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for example, on the white doll a child is playing with in
Reassemblage,
a red plastic cup, or a woman's pink plastic shoe in
Naked Spaces
.
At the same time as it is reassuring for certain Western viewers to see evidence of their industrial society spreading over third-world rural landscapes, it is irritating for others to see the camera gazing at some of these industrialized objects a few seconds too long. The shooting of
Reassemblage
informed me of the potential of a cultural difference whose manifestations neither oppose nor depend on the Westin other words, neither succumb to assimilation nor remain entirely pristine in its traditions. My decision was precisely to work in the remote countryside where circulation was mainly either on foot, by bicycyle, or by pirogue. As a result of this choice, whenever any element of industrial society was found in such context, it was very visible.
MacDonald:
One thing that's been said about anthropologists is that, essentially, by going into "primitive" cultures and gathering information, they are "scouts" for the dominant: culture, leading the way toward the destruction of indigenous people.
Trinh:
There is some truth to that metaphor, although it is a dangerous one because none of us who have gone to the cultures in question can claim to be free of that effect. I would use another metaphor: sometimes anthropologists act as if they were fishermen. They select a location, position themselves as observers and then throw a net, thinking that they can thereby catch what they look for. I think the very premise of such an approach is illusory, If I apply that metaphor to myself, I have to be
the net,
a net with no fisherman, for I'm caught in it as much as what I try to catch. And I am caught with everyting that I try to bring out in my films.
MacDonald:
You were saying yesterday that some people who like the African films were unpleasantly surprised by
Surname Viêt Given Name Nam
. There are common elements in all three films, but your decision to explore what we might consider your own experience, your own heritage, requires you to more obviously distance yourself, to more overtly question your own position of authority with regard to your culture. One of the centers of the film is the set of interviews that were originally recorded in Vietnamese by someone else, then translated into French, and are finally reenacted in your film by women who have come to the United States from Vietnam. In at least one sense, the film is more about the process of translating meaning from one culture to another than it is about Vietnam.
Trinh:
You raise several questions. That some poeple are reacting differently to my last film is true, but I would not say this is only due to a difference between my African films and this film. There has already been a split reaction between
Reassemblage
and
Naked Spaces
. A num-