Original subtitles

Dear Jane, in the advertising leaflet which accompanies Tuva Bien to the

festivals of Venice, Carthage, New York and San Francisco, we preferred using a

photograph of you in Vietnam instead of photographs from the film.

We found this photograph in an issue of L'Express early in August 1972, and we

think it will enable us to talk in a more concrete way about the problems

raised by Tuva Bien.

This is not a way of changing the subject.

nor is it a way of not talking about to Vabien, as if we were afraid of talking

about the film, not by any means.

It is a way of not marking time, like the perpetuous troops at Quang Tri,

which eventually leads to stepping on others, as with the shells of the 7th

Fleet on Quang Tri.

Actually, this is a way of making a detour, but if we dare say so, a direct

detour. In other words, a detour...

which will enable us to run directly into the treacherous little problems

that the film we made together at the beginning of this year is concerned

with. And rather than talk right away about the qualities and faults of our

film, from one end to the other, we prefer to ask critics, journalists, and

spectators to kindly make the effort of analyzing this photograph of you in

Vietnam, which was taken a few months after the film we did in Paris.

As a matter of fact, this photograph and the short text that appeared with it

does a better job of summing up to Fabien than we could.

And for a very simple reason.

This photograph answers the same question that the film is asking.

What part should intellectuals play in the revolution?

To this question, the photograph gives a practical answer.

The answer it gives is its practice.

This photograph shows you, yes, you, Jane, serving the Vietnamese people's

struggle for independence.

To Fabien provides an answer to this question, too, but not in the same way.

Because less certain than the photograph of the answers to be given, the film

asks other questions first.

And finally, these questions amount to not asking the questions of

intellectuals and the revolution in that way.

How can this question be raised, then?

The film does not answer yet exactly.

But the way in which it does not answer yet is actually an indirect way of

asking new questions.

Because there is no use in giving old answers to the new questions that are

being raised by the development of revolutionary struggles today.

One must learn how to ask these new questions.

And learn from those who, even if they haven't had enough time to formulate

these questions clearly yet, have already taken possession of the ground

where they will be able to grow and flourish.

And they have accomplished this by inventing new forms of practical action.

We're telling you that our way of not really giving an answer yet, like the

Vietnamese and you in the photograph, was actually an indirect way of asking

new questions. An indirect way. A deviated way.

Now you can understand why we had to make a detour before talking about the

film. And why it had to be a detour through Vietnam.

First of all, because everyone agrees about the fact that some really new

questions are being raised over there.

And secondly, because you were with them after having been with us.

As we were looking at this photograph of an actress on the theater of military

operations, that's what made us want to ask some questions. Not to the actress,

but to the photograph.

And for us... This means asking a certain number of new questions about

the classical answer that the Vietnamese and you have given to the well-known

question of the intellectuals by publishing this photograph.

There is something else that has influenced our decision to take

advantage of this photograph in order to make a detour through Vietnam.

This something is our desire to have a real discussion about the film with the

spectators, journalists or not.

Everyone is his own journalist or editor, depending on how he changes his

own concrete day-to-day activity into a film, making himself the star of this

film. And it is precisely this kind of little star system that we want to talk

about, to talk about with the audience.

But in order to do so, we must make a detour, because just as a film is a kind

of detour, that leads us back to ourselves.

In order to get back to the film, we must first make this detour into

ourselves.

And here, in the USA today, ourselves still and always means Vietnam.

We'll try to explain a little further.

We think that it's important and urgent to really speak to those who have taken

the trouble to come and see our film.

Really means right where they are, and also right where we are.

And so we must find a way to enable them to really ask questions if they feel

like it, or give answers to the questions we have asked.

The spectator must be able to really think, and think, first of all, about

this problem of questions and answers.

We must be able to be really upset by the spectator's questions or answers,

and to answer or ask questions, other than with ready-made answers or

questions to ready-made questions or answers.

But were they made by whom? For whom? Against whom?

This means that in order to have a real possibility of discussing 2 Verbier,

we're going to place ourselves outside of 2 Verbier. To talk about the machine,

we're going outside of the factory that uses it. We're going to find our basis

for discussion outside of the world of cinema in order to have a better view of

it when we return.

in order to set out in a better way toward the real problems of our real

concrete life, of which the cinema will have been only one of the elements.

We're not going to leave or abandon Thu Viet Bia. We're going to go away from

it, on the contrary, to go somewhere else, to Vietnam, for example, since you

have come back from there. But what is important is that we're going to travel

there by our own means.

What sort of means are we talking about?

