Article

Thesis Eleven
2023, Vol. 174(1) 118–134
Western tourism at Cu Chi ª The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/07255136221147954

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of the carnivalesque
Todd Madigan
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA

Brad West
University of South Australia, Australia

Abstract
In this article we analyze the social memories of the Vietnam War afforded by tourism at
the Cu Chi battlefield. Specifically, we explore the experiences of tourists at the site in
order to address the under-theorized relationship between carnivalesque and dialogical
discourses. Drawing on field interviews and ethnographic engagement with young adult
Western tourists who took tours led by Vietnamese guides, we document how the
tourists’ playful engagement with the past at Cu Chi facilitates the development of new
dialogical memories of the war. Our interviews reveal a strong concern with the suf-
fering of both occupying forces and the Vietnamese communist forces, a finding that
points to the need for scholars to better appreciate the multiplicity of ways that social
performances function in shaping social memory. Ultimately, we challenge social per-
formance theories whose explanations reduce shifts in social memory to audience
interpretations of authenticity.

Keywords
carnivalesque, dialogical, memory, tourism, Vietnam War

Corresponding author:
Todd Madigan, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 337 Frank Porter Graham Building, Greensboro,
NC 27402-6170, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Madigan and West 119

Introduction
This article analyzes tourism at the Cu Chi battlefield1 in Vietnam and its role in
reshaping the social memory of the Vietnam War.2 Critically engaging with theories of
social performance, particularly those developed within what Alexander and Smith
(2010) call the ‘strong program’ of cultural sociology (Alexander, 2017; Eyerman and
McCormick, 2006; Mast and Alexander, 2019), we point to the need for greater
appreciation of how tourist experiences can become culturally significant beyond the
question of whether they are interpreted as authentic representations of reality. In par-
ticular, our concern is with how the experiences of Western tourists at Cu Chi facilitate
new understandings of the war that challenge Eurocentric memory frames. As we
demonstrate, these new understandings are generated despite the fact that a) the tours are
characterized by a playful engagement with the past and b) the visitors themselves are
relatively skeptical about the manufactured character of historical portrayal at the site.
Ultimately, we argue that this case highlights the need for cultural scholars to more fully
appreciate the polysemic ways in which social performances can become consequential
for social memory.
In our analysis of the relationship between tourism and social memory at the Cu Chi
tunnels, we utilize Mikhail Bakhtin’s conceptual framework of carnivalesque experi-
ences and dialogical discourses. The carnivalesque refers to a carnival-like ritual
experience that is distinct from ‘serious official . . . ceremonials’, an experience
involving ‘people who are all participants, actors, not spectators’ and offering an ‘extra
political aspect of the world’ (Bakhtin, 1984a: 5–7). The carnivalesque, as it relates to the
Cu Chi battle site (and to thanatourism3 more broadly), is characterized by an envi-
ronment where laughter, playfulness, and explicit ritual displays of symbolic violence
are sanctioned and establishes the conditions whereby the powerful can be mocked and
brought low (Bakhtin, 1984a). While Bakhtin’s conception of the carnivalesque has been
a central theme in theories of ritual and social performance, within the analysis of
tourism it has rarely been examined in relation to the dialogical, despite Bakhtin’s having
made the connection himself. For Bakhtin, discourses are dialogical when they are both
1) a response to previous utterances made by others and 2) a reply to the imagined future
responses of others. Bakhtin states that a dialogical discourse is ‘constructed while
taking into account possible responsive reactions, for whose sake, in essence, it is
actually created’ (Bakhtin, 1984a: 91, 94). In Bakhtin’s view, there is a perpetual
dialogue regarding the meaning of any particular subject, and new meanings are
conditioned by both prior meanings and our anticipation of a future ‘response,
agreement, sympathy, objection, execution, and so forth’ (Bakhtin, 1984b: 69). In the
case of tourism at the Cu Chi battle site, the carnivalesque is significant in that it allows
dialogical discourses to emerge, ‘a situation in which diverse voices are heard and
interact’ (Robinson, 2011). The resulting discourse then serves to dislodge existing
authoritative monological discourses – ones that operate as if they were ‘hermetic and
self-sufficient’ wholes, presuming ‘nothing beyond the borders of their own context’
(Bakhtin, 1981: 671).
The empirical focus of our research draws on ethnographic observation at the Cu Chi
battlefield and 25 semi-structured interviews with tourists between the ages of 20 and 40
120 Thesis Eleven 174(1)

from Australia, Great Britain, Europe, and the United States. Consistent with Halb-
wachs’s insights (1950: 70), we argue that the empirical focus on young adults is sig-
nificant as it provides an indicator of emerging social memories. Each informant had
undertaken one of the commercially available tours of the battlefield, all of which are led
by Vietnamese guides. In total, the authors participated in 10 different tours of the Cu
Chi tunnels, each having a different tour guide and run by five different local tourism
agencies. The interviews were conducted in Ho Chi Minh City the evening following
each informant’s participation in a tour. We also draw on ethnographic fieldwork on
other war-related tourism sites in Vietnam, pointing to the distinctive character of social
performance at Cu Chi.

