BWVietnam

Christopher Durang, the playwright of The Vietnamization of New Jersey, uses a number of strategies to bring comedy into the action of the play. In this play specifically, he uses farce comedy to lighten the mood of the play while trying to convey a specific view. Farce comedy often uses a wide variety of humorous characteristics to entertain the audience. Most often, farce uses unlikely and extravagant situations with absurd circumstances to provide comedy. The Vietnamization of New Jersey uses a large amount of extravagant situations, a unique attribute of farce, throughout the play. For example, when Davey first arrives back home with his new wife, Liat, he wants his parents to atone for the sins committed against Vietnam. He therefore has rice spread across the living room and allows Liat to shoot at Ozzie Ann and Harry. This absurd situation, which would not happen in every day life, gives the play a very presentational feel and contributes to the farce comedy. Another example of the deliberate absurdity of the play is with the character of Et. He is a delinquent teen who never listens to what anyone tells him to do, except Uncle Larry. In the beginning of the play, Et is eating cereal out of his pants and won’t speak clearly without his mouth full to his parents. He continues to act in this manner, which Ozzie Ann and Harry go along with by pulling letters out of his pants and throwing cups on the floor. While these silly actions continue, Et suddenly relates the wearing of dark sunglasses to being morally blind in a deep, thoughtful line. The suddenness of his seriousness has so much impact that I doubt the audience is able to take it seriously. Farce also uses face-paced action that builds into a specific climax. The action of The Vietnamization of New Jersey is constantly moving. The characters seem to always be changing the subject that they are talking about. Also, the action that is contained within the play is always intense, whether it is a shooting scene in which Liat is shooting at Ozzie Ann and Harry, or Davey getting beaten by Uncle Larry, or the movers coming to take away the entire contents of the house, including the walls. All this action builds to the climax in which Larry and Et are chasing down Davey, who has sworn that he will kill Uncle Larry. This high point in the action quickly falls until Ozzie Ann loses her patience with trying to maintain normalcy and Davey sets himself on fire. In addition to extreme situations and face-paced action, farce employs the use of mistaken identities, word play, and sexual innuendo. The mistaken identities are seen in this play with the character of Liat, who pretends to be a Vietnamese woman but is actually an American girl named Maureen O’Hara. Larry is also mistaken to be Harry at first, until he clarifies that he is Harry’s brother who has come to help Ozzie, Et, Davey, Hazel, and Liat. Word play is seen specifically when Liat, a.k.a. Maureen O’Hara, is introduce to Uncle Larry. Larry thinks that they are calling her Marine, which then prompts him to treat her as a soldier until he realizes that she is merely a woman. Finally, the sexual innuendo of this farce is seen throughout its entirety through Liat. Et and Liat seem to be constantly kissing or engaging other sexual acts, and when Larry enters the play he also kisses Liat and tries to take advantage of her. The Vietnamization of New Jersey reminds me of the TV show “Modern Family.” This show makes fun of families in today’s society. These families include a homosexual couple that just adopted a baby, a man that married a woman considerably younger than him, and a family that America would consider to be the typical nuclear family, with a mom, a dad, and two children. Although I haven’t actually watched this show because I don’t watch TV often, the previews I’ve seen use exaggerated situations to entertain the audience. The previews also showed a considerable amount of slapstick comedy, a characteristic of farce, and sexual innuendo. This show seems to be incredibly similar to this play because it makes fun of the “typical” family.