Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 502 - Does Staying "Politically Correct" Ruin Your Relationship With Your Elders? - Van Tran Nguyen

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502 - Does Staying "Politically Correct" Ruin Your Relationship With Your Elders? - Van Tran Nguyen · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today I have a wonderful guest, Dr. Van Trinowin.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: She is a multi-hifinid in the real sense.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have accomplished a lot.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just the one movie alone, like when I watch the movie that we did, the mother load, just watching of that alone and kind of understanding all the positions that we play just on that film.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: on your own personal profile, your own bio, you know, I'm just blown away.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's so much here to talk about, but I think we will open it up with the mother load, the movie that you produce, so we can stretch things out and have a understanding of your ecosystem.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's what a wonderful and generous introduction.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I wish I could bring you everywhere and having you introduce me like that.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's very lovely.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so like as you said, I'm a filmmaker and I'm a scholar.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I also teach at the University of Georgetown.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I made a movie called The Mother Load, and The Mother Load is a film that stars just my mother and I.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we revisit stories that are often told about the American War and Vietnam.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: just using our bodies to, like, interrogate, you know, the, the, like source material, what it gets wrong, what it gets right, and, and the movie is a narrative film, so it's also kind of the fictional story about a mother and daughter trying to find each other and understand each other within all of the fiction of their own people's history.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: will recognize the real amount of brain power that you have.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you've acted in it in multiple roles.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: You wrote it, you could write it, I'm sure you produced it as well, of course.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those four things are in and of itself positions in the business of making a movie.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really, and it's refreshing, and as a Vietnamese person, for me, it really shows how much you understand the struggle of what diaspora kids go through, and then you understand really the lens of how America has watched Vietnamese people through the lens of war films.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: intriguing to watch all this go down in your project in the muddle.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: How did you get started with the arts?
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder, what was your upbringing?
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for that question.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I was born of Vietnam.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I came here when I was five, like my mom.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And,
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know, being like resourceful Vietnamese people, like immigrants, my family was pretty vehemently against the arts because it's, you know, this gigantic risk.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it seems you and I didn't grow up with artists.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: at all.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't grow up with filmmakers.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just knew that I problem solved in a way that was creative and probably I problem solved in a way that was like closer if you analyzed it closer to how artists problem solved and then maybe someone that is like more perhaps like
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just knew that this is a language that, or like, my personal language of how I kind of see the world.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I couldn't really resist it.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I went to school for, I have like, an undergraduate degree in biology because I was lying to my family and everyone.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: that I would, you know, eventually get into medicine, which is, you know, every kind of immigrant parents dream.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I would go to those classes and walk in through the doors and just felt like everyone had a secret code that I didn't know because I didn't really belong there.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I took a ton of art classes and I took enough art classes or I think an advisor to be like, do you think you want to do this?
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it hadn't dawned on me that it was even a possibility.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I didn't tell them that I was doing it.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't tell my family.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it just felt like, I don't feel understood in any other capacity than this.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like this is the place where I feel like I'm fully understood and I can be myself.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: token of art classes that I ended up getting like an art dual degree.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had a professor offer me kind of like a studio assistant position.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's how I started to work towards like my MFA because he was the head of our MFA program at the time.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he said, I think this is like you have a shot of this.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then it was there in my MFA that I met another artist Kathy High,
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: that you can continue on and I ended up getting my PhD in electronic arts and media.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, it was the right mentorship and the right folks that really saw me as I was, that I got to become the person that I've always wanted to be.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right, I was like shepherded by other folks that I think, you know, saw themselves in me as well.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your mom plays a huge role, literally, and probably figuratively in your life, and in the mother load.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when you get a degree in biology and an expectation is to go to medical school or follow a health care profession.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking at the movie and watching it thinking the whole time on my fingers, how much did mom have an effect on you because it seems like she was taking direction,
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: going along with your plan and I've so many questions when it comes to your relationship with your mother because on the one hand it seems that she's like playing along with you and it's a fun kind for her but the other side of it is I'm wondering how much she understands what you're writing for her to say as well.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah and how much in it quote unquote in it
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, I mean, she is, we kind of wrote it with her in mind.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the movie started off with, well, one I was writing my dissertation and thinking about like,
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know like Vietnamese media and how like the diaspora Vietnamese people were you know like looking at Paris by night like how it is that they wanted to assert themselves right in American in like American media or like um and so I like started to kind of look at a lot of this uh like a lot of like movies that were like Vietnam War movies or movies that were
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I realized really quickly that, you know, the Vietnam War movie itself is a genre, but you can't name as many famous Vietnamese actors as you can these movies.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, all of this kind of points towards the fact that like, these movies are looking to like, freehab, kind of a perspective of, um, you know, like this like failed war on, like, for, for Americans, it's trying to like kind of rehab this like, you know, like American failure.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like it means people just happened to be a by-product of it, right?
