In my current obsession with Miss Saigon...

[ceebeegee]

...on the official website they have teaching materials, for teachers to use with their students in conjunction with viewing a performance of the show. Uh, what? This does not seem appropriate for students to see! I mean, hello, Kim's a bargirl/prostitute, they raffle off women, the Engineer pimps out women openly in several scenes, he says "I got them paying more for just another whore," Chris says "the meat is cheap in Saigon," the Marines talk about getting drunk and laid and there are some pretty skimpy costumes. Not exactly kiddie-friendly! It's difficult to tell the intended age level of the teaching materials--there's a word jumple and a wordsearch on one page, which seems to indicate grade-school level.

Something I don't get--how is the Engineer half-French? He says his father was "a tattoo artist in Haiphong."

I found a site that's devoted to the fall of Saigon--fascinating archive of articles and materials. I can't even imagine how crazy that last scene on top of the Embassy must've been. God, I wish I could've seen this on the stage! [Steve Stark from Waiting for Guffman]

Comments

[nswakko15.livejournal.com]

The guide could be for colleges.
Though you never know what some schools get away with these days.
And one of the Engineer's parents was French. I want to say the mother as the lyrics were:
Selling your mom is a wrench
Perfume can cover a stench
That's what I learned from the French

Since he would learn those two things from his mother.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I thought he learned those things, because his mom prostituted herself to the French--she was "high on betel nuts" which is an Asian thing.

[nswakko15.livejournal.com]

true, but all colonists tend to get high on the area's native drugs. In north america they got tobacco. In the orient it was mostly opium. So a french woman getting high on betel nuts then selling herself while keeping it from her husband by covering the stench of sex with perfume makes some form of logical sense.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

But he has a Vietnamese last name, right? I read his name somewhere, his surname is Nguyen or Vin Danh or something like that.

OTOH, he speaks a patois...

[nswakko15.livejournal.com]

yeah his name was Tran Van Dinh
which is why i think the father was Vietnamese and the mother was French, if we go by the whole wife and kids getting the father's last name thing.