Orientalism and construction of vietnamese women’s subjectivities the case of the scent of green papaya 1993 and the third wife 2018

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES DO THI MINH ANH ORIENTALISM AND CONSTRUCTION OF VIETNAMESE WOMEN’S SUBJECTIVITIES: THE CASE OF THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA (1993) AND THE THIRD WIFE (2018) SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS (ENGLISH LANGUAGE) Supervisor: Hoang Thi Thanh Hoa (M.A) Ha Noi, 2020 ACCEPTANCE PAGE I hereby state that I: Do Thi Minh Anh, QH2016.E32, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purpose of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper Signature of Approval: Supervisor‟s Comments & Suggestions _ _ _ _ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude for my supervisor, Mrs Hoang Thanh Hoa, she has been the most supportive and positive teacher that I can ask for In every of our conversation, she had always transmitted positive energy and warm caring Without her great source of encouragement and patient guidance, I would not have finished the thesis on time I would like to express my gratitude to my lecturer, Ms Phung Ha Thanh This thesis would not be possible without her acceptance and encouragement at early stage During the process, although Ms Thanh is not my supervisor, she gave my constructive comments and never refused my questions, even when she was busy with her research I am wholeheartedly thankful for having a chance to meet her and being her student in my academic experiences To Phuong Anh, Thao and Hoan – my thesis comrades, thank you for constructive discussions, for sharing with my constant moodiness ABSTRACT This thesis is a humanities-oriented study that examines the construction / (re) presentation of Vietnamese women by oversea Vietnamese directors in movies: The Scent of Green Papaya (1992) and The Third Wife (2018) Borrowing Edward Said‟s framework of "Orientalism", this thesis interrogates the construction of Vietnamese women in correlation with colonial discourse in the two movies by analyzing their plot and cinematic language It demonstrates that both movies construct Vietnamese woman‟s subjectivities under the influences of colonial stereotypes about Oriental women The study clarifies the differences between the two films in how the directors use colonial stereotypes If in The Scent Of Green Papaya (1993), Tran Anh Hung used those stereotypes in a creative way, offered a different perspective about Vietnamese women The Third Wife (2018), Ash Mayfair‟s use is mere reproduction and reinforcement of the colonialist discourse about Oriental women Luận án nghiên cứu định hướng nhân văn tìm hiểu xây dựng / (tái) thể chủ thể tính phụ nữ Việt Nam đạo diễn hải ngoại hai phim: Mùi đu đủ xanh (1992) Người vợ ba (2018) Mượn quan điểm lý thuyết từ khuôn khổ "Đông phương luận" Edward Said, luận án nghiên cứu việc xây dựng chủ thể phụ nữ Việt Nam mối tương quan với diễn ngôn thực dân thơng qua phân tích cốt truyện ngơn ngữ điện ảnh phim Nghiên cứu hai phim xây dựng chủ thể phụ nữ Việt Nam ảnh hưởng từ khuôn mẫu thực dân phụ nữ phương Đơng Nó làm rõ khác hai phim việc biểu diễn khuôn mẫu Cụ thể, với trường hợp Mùi Đu Đủ Xanh (1993), Trần Anh Hùng sử dụng khn mẫu cách sáng tạo, góp phần mang lại góc nhìn khác phụ nữ Việt Nam Trường hợp Người Vợ Ba (2018), Ash Mayfair sử dụng khn mẫu để minh họa tái sản xuất diễn ngôn thực dân phụ nữ phương Đông CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In this study, I have avoided use of the term “Vietnam” to refer not only to the spaces which the state took that name only in 1802 For consistency with other sources, I use the name “Vietnam” to refer to the contemporary nation-state, as is common in English-language studies Background of the Study “They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.” – (Marx, 1852) Images of Vietnam have been brought to international forums thanks significantly to French and American colonists as they spread their propaganda about colonial lands since the 18th century Served as one of the most effective propaganda tools, French and American cinema enhanced the emergence of Vietnamese topic in late 1960s, after the invasion of the U.S in Vietnam Movies receiving attention from global audiences can be listed including The Quiet American (1958), Indochine (1992) with 12 Oscar awards, Dien Bien Phu (1992) with Cesar nomination, L’Amant (1992) with Cesar award These movies achieved huge success not only at the box office, but also won many prestigious film awards According to Norindr (1996), French cinema, as well as Western cinema in general has contributed to nostalgically recreating the myths and legitimate narratives which have rationalized the colonial presence in Vietnam, instead of problematizing imperialist narratives (Norindr, 1996) Hollywood cinema has some differences in comparison to French movies as it mainly revolves around political conflicts or aggressive wars Nonetheless, it also creates stereotypes about Vietnamese people to propagate and justify the colonial invasion in the 20th century Vietnamese people are represented in American cinema primarily through images of vicious crafty soldiers, as opposed to the masculine, upright