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, but it seems like the, like, the diaspora in these movies, because, like, an accident.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and so as a standard for a stand-in precisely, right?
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, or, you know, like, you, it, it's, it's, it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: literally scenery, like, you know, in, in, like, happy lunches, maybe, like, we were the scenery that's family, story, and, and, and, and watching these movies, I couldn't help but, but notice that.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, and, and, obviously, my lived experience as, like, a Vietnamese person growing up in, like, Western New York where it's not diverse at all, I couldn't help to also reflect on that type of isolation.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, so, you know, the interesting thing about my mom and I,
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's that we were extremely close and we like a way in which she like learns English is that we watch movies together with the subtitles on and so one of the movies that we watched you know in 2020 during the pandemic together was Spike Lee's defy blood, which is like his kind of hat tossed into the ring of like the war movie.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: and it's so interesting because I have a lot of respect for him as a filmmaker and yet I watched this movie and I felt like he fell into the same trappings of like very specific ways in which you know like a lot of directors that to talk about Vietnamese people as some type of prop as some type of problem right like the polemic and so um
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I watched it with her and I made a lot of assumptions about how it is that I would like to be seeing or we would like to be seeing and it's really interesting because she's like well I don't know that I exactly feel that way or there's like some things that we just get so wrong and in that conversation I realized that there's a lot that like is not said between families even so much so that we like if I were to now you know
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: write my own story.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know that I could do her story justice.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so like there was where this kind of conversation began.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And both my husband and I, you know, it kind of like interviewed her and talked to her for a really long time.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: about like, you know, these errors, what these movies get wrong, what they get right, what she sees in them, because she does go out of her way to swatch them as well.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we wrote this script for her and we wrote this script in both English and Vietnamese.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like a truly bilingual story.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I wrote it all in English.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had it translated in Vietnamese.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: for her to read and for her to approve of, right?
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because I didn't want her to say anything that wasn't let that is disingenuous to her experience.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't want any of the critiques to feel like it fell short of like what she wanted to say.
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so yeah, she was she was in on the storytelling aspect of it.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like also the thing that I kind of wanted to like highlight
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know there's there there are a lot of aspects of this movie that is like critical and biting but it's also deeply funny because like when we watch these movies together you know she she's she is kind of joyful because she gets to see the Vietnam which is like a huge deal right like like Vietnam you know updated or Vietnam however one perceives it to be right so so for her it's kind of a bit like of an exciting adventure too but yeah she was in on the
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: She got to read the scripts.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: She got to change the dialogue.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it felt like her very natural in the way that she talked and the pacing.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she was pretty involved in the making of it.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So hence, the mother allowed.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a very complex script.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't follow traditional storytelling, Hollywood storytelling.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I watched it and I said this deserves to be watched a few more times because it's almost like watching you as a professor tell us some ideas and teaches point out things that most of us don't understand and I think I wanted to find out from you
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you sound to make a film like this, it's not like it's not traditional linear storytelling.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you come up with this way of telling the story and know that it's the right form and know that it is gonna work?
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was the biggest thing.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I watch, I was like, mechanically, how did she know that this is going to,
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: work because it kind of like, um, I mean, it could be a stage play, too.
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you could do a two person year in your mom can take this show in the road, for sure, easily, and I think it would work.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it was a wrist.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not yet.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not like a kind of like traditional five-act structure by any means.
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I just felt like it wasn't, um,
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: because this was like my debut future.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just felt like it wasn't worth it to kind of play into whatever genre or, you know, like in satirizing movies, like the, you know, the Vietnam War movie, which are very specific genres.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I follow a very specific three or five-act structure.
• 13:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I knew that in order to kind of critique it and make it my own, I couldn't exactly fall into any of those trappings.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, yes, it was like a gigantic risk to play every single role and to have my mom also play, you know, also, you know, 30 roles as well.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had a feeling that.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I wanted to really like.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: poke holes at this story.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was going to have to do it in a way that was like deeply, like creative or innovative.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't, I wasn't going to use the same language.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I'm going to like hold them accountable, right?
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like it was like the thing where I kept the text or the scripts, I also reenact for those who haven't watched it yet.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: My mom and I re-enact shop for shots, some scenes from famous Vietnam War movies, like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, etc., and we do it all on like a stage in a high school, right?
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it kind of looks like a high school play, because the point of these movies is that Vietnam is a character, and that it could be anywhere, right?
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like Stanley Kubrick's film was shot in like London in England, right?
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it was supposed to be Vietnam.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, the point is that these are all fake stages, because it's not a way to talk about Vietnam.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a way to kind of like ostracize or make Vietnam like the perpetual other.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, in this particular case, we wanted to be really like playful and creative about these reenactments,
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: because in a way, like the way in which Vietnamese people are represented in these movies is a satire of Vietnamese people, right?
