Having been abroad for more than a year, I was excited at the mere mention of Vietnam anywhere, so I was even more delighted when I learned of the popular musical Miss Saigon. Posters of it were plastered up in musical-themed bars in Manchester and different theaters across London. The musical is constantly on tour, having recently been staged in Brisbane, Manila, and Singapore. I was curious to see what about the play created such a cultural phenomenon in western theater and pop culture, especially when all people ever seem to know of Vietnam is the war and phở. The play, however, with its questionable history and writing choices, didn’t live up to my expectations.
First released in 1989, Miss Saigon was written by Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boubil, the talents behind the musical adaptation of Les Misérables. Split into two acts, it begins by telling a story of love and lust between an American G.I. named Chris, first played by Simon Bowman, and a poor young Vietnamese girl, Kim, whose circumstances force her into prostitution. Kim was first played by Filipino vocalist Lea Salonga. After they fall in love, Chris offers to bring Kim to America but fails when the US suddenly pulls out of Vietnam. The second act then depicts a tragic tale of motherhood and sacrifices. Kim has given birth to Chris’ child while Chris grapples with his decision to abandon his family with Kim and stay with his new American wife, Ellen.
The poster for a cinematic screening of Miss Saigon's original cast, featuring Lea Salonga as Kim and Simon Bowman as Chris. Image via IMDB.
Miss Saigon is one of the most influential musicals in theater history, having had one of the longest runs on Broadway. It launched Lea Salonga and Jonathan Pryce into international stardom and its 2014 revival set the world record for opening-day ticket sales. Much of the critics’ praise seems warranted: the set design is incredible and grandiose; the actors all deliver incredible performances; and each song makes a lasting impression. Part of what kept my attention until the end was the suspense and a desire to know the outcomes of each character, but unfortunately, most of my attention was devoted to trying to understand certain writing decisions.
Jonathan Pryce in yellow face as The Engineer. Photo via Blogspot user @adventureisinvertigo.
The play has been subject to controversies since its first staging. Early performances were met with outrage, especially within Asian communities in the west because of its casting choices and depictions of Asians. One of its main characters, simply named The Engineer, is a scheming French-Vietnamese pimp who was originally played by Pryce, a white man. He wore eye prostheses and bronze-yellow makeup to look more Asian. This yellowface was bad enough, but the character also perpetuates racist stereotypes of Asians as cowardly, calculating, and manipulative of innocent Americans. He is later seen licking the boots of the American dream, played for laughs. The song, aptly called ‘The American Dream,’ features The Engineer excessively praising America as the land of opportunities, exclaiming that he’d fit in there better as an aspiring capitalist than in Asia, where his talents for pimping girls are wasted.
“I'm fed up with small-time hustles
I'm too good to waste my talent for greed
I need room to flex my muscles
in an ocean where the big sharks feed
make me Yankee, they're my family
[...]
Greasy chinks make life so sleazy
in the States, I'll have a club that's four-starred
men like me there have things easy.”
Miss Saigon received a revival in 2014 and, thankfully, much was changed. The new iteration featured Asian actors for Asian roles and much of the racist language was removed from the script. The Engineer no longer calls his fellow countrymen “chinks.” Moreover, he was no longer played by Jonathan Pryce but by Jon Jon Briones, a Filipino-American actor. While it’s worth noting that most of the cast, aside from the American characters, consisted of Asians, no one in the main cast was of Vietnamese ancestry. These changes only made the play a bit less racist, not free from racism. No Asian character was depicted positively aside from the main character Kim, who was presented as unique from other girls. Since the core plot relies on stereotypical behavior, simply removing the use of the word “chink” doesn’t change the play’s racist and misogynistic overtones.
Kim clad in a sexualized áo dài, as seen in the Australian production of Miss Saigon, starring Abigail Adriano (left) and Nigel Huckle (right) as Kim and Chris. Photo by Daniel Boud via Lifestyle Asia.
Kim first enters the stage at a brothel/bar wearing a sexualized version of áo dài consisting of only the dress without the pants. She is fetishized with pedophilic undertones. Her innocence and demureness make Chris, fall in love at first sight. Her virginity and young age are also points of focus for many of the characters and she is even described as “little” and “jailbait.” She is simultaneously depicted as the shy and orientalist stereotype and the exotic, hyper-sexualized femme fatale stereotype.