American soldiers; Vietnamese women through the image of sexually promiscuous, ignorant whores or traitors, defenseless girls wearing Ao Dai, mysterious leaf hats Those become the most pervasive stereotypes to be utilized by mainstream media to depict Vietnamese Before 1980, Vietnamese people could hardly represent themselves on the international forum Foreign viewers get to know about Vietnamese people through foreign cinema products and images that represent "a flirtation with the exotic rather than an attempt at any genuine intercultural understanding" (Marchetti, 1993) To borrow Edward Said‟s term, these constructions are derived in a greater sense from the Western tradition of Orientalism, representing a depraved, unchanging, backward East None of Vietnamese director‟s films about Vietnamese people can resonate globally However, movies of overseas Vietnamese filmmakers have achieved certain success, expanding the voice of Vietnamese people After 1980, a number of films about Vietnam produced by overseas Vietnamese directors receive attention form global forum This can be considered the first voice about Vietnamese people by “so-called” Vietnamese people Some movies that achieved resounding success in the international market can be listed are The Scent Of Green Papaya (1993), Cyclo (1995), Three Seasons (1999), The Vertical Ray Of The Sun (2000) The Buffalo Boy (2004), Owl and the Sparrow (2007), The Third Wife (2018) This, in part, is due to the fact that foreign filmmakers work in foreign markets However, the main reason is that Vietnamese oversea filmmakers taken into account the Western discourse about Vietnamese people in those movies to be accessible to Western audiences Vietnamese oversea directors‟ movies distinguish from other Western work about Vietnam in that these two movies are directed by Vietnamese and inspired by their experiences in their homeland Oversea filmmakers created an intervening zone where Western and Vietnamese filmic representations of Vietnam collide According to Naficy (2001), the quest for diasporic directors is about constructing and de-constructing identities in their movies Accordingly, for Vietnamese oversea directors, the quest is to reconstruct Vietnamese‟s subjectivities by managing between Orientalism narrative about Vietnamese people, Vietnamese narrative of Vietnamese people and the director's own imagination about Vietnam This paper examines how oversea filmmakers rebuilt the image of Vietnamese women based on the dominant Western-generated discourse about Vietnamese people To be more specific, this thesis studies the construction of Vietnamese women‟s subjectivities in The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) (directed by French Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung) and The Third Wife (2018) (directed by American Vietnamese director Ash Mayfair) The reason why I choose these two movies is that after examining movies of Vietnamese overseas directors, these two movies are among the most popular, resonating on the international forum Both focused on Vietnamese women in early modern era Both films have created images of Vietnamese, especially women under the influence Oriental discourse: enduring, sacrificing, voiceless, obedient women However, the two films show discussable different perspectives on Vietnamese women, which I would point out in chapter and chapter The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), with permission from the Vietnamese government, represented as a Vietnamese film, nominated for Academy Award for Best International Feature Films in 1993 The movie won the César Award for Best First Feature Film, Caméra d'Or prize at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for the 1993 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film According to Tran Anh Hung, the movie was inspired by his mother and his childhood memories in Vietnam Taking the context of Vietnam and starring Vietnamese actors, the movie was shot and was financed entirely in France It sets the scene in 1950s Vietnam, tells the story about a servant named Mui, working for a rich family and later for a musician The movie focuses on womanhood, motherhood, wifehood and praises Vietnamese women‟s virtues Narrating through the maturity of Mui, the director introduces a traditional Vietnamese space, the daily life of the Vietnamese people, the way they manage their familial relationships, and men-women relationships Thereby, the resigning, submissive and sacrificing Vietnamese women become throughout images regardless of status and age After nearly 30 years, The Third Wife (2018) by Ash Mayfair is the first film about a Vietnamese woman following the success of The Scent Of Green Papaya, resonated on the international forum The Third Wife movie won NETPAC Award at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, Best Artistic Contribution Award at the 2018 Cairo International Film Festival, Best Film Award of the International Category at the Kolkata, New Directors Award at the 2018 Chicago International Film Festival, and several other awards According to the director, the movie was inspired by her own family story, with the main characters inspired by her mother, her great-grandmother