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a satire of like, you know, like famously famous, like Frances Corp. Ford Coppola talks about his film apocalypse now.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: He says, you know, my film isn't about Vietnam.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is Vietnam, so that when you watch that interview, you think yourself what an insane person.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, how could you possibly think that?
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, therefore, to kind of reenact some of the absurdity of these like, you know, celebrated directors and what they think about their movies, we kind of thought about making it as cheeky as possible.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: What if this was like all a high school play?
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what if, you know, kind of, you had to revisit some of these scripts that were written and celebrated, but two Vietnamese women say it, right?
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And my mom's Vietnamese, like, accented Vietnamese language
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: like how uncomfortable would it feel if you heard that.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And how uncomfortable it must feel to be a Vietnamese person that feels even more other than then she usually does watching these movies.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's what these movies do especially for me and that's like kind of the thesis statement is that it continues to render the other.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: It makes Vietnamese people even more foreign, you know, as a diasporic people.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: when you recreate these scenes in new big war films and then you have these directors and you're playing all of these the roles.
• 16:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: You think about how truly absurd the thinking is but that's just level one.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because when you think about level two, level three is those guys and their vision are affecting entire United States
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it affects the general public and then it affects the military and then it affects the leaders that are making decisions for Afghanistan, for Syria, for Palestine.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is doing all of that dirty work.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: A question is do we think that these directors actually know how they're
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do they know that they're polluting it upstream?
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or do they just think that they're oh tours and they're just giving their vision to the world?
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it's a great question.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's the question that I have.
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the question that carries the movie.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is there such thing as an anti-war film?
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's impossible.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's impossible to make an anti-war film.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because in making a war film, you are recreating and resurrecting these tableaux that are beautiful about the apocalyptic tragedy of life, of a nation's life.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it renders this, it puts this nation on ice.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you say, like, okay, so there's this really awful word association game when you say Vietnam.
• 18:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: people in America immediately think the war, right?
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's like no kind of other memory.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's no other public memory that has replaced this like really apocalyptic event for our people.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so obviously making stories about it, there's consequences.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And whether or not I think these filmmakers know what they're doing consequently, I think that's like a question of intent and as like an artist,
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm it's complicated.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes I feel like, you know, intention matters and sometimes I don't I don't know.
• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, but, you know, for someone, like, you know, so say someone like Francis for a couple of who says, you know, this movie isn't about Vietnam.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is Vietnam.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that, I think you know, exactly what he's doing.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do, I do, because I don't, I think it's really over-simplifying it to not recognize critically the power that these men have over our nations like shared memory and history.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know, like I think it's really, um, I don't know, I think it's really irresponsible, and that's like the other kind of criticism that I have.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And at points, the movie skewers, this, then, is like, you know, kind of saying that there's like this gigantic responsibility that was taken extremely lightly, um, which I think goes to show, you know, and obviously it
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I think it all is of a piece.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's all the products of these films.
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know what it has a lot to do with the root cause of this.
• 20:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, as a as like a young person, I, you know, like walking down the street in Western New York, I heard people scream, you know, out there, car window.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: We love you long time to me, not ever having, you know, like, you know,
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so the memory of a lot of maybe, I would say, like, generations before us, the memory of a lot of, like, Vietnamese people are in these movies, right?
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So like, they saw the me love you long time seen before they saw an actual Vietnamese person in real life, right?
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think being like,
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: culture makers and, you know, like filmmakers who are very powerful, I think that there are like real consequences to the work that that is already done, right?
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like there's a little bit of like damage that we inherit as like immigrants when we come into like a country or refugees and therefore,
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that there should be a little more care.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, a lot more care invested in ways in which war is taught or told.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And even in schools, I was never taught about the American war in Vietnam, right?
• 21:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like in the textbooks, there is, you know, like two or three pages.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the first image that I see in a textbook is of like,
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: like of like the meal I massacre, which is like you know, children that have died, and that's the first vision of Vietnamese people that I see kind of officially like, you know, like in my educational journey.
• 21:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So therefore, I think that yeah, they hold a lot of consequences.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: They hold a lot of weight fee stories.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the reason I live there is because I don't want to divide the diasporic, sort of, there's so many generations or so many different viewpoints about Vietnam within our Vietnamese diaspora.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that, I say it's of the purgatory
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I do believe that we should be able to make jokes about things, right?
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know where to draw the line sometimes in my mind.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think I do this for sometimes, so I can see who's shizzling.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: out the kind of the corrected border that I can play in.
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I can never get the correct answer because on one end I do believe that guys like Huong Gao, the new acting secretary of Navy should not be making jokes like what you did about the Ku Klux Klan, about making slits and giving him a good.
