Miss Saigon is the worst musical I have ever watched.

When my housemate booked our house 4 tickets to the musical "Miss Saigon" (Eva Noblezada's version) two years ago, I was pretty excited.

"Miss Saigon" was set during the Vietnam war, so naturally I associated it with a certain "Aung San Suu Kyi" vibe. I expected to be watching a war heroine who saved lives amid the turmoil of the American intervention, whose life was celebrated for decades to come for her contribution to society.

"Me love you long time"

And damn was I so wrong!

Don't get me wrong. I loved the set, the soundtrack, and the Vietnamese soldier (more on him later <3). I'm very grateful to my housemate for booking the tickets and I'm glad I watched Miss Saigon. It was well put together by a talented cast and crew, even if I hated everything the story stood for. But I do want to discuss the element of racism that was the centre of this entire musical.

A 17-year old Vietnamese woman lazily and generically named "Kim" was forced into prostitution during the Vietnam War, with little other means to fend for herself. The brothel, named "Dreamland", was run by a French-Vietnamese guy called "The Engineer" and was frequented by American soldiers who were fighting in Saigon. Kim met American soldier Chris, and some "romance" sparked between the two, and after a one-night stand, something like the war ended, the Americans retreated, and Kim was left alone and pregnant with a son from the one-night stand.

Things were made more complicated because Kim was betrothed at a young age to my boyfriend,

I mean erm, a Vietnamese soldier named Thuy probably because all Asians have arranged marriages I guess. Thuy was extremely possessive of Kim, wanted her to honour the arranged marriage, and fought Chris over her, even threatening to murder Kim's son. He died before the first half of the musical ended when Kim shot him to protect her son.

YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HIIIIIIMM... DON'T TOUCH MY BOY......

In the 2nd half of the musical, Kim engaged the help of The Engineer to travel to the States to reunite with Chris, thinking that moving to America would give herself and her son a better life. However, she reached the States only to realise that Chris had suffered amnesia from his wounds and not only did not remember Kim, but had gotten married to an American woman! Oh the horror! Kim gave her son up to the American couple then committed suicide, as she had fulfilled her Asian existence.

I have a problem with this entire musical, or rather, 4 problems:

1. The politics behind the romance of Kim and Chris is too glaring to ignore.

The writers conveniently left out the class, race and political issues behind Kim and Chris' relationship, and simply portrayed their love as "100% pure and romantic".

Kim was not your average Vietnamese woman who made the freedom of choice to date a white man. She was born into poverty, in a war zone, sold into sexual slavery at a young age with close to zero hope of getting a better life. It is not unreasonable that someone like Kim would want to grab the first ticket out of this vicious cycle, especially if this ticket also came with true love with an American soldier.

I'm not shaming Asian women who marry white men because they want a better life, I'm simply presenting their POV and telling you that these women's options in life are often limited.

A more troubling aspect of their relationship is that Chris symbolised the American intervention in the Vietnam War. The Americans wanted to contain the spread of communism so they supported South Vietnam against the communist North Vietnam. Not only did the Americans impose their political will on Asian land, they also dominated Vietnamese women by raping and murdering them during the My Lai Massacre. Anti-Asian hatred and the desire to exert power over Vietnamese people- America's enemy- was rampant then and these toxic attitudes lived on long after the Vietnam War had ended.

It's not that I believe inter-racial love is impossible, but in this specific context, it is difficult to deny there just may have been other motivations behind Chris getting with Kim and vice versa.

2. The portrayal of Asian women

I have nothing against inter-racial dating. I know many inter-racial couples, Asian woman-White Man pairings, and I believe these are healthy relationships between two respectful, progressive individuals.

