WGVietnam

Will Guerin __Vietnamization of New Jersey__ Essay Response Question #2

“I can’t castrate you with a spoon, stupid.” Uttered just moments into the play by the matriarch Ozzie, this tasty piece of dialogue immediately alerts the audience to the bizarre journey that awaits them. Christopher Durang helms this ship of the strange as he leads us through the allegoric roller coaster that is __Vietnamization of New Jersey__. While the play may seem to defy all levels of normalcy and convention, it neatly fits in the genre of comedy referred to as farce comedy. Farce is a type of comedy that presents the audience with unrealistic scenarios of absurdity, often characterized by elements of satire. Often farces portray people as animalistic, unable to suppress their automatic behavior. Instead of functioning as normal human beings, they are shown as unfiltered entities prone to obscenities and impulsive behavior. Durang recognizes the template of farce comedy and crafts his work to reflect many of its qualities.

As an audience, we are constantly bombarded with the oddity of the play. From beginning to end, a series of extreme scenarios dominates the action and defines the work as a whole. We are merely a few lines into the play before we are greeted by Et’s character, seen eating cereal out of his trousers. His choice to forsake the conventional bowl as a vehicle for cereal consumption is viewed as a small transgression that suggests a mere scolding by his parents. Keeping with cereal as the focus, we are presented with another unbelievable situation when Liat tries to “see” American cereal by painfully trying to stuff it in her eyes. The absurdity continues when David reenacts the horrors perpetrated on the Vietnamese upon his parents, hoping to establish a different perspective in his myopic parents. In this scene, the “blind” Liat begins openly firing a live firearm in the house, an action that by itself transcends all forms of realism. The insanity does not stop there however, as David is then shot by one of the stray bullets, a wound that mildly phases him, as he continues on in the scene as if nothing has happened. Yet another example of the bizarre plot comes during Harry’s suicide, shooting himself at the dinner table in front of the whole family. Once again this strange action is only the first layer of absurdity in the situation, as Ozzie’s first reaction to his statement of suicide is concern about the insurance policy that could potentially be relinquished by such an action. The list goes on and on, these examples representing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the insanity that establishes the play as a farce.

Satire often involves caricatures of the subject, over representing certain aspects of the topic for a humorous criticism. In that sense, satire flows naturally from the over the top absurdity mentioned in the first paragraph. Christopher Durang takes advantage of this as he chooses to satirize a number of pertinent issues and topics relevant to the time period, the first being the dysfunctional American family falling apart by the seams. In the play, the family is viewed as a shattered mess, the parents lacking any sense of connection with their children. When the parents rely on Hazel to parent their children for them, they expose the appalling relationship they have with their offspring. When Ozzie and Harry can’t understand Et, they turn to Hazel to interpret. When they are questioning how to deal with David’s new wife, they once again consider consulting Hazel. Another issue that the play chooses to satirize is America’s involvement in Vietnam. Using quasi-allegoric elements at time, the play pokes fun at America’s confused and chaotic attempts to restore peace to the warring states in Vietnam. When Liat is “given the opportunity to choose [her] destiny as guaranteed by the Geneva Conference of 1954,” Durang directly establishes an allegoric connection by establishing individual roles for each of the characters. Liat, functioning as the Vietnam, casts her vote to the dismay of Ozzie and Harry who represent the American public and government, backing the puppet government of Diem established by the United States. The confusion over the voting process in the play mirrors that of real life and conveys the mocking tone towards the subject. Through this satire, Durang not only achieves a deeper level of meaning but also establishes his work as that of a farce comedy.

If the title Animal House had been available, it would have been an apt appellation for this work. The zoo the characters inhabit is littered with their sins, tainted by their coarse animalistic actions and language. The notion of impulse over reason is the automatic behavior that identifies the characters and creates a defining feature of the farce comedy. Durang makes it clear that censors won’t restrict him, as the play fully embraces the crude language of the characters. No word is too taboo, nor is any situation. Et’s graphic tale of pleasuring Eddie’s sister under the pool table jumps from the page, most certainly warranting an exclusively mature audience. Copulating behind the couch reinforces the unrestricted nature of the characters, resembling the openness in mating of the animal kingdom. Et is rivaled in his inappropriate behavior and comments by Larry, the epitome of rudeness. Almost every line of dialogue that erupts from his mouth contains some offensive term or word. Whether he is referring to Hazel as a “tar-baby or the Vietnamese as “communist chinks,” matters not to the audience for Larry never fails to agitate. Although Larry is constantly scolded and corrected by Ozzie, he continues on his path of destruction in which yelling out “hot pussy” to a member of his family fits into his schema of acceptable behavior. Any respectable woman would call him a pig if referred to in such a crude manner, labeling his as nothing more than an animal. Even though Et and Larry egregiously engage in such automatic behavior, all of the characters are guilty of this crime. Even Ozzie, the character that tries to restore civility to the house is caught red-handed in this basic behavior, throwing temper tantrums in her disagreements with Hazel. This tendency to showcase the characters of the play as crude representations of human is intentional, further establishing the play as an expression of the farce genre.

One of my favorite television sitcoms is Michael Hurwitz’s masterpiece, “Arrested Development.” Those familiar with the __Vietnamization of New Jersey__ and this sitcom would be able to immediately draw connections between the two works. Both feature a painfully dysfunctional family, struggling to get by in the world that threatens to completely dissemble any hope for stability. Most importantly, both are examples of farce comedy, specializing in the absurd workings of the American family. While television may restrict the crude language and behavior that favors the farce genre, the automatic behavior seen in farce comedies is still intact. All of the characters save the protagonist, Michael Bluth, openly live their life by the pleasure principle. As they strive to fulfill their every wish through any means possible, they encounter the bizarre and strange. These oddities range from Tobias Bluth’s rare psychological disorder prohibiting him from being completely naked (never-nude) to George Michael’s love for his cousin and even to Buster Bluth’s severed hand that was bitten off by a seal let go by his older brother Job. While “Arrested Development” may have only made it through three seasons, the show lives on as a shining example of the farce genre.

Although I had never heard of farce comedies before this assignment, I would like to explore the genre further given my positive view upon “Arrested Development” and __Vietnamization of New Jersey__. I see myself akin to the farce comedy, enjoying the elements of absurdity, human nature, crudeness and satire it brings to the table. While some may be turned away from what they consider weird, I truly enjoyed the __Vietnamization of New Jersey__ and the farce comedy genre it occupied.