• 23:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, I do believe in our first amendment rights to say whatever we want.
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I live in this strange place all the time, and I'm trying to make sense of it all.
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you stand with all this?
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think the,
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's incredibly fair for you to be like really measured about it and I think it's really complicated, right?
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm really disappointed in like the kind of bootstrapped mentalities of someone like Kunkau, right?
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that, like the look if you can't beat them, join them kind of mentality of someone that belongs
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: in his party, they'd be happy to kind of erase our people's history.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's incredibly disappointing.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like that type of, you know, like model minority perspective is, I think, incredibly limiting and painful to see.
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: um because it's um to me someone that is really like remove from their own history and I think that uh for me when I see something like that
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a symptom of supremacy doing its work.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: The fact that he has any razor of the resourcefulness of what it means to be like an immigrant and the fact that immigrants are actually suffering at the hands of the party that he believes in is to me really, really painful, right?
• 25:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a bit of a betrayal.
• 25:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the other thing is that I think it's really,
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, on the one hand, for the movie and the stories that I tell, I'm really cautious of using very specifically like I-terms, I believe this, my family believe this.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like we grew up leaving these things to be true.
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the really beautiful thing about how diverse and large the diaspora is that many, many folks have different ways of becoming an American,
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: and different folks kind of have different allegiances and different stories.
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And therefore, that's the reason why I think I made a mother load as like, I'm throwing my hat into the ring.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm welcoming of other perspectives and I hope that there are more, right?
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that I'm not the only person that's like out here alone, like making these like, you know, straightened like comments or perspectives.
• 26:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's the thing that I like hopeful is that, you know,
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I welcome any other kind of like perspectives or commentary on this existence because I think it's really, as you said, quite complicated.
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: But like, you know, saying this kind of, you know, more like, you know, like left leaning or or, or, you know, I actually think that the statement of the movie is kind of like,
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, if we're really interested, or like constantly, if Asian American media and cinema is really interested in thinking about representation, why don't we kind of go back into the histories of how we were represented and reenact the very like, you know, stories that do us harm or erase our people's story?
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: are people who are making these things really aware that they're doing this?
• 27:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or is it just ha-ha-ha-ha times she?
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is funny to us.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's...
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: innocent to them.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because there's a difference between a diabolical, you know, I'm part of the third right.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing propaganda films for the SS, right?
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's different when you're like in the ranks and you're like, I'm purposely making movies that highlight the, the supremacy of white people.
• 27:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's a different thing when you make something where you think it's ha ha,
• 27:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: but it really creates the erasure of other people.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, there's so funny.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think these video clips about political figures or political ideas and some people are like, there's no way you're a marine.
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or they'll make, you know, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, come from that, I come from that for a public and world where I made fun of myself and being a superhead, being a goof, love me a long time, every kind of joke that I can make about myself to make myself blend in and to make other people laugh, I get it.
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think to myself, at the time I had no idea what I was doing, I just wanted to get
• 28:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: of the films that are made, not that they're humorous or the comical, but the directors have the idea of just, you know, this is the bit on the weak spirits and might not be bit on some of the increased people.
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's kind of innocent and hollow all at the same time, but it's not diabolical as a filmmaker who is like I said, part of 1940s, Germany, right?
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Lenny Rife and Stahl.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you don't mean Lenny Rife and Stahl.
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 29:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the last thing.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's always like very, yeah.
• 29:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Totally.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: The thing is that she romanticizes.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: She romanticizes that third, right?
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right?
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like it's like it's viewed.
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like robust and beautiful.
• 29:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's something that you study in film school.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's obviously a tool of propaganda.
• 29:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And while propaganda is really extreme, like example of that type of filmmaking, I'm really interested in the nuances of where it slips.
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not really looking to the thing that I think is more interesting is not when a filmmaker is quote unquote being diabolical,
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: perspective it's when it kind of accidentally happens because it's within those accidents and it's when those like small conversations that people reveal themselves to, right?
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like if you look at a movie that I think is a really great perpetrator of this is good morning Vietnam, right?
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the film I call it good morning Vietnam or when the war was fun.
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because I mean it's it's Robin Williams movie carries it.
• 30:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: it's a funny movie and you know he is the star of it and he skewers everybody seemingly but if you kind of start to like look at punch for punch you know the story is you know he befriends like a young Vietnamese man who ends up being a
• 30:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, in the fact that like everyone kind of gets skewered, you start to think about, well, what's the kind of the other side of that, right?
• 31:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, even like his officials that gets skewered, you know, that like kind of stiff upper lip guy, he gets to go home and have his power.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, the, the, the kind of like sister of his love interest, he doesn't really have access to that and his best friend who ends up being a Viet Kong.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who like, you know, blows up a cafe and his own neighborhood, which is strange.
