The Committed. Viet Thanh Nguyen
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backsides so padded they could have protected an American football player. Oh, how we howled at those scenes! We, as in the audience at the filming and as in Bon, my aunt, and me. Oh, Fantasia!
This was our Hollywood, but as was too often the case in Hollywood movies, the worst thing about the show was the ending. For the final number, the entire troupe of singers and dancers returned to the stage, the men respectably attired in Western suits and the women in Eastern ao dai, serenading the audience with an original song whose title said it all: “Thank You, America!” Additional memorable, if unimaginative, lines included:
Thank you, Germany!
Thank you, Australia!
Thank you, Canada!
Thank you, France!
The geography lesson continued, and I wondered what handful of bewildered souls had found themselves swept up by the whirlwind of war and deposited in, say, Israel, a lovely country, I am sure, but surely a very depressing one for people like us. Still, regardless of our exile, we apparently found at least some degree of gratitude for being taken in, leading to this appreciative, heartfelt ballad to all the countries that had welcomed us.
Unfortunately—though this was a strange trait for a Vietnamese—I hated nothing more than appreciative, heartfelt ballads. My aunt, being an intellectual, and a French intellectual in particular, likewise detested them. Bon, being a killer, should have hated or at least been unmoved by them, but he shocked me by weeping, or weeping as much as he could, which amounted to a few trickles of tears accompanied by some sniffling, the equivalent to an emotional breakdown in a normal person.
But you think America betrayed us, I said as the credits rolled.
That doesn’t mean everyone betrayed us.
You think France raped our country.
Why do you have to ruin everything? he cried. Just enjoy the damn song!
And then it struck me that what he was crying about was not the endless, schmaltzy gratitude that host countries demanded of refugees who came from countries raped and bombed by the host countries. He was crying about the story of the song, enacted by an attractive duo playing a husband and wife separated by the war, the woman fleeing to America with their children, the man left behind as a prisoner of war. Eventually he escaped on a refugee boat—no, not a boat, a “vessel,” a more dignified term, for his journey and those of thousands of refugees equaled the greatest boat journey of all, Homer’s Odyssey. Surviving that odyssey, he made it to America. Here he was reunited with his wife, who wore a very flattering miniskirt, and his boy and girl, who were impossibly cute and talented, playing the piano and violin, respectively, as their parents embraced. That was why Bon was so moved: he was remembering his dead wife and son, my godson, with whom he would never be reunited except, perhaps, in Heaven.
As for my aunt and me, being connoisseurs of criticism did not prevent us from being deeply gratified to see our people on-screen, even if dancing in a leotard or strutting in a miniskirt. For the first time since we lived in our homeland, we starred in our own show. For all its frivolity, Fantasia was political, as I had learned when I was released from reeducation and came to Ho Chi Minh City, a Saigon renamed for a new era. There I discovered that Uncle Ho’s revolutionary nephews considered this kind of singing, dancing, and lovemaking to be reactionary and dangerous. Good communists listened to blood-stirring red music that hailed blood-soaked revolution, while we who loved yellow music were sick cowards who refused class struggle and hard work. But somehow, despite my reeducation, or because of it, I still loved a good love song, while a red ode to the masses marching toward a glorious scarlet dawn only made the blood pool in my legs. Fantasia might have been mere entertainment, but so what? As the anarchist Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” How did our so, so serious revolutionary leaders not understand that to own the means of entertainment was also revolutionary! What was wrong with self-determination of this kind, given that entertainment was probably the fourth human priority after sustenance, shelter, and sex? I could hardly wait to watch episode two of Fantasia, and was just about to say so, when Bon finished wiping his tears away and said, I have another idea.
Another idea? my aunt said. What was the first?
I assumed Bon would say nothing, but instead he smiled and said, Sell hashish to the Union and kill communists.
My aunt raised an eyebrow. How interesting, she said. You know, in France, it’s the communists who most support the Vietnamese.
The wrong kind of Vietnamese.
You’d be surprised who might be a communist, my aunt said, looking at me, which made Bon look at me, too. My blood went cold.
Nothing surprises me, Bon said. Communists are everywhere.
Indeed they are, my aunt said. Hypothetically speaking, what if you discovered that a friend was secretly a communist? Even your best friend here? Your blood brother?
Bon laughed at the impossibility of this scenario, but like a good philosopher, he played along. I’d kill him, of course, he said, smiling at me. It’s a matter of principle.
I, too, laughed at the absurdity of this bad joke and stood up to turn off the TV. Fantasia was definitely over.
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