The technical means we work with and the way we use them socially.

You in the photograph from Vietnam and we in the film in Paris.

And we will be in a better position to evaluate this use.

And for once, we will not be alone.

The spectator will be there too.

He will be a producer at the same time he is a consumer.

And we will be consumers at the same time we are producers.

Perhaps all this seems complicated to you.

As Vertov said to Lenin, the fact is that truth is simple, but that it's not

simple to tell the truth.

And Uncle Bertolt had come up with five difficulties for telling the truth back

in his time.

Okay, we will explain that another way.

Today one often hears people say that cinema should serve the people.

Fine. Rather than talk theoretically about the faults and the virtues of Tuva

Bien, we are going to Vietnam.

But we are going there by and with the means of Tuva Bien.

We are going to see, if one may use the expression that way, how Thu Va Bien is

working in Vietnam.

And then, from this practical example, we eventually will be able to draw a few

conclusions about what to do and what not to do, each of us right where he is,

with his wife, his boss, his children, his money, his desires, etc.

We are going to use this photograph then to go and seek an answer to the

following question in Vietnam.

How can cinema help the Vietnamese people win their independence?

And as we have already said several times, we are not the only ones who have

used this photograph to go to Vietnam.

Thousands of people have already done so.

Probably almost everyone here has already seen this photograph.

And for a few seconds, each in his own way has used it to go to Vietnam.

That is precisely what we think is important to know.

How each one has used this photograph to go to Vietnam.

In actual fact, how he has gone to Vietnam.

Because Dr. Kissinger goes to Vietnam too, several times a year.

And it's precisely someone like Dr.

Kissinger who is going to ask us, why this photograph?

And what connection this photograph has with Thu Va Bien?

And he and his friends will tell us that we're mixing things up or just playing

around, that we would be better off getting down to some serious talk about

the film, about art, etc.

But one must make the effort to see how this kind of remark contradicts itself

when it is made that way, thus confusing the whole issue and blocking access to

other questions of a more simple nature, simple as might be asked by ordinary

folks. For instance, before saying what connection, one must first ask, is there

any connection?

And if so, then one may ask which one. And then, having discovered which

connection, we will discover a little further on that the connection between

our film and this photograph is in the problem of expression.

We will eventually be able to judge how important it is, which means making

other connections with other important questions and other important answers.

People will say that all this seems like empty words, but already at the other

end of this new little assembly line of questions, the questions of what is

important, that which are called the questions of practical results, is

beginning to look like an extremely important question.

And this is because the North Vietnamese Vietcong Collective has already answered

the question of whether or not this photograph is important by succeeding in

having it published in just about every corner of the free world.

the same free world that is holding them in chains.

And it has shown what importance it gave to this photograph, the importance it

gave to the questions of practical results, the importance that it gave to

the question of what is important.

This photograph is therefore a practical answer that the North Vietnamese have

decided to give with your help, Jane, to the well-known question we asked

earlier, what part should cinema play in the development of revolutionary

struggles?

Or, in other words, how should intellectuals take part in the

revolution?

The photograph gives a practical answer to this question, the answer for whole

people. The photograph has been taken and published, and it has been taken in

a certain way, to make sure that it would be published, both on the right

and on the left. And this is what has happened, obviously, otherwise we would

not have obtained it.

Tu vas bien answers this question too.

but from somewhere else, and in another way. A way, in fact, of not being too

quick to give this kind of answer.

A way that is a means of saying, here in France, where we are, in 1972, ruled by

the friends of the Americans and the Russians, everything is not so clear.

Everything is not so obvious.

Fidel Castro said at the UN that for revolutionaries, there are never any

obvious truths.

That they are an invention of imperialism.

and that those who are big use obvious truth cleverly to oppress those who are

small. And since everything is not obvious, Jane, let us continue asking

ourselves questions.

But let us make an effort to ask them differently.

In other words, let us ask new questions in order to be able to give new answers.

For example, let us observe how the Vietnamese express their struggle.

Let us ask ourselves some questions, since we wish to express our struggle

too. And first, let us ask ourselves honestly what makes us able to say that

we are really struggling.

But at this point, perhaps you, Jane, will ask us. Why this photograph of me

and not one of Ramsey Clark, for example? He was in Vietnam too, and he

also witnessed the bombing of the dykes.

Simply, Jane, because of Tout va bien and because your social rank in the film

was the same as in this photograph.

You're an actress.

We're all actors in this stage of history, yes.

But what's more, you work in films and so do we.

Then why not Yves Montand in Chile, you could say?