While the characters at first see Kim as a stereotype, her behavior establishes her as an anomaly, different from the other Vietnamese girls who use crude language and aggressive, pushy behavior.
“The village I come from seems so far away
All of the girls know much more what to say
But I know
I have a heart like the sea
A million dreams are in me...”
Kim shares about her arrival at the bar, contrasting the vulgarity of the other Vietnamese bar girls. This contrast is shown in the lyrics sung by Gigi, another prostitute at the bar, and the titular Miss Saigon herself.
“If I'm your pin-up, I'll melt all your brass
Stuck on your ball, with a pin in my ass
If you get me, you will travel first-class
I'll show you, we will make magic, cheri.”
Thuy, on the other hand, is a Việt Cộng soldier with sadistic tendencies who is in love with his own cousin, Kim. He first appears in the middle of Act 1, disrupting the wedding ceremony between Chris and Kim. In Act 2, once he finds out that Kim has given birth to the child of an American G.I., he is ready to commit infanticide to absolve her of her sins and take her as his wife. So while Vietnamese women are depicted as either aggressive prostitutes or demure angels in white, Vietnamese men are either scheming cowards or barbaric soldiers.
Vietnamese bargirls dancing in Dreamland, the club owned by The Engineer where Kim and Gigi works. Photo via Twitter page @MissSaigonUK.
The depictions of Vietnamese characters are in stark contrast to the American characters. Chris is always righteous and after first rejecting Kim for being too young, he tries to do right by his Vietnamese lover. After they sleep together, he finds out about her tragic past and how she lost her virginity. He attempts to bring her to America to provide a better life for her but is unsuccessful. They are separated when the war ends. Five years later, he is married to an American woman, Ellen, and discovers Kim is still alive and has given birth to their son, Tam. He sets off to Asia with his wife to find and rescue his abandoned Vietnamese family. Feeling duty-bound to his ex-lover, he is determined to right his wrongs. “So I wanted to save, protect her. Christ, I'm an American. How could I fail to do good?” he says to his wife.
Alistair Brammer as Chris and Eva Noblezada as Kim in a show in the United Kingdom in 2016. Photo via The Guardian.
Even the more politically correct 2014 revival of the play fails to dispel racist and misogynistic overtones. The roots of racism and misogyny go deeper than just the use of yellowface or characters using an occasional slur. The story itself is built on stereotypes which the plot advances: without Kim’s innocence, which sets her apart from other girls, Chris wouldn’t have fallen in love with her; without the Engineer’s greed and scheming personality, the couple wouldn’t have met or reunited years later; without Thuy, there wouldn’t have been a clear antagonist in the story, and without the American’s savior complex, there wouldn't have been a second act. As stereotypes are so woven into the plot, with each main character representing a different caricature, it would be impossible to transform the play into something completely acceptable.
The only constant, undaunted, and admirable aspect of the story is Kim’s undying love for her child. Miss Saigon was inspired by a 1975 photograph of a Vietnamese mother seeing her daughter off at Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base to give her a better life in America. It’s this maternal love that is the focus of the second act of the play. Time and time again, Kim sacrifices for her child, from prostituting herself in Bangkok to killing Thuy to protect him. The finale mirrors the photograph that started it all. The maternal sacrifice culminates in Kim’s suicide at the end of the play so all obstacles are removed for Chis to bring Tam to the US.
Abigail Adriano as Kim in the Australian production of Miss Saigon. Photo by Daniel Boud via Australian Jewish News.
Although racist and misogynistic tones exist throughout the play, Kim’s experiences of motherhood show that a good story could have been told if only the play had focused more on Kim, her experiences in the war, how she had lost her family, and how she had hoped to build a new one, rather than paying too much attention to a sleazy pimp and a virtuous American. Even if the 2014 revival, which continues to be performed around the world, aims to make itself more politically correct than its predecessor, simple script and casting changes are simply superficial modifications that fail to remedy the core problems.
Miss Saigon is one of the few times Vietnam gets the spotlight in the West. Instead of focusing on the resilience and resourcefulness of Vietnamese people during the war or at least shining light onto Vietnamese culture and values, the writers decided to depict the country as a land of immorality filled with helpless women, scheming men, and barbaric nationalists.