and herself Setting the scene in the 19th century in Vietnam, the movie features beautiful shots of the stunning nature, tranquil scenes that hide suffocation of women The main character May is a 14-year old girl becoming a third wife in a wealthy family Through her pregnancy, she gradually learns the constraint position of women in feudal society where male power shadows almost every life aspect The movie also depicts self-discovery, self- realization, and sexual aspect of women The Third Wife film, with most female film crews, showcases a feminist lens about feudal women in Vietnam, is considered a criticism on polygamy and misogyny In order to be accessible to Western audiences and to win high prizes in international forums, both films perform Vietnamese‟s subjectivities in a way that fits the colonial imagination Tran Anh Hung brings indisputable poetically beautiful shots, featuring a lush nature in perfect harmony with humans, “a tranquil Vietnam unknown to most Westerners” (Johnston, 1994) Tran Anh Hung brings indisputable poetically beautiful shots, featuring lush nature in perfect harmony with humans, “a tranquil Vietnam unknown to most Westerners” (Johnston, 1994) The Third Wife also offers stunning nature images, striking river scenes, and mystic feudal practices The Vietnamese people in these films were showcased with vividly traditional features Especially, two movies focus on Eastern women who are sexually beautiful, be exploited and oppressed by men However, unlike other Western films about Vietnam, these two films are produced by Vietnamese oversea directors, both are inspired by the directors‟ family and their experiences in their homeland Therefore, the narrative about the Vietnamese in the film has the look of the "insider" They have a special "in - between" position in comparison to films by domestic filmmakers and films by foreigners about Vietnamese people The director juggles with “outsider” Western discourse about Vietnam and the lens of “insiders” about their homeland In conclusion, The Third Wife and The Scent Of Green Papaya can be considered as the first voice of Vietnamese people about Vietnamese women on the international forum Its success is thanks to the fact that both films perform Vietnamese‟s subjectivities in very strong affinity with colonial discourse like some Western movies However, it also distinguishes from other works by Westerners as the oversea directors have the “insider” position when making movies about their home land because their movies are based on their own family and childhood memories Thus, Vietnamese women‟s subjectivity manifests via the line between colonial discourse and how Eastern position themselves Statement of Research Problems: The aim of this study is to examine the construction of women‟s subjectivity based on the colonial fantasies about Vietnamese women in The Scent of Green Papaya (1992) and The Third Wife (2018) By „subjectivities‟, I refer to the women‟s identities that are made visible as they are treated as the main subject of the two movies More specifically, I look at the women‟s virtues, roles, agency and their position in society I pay attention to not only the female characters but also other relevant elements that constitute their subjectivities, including their living spaces and relationships with others To interrogate the power relations active in the construction of these subjectivities and evaluate how the movies contribute to what is possible to think about Vietnamese women, I address these virtues and roles in correlation with Orientalist stereotypes of Vietnamese women Thus, this study demonstrates that the two movies construct women‟s subjectivity under enormous influences of colonial fantasy about passive, sexual promiscuous, inferior Eastern women However, while The Scent Of Green Papaya used those stereotypes as material to offer an Eastern perspective, The Third Wife simply reproduced Western discourse about Vietnamese women In The Scent of Green Papaya, Tran Anh Hung showed skillful handling of preexisting colonial discourse as while did not disrupt the network of stereotypes that have shaped the colonial images of Eastern women, he offered Eastern perspective by countering Western notion of inferior women Thereby, women's endurance, sacrifice, and servitude not suggest inferior position to men, but rather traditional Confucianism virtues Vietnamese women are inferior and superior at the same time The Third Wife portrayed women's tragedy, oppression to criticize patriarchal society and focuses on female eroticism The movie ends its narratives by confirming oppressive, worthless female status Thereby, the director reinforces the notion of barbarous Eastern society, hypersexual, oppressed women who are in need of Western liberation Buddha is a symbol of nobility, representing the virtues people want to learn towards If Westerners mostly worship Christianity, Buddha to the East is also an important religion that is imprinted in many aspects of life In the film, images of Buddha's face appear in many frames since Mui moved to the Khuyen house For the first time, Buddha's face appeared when Khuyen sat and read books, Mui walked over him to clean the house Khuyen picked up the Budha statue