This week, I’ll be switching things up by focusing on art rather than film.
Today, I’m thinking about art that has discrete political messages. Some of the overarching questions that I’m considering:
• How does/should art relate to war and victimhood?
• How does the art world financially and ideologically commodify suffering?
• How does the art world uplift the narratives of those who have endured war?
• How should we view art about war that is produced by someone who did not endure that war?
• Finally, how should we engage with art depicting the victims of genocide that is not created by someone of the targeted religion/race/ethnicity/culture?
I’d like to keep these questions in mind while considering today’s topic: depictions of Kim Phúc in contemporary art.
First, who is Kim Phúc?
Kim Phúc is an anti-war advocate and survivor of the Vietnam War. In 1972, AP photographer Nick Út photographed her as a nine-year-old child running naked down the highway in South Vietnam (Trang Bang) after she and her family were napalm bombed by the ARVN (the South Vietnamese army, or the Army of the Republic of Vietnam). The ARVN had mistakenly believed South Vietnamese civilians to be NLF (“Viet Cong”) fighters; they used American military equipment and bombs to target Kim Phúc and her family. She endured burns covering 30% to 35% of her body, and she, along with many others, considers her survival a miracle [1]. Út’s photograph (officially titled “The Terror of War,” but often referred to as “Napalm Girl”) went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 (he was the only Vietnamese photographer to win a Pulitzer for Vietnam War photography), and it was widely printed at a time when U.S. support for the Vietnam War was dying. The picture reaffirmed for many Americans that the war was morally unjustifiable and needed to end.
I’m not including an image of “The Terror of War” due to ethical concerns about displaying such a picture. However, if you are unfamiliar, searching for the image will bring it up immediately.
In the decades following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Kim Phúc has been a popular subject in contemporary art. Her body in “The Terror of War” has been extracted by artists to make their own political statements, often ones that have a decidedly anti-imperialist, critical perspective. These artists include Jerry Kearns (Madonna and Child, 1986), Banksy (Napalm, 2004), and Abdel Abdessemed (Le Vase abominable, 2013).
In Madonna and Child, Kearns overlays Kim Phúc’s body onto Marilyn Monroe’s face. The background is red, and the colors are jarring, lurid, and unnatural. The red eyeshadow on Marilyn Monroe’s eyes constitutes the shoulders of the screaming child, and Monroe’s red lips conceal the child’s genital area. The most obvious message is that the material excess of life in the U.S. (symbolized by Monroe) is buttressed by the suffering of the children in countries that the U.S. has imperialized, specifically Vietnam.
In Napalm, Banksy uses the image of Kim Phúc to launch an explicit criticism of U.S. imperialism. The child hold hands with Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald while she screams. Neither Mickey nor Ronald acknowledges her suffering.
In Le Vase Abominable, Abdessemed presents a white, life-sized sculpture of Kim Phúc surrounded by charcoal drawings of soldiers. This representation, more so than the others, leaves the interpretation to the viewer: if one did not know “The Terror of War,” they might not immediately recognize that the sculpture and drawings depict a scene of suffering from the Vietnam War. The fact that her sculpture is white, like a Greco-Roman sculpture, suggests that there is 1) something universal about Kim Phúc yet 2) also an insidious quality about the color white.
Of all these works, I think that Kearns’ depiction resonated with me most. Unlike the other artists, Kearns does not shy away from one of the most jarring aspects of “The Terror of War:” the photograph’s display of child nudity, particularly that of an Asian female child. The red background and the usage of Monroe’s lips to conceal Phúc’s privates makes clear that there is something askew about sexuality in the “Terror of War.” While the other works clearly criticize U.S. imperialism, Kearns (1) brings the nature of the photograph into question and (2) makes a statement about colonial and colonized femininities.
(1) I find it hard to believe that newspapers of the time would publish a photograph of a fully naked white female child, particularly a child nearing puberty, screaming in agony. I’m sure there are examples to counter this statement, but I think it’s a strain of thought to keep in mind. There were concerns about printing the photograph for the above reason, but the photo was believed to be so telling about the nature of the war that the usual rules pertaining to nudity (particularly to child nudity) in the press did not apply. Kearns’ decision to obscure Kim Phúc’s nakedness undermines the notion that the survivor of war possesses a universal body from which viewers can gain moral edification.
(2) If Monroe represents American femininity—rooted in capitalist consumption, voluptuousness, and beauty, then Kim Phúc represents Vietnamese femininity. This is, for the artist, a femininity of victimhood. This notion is furthered by the fact that the feminine symbol of Vietnam is a girl rather than a woman and thus possesses essentially no autonomy compared to Marilyn.
Kearns’ decision to pair Marilyn Monroe with Kim Phúc is complicated. On one level, because Monroe is a sex symbol, it reminds the viewer of the endemic sexual exploitation of women and children throughout the war. It is a scathing criticism of the imperialist intervention. The title (Madonna and Child) emphasizes that American capitalist/imperialist policies gave birth to Kim Phúc’s suffering. However, there is also something reductive about this image. The national symbol of Vietnam in the work, particularly of Vietnamese women, is rooted solely in suffering. There are no cultural references or acknowledgements of Vietnam outside its status as a victim of imperialism.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about these works. If you know any other artwork that utilizes the photo, I’d also love to know about that too. I’d also like to hear your thoughts on the title of the photograph. Is “war” (“The Terror of War”) too generalizable a term for this situation?
Notes
[1] Joseph Campbell, “Picture Power? Confronting the Napalm Girl Photograph,” in Getting It Wrong : Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 130, digital file.
Photo by Văn Nguyễn Hoàng