War and tourism in Vietnam

Since the 1975 fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War has been an important event for thinking
about the power of commemorative practices. Indeed, a great deal of social memory
literature has been written regarding the social and psychological consequences of the
conflict, particularly in light of the war’s ambivalent status within established Western
traditions of remembrance (Eyerman et al., 2017). At times this has included scholarship
that acknowledges the significance of tourism-like logics in shaping the ongoing cultural
significance of the Vietnam War (Reston, 2017; Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz, 1991);
however, this scholarship has largely concerned commemorative activities in the United
States and other Western nations. In contrast, we point to the significance of com-
memorative practices in Vietnam that dialogically bring forth new historical under-
standings of the war.
The growth of war-related tourism in Vietnam is indicative of the rapid international
expansion of thanatourism in the late 20th century (Cohen, 2011; Light, 2017; Welch,
2015). For Vietnam this ‘dark tourism’ corresponds to the emergence of international
tourism more broadly, as it is only since the early1990s – and with the 1995 official
normalization of relations with the United States – that Vietnam emerged as a mass
international tourism market. Since that time Vietnam has seen a dramatic increase in
foreign tourist receipts, with some of the most frequent visitors coming from countries
that fought against the Vietnamese communists, including the United States and Aus-
tralia, ranking fourth and eighth respectively in terms of the numbers of inbound
international visitors to the country (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, 2015).
While war tourism in Vietnam is frequently overseen by the state, Western tourist
agencies have for the most part taken a different approach. In the early 1990s, Vietna-
mese authorities decided to outsource the marketing of the country to foreign visitors.
This decision led to a framing of the country as one that is essentially pre-communist
(Kennedy and Williams, 2001: 136; Tai, 2001). This marketing involves symbolic
emphasis on Vietnam’s colonialist traditions, such as East-Asian exoticism and the
country’s unique natural environment, particularly its long sandy beaches, lush tropical
jungles, broad rivers, and dramatic mountain formations. Within this marketing regime,
war tourism was marginalized, despite the fact that sites connected to the war in Vietnam
proved to be among the most visited places by foreign tourists, something recently
acknowledged in official government tourism strategies.
Madigan and West 121

The Cu Chi tunnels are one of the most prominent war-related tourism sites in
Vietnam. Other popular places include the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the Son My
Memorial (the memorial dedicated to the victims of the infamous ‘My Lai Massacre’),
the Museum of the Revolution in Hanoi, and the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh
City. We note that each of these sites has a distinctive historical framing and social
performance of the past. For example, the Hoa Lo Prison – more famously known as the
‘Hanoi Hilton’ – contrasts the North Vietnamese Army’s kindness shown to French and
American captives with the cruelty visited on communists and other dissidents under the
French and South Vietnamese governments. The War Remnants Museum, previously
named the Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes, focuses on war atrocities by the
South Vietnamese, the United States, and the French occupiers with exhibits relating to
the use of Agent Orange and Napalm, as well as the My Lai Massacre.
Western depictions of the Vietnam War in popular culture are a significant cultural
frame for young adult Western visitors to Cu Chi, while perceptions of the war also often
derive from personal connections to those who fought in the conflict. Consequently,
Western visitors often find it difficult to make a distinction between ‘Vietnam the war’
and ‘Vietnam the country’, for the country is generally experienced through the prism of
the war. As demonstrated in the quotes below, such beliefs meant that the tourists we
interviewed were often surprised by Vietnam’s contemporary socio-spatial reality.

As Americans what you know is what you see on the Vietnam TV show or war movie, and
you don’t know anything about the culture or, you know, I thought it was a great big jungle.
(American woman, age 35, investigator)
. . . the whole country’s different, because if you think about Vietnam as it’s portrayed, it’s
like a sort of sleazy, like brothels, GIs roaming the streets, and women in silky . . . every-
thing you see is a departure from that. (American woman, age 24, university student)

The souvenirs on sale throughout Vietnam also encourage viewing the country
through the prism of the war. This includes the sale of reproduction American soldier
dog tags4 and Zippo lighters (complete with faux wartime engravings on the sides),
North Vietnamese Army helmets, prints of war-time communist propaganda posters,
and Viet Cong sandals made from recycled car tires. There are even Vietnam War-
themed bars and restaurants that target Western tourists, such as the DMZ Bar in Hue
(with its Westernized Apocalypse Now! atmosphere) and the chain of Cong Cafes (with
their drab communist decor and military-themed uniforms and merchandise for sale).
While our focus is on how the Cu Chi tunnels are experienced by young adult Western
tourists, it is important to note that this experience is influenced by the fact that Cu Chi is
also a significant site for domestic tourism and Vietnamese state remembrance. Many
Vietnamese from around the country – including groups of students on field trips – visit
the same exhibits and wander around the battlefield, rubbing shoulders with the Western
tourists. The battlefield itself was recognized by the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture as a
national and cultural historical site in 1979 (http://en.diadaocuchi.com.vn) and is situated
on what was during the war a 250 km network of tunnels and subterranean barracks,
commissaries, field hospitals, and weapons caches. From this underground complex the
Vietnamese communist fighters in South Vietnam – known as the National Liberation
122 Thesis Eleven 174(1)

Front (NLF or colloquially in the West, the ‘Viet Cong’) – waged continuous battle
against the Republic of Vietnam Military Forces, the US, and other allied forces. Today
the complex is called a ‘heroic wonder’ (http://en.diadaocuchi.com.vn), and among other
structures, the Cu Chi tourist complex houses the Monument Temple for the Martyrs of
Ben Duoc, which was completed in 1995 and opened to visitors both foreign and
domestic ‘to commemorate, to burn incense and to contemplate about a vital thing that
created the holy soul of the nation’ (http://en.diadaocuchi.com.vn): that is, to honor the
more than 44,000 Vietnamese people who lost their lives in Cu Chi and whose names are
carved in the temple’s granite stele.