• 31:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like it, it, he, again, doesn't really have access to the same story to the same ending as everybody else.
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when you kind of look at that and like the slippages of like those like types of nuances, you kind of can't help, but I'm like, Oh, this is how you perceive us, or this is how you perceive Vietnamese people to be, right?
• 31:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're basically saying, oh, don't get close, they'll trick you.
• 32:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: and so the reading between the lines is something that I think is much more interesting, albeit not diabolical, right?
• 32:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it still is like, you know, like, funny and perhaps irreverent.
• 32:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really interested in the ways in which like these like really big, like fanfare stories are like,
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: don't look over here, we still have our very specific biases and you will always be different, but don't look over here, we're still trying to make you laugh.
• 32:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's the thing that I find like really, really interesting.
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, like our existence is really complicated, the movie itself is, you know, a comedy, because I find interestingly enough like this
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: like absurdly hilarious, you know, like I think it's like closer to absurdity than it is anything else like this, you know, like my diet diet sport reality.
• 32:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I think about our reality as Vietnamese Americans, first generation, one point five, like you, you consider yourself one point five.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Second generation like me, I think about the Indian population of Britain,
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: during the colonial period that they experienced.
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's got to be writing from thinkers like you in those periods, right?
• 33:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's got to be.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, and I just think about these things.
• 33:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if there's writers that are writing during those periods about the same way you're looking in, and you're critiquing, whatever, I think they're probably in the movies at the time, but plays, wherever, or newspaper.
• 33:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's gotta be these thinkers that wrote about it.
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But how is it hundreds of years later?
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Later, we are still experiencing the same dynamics between
• 33:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: our colonial masters and the other, how we still, it's 2026 and this stuff is still here.
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has not disappeared, it's got even worse, maybe arguably, I think.
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, you said it.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's white supremacy.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's working over time.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's working.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's working.
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's working.
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's working.
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's working.
• 34:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: The work of white supremacy is to erase.
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: People, to disappear people, to disappear stories, it's working over time, and it's deeply embedded in everything that it is that we do, right?
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, the 16-18 project is like to think about the origin of making of America to be deeply embedded in slavery and racism.
• 34:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: and a project that I'm working on right now, a book that I'm working on with my collaborator and Natalie Fleming, we look at statements like Nation of Immigrant.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: right and how often the word nation of immigrant has been weaponized to be this kind of like false empathy.
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because what it does is that erases the actual origin of the nation which is the indigenous and the indigeneity that persists and flourishes and is thriving and surviving.
• 35:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: all at the same time.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so when you say that you're a nation of immigrants, what it does is it kind of like it's undertone is a white supremacist undertone as well.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's to kind of like talk about these other forms of migration to kind of make them okay where it's completely racing the actual origin of said nation, which is it's built on the genocide
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, and constantly doing that type of stuff, again, performing these other things, right?
• 35:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: These flashy performances of empathy, culturally, it loses sight of the actual like origin, right?
• 35:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which is, you know, like the genocide of like many indigenous of indigenous populations that have lived here before and continue to live and strive and take that their land.
• 36:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to address two other things that have nothing to do with what we're talking about, it's from the motherland.
• 36:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's in the back of my mind, and I'm just like, I want to stay on this topic, but then move time and so limited sometimes.
• 36:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because not only do I want to talk about these two things, but there's other things that I want to talk about after that.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the first thing, there's two things.
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like on A, which is the soundtrack I keep hearing, Rick Hurr in the films.
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: The composer's Ivan in his daughter's granddaughter's class, she made the Ivan documentary.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I count thinking about the music rights and how complicated that's been for.
• 36:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Vietnamese people in America that use the soundtracks of this period, the people period, and it's really been a hot mess with the company that has been trying to steal the copyright.
• 37:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: of the abundance, a lot of different, I don't know what the HTC is or but so I kept thinking about the dynamics of that song and how it kept playing and the meaning of it as it relates to the Vietnamese diaspora around the world.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: The thing that's related to that, and then we get
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: got the most creative thing when I saw in your film.
• 37:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's a lot of creative things, but this is the most, I don't know how you arrived at it, but I had to talk about it.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: The scooter that you built from the parts in that room and your mother's on it, and then it placed like an eye.
• 37:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's facing me out.
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to cry thinking about it.
• 38:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: that scene.
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And somebody like me can remember when we were little kids, you're like, I'm not actually playing at there's this restaurant melancholy cotton v. And it was like a shack in LA in the 80s.
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was a little kid and we went to that restaurant and I remember the rain will come down and he's like, I don't know where we'll come on.
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And
• 38:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: There were glass that went out through the street.
• 38:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I remember thinking how many people in here wished that they were still in Vietnam.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It brought so much memory of what I thought Vietnamese people fantasize about their homeland and their home.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And watching that scene,
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: that you put together really rock me to my court.
