Tiffany Duong

Orange is the New Pink: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Genocide

Re-imagined play scenarios based on the truth of my mother's life during the Vietnam War, alongside the theatrical fiction of American movies about the war such as 'Tropic Thunder,' 'Missing in Action,' and 'Full Metal Jacket.'

“My parents were really young during the Vietnam War, but old enough to remember it. My mom lived in Saigon and was five or six when she watched it fall. My dad was eight when he heard the news on the radio from Binh Dinh. They experienced the impact of Americans losing the war for long after that. Up until that point, history led us to believe that winners get to tell the story of war. But as communists took over South Vietnam, the American side of the war still triumphed. America reared its ugly head, thrashing against our land with colonial poison - violence, chemicals, pesticides. Then, they locked us away in a trade embargo for twenty years as one last “fuck you” - to show us there was no real way of winning a war against the big guys. As an American product, Barbie indirectly encompasses American visions of colonial conquest and beauty through the decades since her conception, like a girls’ Uncle Sam. She’s never verbalized it, obviously, but she’s quite the patriot. She’s been packaged in “Screaming Eagle” badges, maroon berets, navy and desert combat uniforms. However, I’ve taken her out of the box, swapped her medals for a Viet Cong uniform, and sent her into the swamps of South Vietnam. Since I only had white, blonde Barbies growing up, I often made do and projected my spiritual and moral values on them regardless of ethnic presentation. The stiffness of the Barbie doll within the context of war parallels the combat-oriented nature of boys’ action figures. However, since dolls are intended solely for dress up play, Barbie is rarely produced with more than five movable parts. That's less than half of G.I Joe's who, like his action figure cohorts, are intended for strategic play. How is Barb going to cock the gun?”