He was also in the movie, true.

But it so happens...

that the Chilean revolutionaries, the mere, did not judge that it would be a

good thing to publish photographs of Eve.

Whereas the Vietnamese revolutionary did judge, with your agreement, that it

would be a good thing to publish photographs of you. In fact, to publish

photographs of your agreement with the Vietnamese travel.

There is another problem, too, and one that we can't avoid.

We are both men who have made Tuva Bien, and you are a woman.

In Vietnam, the question is not put that way, but here it is.

And as a woman, you undoubtedly will be hurt a little or a lot by the fact that

we are going to criticize a little or a lot your way of acting in these

photographs. Hurt because once again, as usual, men are finding ways to attack

women. If for no other reason, we hope that you will be able to come and answer

our letter by talking with us as we go reading it in two or three places in the

U.S.

In the U.S. and in Europe, it's true that things are still or have already

become that way.

And we are as you, submerged in some pretty troubled water, through which

this photograph can help us to see clearly.

This is where we have to start from. From you in the U.S., from us in Paris,

from you and us in Paris, from you in Vietnam, from us in Paris, looking at

you in Vietnam.

from us going to the U.S., and from everyone here in the theater listening

to us and looking at you.

We are starting from all this.

It is organized in a certain way and functions in a certain way.

We want to discuss it all, starting from there.

To start from Thu Va Bien, to go to Vietnam, to come back to Thu Va Bien, in

other words, to come back to Vietnam in the theater where Thu Va Bien is being

shown, and afterward to go back home.

and tomorrow to go back to the factory.

In order to discuss all that, we are slipping this photograph under people's

noses for a second look, since the Vietnamese and you already slipped it

there once.

In other words, we ask, and we are asking ourselves, did we really look at

this photograph?

What did we see in it? And beneath its question, we discover another question.

For example, how did we look at this photograph?

How did our eyes function in regard to this photograph?

And what makes them glance that way instead of another?

And still another question, what makes our voice interpret this glance in a

certain way instead of another?

To Vabien asks all of these questions.

These questions can all be summed up in the big question of the role of the

intellectuals in the revolutionary struggles.

Or rather, this big well-known question about intellectuals. One begins to see

that... By expressing itself in that way, it becomes paralyzing, and that it

paralyzes others. And finally, that it is no longer a question belonging to the

revolution. Today's questions about the revolution, as we will discover in

relation to the photograph, then in relation to the film, should be, how to

change the old world?

And one can see right away that the old world of a Viet Cong is not the same as

the old world of a Western intellectual.

That the old world of a Palestinian is not the same as that of a black child

from Harlem.

That the old world of a worker from the Renault factory is not the same as that

of his girlfriend.

One can see that this photograph gives a practical answer to the question of

changing the old world.

And therefore, we're going to examine this photographic answer.

We're going to make an investigation.

We're going to look for some clues.

We're going to analyze and put them together.

We will try to explain the organization of these elements that make up this

photograph. On the one hand, we will explain things as if we were dealing

with a photographic molecular structure.

And on the other hand, as if we were dealing with a kind of social nerve

cell. Then, we will try to show the connection between the scientific

investigation and the more political one.

Where do the right ideas come from? From the struggle for production, from the

class struggle, and from scientific experimentation?

In making this investigation, questioning this photograph, we're doing

nothing other than trying to find out how the answer that this photograph

gives was produced in the context of the struggle in Vietnam.

Then we will see if the answer is entirely satisfactory for everyone, for

whom, against whom, and if perhaps other questions won't start cropping up, just

those that Tout va bien somehow or other manages to raise.

For example, as far as an important part of the photograph is concerned, the

actress's expression, the relation between the eyes and the mouth, in

Western Europe, in our opinion, one cannot be satisfied with it for the same

reasons as its authors those who took the photograph or decided that it should

be taken the north vietnam vietnam collective and this at first seems

absolutely normal the context being different but then one ought to inquire

as thoroughly as they do into what has conditioned this idea of what is normal

in saying this we are not doing as most of the communist party and their allies

in the western world the Pope, the UN, the Red Cross, who say simply, let us

help Vietnam toward peace.

Saying what we have said, on the contrary, is saying something much more

precise. For example, let us help the North Vietnamese-South Vietnam alliance

make its own peace.

And even more precise, since Vietnam...

in changing its whole world, helps us change our own, how can we really help

Vietnam in return?

And since the Viet Cong North Vietnam Collective is struggling, criticizing

and transforming Southeast Asia, how can we struggle in our context for changing

Europe and America?