• 38:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it really moves me when I watch that.
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll let you know about it.
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for, that's like, yeah, such a, I'm really happy you brought it up.
• 39:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like one of, I think it is, like you said, it's like a shared memory.
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, like, so might like,
• 39:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Similarly, like a memory that I have about that song, and the reason why we hear that song for the first time while that kind of like melancholic scene is happening is because it's exactly that, right?
• 39:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a song that is like, um, it's strangely like, like it sounds joyous, but if you listen to it as a diasporic person, it's very melancholic and kind of if anything, like, there's a lot of grief there.
• 39:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot of grief in terms of ownership, right, fighting for its rights that we're like to keep the rights of the music and how it can be used and you know, I remember working on my short very kind of smile trying to get a right for a Carol Kim song.
• 39:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it was also like, I think we fought pretty hard to get it, but it
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh, and by perhaps RCA or something like that, and so, you know, in the, like, psychone, I song in that part of the movie,
• 40:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I thought a lot about my kind of early memories of listening to that song.
• 40:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I thought about kind of, um, the first, you know, my first memory of being in Vietnam when I was like maybe four years old and it was like during that during the lunar new year.
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, one of my earliest memories of that song was I was four years old on a scooter and Vietnam, and then Vietnam, the scooters, the kids right in the front, between his parents legs.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I remember that it was like raining and it was like during thought, which is the lunar new year.
• 41:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I had a poncho over me, right?
• 41:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it was like tentated and I can kind of
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like the hot rain falling onto my legs and that song is playing, you know, because it's thought it plays like everywhere, right, like people are playing it in their storefront.
• 41:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just or it's like it's also like kind of like made into like eight bit and played from like, you know, stuffed animals or whatever.
• 41:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so for me, it was like this early memory of Vietnam and like the comfort and the warmth, but a little bit of nostalgia.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like I said, the lyrics are kind of like, if you look at, if you read them, it's kind of really, there's a lot of like four long and it's like a little sad, a little grief.
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so the first, that's the reason why we chose that song is that she remembers Vietnam and she has this memory and so she has to kind of cobble together which I think is really, I mean, it's common in my family,
• 41:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: common to kind of cobble together bits like bits and bobs of like, you know, one's American life to kind of remember or to kind of reflect what
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: or like, you know, deal with the memory of of home, you know, it's kind of like how we cook when we cook like Vietnamese food, right?
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like the ingredients aren't Vietnamese anymore because they were here with the point is like what these ingredients that aren't inherently Vietnamese will making this Vietnamese meal and when making these like various specific memories together.
• 42:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so that's that's why we chose that song and and and it yeah, it's
• 42:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a song that like for like a lot of like diasporic Vietnamese people at me.
• 42:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: It kind of conjures like a lot of like, you know, memories of like of grief, a four-learn of joy because it's usually played during a celebration.
• 42:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's really complicated.
• 42:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think therefore that song represents a ton holds a lot, right for for like, you know, for our memory.
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what a beautiful scene.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that is so creative.
• 43:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: But one of the most,
• 43:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: memorable parts of that film that made me question how far the power of creativity can go in inside of the mind of an artist because you know you're acting you're writing, producing, directing, the whole thing.
• 43:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then this shows up as a very specific production design.
• 43:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: issue or seen or product and the result of it is moving and when you think about just as a consumer like me or an audience person, it just gets right to the core of all these memories of all this taste and now the restaurant when I was a kid and remember when
• 43:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: just brought back this nostalgia for me wondering what went on and the adults minds about how they felt about being away from home at that time, maybe eight years, nine years away from home.
• 44:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they're so close and, you know, they'd only left for seven or eight years and that to like deal with this trauma, losing their entire lives.
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 44:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 44:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's like
• 44:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: kind of funny because I how I described like another sense memory that I think perhaps we can share is or perhaps we share is like of our parents like wailing singing these like songs and karaoke right like you like I grew up in a lot of like basements like with a hot hot or like
• 44:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and like beers and men and like like holding each other like wailing these like very kind of emotional songs And to me, it's like like I get them.
• 45:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, oh, they understand emo music Like this is there, you know, they are like, you know, wailing to like, you know, this is this is They're like us holding each other and like you know singing like my chemical romance or something right like and it's just like
• 45:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a release, it's like ways in which we work through like conflict or friction and it's like it's a deeply emotional thing.
• 45:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like there's like so much like feeling an affect there and you know and a lot of the other thing that I think is really interesting speaking of like kind of the politics and rights to music.
• 45:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's
• 45:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: a lot of this music that we hear or don't hear has been or like hear, listen to here, it like has been like you know for a while during like the Vietnam's like reconstruction era.
• 45:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: it was like censored.