Anatomy of the Cu Chi tour

Despite the use of the Cu Chi site for official Vietnamese commemoration of the war
(and the fact that it is run by the paramilitary National Parks Service), Western visitors
are invited to engage in activities on the battlefield that one typically associates with a
theme park, or indeed, a carnival. The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism in
2019 advertised that at the Cu Chi battlefield tunnel complex, ‘Above-ground attractions
include caged monkeys, vendors selling souvenirs, and a shooting range where visitors
can fire a number of assault rifles’. One can also enjoy a meal at a restaurant on the
premises, as well as have fun kayaking or skimming along in swan-shaped pedal boats on
what is described as a lake simulating the East Sea (a.k.a. the South China Sea), which
includes miniature replicas of ancient temples and fortresses along its shore. What’s
more, for additional thrills, tourists have been encouraged by the Cu Chi tunnels website
to ‘split into two teams to play a pretending fight of paint shooting’.
The first stop for international tourists visiting the Cu Chi tunnels is the Visitors
Center, though the tone of this exhibit is somewhat out of keeping with the general
carnivalesque atmosphere of the battlefield itself. Here visitors view traditional museum
exhibits, after which foreign tourists are subject to a compulsory viewing of a govern-
ment propaganda film from the 1970s dubbed into English. The film depicts how an
idyllic rural lifestyle enjoyed by villagers in the area was nearly lost due to American
occupation, with villages mounting a successful resistance to this invasion in order to
restore their sense of home. Following the film, a member of the Parks Service provides a
brief lecture on the structure of the tunnels and their strategic importance. As illustrated
in the quote below, Western tourists typically respond with skepticism to the overt
political propaganda of the film, the museum exhibits, and the lecture.

. . . in the museum today, well I noticed how some of the photographs, you know, there were
some American soldiers getting on a helicopter and I liked the way they put [in the caption]
‘American running away from the . . . ’. (English man, age 28, forestry worker)

However, there are other parts of this historical narrative that have greater resonance
with Western visitors. One of these is the portrayal of the events depicted at the site as
forming part of a larger episode extending from 1945 to 1975, a portrayal that promotes
dialogical discourses. This narrative provides a postcolonial frame around the American
involvement in Vietnam, emphasizing that the war was part of a broader national
Madigan and West 123

liberation movement. This is something that frequently challenges prior understandings

of the war held by Western tourists. While in most cases these tourists previously
comprehended the war in terms of America’s involvement and American hegemony,
the focus of the tourist experience turns to Vietnam’s long struggle for independence,
with the fight against the United States being only one component. This narrative of
national liberation is significant for its capacity to generate cultural empathy toward
the Vietnamese.
Within Western nations the Vietnam War is typically understood in binary and dia-
lectical ways, with the Vietnamese communists and Americans positioned as the primary
antagonists. At the Cu Chi tunnels site, the focus on the Vietnamese independence
movement strikes a chord with tourists, for in many cases it is a trope similar to that
celebrated in their own nations. For example, most national narratives contain evolu-
tionary notions of nationhood, standardization of ethnicity, totalization of national
culture, and the characterization of a national type. As the tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels
progresses (especially when this is paired with the tourists’ other experiences in the
country), so too does the dialogical dimension of the Vietnam War narrative. One
example of this is the fact that Western tourists are commonly surprised that the locals
are not more focused on the war and antagonistic towards Westerners. As demonstrated
in the quotes below, this not only relates to experiences at war-related sites, but also in
the tourists’ everyday cultural interactions and experiences in Vietnam.

. . . it’s amazing how past it they are, how far removed the war seems here, whereas it’s the
first thing that comes to mind in the United States . . . there’s very little unless you seek it
out, I mean about the war, blatantly in your face. (American woman, age 24, university
student)
I mean it is pretty impressive that they can say ‘Oh yeah, welcome to Vietnam, I hope you
enjoy it, let me take you here, let me take you there.’ (American man, age 29, security
consultant)

