BBC documentary - The ascent of woman

Bill Hayton bill.hayton at bbc.co.uk

Wed Sep 9 14:55:05 PDT 2015

I'm not sure if you'll be able to watch this outside the UK but vsg-ers might be interested in this 60 minute programme (The title is a riff on a 1973 BBC TV history series, The Ascent of Man.)

Travelling to Vietnam, China and Japan, Dr Amanda Foreman explores the role of women in Asia under the philosophy religions of Confucianism and Buddhism. Covering a period from the 1st century AD to the present day, she'll look at how Asian ideals of feminine virtue and the division of space between the female world of the home and male world of business and politics became a hallmark of Chinese identity. Part of yin and yang, they have cast a long shadow across women's lives, not just in China, but across Asia.

On the one hand, empowered by faiths such as Buddhism and Shinto, many women confronted the limits placed on their sex. They include Vietnam's Trung Sisters, who mounted the first armed rebellion against China, Empress Wu, the only woman to have ruled China in her own right, and the female writers of 12th century Japan such as Murasaki Shikibu, who created Japan's great literacy masterpieces, including the world's first novel - The Tale of Genji.

On the other hand, these limitations created ideals of beauty that advocated immobility and artifice, and were a world away from low-status work and labour. If they could lead to dynastic power and in some cases considerable sexual freedom, they also culminated in one of the most troubling and least understood beauty rituals in women's history: Chinese foot-binding, whose painful legacy would last right up to the 20th century.

Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06b8g1d/the-ascent-of-woman-2-separation

Enjoy...

Bill Hayton

writer

David Marr david.marr at anu.edu.au

Wed Sep 9 16:26:57 PDT 2015

Let's hope SBS in Australia picks it up, probably a year later.

David Marr

Kathryn Dinh k.dinh at unsw.edu.au

Thu Sep 10 19:36:28 PDT 2015

At the moment it's accessible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTpDcF71psA

Cheers

Kathryn

Kathryn Dinh

University of New South Wales, Australia

Liam Kelley liam at hawaii.edu

Thu Sep 10 22:58:44 PDT 2015

Dear list,

So this afternoon I started to read (distinguished UCLA professor) Lynn

Hunt’s “Writing History in the Global Era” (2014) in which she talks about

how in order to get into Harvard in the 1850s one needed to know “all of

Virgil’s works and Caesar’s commentaries, select orations from Cicero and

Latin grammar, select readings from Greek. . .” and how “In the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, history took on a new role, that

of teacher to the nation. History reinforced and in many cases created

national identity.” (2) She then goes on to talk about how the

“democratization of the university” in the US in the 60s and 70s (i.e.,

more women and minority students) diversified the definition of “the

nation” and led to the rise of various forms of critical theory. And

finally, she looks at how globalization is transforming the academy yet

again. This is a book that from what I can see so is totally lucid and

perceptive.

In viewing the first 6 minutes or so of this documentary, I am utterly

astonished at how hopelessly stuck Dr. Amanda Foreman is in the past. I

feel like I’m listening to a British anti-war activist in 1968, someone who

is completely buying nationalist history and is oblivious to any other,

more sophisticated, understanding of the past.

“Today, Vietnam is known for its strong women” which of course is why women

have served in the highest governmental positions in the Philippines,

Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India. . . but never

Vietnam.

“In the first century BC, northern Vietnam was home to a tribal Red River

culture in which women had equal power and equal rights with men.” Oh

really? How on earth do we know that? What historical sources (other than 20

th century nationalist writings) contain information about this?

“They could become clan rulers.” Again, how do we know that?

“. . . operate businesses and own property.” Are you kidding me?!! The

Hanshu (History of the Han) has information about Vietnamese women

operating businesses???

“. . . even have multiple husbands.” Again, where is the evidence for this?

But all of this changed when the Han conquered the area. “The Chinese. . .

replaced the ancient Vietnamese tradition of giving women a greater role in

society. . .” Yup, “Vietnam” existed before “the Chinese” arrived, and of

course “the Chinese” destroyed everything then, just as they are doing

today.

“They mounted their elephants. . .” How do we know that that the Trung

sisters rode elephants? What historical source records this information?

“The defeat of the Trung sisters was a double catastrophe for Vietnam. It

became a Chinese colony for the next 900 years. And under Chinese rule,

Vietnamese women were turned into second class citizens.” Yes, the concept

of a “colony” works really well for the periods 2,000 years before the

present.

As an historian, watching stuff like this just makes me want to purchase a

gun and end my misery. There is simply no hope. Humankind is just too

stupid.

I thought the BBC was smarter than this, but obviously I’m wrong. The one

thing I can confirm though is that this documentary definitely gets me

Irish blood a boilin', so long live nationalism!!! :)

Liam Kelley

University of Hawaii

Quynh Le lequynh78 at gmail.com

Fri Sep 11 03:48:53 PDT 2015

Many thanks to Dr. Liam Kelley for this review. So it seems there are holes

in the series.

I have not watched it, but am always sceptical about scholars who talk

about ‘global issues’. According to her CV, Dr. Amanda Foreman received her

doctorate in 18th Century British History from Oxford University in 1998.

So she must be excellent about British history, but it can be a different

story when you try to talk about other countries. And I am not referring to

a particular person here. Rather, I think few scholars are really qualified

to lecture about world history.