• 45:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it was not music that you could actually like have access to so easily.
• 46:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because you know, it was like considered like bad for the country's morale, right?
• 46:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like building a kind of a new attitude or a new reputation.
• 46:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So like this type of music that's like for Lauren and deeply sad, it has been kind of like been limited in a lot of my parents and they're like, you know, they're young life.
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, in Vietnam.
• 46:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, so I think it's this like really great kind of like reprieve, but it's also like really kind of for Lauren.
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: She she feels a lot of brief, but it's like potential because it's right before, um, you know, before you get to kind of take a sigh of relief and we go back to Vietnam this modern day Vietnam.
• 46:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: You are a professor at Georgetown, which is no small.
• 46:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's not a small deal.
• 46:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's, I think, a really big deal to me at least.
• 46:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But to the bigger picture here, it's a big deal.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I think about Vietnam, and I knew him when he was a first year at USC, and I don't remember him being for a lot of vocal, but if I could remember back,
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's seeing what's English, you know, he's an English department guy and, you know, he's a young professor.
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I look at you, you are a young professor at a big university.
• 47:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the world, like you said, the white supremacy is working over time.
• 47:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your work is about to get even more loud, or it probably needs to be more loud, probably from your perspective.
• 47:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you're dealing with a few things I think, working in an institution like Georgetown in DC.
• 47:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's complicated because, how I think about these universities, well, they need to be funded and they need to have money coming in from.
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Devoners and federal backing, it's complicated, it's tricky, but the breeding round for intellectuals and people who are thinking about these issues, it's a patriotish of growth, of these ideas, of insurrection, of revolutions, of students come from students that that begin revolutions and protests come from universities.
• 48:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: How are you navigating all of the landmines that are potentially showing up in your way in the next decade?
• 48:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you think about this contemplated like how far you can go and you can meet through the work?
• 48:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, of course.
• 48:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's complicated.
• 48:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course.
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course.
• 48:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think about it.
• 48:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think about the history of higher ed all the time.
• 48:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I live and work, so I live and Baltimore, but I work in DC.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I do that with my design because the work that I get to do in Baltimore and like how I show up for my community, how I show up for artists and creative folks and Baltimore that I'm deeply involved in informs how I interact with students.
• 49:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It involves the way in which I'm involved in my community hopefully is reflective and like my pedagogy.
• 49:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Working in D.C. is really complicated.
• 49:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really, really complicated because the thing about like Georgetown students is that they come to D.C. and study in D.C. right to eventually like have a career and future there.
• 49:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I feel like it's my utmost responsibility to
• 49:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: think about or rather reflect upon the revolutionary histories that take place there, right, the protests.
• 49:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, we talk about our like your first amendment, like your your right, you're right to not like concede to the things that are being told to you, right, you're right to critique.
• 50:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: and you're right to be outspoken about it is one that I value and one that I impart to my students.
• 50:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, like I said, I'm a young professor, but I also, you know, before becoming a professor, I did a lot of work in terms of like independent media and, you know, I, a lot of my work and research has been built on, on folks that have our, our protesters, our folks that are
• 50:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Those are my mentors, I look up to them, and like a lot of whom are women of color, scholars of color, so these black and brown women that have gone out of their way to liking nurture and care for me, that type of mentorship is the type of mentorship that I impart on to my students, because our embodied presence is
• 50:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's also like an actor rebellion, right?
• 50:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: The fact that I'm there that I talk to my students that I teach my students about these rebellious histories is incredibly important.
• 51:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because if they go on to be really powerful people, I would like for them to know the scale of power as it pertains to the people.
• 51:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: We great answer.
• 51:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, something that you've thought about it and there is a trajectory of change
• 51:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we need more of it to be people to really think of progress because I think of times the majority of us are aligned with white proximity for the long reasons.
• 51:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the future of these older January, six types with the, yeah.
• 51:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: with the old fly, you know, it's a sad state of affairs because it's just not understanding what the political context is, you know, it's poor ignorance.
• 51:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: But how do we fight against that and pull this off with success and not
• 52:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: entirely cut off our connections to the people we love the most for our family, and I am the biggest corporate of saying this, like, oh, we don't want to be divided, we want to be united, but then I don't talk to most of my family more as a result of our, you know, we don't fight about, but we just don't do that inside, you know, what this is about, we just can't sit in the same room anymore.
• 52:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: to warm down.
• 52:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's incredibly painful, right?
• 52:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think that's what you're saying, Kenneth, and I think it's incredibly painful to have relatives that you were raised by, that you make memories with, and a lot of beautiful memories, and even complicated memories, like that you really can't, you don't see life the same way.
• 53:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I know that there's different types of grief, and you're also talking about this generational grief
• 53:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I am not the thing that I'm not interested in is throwing people out like that's not it right it's like we kind of if you have the energy and the capacity calling people in.