to look at and was inspired to paint the portrait of Mui The second time Budha appeared was when Khuyen's fiancé was suffering because she realized that Khuyen had a crush on Mui, she wanted to smash it, but then she put it down The third time Budha's face appeared was at the end of the film, when Mui became Khuyen‟s wife, the statue lay behind her, recorded in a straight shot of the character's portrait Three occurrences of the statue represent the three major developments in the position of the Mui: the helper, the lover, the wife of Khuyen Regardless of the position, take care for Khuyen in the position of the helper, or when she has become a lover, and when she is a wife, the silent, cultivating and sacrificing qualities of the woman in Mui are still valuable qualities, which the director compares to Buddha This is where the Western views of the woman are broken: women serve, endure, and cultivate wholeheartedly for men, but that is not a manifestation of ignorance or a captive slavery, it is a manifestation of the noble qualities that East Asians cherish For The Scent Of Green Papaya, all the patience, silence and sacrifice that a woman makes is a manifestation of love and noble virtues The opposition between Mui and Khuyen’s fiance These two characters are built with completely opposite personalities While Mui is a typical of Vietnamese women who is quiet, gentle and obedient; Khuyen's fiance is a westernized girl These two characters bring two opposite beauties Mui is quiet, patient, and careful, her beauty is hidden Meanwhile, Khuyen's fiancé attracts attention from the high bun hair, sparkling shoes The way they seduce men also shows the contradiction between the West and the East: one is the elusive, passive, silent; one is direct and proactive Khuyen ends up choosing Mui for many reasons First of all, he concerns about breaking the Eastern relationship between men and women, and also because he was fascinated by the Asian characters in Mui Khuyen has very few lines, but his piano reveals many things When he was with his Westernized fiancé, the sound of the piano was intense and fast, and it only softened when he was with Mui It suggests the nature of Eastern people that tends to love simplicity and peace It should be noted that the choice of Khuyen is not a strengthening of male dominance but rather because Khuyen also has Asian traits He later teaches Mui how to read and write, which indicates that he respected and placed the woman in an equal position with him The Western resistance can also be seen in the character Mui Although she was intrigued by the Western style sparkling girl's shoe, she still chose not to put on her feet The detail of the painting on the wall appears twice in the film: when compared to the image of Mui and when compared to the image of the fiancée in the mirror, it contributes to emphasizing the embrace of Vietnamese tradition Aesthetic Vietnamese traditional features The director describes the traditional characteristics of the Vietnamese under the aesthetic lens and creates details to describe and praise the Eastern beauties This is shown both visually and narratively The film is set in Saigon in the 1950s The entire film is shot on the premises of the house, with small, cozy spaces filled with Vietnamese spirit The mistress's houses were built in the old Vietnamese style House materials are mainly exquisitely carved wood Indoor decorations such as ceramic vases, Buddha statues and rice bowls also feature Eastern patterns Many close-up shots featuring traditional Vietnamese items such as antique vases, bonsai pots, traditional healing tools or moon lute instruments create a strong sense of a traditional Vietnamese space Khuyen‟s house offers more Westernized features such as a bookshelf, a piano, and a tiled floor However, the most intimate spaces in the house are still traditional such as the bedroom, the residence of Mui, the kitchen This shows that the director celebrated Vietnamese traditions and embraced Eastern values The harmony between people and nature was captured beautifully Almost every frame can see the appearance of plants, insects, and vegetables grown indoors This creates a peaceful, cozy space, a space where people and nature get along and stick together The sound used in the film is mainly from nature: the sounds of birds, crickets, rain The number of lines in the movie is extremely small, mostly short sentences, in a conversation there is usually only one speaker and the other silent or extremely short answer This, along with the way the movie was shot, creates a very slow movie tempo, affection for calm and composure The small, silent features of Vietnamese people are also skillfully captured Many of the window images appear in the frame to create a sense of depth of the frame while also creating a narrower frame For example, in the scene where the father and son are playing music, the camera is placed behind the door frame, facing two people in the small room Or in the scene of the mistress returning to the bedroom after finding out that her husband had left again, the image of her hiding behind two door frames in the dark This arrangement makes the character seem to be caught in a tight, cramped space, increasing