Of course, all this takes a little longer to say than just peace in

Vietnam. And it necessitates doing things more thoroughly than just

creating two or three Vietnams.

And that's why Marx, in the preface to the first edition of Capital, was asking

for readers who were not afraid of minute details, in order to overthrow

the king of hell and free all the smaller devils.

Faced with this photograph a few months ago by Eugene and the Vietnamese, and

now by us again, each person can, if he is willing, make his own investigation.

Then we will be free to compare the results, and we will be able to speak.

without taking the desire to speak away from those who are listening.

Perhaps we will be able, just for a moment, to say a little less nonsense

about ourselves and the revolution.

And one more thing, so that you won't feel attacked personally, although we

can't really avoid it. We feel the question is badly put, but we hope that

by the end of this letter things will be a little clearer.

And that's why we really need you to come and answer us directly.

Because we're writing to you not only as authors of Tuvebia, but also because we

have been looking at this photograph.

And you must admit, it is the first time anyone who has seen a photograph of you

in a magazine writes to you about it this way.

So that you won't feel like our chosen victim, as they say. And so that you'll

understand that we're not aiming at Jane, but at a function of Jane.

When questioning this photograph, we will refer to you in the third person.

We won't say Jane has done such and such. We'll say the actress or the

militant, just by the way as in the text which accompanies the photograph.

In our opinion, these are the principal elements or elements of elements

that play an important part in this photograph which appeared in the French

magazine L'Express at the beginning of August 72.

Elementary elements.

This photograph was taken at the request of the North Vietnamese government,

representing on this occasion the revolutionary alliance between the

people of South Vietnam and the people of North Vietnam.

This photograph was taken by Joseph Kraft, who is described beneath the

photograph in a text which was not written by those who were responsible

for taking the photograph, but by those who have published it. In other words, a

text composed by several writers from L'Express who had not made any contact

with the North Vietnamese delegation in France.

We checked that.

The text describes him as one of the most well-known and most moderate

American journalists.

It also says that the actress is a devoted militant for peace in Vietnam.

But the text doesn't mention the Vietnamese people in the photograph.

For example, the text does not tell us that the Vietnamese who cannot be seen

in the background is one of the least known and least moderate of the

Vietnamese people.

This photograph, like any photograph, is physically mute.

It talks through the mouth of the text written beneath it.

This text does not emphasize, does not repeat, because the photograph speaks

and says things in its own way. The fact that the militant is in the foreground

and Vietnam is in the background.

The text says that Jane Fonda is questioning the people of Hanoi.

But the magazine does not publish the questions asked, nor the answers given

by the representatives of the Vietnamese people in these photographs.

In fact, the text should not describe the photograph as Jane Fonda

questioning, but as Jane Fonda listening.

This much is obvious, and perhaps the moment only lasted 1 250th of a second,

but that is the 250th.

that has been recorded and sent throughout the Western world.

Being written this way, the text is probably trying to tell us that the

photograph was taken at random during a discussion where the actress militant

was actually questioning the people of Hanoi, and therefore we shouldn't pay

any attention to the detail of her mouth being closed.

But we will see a little further on that it is not a question of chance, or

rather, even if it is chance, the chance is then exploited according to the

logical necessity of capitalism the necessity for capital to disguise what

is real at the same time it reveals it in other words the necessity of tricking

the customer about the product less elementary elements less elementary

elements the camera took this photograph from a low angle actually in the history

of cinema this low point of view cannot be considered an innocent one.

This fact has been emphasized technically and socially by Orson Welles

in his first pictures.

The choice of frame is not neutral or innocent either.

The frame is composed in relation to the actress who is looking rather than in

relation to what she is looking at.

She is presented in the frame as if she were the star and that in fact is

because the actress is an internationally known star.

So on the one hand, the frame shows a star in a militant activity, and on the

other, it focuses on the militant as a star, which is not the same thing.

Or rather, which might be the same thing in Vietnam, but not in Europe or in the

US.

The following page shows photographs of what the militant saw at other moments,

but not what she was looking at in this photograph.

As far as we're concerned, these are the same type of pictures that now flew

automatically through the channels of TV and newspaper publications in the free

world. Pictures that we have seen hundreds of thousands of times, as many

as there have been bombs.

And that don't change anything, except for those who are struggling to organize

this flow in a certain way, their way, the seven points of the GRP.

The truth is, if these photographs had been presented by some Miss Jones or

Smith within the same newspapers, we'd have refused them as too ordinary.

