Do we really need to discuss the film "Taste"?

Taste?

Taste is the debut film of director Le Bao, a collaboration with producers from Singapore, France, Thailand, Germany, and Taiwan. The 97-minute film, set in a slum in Ho Chi Minh City, tells the story of a Nigerian footballer who leaves his son behind to work in Ho Chi Minh City, but quickly becomes unemployed. He then befriends and moves in with four middle-aged Vietnamese women.

Before being banned in Vietnam, the film "Taste" won the Special Jury Prize in the Encounters category at the Berlin Film Festival (Germany) in March 2021. Submitting the film to the Berlin Film Festival without permission from the Vietnam Film Department (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) resulted in a 35 million VND fine for the production company. Most recently, to allow the film to reach a wider audience, the producer and director announced they were relinquishing ownership of the film, and "Taste" now has Singaporean "nationality".

Throughout history, humanity has often been tempted to imagine that all cultural concepts undergo a process of birth, growth, degeneration, and ultimately decline and disappearance. Of course, these are metaphors reflecting humanity's tendency to project its own life cycle—or that of plants or animals—onto inanimate or abstract entities in an attempt to fully understand the world. And in the new digital age, this formula has returned to politics, social criticism, cultural concepts, and, most importantly, art.

The story of the recent film "Taste" is just a small ripple in the larger wave of historical upheaval. Many opinions and perspectives have been expressed, but truly engaging with the film and the issues it faces objectively is quite difficult. Anyone who has actually sat down and enjoyed "Taste" as a film will see that, like its name suggests, it is a film with many viewpoints, requiring specific comparison and projection to arrive at an objective "judgment" on the work's fate. "Taste" embodies the essence of the debate that took place in 1917 over Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain"—a porcelain urinal signed R. Mutt—with some despising this work labeled as art, while others praised and lauded it as a modern artistic marvel. This brings us back to reality: in order to fully appreciate "Taste," the only thing that needs more discussion amidst this turmoil is how it is formed and how people actively dissect, exploit, and share it—is it "correct" or not?

Popular culture cannot encompass the culture of a nation.

Art forms, music, and literature, combined with the power of digital technology like "Taste," sometimes don't necessarily deserve praise or recognition in the context of multimedia – where people only see one aspect that their thinking accepts – and from that perspective, they judge it. In fact, it is the unnecessary controversies that deprive the audience of an enjoyable experience. When the arguments subside, people no longer watch "Taste" for the sake of watching "Taste," but instead scrutinize every detail, sift through every image, searching for evidence and details worth including in their own arguments. Thus, they succeed in killing the experience of "Taste" in the name of a film and a work of art.

Another unfortunate fact that needs attention is that anyone can have objective thinking while still possessing very subjective standards when judging things. Therefore, presenting "Taste" as a work of art with the argument that "because it's art, it deserves freedom of expression," or "because that's how it is done all over the world," is clearly insufficient. Audiences hastily forget that popular culture cannot encompass the cultural concept of an entire nation – what unfolds in the main storyline of "Taste" might be acceptable in Germany and Western countries, but in Vietnam in particular, and Asian countries in general, it would still be taboo, an insult to the values ​​of a nation that considers the image of the mother sacred and precious. Therefore, each work of art requires careful selection of its subject matter and ideas to align with its artistic goals. Unfortunately, "Taste" chose the wrong target audience to convey its message from the very beginning. The film's ban in Vietnam was merely the "last straw," rather than something to be upset about, reflecting the "conservatism" and "authoritarianism" of those representing the country's film and art scene.

The case of "The Taste" can be compared to what happened with Balthus's *Thérèse Dreaming* (1938). In 2017, more than 8,700 petitions were sent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States, demanding that they remove the painting because they believed that the depiction of a young girl's vulnerable moment would create a "romanticized view of the sexualization of a child." However, the petitions only requested its removal, not destruction or threats of destruction. The petitions were merely a formality to ask the museum to be more mindful in creating context so that works of art convey their intended meaning. The public only requested that the Metropolitan Museum add a disclaimer stating: "Some viewers may find this work offensive or perverse, given Balthus's artistic fascination with young girls."

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Museum at the time called the controversy “an opportunity to debate” about “the ongoing evolution of existing cultures.”

The journey from theIto theus

From the story of "Taste" and the example above, we can see that each artist is an individual who actively experiments with endless ideas and directions in their own art, in order to find the "right" path for themselves. But first and foremost, they must have what is called "their own art." If they only stop at a superficial hybrid or an imperfect experiment, it will be very difficult for all of the artist's ideas to be accepted by the global public.

An artist has the freedom to create only when they allow the audience (or humanity) the freedom to accept or reject their creation. At this point, it's clear that we're not unprepared for "Taste," but rather, "Taste" isn't truly ready for us. Remember, director Bong Joon Ho needed nearly two decades to pursue very human stories to create a Parasite with his own unique vision, one that was accepted by the whole world.

Ultimately, what brings a work of art to life is not its inevitability, but the decisions the artist has made. We are captivated by a work, admire an artist not because the words, the notes, the images they create are "right," but because their art is revelatory: it makes the individual more open and more in contrast to the world in which they live.

BJ