The most significant element of the Cu Chi battlefield experience for Western tourists
– and that which has the greatest influence on the promotion of dialogical discourses – is
the time spent in the tunnel complex itself. This is an area of the tourist compound that is
not heavily overseen by the Parks Service, in part because most of these government
workers are not fluent in English (Rosen, 2015). Instead, tours of this substantial outdoor
area are led by guides from private tour companies who have, in many cases, also
transported the tourists to the Cu Chi battlefield site, which is about an hour’s drive
from downtown Ho Chi Minh City. These private tour guides are particularly important
to the Western tourist experience at Cu Chi. When successful, the guides are considered
by many foreign tourists as representatives of civil society from which they wish to
receive an insider’s – or in Goffman’s (1959) terms, a ‘backstage’ – insight into history.
The identity of the tour guides themselves is significant in this regard, with many of the
initial guides having been English-speaking translators within the South Vietnamese
Army who were shut out of government positions following the war. As illustrated in
the quote below, one such guide even tells his tour group that he was a double agent in
the war. In this way the guides are important in providing not only a narrative account of
124 Thesis Eleven 174(1)

the war but also a performance in the telling of history, becoming reputational entrepre-
neurs in giving discursive meaning to the tunnels. In terms of dialogical meaning-
making, we can think of these guides as cultural mediators (Macdonald, 2013) who help
to piece together different cultural understandings of the past.

Especially when the tour guide was saying that it was very much, it wasn’t so much
the North Vietnamese Army but it was people on the ground who won the war for the
Vietnamese. Yeah, and I think he actually said at the end that he was a double agent.
(Australian woman, age 31, Christian missionary)
. . . he’s lived with it, he’s dealt with it, he talks about it, it’s part of his life . . . that he was
able to share . . . and how he doesn’t have any animosity towards any race. (American man,
age 35, teacher)

The guides also tend to reinforce the propaganda film’s interpretation of the war as
involving a struggle by locals in the Cu Chi area, though in a way that pulls the conflict
and victory down from the macro/geopolitical realm to that of the ordinary soldier’s
experience of the war. For example, the guides say little about ideological clashes
between capitalism and communism or the broader Cold War context in which the
Vietnamese were supported and armed by China and the Soviet Union. This focus on
local struggle works for the Vietnamese in that it embeds the war in a national context
out of which emerged a national character. It also draws attention away from the idea that
the conflict was a civil war. As illustrated in the quote above, this localized focus also
serves to explain to Western tourists the military defeat of what – from the Vietnamese
perspective – were occupying nations in such a way as to shield the tourists from the
charge that their own national character is somehow inadequate.
In many ways these portrayals and interpretations have a contingent quality, relying
on a performance of history that requires the guide to successfully act out a script whose
tone is complementary to the Cu Chi tunnels’ carnivalesque engagement with history.
The contingency around the tourists’ experience is most evident when the script and the
acting associated with the telling of history fails, at which point the intended narrative is
rejected by the tourists. Examples of when there was disappointment with the guides are
illustrated in the quotes below.

He was informative, he was interesting. He could have been . . . a little bit more infor-
mative about his role; what was his function with the South Vietnamese Navy or the US
Navy? . . . I found myself being polite in listening to what he had to say, but taken with
a grain of salt. (Australian man, age 36, teacher)
Yeah, he was pretty witty. He was pretty funny. I think he let a lot of the propaganda stuff
go . . . and he was witty enough for me to kind of expect to say something. . . . I expected
him to say something like ‘how about that 40-year-old movie?’ (American woman, age 29,
teacher)

Tourists develop these impressions of their guides as they proceed through the heavily
narrated Cu Chi tunnel area, as well as on the drive to and from the tunnel complex.
While the order in which tourists visit the main areas of the tunnel complex will depend
Madigan and West 125

on the tourist numbers and congestion on any particular day, the main exhibits and
experiences involve the following: tourists searching for the opening of a hidden tunnel;
a viewing and presentation of how the tunnels in the area were booby trapped; the
viewing of a destroyed American tank; a walk through an enlarged – but still cramped
– tunnel network (which includes various subterranean rooms, such as a make-shift
hospital, command post, kitchen, and armory); and a visit to a rifle range where tourists
can shoot the same kind of weapons used during the conflict. While each site illustrates a
different part of the campaign, all are narrated in ways in which the emphasis is on a
‘living history’ mode of heritage and tourism involving an attempt to understand history
from the perspective of how ordinary people experienced it (Hart, 2007; Tivers, 2002). In
relation to the Vietnamese communists, this includes attention paid to the food they ate
and the clothing they wore, as well as how they ingeniously made traps out of the natural
surrounds and reused American shells to make their own weaponry. While the living
history genre typically reinforces gender stereotypes and is associated with political
orthodoxy (West, 2014), at the Cu Chi tourist site it is used to demonstrate the active
involvement of local women in the resistance. This claim is reinforced by the female
mannequins on display in the rooms of the tunnel network, dressed in the same black,
guerrilla uniforms as the men, rather than in the traditional female attire such as the ao
dai. In contrast, many other museums in Vietnam portray women primarily as domestic
caregivers and victims of war, rather than as active participants (UNESCO, 2011: 23).

