More Shots out at Slavery: Vietcong Diva

At left Gorodish played by Richard Bohringer speaks to Alba played by Thuy An Luu in Jean-Jacques Beineix, his 1981 film, Diva. Back in the 1980s, when I began to see this film, I never noticed the look in her eyes. Do you see the look in her eyes? Click on the picture to get a closer look. When I was a kid, all the way through to my 30s as a young, white liberal, I would be too busy seeing Gorodish as the brilliant hero.

I was very impressed with Gorodish. I wanted to live in a large studio space just like Gorodish. I wanted identical cars just like Gorodish (with optional explosives). I wanted to have a spare lighthouse just in case I wanted to try new sexual positions with my pet Asian chick just like Gorodish. I wanted to be meticulous, artistic and technical just like Gorodish. And, of course, I wanted to take baths in a freestanding bathtub and talk shit to my spank just like Gorodish.

See him at right, taking a bath and speaking again to Alba. When I was child I understood completely that he was threatening her. But it took me decades to explicitly consider the possibility in writing that Gorodish keeps “his woman” not with good looks and technical excellence but with threats of deportation due to her ‘unspecified’ immigrant status. I consider the possibility that Alba is a sex slave.

I remember the accounts of the French occupation of Indochina and their bitter defeat in the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Perhaps Gorodish is so adept with explosives and mind games because he was an agent of the colonial French government. Perhaps he has access to a lighthouse for professional and sentimental reasons—the light house was used to torture “the enemy”—and the old boys share it as a reward for their official service. Do you see the look in her eyes?

Now let’s not forget about a less-than-ideal Alba. She enjoys the sensations of the West and would dread living a hard, communist life in post-war Vietnam. Her message would be that it is better to be a slave in the West than to be free in abject poverty in the Far East. I need to find a character like Alba in a Vietnamese film so I can fully appreciate this message. The work of, say, Anh Hung Tran would have “mixed messages.”

You may notice that all this sexual attraction has not included the titled subject of this film Cynthia Hawkins, the Diva herself, played by Wilhelmenia Fernandez. The Cynthia Hawkins character eternally represents the inaccessible colored woman. There is only one scene in Diva where a non-white man got within three feet of Cynthia Hawkins: it was the character played by Raymond Aquilon, a charming street vendor. This message lasts to this day—even now at my age. Even after hearing financially and white-socially successful Negro women complain about Black men being “scared” of them and “insecure” around their “power,” I still say that this message lasts to this day. Without wasting my time trying to argue with Negro women who cannot see that they are not African women (even native-born African women running African governments), let me just say that the Diva story would have serious plot issues when you have Cynthia Hawkins up and down with a Black man. The Diva, “in love” with a Black man? That certainly would be another “terrible mystery”—right?

Gorodish is not a one-dimensional hero. He is definitely the type of character professional actors would love to play. But he should not be used as a role model for the adult incarnation of any human being. My childish instinct to follow patterns and imitate dominant human traits had me quite full of Gorodish dreams—and more silver screen characters like him. Now I consider myself mature enough to analyze Gorodish instead of being dominated by him. One piece of the analysis is the sexuality of Gorodish. I realize that his “sexual orientation” is different from mine. He has the sexual orientation of a mercenary—or really—an army man. What I find with me up to this day is the sexual orientation of a family man. I know all the Negro ladies out there—those cynical observers—are snickering sarcastically, “Yeah, right! You would trade places with him in a second.” Experience tells me to get beyond my sexism and consider the possibility that what my Negro sister is really saying is that she would trade places with Gorodish in a second. Set it off, girl!

rasx()