After the controversial statement in the first days of the New Year, Xuan Bac apologized. The artist thinks that his story is only personal and misleading for some audiences. However, on his personal page, Xuan Bac still keeps the article “Mother’s slap”.
“Mother’s slap” is controversial
Xuan Bac tells a fable with the content that the son criticized his mother’s banh chung cooked every New Year’s Eve, even though he still ate “tongue”. As a result, he received a slap from his mother with the curse words “eat porridge and stone bowl”, “have a big but no wisdom”; “If you don’t eat, then get lost”; “If you don’t eat, no one will catch you”…
The artist ended the fable with the sentence: “My whole family finished dinner on the 30th night at the end of the program Tao Quan on VTV3”.
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| Xuan Bac and artists on the stage of Tao Quan 2023. |
Xuan Bac’s way of creating a parable is actually using a metaphorical story to convey the message. What that message is, of course, the public has to guess. Many people believe that Xuan Bac did not mention the word “audience”, so he did not curse the public.
However, this statement is rather condescending. Very few people use metaphors if they do not want to indirectly give an opinion. Xuan Bac certainly has implications, it’s just that he leaves people free to arbitrarily.
“Truong Quynh Culture”
Vietnamese people are no stranger to using metaphors, metonymy, and rhetoric to raise their voices safely. The culture has also produced the Trang Quynh and the Pig. Although Nguyen Quynh is a real character, the story of Trang Quynh is often imagined by folk, in order to show the psychology of the weak when they want to face the strong, they must use the back-to-back, slanting, edge-to-edge fighting style.
Xuan Bac was very Trang Quynh and Tao Quan when using metaphors on white paper with black ink, no law might refute him.
The way of saying country two, lashing out… is also part of the core of the Tao Quan program itself. The Tao Quan script is full of metaphorical stories.
Last year can be mentioned “the donut fell on the road” or even quite unattractive like “she sold melon, not grapefruit”. Lovers look forward to Tao Quan as a kind of Trang Quynh cursing God for hate. People who criticize also because they consider Tao Quan as Trang Quynh, just swearing doesn’t do much good.
Thus, to understand and laugh at Taojun, one must be able to deduce from metaphorical stories. Similarly, to understand Xuan Bac’s meaning, one must also infer from the story (possibly metaphorical). However, that story was too forced for many people to accept that Xuan Bac was literally slapped by his mother.
He may have been very Trang Quynh and Tao Quan when using metaphors on white paper with black ink, no law might refute him. Perhaps he unconsciously projected the pressure to please not only the audience but also other sensitive and difficult things to say in order to launch the Tao Quan program.
The implication in Xuan Bac’s article
Suppose that if Xuan Bac uses a metaphor, his real message is just speculation. However, if Xuan Bac really meant that, the image he used to compare was very unwise. It reflects the following two issues:
Firstly, it is indirectly a consequence of the monopoly mentality that the Tao Quan program is enjoying on television. With very few options on the night of the 30th, people have almost no choice but to watch the Apple Army.
That “banh chung” is almost the only dish on the tray. The solution is probably to increase healthy competition so that the audience is less inhibited, the actor Tao Quan also relieves the pressure, and the delusional thoughts that he is “the mother of the world” will no longer live.
Second, if that comparison image is the correct message, then perhaps Xuan Bac is also infected with cultural disease. He is an actor serving the public, the program Tao Quan is to serve the people, and he himself is being nominated as the people’s artist.