Carnival and symbolic violence at Cu Chi

Once tourists have passed from the more official areas near the entrance to the Cu Chi
complex, areas where they are expected to act as a passive audience, they move into a far
more participatory area of the park. For example, there is a prominent working display of
some of the various traps designed by the NLF fighters to maim and kill South Viet-
namese and American soldiers. Neatly arranged in a single row beneath a permanent
rooftop and dug into the ground, these traps are surrounded by a small rail that allows the
tourists to get very close. Behind the traps is a large, gaily-colored mural in what can
only be described as a disconcertingly cartoonish, light-hearted style. But despite the
mural’s childlike style (one is reminded of a mural one might see at an elementary
school), the images are actually depictions of bloodied American GIs falling into sundry
traps and being impaled by their deadly spikes. Cu Chi guides will take the opportunity
to stroll along the row of traps on the side opposite the tourists, pausing at each to give a
brief description and demonstration of how they operate. These working models – whose
mundane names only hint at their gruesome function – include the ‘rolling trap,’
‘clipping armpit trap,’ ‘tiger trap,’ ‘folding chair trap,’ ‘swinging-up trap,’ ‘see-saw
trap,’ and ‘door trap.’ Each of these traps features sharpened bamboo stakes or rusted
iron spikes, which, as the guides inform the tourists, the designers would urinate and
defecate on in order to cause infections to the enemy soldiers who were lucky enough to
survive having fallen into them. The guide illustrates how each trap works, typically by
poking it with a wooden pole, which often sets spiked cylinders spinning rapidly, or
causes spiked jaws to slam shut or swing into what would have been an unsuspecting GI.
We observed frequent gasps from the tourists as they watched these demonstrations, but
126 Thesis Eleven 174(1)

just as frequently these demonstrations elicited giggling, joking, and laughter. This is a
prime example of Bakhtin’s carnival, where ‘Grotesque-comic elements prevail’
(Bakhtin, 1984a: 230). Often the guides themselves joke and laugh with their tour groups
during these demonstrations, even as they describe the terrible wounds inflicted by the
traps on the US soldiers.
In a carnivalesque atmosphere, the powerful are brought low. Clearly, at the Cu Chi
tunnel site it is the Americans who are considered powerful and in need of ceremonial
degradation, while the Vietnamese communists are depicted as small and poor, but
also cunning and courageous. Here is an example from the Cu Chi tourist website to
this effect:

Just going under a tunnel section, you will understand why the small Vietnam could gain
victory over the enemy, a big country and the world’s richest. Why Cu Chi, the poor land
was able to cope uninterruptedly for 21 years with a much larger army, warlike, equipped
with modern and updated weapons and means of warfare. (http://en.diadaocuchi.com.vn/
gioi-thieu-ve-khu-di-tich-lich-su-dia-dao-cu-chi-37.html)

And we see how, in the following remark during one of our interviews, this narrative
is effectively communicated and absorbed by tourists. The dialogic process begins to
unfold immediately, even while the tourists are still at the park.

the bear traps they were using . . . booby-trapped stuff, I think that was amazingly creative
and courageous . . . just local village people were fighting against a superpower . . . the ral-
lying around a cause . . . it’s pretty impressive to see how it was done from their perspective.
(American man, age 29, security consultant)

The boobytrap display exemplifies Bakhtin’s carnival, where the one in power
(i.e., the American) ‘is abused and beaten when the time of his reign is over, just as the
carnival dummy of winter or of the dying year is mocked, beaten, torn to pieces, burned,
or drowned’ (Bakhtin, 1984a: 197). Another permanent display in the park where carni-
val is readily apparent is the wreckage of an American M1 tank. Sitting in a cleared area
of the woods, the guides often point out that it was a handmade Vietnamese mine that
destroyed the heavily armored war machine. The exhibit is significant as tanks, more
than any other weapon, symbolize modern warfare and the Western victory culture that
emerged from the Second World War (Wright, 2001). For those that emotionally respond
to the tank, it is not so much because it is being used to symbolize Vietnamese victory
over America, but because this war remnant has become a tourist object, one lacking any
particular signage or restriction of access to it. Visitors are allowed and often encouraged
by the guides to climb on it, which often leads to children laughing and playing on it as if
it were schoolyard play equipment. This differs from the more traditional restricted
museum mode of presentation and experience with which Western tourists are familiar,
a presentation that demands a deference to material culture through establishing a
distance between the spectator and the sacred (Bennett, 2013; Macdonald, 2013).
During one of our visits, an older Englishman uttered – not really loudly enough for
those climbing on it to hear – ‘Show some respect!’ Similarly, our respondents noted
the following:
Madigan and West 127

So it’s an American tank sitting in the middle of the woods, near the tunnels, and then there
are people climbing on it . . . Sitting on the top of the tank, little kids and their parents are
taking pictures, it was so strange! I mean we’d just been to Pearl Harbor, and so it was kind
of the same thing, all these Japanese tourists taking pictures . . . (American woman, age 29,
teacher)
And that tank that everybody was clambering all over and sitting on, taking pictures on, and
people died in that tank I’m sure, and it’s just being treated like a jungle gym. . . . It’s sad and
it’s being on victor’s soil, you know, North Vietnam won so they’re going to treat relics or
any leftover artifacts that were left behind by the States as something to be joyous about and
to celebrate. But being an American and thinking about the kid that died on that and it’s just
being mocked or being trivialized is sad, it makes me sad. (American woman, age 24,
English teacher)

