The above films were all produced based on literary works written by Kinh authors and continued to be produced by Kinh people; there is also no information confirming the deep cultural consulting participation of local Hmong people. Therefore, to a greater or lesser extent, the stories told, the ethnic minority cultural elements in the stories and films may differ from what is done in the community.
The film A Phu's Wife (1961), adapted from the original short story of the same name by writer To Hoai, tells the story of the suffering of the small, poor people under the yoke of feudal and colonial domination and oppression. That is the character Mi who had to bear the debt of her parents and was forced to marry A Su - the son of the village chief Pa Tra; and A Phu - an orphan with no relatives - a typical character in Mong folk culture. These characters live in the Mong community in the geographical area of Hong Ngai, Bac Yen, Son La. When analyzing and understanding the details in this film, we need to use the images, practices and understanding of Mong culture in the same context.
In the original short story "A Phu's Wife", writer To Hoai mistranslated the concept of "ma" (dab) in Mong culture and this was reused in the 1961 movie version without any further explanation of this concept.
The scene at minute 1:10:34 depicts the character A Su preventing the character Mi from following the French migration group to Laos to avoid the war; he continuously shouts and holds Mi tight, saying:“You are my family's ghost… You are my family's ghost… My family's ghost can only die in my family… Can only die in my family.”
This sentence is actually a famous idiom in the Hmong language, originally:“ciaj ua koj neeg, tuag ua koj dab”.The general idea is that girls will depend on men in Mong society in their souls as will be analyzed below.
Firstly, it is necessary to understand that in Mong culture, a human being consists of two parts: the physical body (lub cev) and the soul (ntsuj plig). A Mong person, according to traditional beliefs, absolutely cannot exist without one of these two parts of the body.
Second, in the Mong language, the word “dab” which is often translated into Vietnamese as “ma” is actually a general term used to refer to living entities without a physical body, including: souls (ntsuj plig), gods (dab qhuas/dab neeb), ghosts (dab/dab qus), demons (dab tuag, dab phem), (the word “dab neeg” in particular, although it contains the word “dab”, has the meaning of a myth). Depending on the different contexts of use, it is necessary to understand the original word “dab” in Kinh language differently.
Third, when a person is born, regardless of whether it is a boy or a girl, the physical body is born first. Three days later, the Mong people hold a ceremony to welcome the soul (hu plig) with lyrics similar to the lyrics used at the beginning of the film in the funeral of Pao's old mother in the film Pao's Story (2006) to call the soul (plig) to enter the physical body. At that time, the Mong child will be included in the spiritual system (dab qhuas) of the father's family. Then, if it is a girl, when getting married, the Mong people use a pair of chickens or a burning bundle of firewood to rotate a few times over the heads of the bride and groom right after they bring the bride home, standing in front of the main door before entering the groom's house to invite the soul (ntsuj plig) of the girl into the spiritual system (dab qhuas) of the husband's family. From now on, the girl will have to live with a body belonging to her husband's family and a soul belonging to the spiritual system of her husband's family. The fact that a daughter-in-law/son-in-law, when joining the husband/wife's family, will become a member of this family for the rest of her life also appears in many cultures, such as the concept of "three obediences" in Confucianism or the "string connection" custom of many ethnic groups in the Central Highlands.
Therefore, when not fully understanding the different meanings of the word “dab”, people often easily translate it into “ma” in Kinh language. This leads to misunderstandings such as the Mong people performing a ceremony to call ghosts back to become ghosts of their parents’ house, and when they get married, they become ghosts of their husband’s house as shown in the work Husband and Wife A Phu.
Outside the context of the film, misunderstanding the word “dab” as polysemous in the Mong language can easily lead to many misconceptions about Mong culture that we often encounter, such as Mong people worshiping ghosts (which actually means worshiping gods and ancestors, the souls of ancestors and deceased people); or Mong people worshiping ghosts (which actually means worshiping gods or destroying and making peace with ghosts).
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* Lesson 2: Cultural context errors in movies
* Lesson 3: Movies distort perspectives on gender