the little feeling of the people in the movie Summary This chapter begins with analyzing the way female subjects appear in the film through the aspects of female relationships, male and female relationships, and life space From this, the image of a small woman, resigned, sacrificed, and submissive to men matched the discourses of Eastern women produced by colonists I then analyze how the position of a woman as an inferior individual has been removed through the respect and affection of a man and through how Vietnamese traditional traits are described in an aesthetic way In conclusion, The Scent Of Green Papaya creates Vietnamese female subjects through Eastern discourse on Asian women but did not reinforce or confirm those discourses In order for the film to be accessible to the Western audience, the characteristics of Vietnamese people associated with femininity, smallness, resignation are still there but that does not prove that they are inferior to the West The director embraces the Vietnamese virtues and praises those qualities of women as the traditional noble qualities of the East Dedicating the movie for his mother, through beautiful and sensual m,l footage, the director brings the image of noble, self-sacrificing, gentle Vietnamese women under the eyes of pride CHAPTER 4: THE THIRD WIFE Almost 30 years after The Scent of Green Papaya film released, The Third Wife by Ash Mayfair marked a resounding success of Vietnamese overseas films on the international forum, feature Vietnamese women in history Focusing on the image of traditional women, The Third Wife has a different approach to The Scent Of Green Papaya: taking the context of Vietnam in 19th century, the movie criticizes patriarchy, where men had in-born supremacy and women was confined in familial responsibility, oppression The film focuses on the image of a woman in positions of a wife, a mother; utilized female sexual aspect to show women‟s tragedies, which are having no right controlling over their lives, being exploited and suffocated in familial kinship responsibilities The center of the movie is Confucian - feminism matrix and female sexuality The director then created an oriental space of gender inequality; and erotic and homosexual women Despite creating women‟s agency by constructing their journey of self-discovery, women‟s desires and need to protest, the film still falls under the cliches of creating the image of a woman without voice, is sexual object and oppress under male domination, criticizing the patriarchy This study argues that the movie represents a universal picture of Confucianism as victims, failing to reveal women resistance and varied women‟s experiences under Confucianism society in the 19th century The failure to represent the whole picture is selective, in order to reproduce orientalist discourse of Eastern women The movie also negativizes feudal society by showcasing false customs to culminate the uncivilization of Confucian world Women’s tragedy: Confucianism- feminism matrix In The Third Wife (2018), Ash Mayfair works on the struggle for equality of Vietnamese women within a framework of Western liberalism, which includes women agency, points out that women should have control over her life Those criteria are used to claim that Vietnamese women lack of rights The film does not necessarily construct false images of Vietnamese women in male-dominated society, but it extremely depicts the image of women and their tragedies and leaves little room for female survival My argument is that the oppression of Vietnamese women portrayed in The Third Wife was climaxed to match the universally critical discourse of Confucianism Rigid customary rituals The Third Wife criticizes the rigid customary ritual imposed on women both narratively and visually Women had to forcefully perform those rituals The director uses a lot of coded and interpretable symbols to express this Marking the first step of May into her husband's house is the scene of her bowing doomly in front of the door The camera captures the image of a woman in a solemn, rigid, religious space: May bowing her head, staring fearfully into the inner space: husband‟s family members stand like statues, looking back with judgment The static, prolonged shot and the sound of the birds exaggerate a strained feeling The beginning of a marriage started with a stressful scene signals the stagnant life of a woman that lasts for the rest of her life Immediately after the first scene is the wedding scene taking place in the evening with red tones: red lanterns, tables and chairs covered with red towels, red dresses Red symbolizes good luck and happiness, but in this scene, red brings a sense of tragedy The wedding night scene of the husband and wife is stressful, formal There is no conversation between the couple The shot confines May into the space of the wedding bed, wedding curtain, while the male remains unknown The only thing suggesting his presence is the sound of footsteps and the figure of his hand holding the bow of egg, emphasizing the oppression and threat to females May was shot from a high angle, showing her frontal laying in bed, suggesting the vulnerable, victimized position The repeated shots of May confining her body into the feudal