And yet, despite these reservations, the dominant atmosphere around the ruined
tank is one of playfulness. And this presence of playfulness and flippancy in the
midst of what would in almost any other context be considered sacred is what
concusses the monological discourse of the Western memory of the war. This sort
of behavior and response would be unthinkable in other venues, including those in
Vietnam, such as the ‘Hanoi Hilton.’ But the fact that this horseplay and merriment
does occur here is what jars the official Western narrative enough to open up the
possibility of dialogue with what are radically alternative – and in other circum-
stances subversive – perspectives.
The actual tunnels themselves provide another important opportunity for tourists to
participate in the Cu Chi carnival. Before entering the 70-meter-long tunnel that is open
to visitors, tourists are informed that this once much smaller tunnel has been enlarged
from its original dimensions in order to accommodate the larger bodies of Western
visitors. And here the guides’ playful teasing about the ‘fat Americans’ often begins. The
open tunnel as it exists in the park today is about two-feet wide and three-feet high. The
tourists who opt to go through the tunnel generally have to crouch near to the ground as
they shuffle, bent-over, through the passage’s twists and turns. This inevitably leads to
lots of laughter and high-jinks as people’s heads often bump into others’ backsides.
Voices are amplified in the tight quarters, and many report twinges of claustrophobia as
they make their way deeper and deeper into the structure. Periodically throughout the
length of the tunnel, tourists will encounter various rooms – some completely under-
ground, some open at the top. In some of these, as well as in other above-ground areas of
the park, mannequins are set up to depict what life in the tunnels might have been like.
They are dressed as NLF guerrillas and are shown engaged in various wartime activities.
This experience of being underground promotes a dialogical narrative by tourists dually
imagining what it would be like for both the Vietnamese communists and American
soldiers – the so-called ‘tunnel rats’ whose job it was to enter the tunnels in order to
capture or kill the enemy – to be in this space.

You know, being at the tunnels . . . it’s just people, it’s not like, ‘oh the crafty war mon-
gers’ . . . South Vietnamese or Viet Cong or . . . the Americans. (American woman, age 29,
teacher)
128 Thesis Eleven 174(1)

The thing that really freaked me out was just imagining yourself being a GI and having to go
into those tunnels with a flash light and a .45 [pistol] and try and find somebody, and
imagining how scary that would be . . . it just kind of does spark up a little bit of ‘I can’t
believe this, I can’t believe I’m really here, in this tunnel, and who knows what happened
here.’ (American man, age 29, security consultant)
. . . putting yourself in another time and on both sides. Thinking, ‘oh my God, if I was a
person digging those things, like are you joking!’ And crawling around in those and living
underground for years. I don’t know, I don’t think I would have the resolve to do that . . . just
an amazing display of human spirit. And . . . with the GIs, you know, how do you get the
balls to go in there and you know, I would just be crying my eyes out. (American woman,
age 24, English teacher)

Not far from the tunnel is the spot where the most iconic photos of the park are taken.
A very narrow opening in the ground – simulating an entrance to the tunnel system – is
presented to volunteers to slide into (of course, these volunteers must be fairly slim in
order to squeeze through the opening into what is essentially a small pit). Once inside,
the guide will have the volunteer pick up a small wooden lid lying on the ground next to
the hole that fits flush over the opening of the pit. The lid’s top is covered with packed
dirt and leaves, and once in place, the would-be tunnel opening becomes virtually
invisible, even to those standing nearly on top of it. Again, the tourists are prompted
to imagine that they are American GIs searching the area for tunnels, or that they are
NLF fighters trying to avoid detection. After a few moments in the darkness of the
camouflaged pit, the person in the pit typically pops up, holding the cover above his
or her head, which is usually met with laughter and applause by the rest of the tour group.
Photos are taken, and the whole experience, which is usually repeated by several mem-
bers of any particular tour group, is one of amusement and frivolity.
This embodied imagining continues at the rifle range situated on one of the very Cu
Chi battlefields where soldiers fought and died during the war. Here tourists can pay to
fire a variety of weapons that were commonly used by soldiers on either side of the
conflict, including the AK47 rifle used by the NLF and North Vietnamese, the M16 used
by the Americans and their allies, and larger caliber guns like the M30 or M60. This
participation in the ritual firing of weapons is a crucial step in the dialogical process
facilitated by carnival, for ‘Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people . . . everyone
participates’ (Bakhtin, 1984a: 7). What’s more, most Western tourists choose to fire the
AK47 – the weapon of the Vietnamese communists. Roles are reversed in this way (as
they typically are in carnival), and the ability of the tourists to respond to the unfamiliar
war narrative they have spent the past hour or two experiencing is put on display.
Within the social commentary on the Cu Chi tunnels, the rifle range is the most
critiqued dimension of the tour and an aspect of the site that scholars often describe as
postmodern, part of a hyperreal environment lacking in cultural depth. This is a criticism
that is shared by some of the tourists as well. But at least half of those in the tour groups
we observed over the years did fire the weapons, and amongst these there is a fairly even
gender divide. Many who shoot do not have previous experience with guns, with the
decision to fire often motivated by a tourist’s openness to undertake activities they would
typically avoid at home. Shooters typically reflect on how difficult it would have been
Madigan and West 129

for soldiers to handle these weapons and that it was such weapons that accounted for
much of the war’s loss of life. For those who do not shoot, waiting for others to do so
while watching them engage in the experience is also significant, with the noise pro-
viding a sensory representation of the war.

