy couture bags says
They looked so ridiculous with helmet heads walking around Wally World like Mad Max rejects. Another prime example of why there's a website called People of Walmart =D!
So tell us Mechgogo, is it customary to shop around a store with your motorcycle helmet perched on your head? Or using it as a shopping basket to carry the BBQ sauce?
eczema free forever says
I have watched this movie
Sad Song of Yellow Skin
Michael Rubbo, 1970, 58 min 5 s
A film about the people of Saigon told through the experiences of
three young American journalists who, in 1970, explored the
consequences of war and of the American presence in Vietnam. It is not
a film about the Vietnam War, but about the people who lived on the
fringe of battle. The views of the city are arresting, but away from
the shrines and the open-air markets lies another city, swollen with
refugees and war orphans, where every inch of habitable space is
coveted.
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[email protected] says
Hi Mike, I knew Steve a few years before his illness. I loved him deeply and have never forgotten him. What can you tell me about him, as the last I heard from him was when he decided to go to India to die. Best, Deborah