Ordinary, one must admit, just as it has become a very ordinary thing for an

agricultural community situated just outside of Hanoi to rebuild its

schoolhouse for the 20th time, after the phantoms of Kissinger have destroyed it.

But of course, No one is going to talk about this extraordinary, ordinary fact.

Neither the militant being given star treatment, nor the express.

Neither will anything be said about what the American actress and her sisters,

the Vietnamese actresses that one can see in the photographs on the next page,

have said to each other.

Did the American actress ask about acting in Vietnam?

Or how someone who acts in Hollywood can act in Hanoi knowing he must return to

Hollywood? Express doesn't mention anything about all that, and we think

this is because the American actress doesn't talk about it either.

It's true that the militant talked about the anti-personal bombs and the dykes,

but one must not forget that the militant is also an actress, whereas the

Russell Tribunal and Ramsey Clark, for example, are not.

We think that one must realize that because she's an actress, the officials

in the White House will have no difficulty if no one tries to stop them,

saying that the actress has more or less unconsciously played into the enemy's

hand, and that she is just reciting a text that she has learned by heart.

Such criticism can easily destroy all the efforts of the actress and the

militant. and one must understand why she remains vulnerable to this kind of

attack.

We think in this case it is because the actress militant did not refer to the

dykes by using an example such as that of a Vietnamese actress who works to

fill in the holes in the dykes and then acts in a theatrical representation in

the village that is threatened by the breakings of the dykes.

In relation to this, We believe that if the militant considered herself, first

of all, as an actress, as the Vietnamese were making use of her due on their

level, she could begin to play her part historically, otherwise than in

Hollywood. Perhaps the Vietnamese do not have a direct need for this yet, but

Americans probably do, and therefore, indirectly, the Vietnamese do too.

Once again, we find the necessity of making a detour.

The Vietnamese are obliged to make a detour through the USA.

In this photograph, in this reflection of reality, two people are seen facing

the camera.

The others, they are back turned.

Of the two people, one is in sharp focus and the other is not.

In this photograph, the famous American is sharp and clear and the anonymous

Vietnamese is blurry and unclear.

But in reality, it is the American left that is blurry and out of focus.

and the vietnamese left that is exceptionally sharp and clear in reality

it is also the american right that is always exceptionally sharp while the

vietnamese right the vietnamization is becoming less and less clear what should

we think then of the moderation of joseph craft who took a moderate view of

his contradiction set the lens opening and measured the focal distance

accordingly it was all carefully measured as we have seen in relation to

his choice of frame, and he intentionally set the focus on the star

in militant activities in order to obtain a certain product, a certain

ideological merchandise, and once more with a deliberate aim in mind.

Let's not forget that the processing of this product is directly controlled by

North Vietnam, but its distribution outside of Vietnam is not, or rather it

is but in a very indirect way, not to mention the feedback.

This distribution is controlled by the TV networks and newspapers of the free

world, and so we see that one of the moves necessary to complete this act of

communication cannot be made by those who have planned it. Which move?

Or is it a move in some kind of a game? And who has the right to play?

And who plays for whom, against whom?

At this point we find, and we will come back to it again later, that in

examining the relationship between what seems sharp and what does not, in

relation to the two faces in the photograph, we have discovered something

quite unusual.

The face out of focus is sharp and clear, and the sharp and clear face is

vague and out of focus.

The Vietnamese can stand being viewed out of focus.

Because he has been in sharp focus for a long time in his everyday reality, the

American is obliged to appear in sharp focus.

Because the Vietnamese way of remaining clearly out of focus makes this

inevitable. The American is obliged to focus clearly on his real lack of

clarity.

But nothing of that thought is said in the text.

The general effect of this photograph emphasize that of another photograph of

the actress on the cover of the same issue of Lexpress.

This cover composition is very revealing if one is willing to see that a

photograph can cover up just as much as it reveals.

A photograph imposes silence as it speaks.

In our opinion, This is one of the working principles of the two-faced form

Jekyll and Hyde, principle and interest, that information deformation takes on

when it is transmitted by images and sound in our epoch, which is that of the

decline of imperialism and of the general tendency toward revolution.

The American left says that the tragedy is not in Vietnam, but in the U.S.

The facial expression of the militant in this photograph is, in fact, that of a

tragic actress.

But a tragic actress with a particular social and technical background, formed

and deformed by the Hollywood school of Stanislavski and Shobis.

The militant's expression was the same in the third reel of Two Verbien when,

as an actress, she was listening to one of the film extras singing a text

written by Lothar Continu.