And then to fire the gun was something I wanted to do. . . . I guess more so to put myself in
the perspective of what it would have been like to hump one of these around . . . you see
these guys in movies . . . you just can’t do that in real life . . . the historical perspective
interrupts the Hollywood perspective. (American man, age 29, security consultant)
I was like, ‘Oh whatever, shoot guns, I’m not going to shoot any guns.’ And as soon as we
got into Saigon, I was like, ‘Maybe I’ll shoot the guns.’ I don’t know, just for the experi-
ence . . . I was really awkward with it, and I was really uncomfortable doing it. It didn’t make
me feel powerful or strong. It was an unpleasant experience, and I hope I never have to do it
again. . . . That’s probably some dead GI’s gun . . . thinking about it that way was unsettling.
(American woman, age 24, English teacher)
It completely catered for the person who is ok with guns. . . . And I had opposite fee-
lings . . . But I was actually quite interested to hear the gun sounds and to hear the bullets
whistle through. (Australian man, age 36, schoolteacher)

Such interactive tourist experiences are dialogically framed in relation to preconcep-

tions about the war. But what is significant, as demonstrated by the quotes above, is that
they challenge – rather than reinforce – the dominant Western warrior culture that was so
powerfully influenced by the American experience in the Vietnam War. However, there
is another cultural frame outside of the tourists’ experiences of the Cu Chi tunnels, one
that also influences the way they are interpreted. Early in the article we noted that
previous tourist experiences in Vietnam affect how tourists interpret the tunnels. Even
more broadly, visitors also view Cu Chi in relation to tourism experiences in other
countries, expressing a broader conceptualization about the role of tourism in under-
standing warfare and the world. As an illustration of this phenomenon, consider the
quotes below.

I mean, I think if anything, of all the things we’ve been seeing today, [it is] like seeing the
museum in Hiroshima, or going to concentration camps in Germany. It just kind of drives
home the point of how awful humans can be to each other. . . . I don’t think the majority of
Americans learned any lessons from all this kind of stuff. Which is why museums, espe-
cially [here in Vietnam], and traveling, and seeing other parts of the world and seeing other
people’s pain is just invaluable. (American woman, age 24, English teacher)
We were at the rifle range, and I said ‘do you think our great great grandchildren will be in
Iraq doing this in however many years time?’ It’s really scary to think that it’s not that
different, the conflict, it’s really not that different. (English woman, age 28, insurance
broker)

Prompted by their tourist experience at Cu Chi, this symbolic linking of the Vietnam
War to other transnational historical narratives is significant. It serves to elevate the
conflict to a level of cosmopolitan memory where it becomes a site used by various
130 Thesis Eleven 174(1)

nations to reflect on ideas of militarism, justice, and organized violence (for a discussion
of the unique Vietnamese-American representation of the war see Madigan, 2021).

Dialogical reimagining and the carnivalesque

The relatively detached involvement of the state in Vietnam’s war tourism, the pro-
pensity for reflexivity from Western tourists about the politics of history, and the
atmosphere of irreverent frivolity make it difficult on the surface to conceive of the Cu
Chi battlefield as either a sacred site of civic pilgrimage or a conventional escapist
tourist compound that works to sever serious engagement and dilute meaningful
reflection on the past. However, using Bakhtin’s conceptual framework we have
argued that the socio-political significance of thanatourism for social memory should
not be judged solely in these ways. More often than not, Western tourists experience
the Cu Chi tunnels as carnival, and this rite is consequential to social memory in that it
promotes a dialogical re-orientation of the Other. As we saw above, Western tourists
frequently come away from the battlefield with an understanding that the war was an
event where both sides suffered. This new realization is prompted by a living history
mode that – through its dual perspective on how otherwise-ordinary individuals
experienced the past – engenders empathy for soldiers from both sides of the war. This
dialogical mode of engagement also encourages tourists to view the war in transna-
tional ways as part of a broader lesson the world needs to learn about warfare. How-
ever, this reimagining of the past occurs without the tourists wholly accepting the
authority and authenticity of the related social performance. Given the connections
between the carnivalesque and the dialogical, the cultural significance of the rite is
possibly even predicated on such critical distance.
From this perspective we highlight the multiple ways in which social performances
can be meaningful beyond – in Alexander’s (2004) terms – an experience that establishes
a performer’s ‘fusion’ with their audience. Alexander argues that a key dimension of a
successful performance involves an audience’s identifying ‘psychologically with the
characters on the stage and projecting themselves into them’ (Alexander, 2004: 531), and
through this process, experiencing a ‘loss of self-consciousness and a lack of concern for
– even awareness of – the scrutiny of observers outside the action itself’ (Alexander,
2004: 548). However, as Ringmar (2020) argues, Alexander’s theory of social perfor-
mance analytically privileges audience interpretations over a concern with the affects of
ritual experience itself. A certain level of perceived authenticity at the Cu Chi tunnels is
necessary for Western tourists to accept a dialogical reimagining of the war, and in this
way we differentiate the Cu Chi tourist experience from other more mundane tourist
experiences. That said, much of the emotional energy (cf. Collins, 2004) of the tourist
experience is not primarily traceable to a ‘mutual belief in the descriptive and pre-
scriptive validity of the communication’s symbolic contents’ (Alexander, 2004: 527).
Rather, at Cu Chi the ritual-like significance of the tour derives mostly from the presence
of the carnivalesque and its connection to the dialogical, activity that involves shaking
‘up the authoritative version of language and values, making room for a multiplicity of
voices and meanings’ (Elliot, 1999: 129). As such, the dialogical reimagining of the
dominant Western narrative of the war comes when the ‘authoritative voice of the
Madigan and West 131

