Vietnamese Popular Culture Analysis

However, under the state control of Communist Party, foreign cultural influences on popular arts and music can hardly go beyond the Vietnamese government censorship of the Ministry of Information and Culture, where Vietnamese artists are required to provide their music product such as song, music video, show, etc. before releasing it. The music product can only be approved to if it fits the moral and aesthetic standard of Vietnamese cultural society and especially must carry non-political message. Otherwise its publication will get banned and the artist might even have to face some charges. Globalization in Vietnamese popular music and entertainment has also received much condemnation by local critics, as they see its transnational homogenization

As mentioned above, music video has become increasingly important to Vietnamese popular culture, especially to cultivate Vietnamese images and identity, as Olsen explained: “Vietnam is indeed a beautiful place for landscape, seascape, and other visual ‘scapes’ suitable for the sentimental and often nationalistic lyrics of its youth music.” (2008: 29). Hồng Nhung’s Đóa Hoa Vô Thường is one of the first Vietnamese music videos developing a complete storyline instead of consisting only footage of ordinary musician’s performance. With scenes located at a Northern Vietnamese village and shots of traditional Vietnamese motives such as banyan tree, communal house, horse wagon and especially lotus pond, the music video has become a cultural significant of Vietnamese contemporary arts for its modern visualization of pure Vietnamese figures and Orient ideology. Despite of being rather suited for Vietnamese audiences than the world market, during her personal interview with Olsen, she considered her music to be global, as she did not want to limit herself to a particular region, because “Music is freedom, and if it is what you like, what you think about the world, what you believe, [then it] is

That is very Vietnamese. Everybody does things differently.” Her prediction was right, as Vietnamese society today has complexly changed with the increasing effect of global media. Meanwhile, the government is also attempting to spread their propaganda to maintain the Vietnameseness among the globalization, especially when V-pop today has a tendency not just to reduce the pure Vietnamese characteristics, but even to lose its impact to Vietnamese contemporary culture, as a lot of critics prove that the teenagers and young people nowadays get more interested in foreign cultural music and entertainment and seem nonchalant about local culture, due to the larger Western and American impact in Vietnam together with the growth of media competence and foreign language knowledge among youth community. Therefore, the legacy of Vietnamese contemporary popular music from 1990 to 2005, which were Olsen’s surveys about, is widely acknowledged by local music critics and Vietnamese citizens as “the heyday of V-pop” contrasted to its less cultural impact today. Also the Vietnamese young and contemporary artists themselves now frequently show in the newspapers and online media their disappointment with either the lack of interest in the local musical development among youth community, or