Week 8 Trinh T Minh-ha

Surname Viet, Given Name Nam was probably my favorite film of the quarter and that is because I'm Vietnamese. The moments where the women recite what I will assume are translated passages in English were particularly interesting to me because of the artificiality of them. There is something about thick Asian accents that makes me associate them with simplicity, and that has a lot to do with my mom probably. The women were speaking rather eloquently through their accents and that was a pretty jarring contrast to me. It seemed performed, and for all I know these could be passages written by these women from the heart. Minh-ha's decision to have them performed in this way, staring off into space and uttered rhythimically, does really bring up questions about foreignness.
It kind of makes you wonder if these women even know what the hell they're reciting out loud, and that's what's ugly about the stereotype of accents. Right now I'm reading a review of the film on imdb and someone complains:

"the film would seem to be about women's life in Vietnam but it can't seem to understand that when people watch a movie they need to understand what is being said to comprehend it. actually it seems to know this very well teasing the viewer with subtitles that come on after the Vietnamese women has been speaking in unintelligible English but then taking the subtitle away before you can finish reading it so you are lost as to where the hard to understand English is and you can't remember what you read cause you were straining to read it so fast. then a strange poem will have lyrics written underneath the screen further distracting you from the broken English that you are trying to hear."

I have been wondering about the subtitle thing as well, and I do understand that part of the reasoning is to create more interaction with the spoken word performances than the actual text. This reviewer is completely missing the point with their conventional reading of this film, but it is very interesting that they lament this "broken English" over and over. They are very well frustrated with these accents and it is probably this kind of reading that Minh-ha is trying to engage in her performances.