The Ironies of Freedom: Sex, Culture, and Neoliberal Governance in Vietnam

Introduction

Introduction BEFORE THE HEAT woulddefinethedayoneearlymorninginJune2002 at the center of Ho Chi Minh City, an area still called Saigon by its residents , crowds gathered in front of the old French-built Opera House, which now has reverted to its theatrical functions after various incarnations through Vietnam’s postcolonial history. Young faces of uniformed students in lethargic poses filled the ranks. Surrounding them were banners and posters in primary colors. One large poster depicted a human form shackled to the words drugs and aids. Adjacent to it was a banner exhorting the “construction of a healthy cultural environmenttohelppushbackdrugaddictionandothersocialevils .” Ared banner hung across an intersection promising to “sternly punish drugrelated criminals to protect social order.” Representatives from local Communist Party and government organs stood up to give speeches behind a podium perched on top of the steps of the Opera House and framed by its vaulting entrance. As the sun climbed, the event became a procession, announced by slogans and songs from loudspeakers and flanked by rows of motorcycle police down tree-lined boulevards. It turned out to be an “anti-social evil” rally, set to coincide with the International Day of Drug Awareness on 26 June. Thephysicalsurroundingsof thislatestanti-socialevilrallyconsisted of refurbished posh hotels, multiplex theaters, and high-end retailers carrying global brands, catering to both a tourist and a domestic clientele of newly affluent Vietnamese who make their money in the new market economy. Many now populate the various night scenes of narcotics and commercial sex, as Vietnam embarks on the marketization and globalization of its economy after its victory against French colonialism , American imperialism, and decades of socialism. The mode of intervention in society in this new context had been xi set by the government’s approach to “prostitution” as a “social evil” as of the mid-1990s. The themes of the day’s anti-social evil campaign— disease in medical knowledge, Vietnamese culture, and social order— were taken directly from strategies that the government has been using to fight prostitution. As with prostitution, tension exists between “knowledge of the real” and what is true in Vietnamese tradition and culture. On the one hand, the government refers to knowledge both of real social practices and of the (medical) expertise designed to address them. The Ho Chi Minh City Health Bureau since the mid1990s has run a semipermanent exhibit with photographs that link prostitution to sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS. On the other hand, the government exhorts adherence to tradition and order. Governmental Decree 87, for example, in the late 1990s inspired similarrallies ,streetbanners,andexhibitsinwhichthegovernmentlinked prostitution as a social evil to “poisonous cultural products.” Making this linkage, the government resolved to build a healthy Vietnamese culture to fight prostitution. The government was not the only entity interested in commercial sex. In 2003, the movie Gái nhảy (Bar Girls) opened in Vietnam with unprecedentedboxofficereceiptsandblazedthetrailforacommercially viable domestic film industry. The plot revolves around the lives of two womeninthesextrade,repletewithnudity,booze,heroin,violence,and death. The success of this film has been based in part on its claim to a new brand of social realism in the time of a market economy in Vietnam ,arepresentationof “real”lifethatbothreflectsandreworksprevalent governmental representations of society and its ills. Whatisitaboutcommercialsexthatmakesitsuchabusysiteof commerce , of governmental intervention, and of representation in popular culture in Vietnam at the present moment? What do the specific forms of these economic, governmental, and representational practices reveal aboutneoliberalismasthemarkettakesrootandVietnambecomesintegrated into the neoliberal global economy? Toanswerthesequestions,thisbookcombinesmethodsandtheories from the social sciences and humanities to examine (1) commercial sex as a function of government-initiated neoliberal market freedoms; (2) xii Introduction the government’s shaping of citizens and their desires through intense interventioninwhatthegovernmentrepresentsastheempirical“social evilof prostitution” setagainstauthenticVietnamesetradition;and (3) the depictions of this social evil in a popular culture that currently responds to both the market and the government, as the latter sets the terms of discourse between the empirically real and the authentically true. I consider how various constructions of femininity reflect struggles over how reality should be represented as well as how the liberalizing society in Vietnam should be governed. Vietnam in the late 1980s “opened up” and joined the global economy after decades of war and socialism in the new policy of Đổi Mới, making it a good case study of how a former socialist government adapts to the market and to its neoliberal insistence on the freedom to choose for entrepreneurs and consumers , who may operate not just in the national context...