The actress also had this expression in Clout.

As she looked at her friend, a policeman played by Donald Sutherland, with a

tragic sense of pity on her face, and made up her mind to spend the night with

him. We can find this same expression already in the 1940s, used by Henry

Fonda to portray an exploited worker in the future fascist Steinbeck's Grapes of

Wrath. And even further back in the actress's paternal history within the

history of cinema.

It was still the same expression that Henry Fonda used to cast a profound and

tragic look on the black people in Young Mr.

Lincoln, made by the future Honorable Admiral of the Navy John Ford. One can

also find this expression on the opposite side as John Wayne expresses

his deep regrets about the devastation of the war in Vietnam in the Green

Beret. In our opinion, this expression has been borrowed, principle and

interest. from the free trade mask of roosevelt's new deal in fact it's an

expression of an expression and it appeared inevitably by chance just as

the talkies were becoming a financial success this expression talks but only

to say how much it knows about stock market crush for example but it says

nothing more than how much it knows that's why in our opinion this

rooseveltian expression is technically different from those that have preceded

it in the history of cinema, the expression of silent screen stars,

Lillian Gish, Valentino, Falconetti, etc.

Just make the experiment and have these faces look at a photograph of U.S.

crimes in Vietnam.

Not one will have the same expression, although all of them have the same

knowing look.

equals editing of IC.

This is because before the talkies, silent films had a materially starting

point. The actor said, I am filmed.

Therefore I think, at least I think of the fact that I am being filmed.

It's because I exist that I think.

After the talkies, There was a new deal between the matter being filmed, the

actor, and thought.

The actor began saying, I think that I am an actor, therefore

I am filmed.

It is because I think that I am. I think, therefore I am. As we have just

seen in this experiment, which elaborates Kuleshov's, before the new

deal expressed itself.

Each star of the silent screen had his own individual expression, and the wide

popularity of silent movies was a real fact.

On the contrary, as soon as films begin to talk like the New Deal, each actor

begins to speak the same thing.

Just make the same experiment with any big star from the world of cinema,

sports or politics.

I think therefore I am. I think therefore I am. I think therefore I am.

I think therefore I am.

I think therefore I am. I think therefore I am.

This expression that says it knows a lot about things, this expression that says

it knows a lot about things, that says no more and no less, is an expression

that doesn't help one to see more clearly.

into one's personal problem, to see how Vietnam can shed some light on them, for

example. So why be satisfied with it and say, it's better than nothing, something

gets across a little, as in the Union speech in 2 Verbien, Reel 3, or in the

CP speech in 2 Verbien, Reel 5?

And why, even if the actress is not capable of acting differently yet, and

even if we are not yet as able to help her...

to help her act differently as we would like to be.

Why should the Vietnamese be satisfied with it? In our opinion, we risk doing

them more harm than good by producing a good conscience for ourselves in such a

cheap way.

Scientifically speaking, the movement from life to information is cheap.

After all, this expression is also addressed to us, we who are making an

effort to look at it a second time.

These eyes and these mouths are not saying anything to us, and for us, they

are filling themselves with emptiness, like those of the Czechoslovakian

children in front of the Russian tanks, or the swollen little bellies from

Biafra or Bangladesh, or the Palestinian feet carefully looked after in the mud

by the UN, full of emptiness, full of empty meanings, but watch out only for

capitalism.

Because capitalism knows how to fuck things up and fill the real eyes of its

future enemies with emptiness, forcing them to look nowhere.

How can one fight against this situation?

Not by banning the publication of this kind of photograph.

One would have to stop all these TV and radio programs in practically every

country in the world, as well as the publication of practically every form of

newspaper.

which would be utopian.

No. But one could publish them differently.

And it is in relation to this difference, because of their financial

and cultural influence, that the stars can play an important role. A very heavy

role, as they say.

And the real tragedy is that they don't know how to play this heavy role.

How can one learn to play it?

Many questions must still be asked in Europe.

and in the United States before one can answer clearly.

We are asking a few into that, as Marx did in his day by taking German ideology

and raising the question of the misery of philosophy against Proudhon, who only

knew how to philosophize about misery.

If one looks carefully at the Vietnamese behind the actress, one realizes very

quickly that his face is expressing something entirely different than that

of the American militant.

But even if one can't see what he's looking at, one can see that his face

reflects what he must face every day.

Entire personal bombs, broken dykes, and the torn bodies of dead women.

A house which must be rebuilt for the nth time, the hospital, and a lesson to

be learned.

Lenin said, first lesson, learn.