Quynh

BBC World Service, London

Liam Kelley liam at hawaii.edu

Fri Sep 11 09:52:32 PDT 2015

Dear Quynh,

I don't think the problem is with world history, it is with Westerners and

Vietnamese. Since the time of the Vietnam War there has been an endless

stream of Westerners who have gone to Vietnam with ideas in their head of

what they don't like about their own society and have naively and

uncritically believed what the Vietnamese they talk with say. Knowledge

about the past in Vietnam has also not progressed since that time. All that

gets published and presented in Vietnam is the nationalist interpretation

of the past that was produced for nation-building and war in the 1960s. So

Westerner A talks with Vietnamese B and thinks that s/he can understand

something about ancient history, and it fits perfectly with what s/he wants

to critique about her/his own society today (amazing how that works!!).

It's a toxic mix that of course is not unique to Vietnam (Westerners come

up with similar rubbish in talking about other places), but it is more

intense in the case of Vietnam as there isn't an alternative to this kind

of historical knowledge in Vietnam. I strongly doubt, for instance, that

you can find a university professor in Vietnam who will go on camera and

deconstruct the ideas that Dr. Foreman presents here.

Regards,

Liam Kelley

University of Hawaii

Bill Hayton bill.hayton at bbc.co.uk

Fri Sep 11 13:00:32 PDT 2015

I agree. I sent the link before I watched the programme (my bad…)

I know a couple of people involved in the production and they had previously done excellent work on British history documentaries (including with my wife) so I thought that it would be equally good. But – as you say – it wasn’t. It was as if they’d based the story on a Vietnam Women’s Union pamphlet. Apparently it took two years to make, pity they didn’t talk to some vsgers along the way. It’s not getting very good ratings either. All in all it might have set back the cause of TV history.

Bill

Shawn McHale mchale at gwu.edu

Fri Sep 11 15:11:57 PDT 2015

The issue is not always that Westerners uncritically believe what the

Vietnamese say. In some cases, Westerners don't believe what Vietnamese

tell them, or mangle what is told them. An award for horrible nonsense

Westerners write about Vietnam should go to Susan Brownmiller for her

cringeworthy travelogue to Vietnam, first published in 1994. Not only does

she not believe what she is told, at times, but she makes up stuff. I don't

believe in burning books, but I'll make an exception for her utterly

condescending, self-absorbed, and naive tripe on Vietnam.

Shawn McHale

Le Thanh bantinphuongdong at yahoo.com

Sat Sep 12 00:43:55 PDT 2015

Dear list

I would like to give some more background information to help us understanding this film. First, it is not quite a BBC documentary but rather an educational film made by Open University for their students, aired in Learning Zone from 1:00 am to 4:00 am when people can set an automatic record to their video tape or recently to their digital box. The attractive programs are selected for BBC4 from 20:00-24:00. Some are very good like al-Khalili about the Islamic influence on the Western science, and his other series on Quantum and Quantum Biology. But most of the programs base on certain lecture which is chopped down to 45-min or 1-hour and illustrated by video clips and presenter stand-up like this one. Open University has its own building to produce a vast amount of such film-lecture. Then a BBC office would make a decision whether they fit all the requirements printed in its guidelines book (quite a big bible). I've once visited all those units and interviewed them and made a radio program. Therefore we can assume this a lecture by Dr Amanda Foreman [who] explores how early civilisations dealt with the status of women.

Then I don't see any problem with it, if I simply read the script as a reading/lecture for the first-year students in social science and humanities. Her interview with the leader of the biggest national women association in the world and video-clips of Trungs rituals can be a little bit out of context but it is acceptable in order to make the lecture less boring and monotone. The content can be easily found almost everywhere - and I think this is a big problem awaiting for a new generation of historians like Liam to change, especially after the U-turn by Phillips Taylor about 'the birth' of a nation, or whether a nation is really the current body of a 'long duree' history, or a modern child of some or an 'ethnie' (Anthony Smith).

However, I have problem with the Sino-centrism in the 'Western' story of Vietnam. The presenter has no problem to take the Chinese confucianism as the 'centre' and then teach her students how Vietnam and Japan separated from the core. I believe that the 'separation' has been started just after the French victory at Bac Ninh and then replace the Chinese soldier at Dap Cau in the 19-20 century, and then the Vietnamese has started to promote their Trungs after scanning and skimming their ancient books (why not Trieu? why not Huyen Tran?). Deep in the culture we have woman as the 'head' of the family as they keep the knowledge and language and the warlord Nguyen Thi Dinh (Mrs 3 Dinh) from Ben Tre is an example. I've luckily got a chance to meet many of them who were comrades of my paternal grandmother: Mrs 3 Thi, Mrs 7 Van (wife of Le Duan) and Mrs 7 Hue (wife of Nguyen Van Linh) - they are all real leaders in the communist forces. If it were me, the lecture would base on anthropological explanation with woman-shamanism in Nusantao (Wilheim II) culture rather than that historical account over Ma Vien. But it is really a difficult problem for Western 'minds'. When Bill introduced his book at SOAS, I've raised a question about his use of the name South China Sea but he seemed not to understand the issue why many groups in Vietnam and the region reject this label. Again, the term South East Asia was coined by a British historian and not far ago. But at least he had tried to depart from the Chinese centre in understanding of the region.

And I agree with Liam about the silent Vietnamese historians - I came across the same problem when defending the chapter on history in my dissertation against a 'Chinese history' scholar who had studied Vietnam quite well but mainly via the official versions. But I believe that they are 'silent inteligentsia', a term coined by another historian who studied the history of Poland when it lost its name on the world map. They did not dare to talk, but some how they spread out their views to their students awaiting for a better condition for this history seed to blossom. I can identify at least two of them: Tu Chi and Tran Quoc Vuong. Together with Ta Chi Dai Truong, a new 'space' of historiography has been formed in Vietnam.

Anyway, have a nice weekend all.

Le Thanh Hai, researcher, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Science. (ex BBC WS producer and current RFI journalist, as well as Tuoi Tre and Sai Gon Giai Phong columnist)