<aside> 💡 Assignment: wee woo wee woo 📸

</aside>

• Feeling ok???? but also not???? progressing very slowly
• The most I got done is that I collected more Vietnam clips videos. I find it fun to discover a new way of using the term “Vietnam”, I started this collection wanting with the mindset that there are “right” and “wrong” ways of referring to Vietnam, but these days I’m simply fascinated by the wide range of creative meanings and definitions people have assigned to “Vietnam” over the year. Most of them are not positive or accurate or whatever, but they reflect the time and place and mentality. One recent find I really like is “Away” was the word my mom used instead of “in Vietnam”. It’s still strange to hear your home country’s name referred to as a multitude of things other than “home” (but also tbh I don’t know what “home” is), but “Vietnam” also feels like a collective time capsule that is shared (and magnified) through sitcoms. Ultimately, I want to paint a picture of what this “Vietnam” looks like, a “Vietnam” that exists in people’s consciousness, that still come up as a joke, a flashback, a Freudian slip, a memory.
• I do wonder why certain shows frequently mention “Vietnam” (when there’s no Vietnam-related character or plotlines), so maybe I should look into the showrunners 🤔
• At this stage, my focus will be on the role and meaning of the word “Vietnam” in contemporary media, to study them, to bring attention to them, and in a way, criticize???? them???
  1. Vietnam as away
  2. Vietnam as a messy business
  3. Vietnam as somewhere people disappear in
  4. Vietnam as Afghanistan
  5. Vietnam as something to forget
  6. Vietnam as something that smells bad
  7. Vietnam as a place to inhale Agent Orange
  8. Vietnam as eyes
  9. Vietnam as a medical condition
  10. Vietnam as a place with lots of cat-butcher sweatshops
  11. Vietnam as poison/ Vietnam as diet
  12. Vietnam as somewhere with landmines
  13. Vietnam as an apocalyptic wasteland
  14. Vietnam as somewhere to ride a helicopter over
  15. Vietnam as a time measurement unit
  16. Vietnam as somewhere childhood sweethearts go to and die
  17. Vietnam as a place with lost family
  18. Vietnam as a place where grenades went off
  19. Vietnam as burning nostrils
  20. Vietnam as not Taiwan
  21. Vietnam as a nice nature walk
  22. Vietnam as somewhere to get pimps
• Also watched The Five Obstructions! I enjoy the subversion! Noted down some obstructions that I can adapt to my own work.
  1. Change in frame rate
  2. Offer answers rather than questions
     1. This one is the most intriguing obstruction for me
  3. Change in background/context: taking the content and placing it in a new environment (”the most miserable environment”)
     1. Probably the most applicable obstruction for my project
  4. Free-form, no parameters
• Next steps
  1. Giving myself one more week (till March 1st) to finish building and collecting my “Vietnam” clips database
  2. I do have a few more readings to go through. Giving myself until March 8th
  3. Make a spreadsheet of the shows’ genres & years
  4. At this stage, the output I’m aiming for:
     1. A text archive, playing around with the multitude of definitions/contexts that “Vietnam”, something like this project
     2. A web archive of the videos
     3. A video/sound piece about sounds of “Vietnam”
     4. A collage of all the places that were filmed and framed as “Vietnam” (i.e, Huntington State Park, which was passed as “Vietnam” in Forest Gump)