Commodification of women’s landscapes in post-renovation Vietnam: the case of Endless Field by Nguyễn Ngọc Tư from novella to film

Abstract

In what manner has the commodification of artistic works of women unfolded in post-renovation Vietnam? How does this contribute to our understanding of the relationship between gender and landscape in a market-oriented socialist country? This article analyzes two versions of a fictional landscape, the field, as discursive constructions in relation to female characters in Nguyễn Ngọc Tư’s novella ‘Endless Field’ and Nguyễn Phan Quang Bình’s film ‘The Floating Lives.’ Drawing on feminist philosophy on women’s love, feminist semiotics, and critiques offered by Laura Mulvey regarding patriarchal cinema, the paper argues that the process of commodification of women’s landscapes from an artistic novella by a female writer to a commercial film by a male director is also a process of gendering/regendering landscape. By providing a means to elucidate this process in Vietnamese literature and cinema in the post-renovation era, the paper aims to clarify its contribution in producing, reproducing, questioning, and reinforcing gender stereotypes.

Keywords:

• Commodification of women’s landscapes
• gendering landscape
• gender stereotype
• feminist philosophy on women’s love
• feminist semiotics
• post-renovation Vietnam
• Endless Field

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 One year after the publication of the work, due to concerns that Nguyễn Ngọc Tư’s work was ‘subversive’ and depicted the homeland in a derogatory manner, the Provincial Party Committee’s Propaganda Department in Cà Mau requested her to write a self-critique. This incident sparked a heated debate. For an insightful analysis of the discourse surrounding the controversy over the work, see Hoàng Phong (2017).

2 For a comprehensive article on this topic, see Hoàng Cẩm Giang’s work (2022), ‘The trend of ‘films as tourism promotion’: from picturesque landscape to eco-consciousness in Vietnamese masses.’

3 For an insightful discussion on how landscape serves as a way to make meaning in literary discourse or the framing of ideologies through language, see Mellard (1996). In terms of theoretical discussions related to the study of landscape in cinema, one may refer to the arguments presented by Lukinbeal (2005).

4 All citations from Nguyễn Ngọc Tư’s work are from Nguyễn Ngọc (2019). Endless Field. Translated by Hung M. Duong, Jason A. Picard. Ho Chi Minh City: Tre Publishing House. All references after quotations are to page numbers.

5 These lines are from the poem ‘The Song of Grubbing Planting Land’ by the revolutionary poet Hoàng Trung Thông.

6 Because as being seen in the story, even when imagined as untamed nature, the field still adheres to the rules set by humans, emphasizing that there is no such thing as pure, separate nature divorced from societal life.

7 The field is described using a term ‘ngoa ngoắt’, which is very difficult to translate into English, and in English version, at the page 95 where the term should appear, the translators did not translate it at all. In Vietnamese, this term is reserved for women only, to describe someone who is unpleasant, sharp-tongued, vindictive and overbearing.

8 It is worth recalling a previous scene, when lying on the boat, observing Sương raising her hand to tie her hair, revealing a similar part of her body; Điền could not restrain his desire, embracing her leg tightly, and subsequently, he leaped into the water.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received.

Notes on contributors

Nguyễn Thị Minh

Nguyễn Thị Minh is a tenured lecturer in the Faculty of Linguistics and Literature, Ho Chi Minh City University of Education. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Oregon (2018), a Fulbright scholar at the Asian American Studies Department, UCLA (2022–2023). In addition to translating multiple classical works in philosophy, gender, and cultural studies from English to Vietnamese, Minh works in comparative literature and film adaptation based on gender studies and semiotics, with her latest research publication featured in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy in 2024. She is collaborating with the Vietnam Women Publishing House to build the Women’s Book: Gender and Development series to promote Vietnamese gender studies. Minh is the co-founder of The Ladder, an inclusive community learning space, which is making academic knowledge more accessible for everyone, especially the Vietnamese youth.