Second lesson, learn. Third lesson, learn.

And this face...

immediately reflects a day-to-day struggle for a very simple reason.

It's not just the face of a revolutionary, but of a Vietnamese

revolutionary. A long past of struggling has been written on this face by French,

Japanese, and American imperialism. In fact, this face has been recognized for

a long time now throughout the world as the face of revolution, even by his

enemies. Let's not be afraid of words.

This is a face that has already won the independence of its own code of

communication. Today, no other revolutionary face reflects as much

daily struggle as this, simply because no other revolution, except the Chinese,

has made as long a march as the Vietnamese revolution.

Let's make the experiment.

This black man, for example.

We cannot say right away why he is struggling, or where, and how.

In Detroit, on the assembly line of the Chrysler Corporation, for better wages

and a slightly slower work rate.

In Johannesburg, to have the right to enter a movie house where white people

are showing white people's film.

And this worker.

And this European girl.

And this Arab.

And this young radical.

As Uncle Bertolt said, one must have the courage to say that we have nothing to

say about these faces.

unless there is a caption with some sort of nonsense or lies that we can swallow.

And one must have the courage to admit one's weakness and failure, for one has

nothing to say.

This Vietnamese face, on the contrary, needs no words written underneath.

Anywhere in the world, people will say, this man is Vietnamese, and the

Vietnamese people are fighting to kick America out of Asia.

Let's look on the other hand.

at the face of the american actress without the rest of the photograph what

can see right away that it doesn't reflect anything or rather that it only

reflects itself but a self that is nowhere lost in the infinite immensity

and immortal tenderness of a pieta by michelangelo a woman's face that does

not reflect other women a vietnamese face was a function reflecting reality

Whereas the American's face is a function that only reflects a function.

A face that could also belong to a hippie needing a fix. To a student in

Eugene, Oregon, whose favorite runner, Pree Fontaine, just lost the Olympic 5

,000 meters.

To a young girl in love who has just been dropped by a boyfriend.

And also to a militant in Vietnam.

It's too much. There is too much information in too small an element of

space and time.

At the same time, we are sure that the militant is thinking of Vietnam, and not

sure at all, because she might be thinking of something entirely

different, as we have suggested.

Therefore, we must eventually ask the question, why is this photograph of a

militant actress, who is not necessarily thinking of Vietnam, being published,

precisely in place of that of an actress militant, who is necessarily thinking of

Vietnam?

Because the true reality of this photograph... lies in just this, a star

disguise unveiled by the absence of Max Factor. But L'Express doesn't say

anything about this, because that would be starting the revolution in

journalism. It would be the beginning of revolution to say in Europe and in the

US that today it is not possible to take a photograph of someone thinking of

something. Vietnam, fucking Ford Motors, factories, sand on the seashore, etc.

Perhaps people will say that we should not have isolated this part of the

picture from the rest, since it was published as part of a whole.

But we think this is a very bad argument.

We have isolated this part to show that it already stands alone in fact, and the

tragedy is in this solitude.

If we have been able to separate this face from the rest of the picture, it is

because the face lends itself to this separation.

Whereas the Vietnamese face, on the contrary, remains a part of its

surroundings, even if we try to look at it alone.

It has a definite reverse shot.

On the contrary, here, there is no reverse shot possible.

No reverse shot.

In France, we are very familiar with the expression used by the actress in this

picture. It's a working model of Cartesian thought process.

I think, therefore I am, the same that inspired the statue of the thinker by

Rodin. Why not carry this statue around wherever there is a catastrophe in the

world, to inspire the crowds with a feeling of pity?

The swindle of capitalist art and humanism would be exposed immediately.

One must realize that stars are not allowed to think.

They are only social functions.

They are thought, and they make you think.

One just as to look at the acting of big thinkers like Marlo Brando or any other

motherfuckers to understand why capital needs this sort of art to reinforce the

strength of idealistic philosophy in its fight.

Against the materialist philosophy of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao who

represent their peoples.

We've said that we are able to isolate on the contrary.

The face of the American actress.

Now we are going to isolate the expression on the contrary in this

sentence. Isolate, separate.

Lenin said that a revolutionary kind of separation is needed to fight against

the way capitalism separates workers into isolated categories.

The face of the American militant and that of the North Vietnamese are

opposites. The struggle of opposites is precisely what is happening in the

imaginary reality of this image.

The American eye in Vietnam is satisfied with just reading the word horror.

The Vietnamese eye sees the reality of America in all its horror.