space The scene when May bowed her head in front of the yard for the first wife to check her virginity is mostly based on the director‟s imagination about traditional customs According to cultural Thu Quynh Nguyen (2019), such cultural practices like weeding egg yolk, virginity scarf not exist in Vietnamese practices The director uses these conventional images to push the woman's resignation, inferior positions to climax in the eyes of the audience, instead of reflecting true customs Misogyny Narrate about female tragedy, the film presents the misfortune that women suffer from misogyny As Confucianism maintains a patriarchal society and attaches importance to having a male heir, a female is not respected The man in the house is supreme power The image of the husband is depicted with a symbolic image of a householder holding a mouthpiece, a whip Especially in the scene when he makes his wife kneel down to seduce him in sex, the man considers his wife no different from an inferior animal or a toy to satisfy him When May became pregnant, she began to engage in an underground war between the wives in her home so that she could have a son and become an official mistress Before her, the first and second wives experienced similar desires, day and night praying for a son Paradoxically, it was the women who inadvertently reinforced gender oppression through their desire to have a son Or in the case of the maid having sexually caught having sex, she had to give up her normal life and go to the temple to become a monk Women’s agency The value of a woman is not possible outside the title of being a daughter, a wife, or a mother Women lack control over their life, they almost have no private life separated from family kinship Their life cycle is tied to the obligation to give bỉth, to be a wife: Lien started to have her first period, May began to be a wife, her second aunt was in the early spring, and the first was in his fifties The life cycle of a woman begins with the image of a silkworm, a cocoon fidgeting Silkworm cocoon makes the audience immediately associate women with little fate, no voice creatures Throughout the film is the journey of silkworm silk, exploited, until the silk is fully released, the life of a silkworm also comes to an end The three wives in the film, their work and interests revolve around serving their husbands in bed, carrying water for men, and managing household chores Each wife is constructed with very different personalities The first wife can be seen as the most repressive woman, and lives in the most orderly manner She had her own sorrow and memories, but moved away to live up to her eldest wife's duties: though she dislikes May, she still teaches and helps her to give birth; suffers from losing her unborn child but she still contemplates family work from the cult, funeral,… When a woman fails to be a wife to be a daughter, there is no space for her in feudal society The story proves that this is the death of Tuyet Her father's words "What did you to make this family suffer?" This is your only duty but you can‟t it right?” and his turning away has put an end to Tuyet's existence in feudal society Unlike The Scent Of Green Papaya movie, the women in The Third Wife refuse to be content to resign their life of patience, they seek to struggle to escape the social constraints imposed on the woman Thus, the author has created a suffocating, draconian society, where women have almost no escape but death The film's narrative pushes the rivalry between feminism and patriarchal society to a climax and gives the woman very limited or almost no survival space Either they live according to the norms imposed by society, either choose death or seek a male identity The metaphorical image of Tuyet's turning into a moth suggested the only way out for May: it was for both herself and her child to eat poison leaves When Lien cuts her long hair, which symbolizes femininity, she chooses herself another gender identity: to be a man "to have a lot of wives" Even in the way women seek liberation, the power shadow of men still exists, women only have to go into the way of choosing for themselves a male identity to continue life The movie ends it narrative by reaffirming the notion of Orientalism about a barbarous society constraining women Women sexual aspects A key narrated element throughout the film is women sexuality The film depicts women as a sexual object for men and engages them with homoeotic love and illicit sexual relationships This is most evident in the May character and the second wife character Right from the first scene, in the wedding of May, the second wife appeared with the image of highly sexualized: singing folk songs about the beauty of the woman, her eyes fluttering in love In the scene on the stream, close up shot to the character‟s skin, wet hair, breast turns Xuan mistress into a sexuality object In terms of sex, the second wife also fits into the stereotype of "promiscuous exotic Oriental female." If her daily life followed the special feudal rituals that held the inferior to husband position, she was especially active in sex She knows how to seduce men and actively teaches May how to satisfy herself and to satisfy her husband Her illicit relationship