Producing Miss Saigon

Abstract

This essay examines Western representations of Saigon as a feminine and sensual place, providing examples of continuity between French colonial portrayals of the city and print journalism during the u.s. presence in Vietnam from the mid-1950s to 1975. Femininity and sexual allure feature prominently in an array of 19th Century works about Saigon, yet those writings vary considerably. By the early 20th Century, Western writers had begun to personify Saigon as a woman engaged in a relationship with a Western man. In similar ways, femininity and sensuality figured prominently in how Western journalists covered Saigon throughout the Vietnam War. Such representations cast a mold for tragic postwar narratives—a genre that the celebrated musical Miss Saigon best exemplified. Weighing the possibilities and shortcomings of collectively interpreting these writings as an Orientalist discourse, this article surveys more than a century of work that describes Saigon as a sensual maiden whom the West courted, exploited, and abandoned.