In this scene, the Vietnamese just appears in the background like a film

extra. But behind him, we can already feel the force of the astonishing,

incredible machine built by the North Vietnam Vietcong Collective.

And standing behind the star, we can still sense the vile, deadly capitalist

machine. looking full of cynical humility and limpid confusion, as

Lelouch said in Adventure is Adventure.

In all of this we find a struggle between what still is and what already

is, a fight between the old and the new.

A struggle which does not limit itself to the taking of this picture, but is

perpetuated by the way it has been published and by the fact that people in

this theater are looking at it at this very moment, a struggle between the

process of making a product and the process of its distribution, depending

on who controlled the process, capital, or revolution.

Other elements of elements.

The North Vietnamese are right in taking the risk of publishing this picture. Or

rather, they have their reasons for doing so.

This picture plays the part of a small screw in the mechanism that has been

conceived for developing their current military diplomatic offensive.

This picture is one of the thousands that the Vietnamese have given with

their blood in answer to U.S. war crimes.

You may have noticed, by the way, Jane, that the Viet Cong North Vietnam

Collective often publishes documents of their struggles, but seldom of

atrocities. In this case, the North Vietnamese government has answered on

behalf of its people and specifically representing the Committee for

Friendship with the American People by calling on the services of Jen Fonda,

which means asking her to play a certain part.

Unlike what many Americans would have done, the American actress accepted to

go to Vietnam and play this part. She went to Hanoi to help the Vietnamese

revolution.

Now one must ask the question, How does she help? Or more precisely, how does

she play this part?

The American actress at work in this picture is helping the Vietnamese people

in their struggle for independence.

But she's not only helping in Vietnam, but particularly in the US and in

Europe, too, since the picture has come to us in France as well.

As we look at the picture here, then, we are freely obliged to ask, does this

picture help us?

And above all, does it help us to help Vietnam?

Vietnam forces us to ask this question.

Putting together some elements, or some elements of elements.

Neither Lexpress nor the American militant have made the distinction

between Jane Fonda speaking, asking questions, and Jane Fonda listening.

For the Vietnamese, in the present historical stage of their struggle, the

most important fact about this picture is... that Jane Fonda is in it.

And in our opinion, it doesn't matter much for them whether she is speaking or

listening, because the silence is just as effective.

The important thing is that she is there.

But here in 1972, the most important thing is not necessarily the same.

We must learn what determines this necessarily.

We couldn't help observing that the text beneath the picture was lying.

when it said that the actress was speaking to the inhabitants of Hanoi,

since the picture plainly showed that the militant was listening.

And since we need the contradictory truth of this picture, and not its

eternal truth, it is also important for us to make the observation that L

'Express is lying on every level.

But we must also add that if the magazine is able to lie, it is because

the picture makes it possible.

Actually, L'Express takes advantage of.

profits by the implicit authorization of the picture to hide the fact that the

militant is listening.

By saying that she is speaking and speaking about peace in Vietnam,

Lexpress is able to avoid saying what peace, leaving this up to the picture

alone, as if the picture said precisely what sort of peace was involved.

We have proved, however, that this is not the case.

But if Lexpress can do this, it is probably because the American actress

does not express her struggle as a militant by saying anything other than

peace in Vietnam, and because she does not ask herself exactly what peace, and

particularly what peace in America.

And if she doesn't ask herself this yet, or is not able to, it is not because she

still acts as an actress, as not as a militant, but on the contrary.

Because as a militant, she doesn't ask herself questions yet about what new

approach or style might be applied to her function as an actress, both

technically and socially.

In other words, she doesn't consider a militant activity as an actress, even

though the North Vietnamese invited her precisely as a militant actress.

And she's talking from somewhere other than where she really is, in America.

which is what interests the Vietnamese most of all. This is why she also covers

up the fact that the most important fact about this picture is listening,

listening to Vietnam before talking about it.

Whereas at the same time, Nixon, Kissinger, and the big barrel of Stale

Porter are not listening to anything or refusing to listen to anything of the

Paris talks.

We must be able to examine this masquerade.

An unmasking Nixon hypocrisy does not mean saying, peace in Vietnam.

Because he says it too, and so does Brezhnev.

One must say the opposite of what he says.

One must say, I'm listening to the Vietnamese, who are going to tell me

what sort of peace they want in their country.

And one must say, as an American, I'll keep my mouth shut, because I admit I

have got nothing to say about this. The Vietnamese must say what they want, and

I have to listen.

and then do whatever they say because they are not a part of Southeast Asia.

The rest is just masquerade.