• 53:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: and stand in front of what you believe in and not like conceding to having to share this perspective in order to make sure that people that you love their needs are met, right, it's like something that I think is really complicated and really hard to do.
• 53:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like when it comes to like how we show for each other and how we need each other, I don't need you to agree that like what supremacy is alive and well for me to know that it is hurting both you and I if you do not understand how our legal system works because it's not translated into language.
• 54:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's ways in which we show up for each other that I think is incredibly meaningful that has almost nothing to do like with your own personal beliefs because the fact of the matter is the fabric of America is here and it's happy to diminish you.
• 54:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I am here as a person that knows it and I'm here to help in any way for you to resist these parts.
• 54:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he's like, you know, hot holes, whether or not you like believe in me or not.
• 54:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's such a great way to put it there.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's happening.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: The system is happy to diminish your cultural, if he raises you.
• 54:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the funny thing is, those between these people are also happy to diminish their own cultural light as well.
• 55:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's the tricky thing.
• 55:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: The work part, I think my brother and I thought about this quite often is,
• 55:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do we have conversations, meaningful conversations with our relatives and our friends who are on their insights, without making them feel that they're that will kind of sending that we are armed, which at least institutional knowledge coming from colleges?
• 55:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's this sort of, um,
• 55:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Resentment, it's the culture of resentment that it goes unspoken, especially with the order crowd when they're like, well, you think you know what they think you don't have to do.
• 55:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it becomes a sort of like back and forth and it's just there's no winning this anymore, you know?
• 55:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 55:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the very part about this.
• 55:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really hard.
• 55:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really hard.
• 55:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I'll be the first to say, I don't know everything.
• 56:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm relieved when I'm wrong.
• 56:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, oh, thank God, I'm wrong.
• 56:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or, you know, something like that, right?
• 56:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, like, I'm always hoping to see that there's a meeting point, which, you know, I think is an educator.
• 56:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's, that's one of the things that you can learn to help make your experience less painful.
• 56:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, the other thing that I think is, um, really, really painful and difficult is that for a lot of us, right?
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: younger generations who are queer, who are non-binary, who live a life that is maybe outside of the imagination of that of their elders, who don't exactly have elders or ancestors to talk about.
• 56:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: This very personal, very intimate experience with.
• 56:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's incredibly painful, so I understand that maybe resisting and not talking to your family is maybe the best thing that you could possibly do for yourself.
• 57:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think I mean, I think it's like regardless of whatever your cultural identity is, that's, you know, like being isolated is no one wants to do that.
• 57:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, I think it's really, I think what?
• 57:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: is important is figuring out on a case-by-case basis what matters to you, right?
• 57:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Does it matter that you're correct?
• 57:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or does it matter that you are trying to make memories with your family that is outside of talking about politics or something like that, right?
• 57:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because I'm quite similar.
• 57:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have family members that I do not talk to because we do not share a perspective that I think is pretty neutral.
• 57:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right, like, all people deserve to exist, I think that's like a pretty neutral, like a neutral stance.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, like, you know, we don't see eye to eye on that.
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have a really hard time trying to, you know, make no noise with you.
• 57:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm because it's really painful.
• 57:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, I'm all for doing exactly what you need to do to survive because I'm assuming the same of them.
• 58:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm also assuming that they're doing exactly what they need to do to survive.
• 58:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And survival is a complicated thing in this place, in this time.
• 58:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: How can our audience watch your film, mother load, the mother load?
• 58:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And mother load.
• 58:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so the mother load is getting distribution.
• 58:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It will be available for video on demand rental on Apple TV plus on Apple TV plus and on Amazon Prime video starting June 16.
• 58:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then a month later it will be available on streaming platforms like Roku and 2D, but yes, we are, we're going to be giving, we're given nationwide distribution so you can find us on Apple TV plus and on Amazon prime.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So please please raise rent and and watch the movie.
• 59:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're in Baltimore on June 14th to celebrate our distribution, we're going to be having a free Baltimore screening at the Maryland Parkway feeder at 2 p.m.
• 59:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if you're here, we'll be there doing a screening in the Q&A to follow.
• 59:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It starts at 2 p.m.
• 59:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it also, at the Q&A, is going to be hosted by our Dear Friend James, where we movie good will be bad.
• 59:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you use a film critic and brilliant, but yes, that's where the movie will be rentable and then streamed.
• 59:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for today.
• 59:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do hope that we can get back on the podcast after you finish your next course, your next book.
• 59:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that I have so much hope after talking today about how we frames our culture, as at least to the new way of being in America, to an interesting time.
• 1:00:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for coming on this podcast.
• 1:00:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm very, very grateful to you and your time.
• 1:00:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:00:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
• 1:00:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
• 1:00:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.