dominant discourse loses its privilege’ (Robinson, 2011). But this is only possible
because the Cu Chi battlefield involves a carnivalesque ritual mode.
In reflecting on the cultural significance of the Cu Chi tunnels site and how it
influences the social memory of the past and cultural difference, it is important to
note that international thanatourism is contingent on a global mobility that is not a
factor for other remembrance forms. As we saw at Cu Chi, the structure and historical
interpretation of the performance was not a reflection of domestic cultural structures.
Instead, the ritual advanced new understandings of the past due to the presence of two
different audiences. In Victor Turner’s terms, this can be understood as different ritual
structures allowing for contexts of ‘possibility whence novel configurations of ideas
and relations may arise’ (Turner, 1969: 97). It is within this frame that the perfor-
mativity and creativity of actors is significant, highlighting issues of agency, multi-
plicity, and contestation. As such, the dialogical meanings of the war advanced at Cu
Chi would be unlikely if the tradition of Western tourist visitation were to cease, and
with the Covid-19 pandemic (ongoing at the time of this writing in 2022), this
cessation has indeed occurred. Cultural scholars must come to a greater appreciation
of the ways in which immobility can shape the culture of post-industrial society
(Turner, 2007). In this regard we note that the meanings and effects of tourism at Cu
Chi are important in establishing the parameters for analyzing shifts in the remem-
brance and memory of the war. If the presence of the carnivalesque diminishes with
the decline in international tourism, then so might the potential for dialogical dis-
courses and reconciliation narratives that counter social memories of the warrior in
the West (Logan and Witcomb, 2013).

Conclusion
Based on fieldwork at the Cu Chi battlefield in southern Vietnam, this article has drawn
on social performance theory and Bakhtin’s conceptual framework of the carnival-
esque and dialogical in order to provide an alternative way of understanding the social
and political significance of tourism memory rites. While the meanings Western
tourists take away from Cu Chi significantly challenge the dominant Western narrative
of the Vietnam War, the ritual form differs significantly from that typically associated
with social performances that are socio-politically significant. This is due on one hand
to the fact that tourists do not completely suspend disbelief as they process the por-
trayal of the past at Cu Chi, and on the other to the fact that this particular tourist ritual
lacks the sort of reverential aura often found at other thanatourism sites, an aura many
cultural scholars assert is consequential to social memory. However, we argue that in
the Cu Chi case it is not the degree of acceptance of the historical portrayal that is most
significant, but rather the meaning tourists give to the carnivalesque ways that history
is engaged with at the site. Specifically, the carnivalesque generates an enchanted
engagement with the past that works independently of the acceptance of a particular
interpretation of history. This tends to destabilize prior dominant conceptions while
also allowing new dialogical understandings of the war to emerge in ways that
engender both a concern with the suffering of both sides and a strong connection to
cosmopolitan visions of the world.
132 Thesis Eleven 174(1)

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

Notes
1. So-called due to its location within the Cu Chi district of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon,
the capital of what was South Vietnam during the Vietnam War). The site is also commonly
referred to as the Cu Chi tunnels.
2. While the war is known in the West as the Vietnam War, in Vietnam it is often referred to as the
American War (Laderman, 2009; Schwenkel, 2009; Tai, 2001)
3. Thanatourism is a term coined by A.V. Seaton, who defines it in the following: ‘Thanatourism
is travel to a location wholly, or partially, motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic
encounters with death, particularly, but not exclusively, violent death’ (1996: 240, emphasis in
the original).
4. The thin metal identification tags worn on a light chain around the neck by American military
personnel.

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Authors biographies
Todd Madigan is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro and author of works on cultural trauma and the role of narrative in social life. He is
a Faculty Fellow in the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University, and his book Vietnam:
A War, Not a Country (with Ron Eyerman and Magnus Ring) is forthcoming (Amsterdam
University Press).
Brad West is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of South Australia. Working
mainly within a neo-Durkheimian tradition, he is currently the co-President of the International
Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Sociological Theory (2018–23) and a
Faculty Fellow in the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. His recent publications
include the sole-authored research monograph Finding Gallipoli: Battlefield Remembrance and
the Movement of Australian and Turkish History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and the journal
article ‘Militarizing politics of recognition through the Invictus Games’ (American Journal of
Cultural Sociology, 2022).