with Son, her husband‟s stepchild also suggested the same thing With May, she goes through the process of discovering gender identity when she learns that she has feelings for her second wife On the one hand, this detail showing an image of a woman who has her own point of view, struggle for love and an understanding of her own desires, on the other hand this detail reinforces the stereotypes of the East as a fertile ground for sex and homosexuality gender To center as a civilized one, European perceive the Middle East, which can also apply for the Orient as a whole “as rampant with homosexual libertinism in the European heterocentric tradition, which categorized gayness as moral perversity and mapped homosexuality onto the discourse of Orientalism.” (Averbuch) The images of homoerotic loves have been largely engenderd after the journey of European authors to the East as they othering the Orient involved a conceptual homosexualization of the Middle East built on exoticized beliefs and myths (Bleys et al, as cited in Averbuch) Therefore, the self-discovery of May has reinforcing the uncivilized and sexually promiscuous Oriental image Conclusion This chapter begins by revealing the point of view in which the director used to rebuild the Vietnamese image: feminist point of views Accordingly, Vietnamese women appear as individuals without freedom, being oppressed under male power, thus possible for a sharp critic of Confucianism society In addition, the sexual aspect and gender identity are also incorporated into the film, depicting women with a rich, active sex life, entangled in illicit relationships Overall, the female and Vietnamese society in the film is created under close correlation with Orientalism This construction failed to generalize the richness and complexity in Vietnamese women‟s life The selective depiction shows an illustration of colonial discourse about Asian women, having been given legitimacy by the director ‟s status as a woman and the claim that the story is based on her own family CONCLUSION This study sparked as I noticed different reaction from two audience groups for films directed by Vietnamese overseas directors about their mother country While the films received a lot of praise and praise from the foreign public, particularly the West, it failed to touch the hearts of domestic viewers for its alienation Under the light of Orientalism critic by Edward Said, I study how the oversea directors has recreated the image of Vietnamese people, namely Vietnamese women under stereotypes about them produced by colonists Accordingly, they worked on the norms of an inferior, ignorant, civilized East, inferior Eastern women, oppressed by men and unable to be free under the patriarchal regime This study shows two different ways of interacting with preexisting stereotypes and creative of the two directors Both films show the immense influence of colonial discourse in creating female subjects However, with Tran Anh Hung's case, the film stands at the borderline between the East and the West, using the same rigid dimensions to assert that the East has its own value systems, showing the female image of endurance of sacrifice not because of their inferiority but by the virtues of noble traditions In the case of Ash Mayfair, the film was considered a modern perspective as many articles pointed out, but failed to resisting producing stereotypes that underscores their productive origin, which is colonialist stereotypes about the East Under the strong expansion of cultural hegemony, I think it is important that we can see and appreciate ourselves under our own lens, not the West lens REFERENCES Averbuch, A (n.d.) 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Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scent_o Tyagi, R (2014) Understanding Postcolonial Feminism in relation with Postcolonial and Feminist Theories International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 1(2) doi:10.30845/ijll Tran, D T (2019, September 5) Khái niệm người Việt biến động lịch sử Retrieved November 16, 2019, from http://tiasang.com.vn/-khoa-hoc-congnghe/Khai-niem-nguoi-Viet-duoi-nhung-bien-dong-lich-su-20590 VietHoang Media (2018, September) phim nghệ thuật tiêu biểu đạo diễn Việt kiều Retrieved May 10, 2019, from https://vietgiaitri.com/4-bophim-nghe-thuat-tieu-bieu-nhat-cua-cac-dao-dien-viet-kieu-20180901i3349202/? VietHoang Media (2018, December 3) Phim Việt kiều: Xu hướng phát triển Điện ảnh Việt Nam Retrieved November 19, 2019, from https://vietgiaitri.com/phim-viet-kieu-xu-huong-phat-trien-moi-cua-dien-anh-vietnam-20181203i3609694/? ... by the Westerners, thereby managing to create their Vietnamese image In chapters and 3, I will study that construction in the case of The Scent of Green Papaya and The Third Wife CHAPTER 3: THE. .. this thesis studies the construction of Vietnamese women‟s subjectivities in The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) (directed by French Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung) and The Third Wife (2018) ... women in The Scent of Green Papaya (1992) and The Third Wife (2018) By ? ?subjectivities? ??, I refer to the women‟s identities that are made visible as they are treated as the main subject of the two