What I am against is a common misogynistic/racist dynamic that causes a particular type of white men to seek out Asian women. It is the notion that Western women are too empowered, independent, and have higher expectations for men, that fuels this preference for Asian women. That Asian women are more obedient, less "tainted" by feminism, and easier to control. More disturbingly, as this musical suggests, that you can bomb and loot the shit out of an Asian woman's country and she will still love you long time and move to America with you just because you are the superior white male.*

This isn't me trying to be racist to whypipo, the fetishisation of Asian women by Caucasian men is alive and dangerous because it has given birth to the mail-order bride industry and exploitative sex tourism practices in Asia. Here's a paragraph from the Asian American Law Journal by UC Berkeley:

So Chris abandons Kim after the war and she tries to seek him out years later. When she finally finds Chris married to an American woman, she commits suicide. Wow... it is almost as if the entire existence of an Asian woman revolves around hooking up with superior whymail, failing which she would have no other purpose in life except kill herself.

3. The dehumanisation of the Asian man 

Another problematic aspect of this musical was its portrayal of Asian men. Thuy personified everything (the writer thought was) wrong about the traditional Vietnamese man. Co-incidentally or not, Thuy was also a soldier who fought for the People's Army of Vietnam (i.e. he fought for the communist North Vietnam against the American forces in the South). He was not only a romantic but also a political enemy of Chris- communist, chauvinistic, "racist against whypipo" and believes in antiquated traditions as opposed to the "liberated and democratic" American.

I know the Viet Cong killed many innocent civilians in Vietnam as well; I'm not calling the writers racist simply because they cast the Vietnamese character as the villain. My question is why Chris is being painted as some kind of tragic hero who deep-down is a tender guy damaged by the war, while all Thuy gets to be is "crazy". Why did no one bat an eyelid when the American soldiers went to "Dreamland" to patronise Vietnamese prostitutes but when Thuy as much as stepped into the brothel to ask for Kim, he is The Psycho? From whom Asian women like Kim must be rescued, by a white man?

At the end of the story, Chris, and the American ideals that he personifies, was the "winner"- he won Kim's heart, a new family, and got to stay alive.

4. Contrary to popular belief, this is NOT a story about the "ultimate sacrifice for love". There's something more disturbing behind it.

This is what the producer Claude-Michel Schonberg, had to say: Miss Saigon was inspired by a photograph he found of a Vietnamese woman sending her child off at Tan Son Nhut Air Base to board a plane headed to the United States to find its American father (an ex-soldier) to lead a better life. He called it the "ultimate sacrifice".

Or was it?

The American intervention in Vietnam left the country in ruins. The My Lai Massacre left hundreds of civilians dead in South Vietnam, and many are still suffering the aftereffects of American war crimes. Even if Schonberg's interpretation of the photograph was accurate, I highly doubt it was as much a sacrifice as it was the fact that the woman had no other choice.

Most disturbingly, sexual war crimes involving Vietnamese women was a widespread form of dominance and control asserted by American troops during the war. I am willing to bet there are hundreds if not thousands of real "Kim"s in Vietnam, and none of this is a beautiful love story to them. They were impoverished, impregnated (many forcibly) by the very men who wrecked their homes, and probably remained unemployed or were forced into some form of slavery to feed themselves and their children (if they have any) for the rest of their loves.


LET'S STOP PRETENDING MISS SAIGON IS A BEAUTIFUL LOVE STORY CAN WE ALL
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Amid all the ranting about the racism behind Miss Saigon, I do want to talk about Hong Kwang-ho, the Korean singer who played Thuy in the London Revival version in 2014 (the version I watched). The script did no justice to Thuy, but Hong Kwang-ho fleshed out an otherwise hollow creep who is nothing but cold-blooded and sociopathic, and added emotion and conflict within the character.

I mean, just look at this clip and tell him he isn't perfect.




* I can already picture a particular segment of Singaporean-Chinese guys, who are bitter about "their" local women being "stolen by angmoh" at this point go "HA! bet you Singaporean women didn't know you were being exploited by racist angmohs when you choose to date them! Don't come crawling back to us when you realise we're better!" 

...Except these same Singaporean guys exclusively seek out Thai/Vietnamese/Cambodian girls for the exact same racist and misogynistic reasons- to exploit their poverty and patriarchal culture to harvest submissive women who won't speak out when you abuse them. These guys are so forehead-deep in their own hatred for Singaporean women that they don't even see an ounce of hypocrisy in their own actions. 

Come on- it is either you are okay with everyone, white or Singaporean, being racist to women of other nationalities, or you're not. Enough with the double standards already.