1. Acknowledgement: Many thanks to Clay Steinman for his astute comments on an earlier draft of this article, which significantly improved the final version, and for his generous mentoring over many years. [return to page 1]

2. Poniewozik, James. “‘the Sympathizer’ Opens a Counteroffensive on Vietnam War Movies.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 May 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/arts/television/the-sympathizer-satire.html?searchResultPosition=4&login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock.

3. Nguyen, Viet Thanh. The Sympathizer. Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2015.

4. Nguyen, Viet Thanh. A Man of Two Faces. Grove Press, 2023, p. 229.

5. Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2017; Jia Tolentino. “Park Chan-Wook Gets the Picture He Wants.” The New Yorker, 8 Apr. 2024, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/15/park-chan-wook-profile; “Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art | Book to Screen: Viet Thanh Nguyen on Adapting the Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen.” Vietnguyen.info, 20 June 2024, vietnguyen.info/2024/smithsonian-national-museum-of-asian-art-book-to-screen-viet-thanh-nguyen-on-adapting-the-sympathizer. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024. [return to page 3]

6. Uyehara, Mari. “The Many Faces of Viet Thanh Nguyen.” The Nation, 25 Mar. 2024, www.thenation.com/article/world/viet-thanh-nguyen-profile/.

7. “Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art | Book to Screen: Viet Thanh Nguyen on Adapting the Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen.” Vietnguyen.info, 20 June 2024, vietnguyen.info/2024/smithsonian-national-museum-of-asian-art-book-to-screen-viet-thanh-nguyen-on-adapting-the-sympathizer. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024; Democracy Now, “Viet Thanh Nguyen & Ariel Dorfman on the Vietnam War, How Hollywood Reframes U.S. Imperialism & More,” May 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XASYKNn6EFo; Democracy Now, “’We Need a Ceasefire’: Author Viet Thanh Nguyen on Gaza & Israel’s Dehumanization of Palestinians,” October 25, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIrVQD31zhE&t=1s; “What Gaza tells us about the world today: Raoul Peck & Viet Thanh Nguyen,” Studio B Unscripted, Al Jazeera English, May 27, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4rRhkHbrG4 ;

8. Tolentino, Jia. “Park Chan-Wook Gets the Picture He Wants.” The New Yorker, 8 Apr. 2024, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/15/park-chan-wook-profile, p. 7/29; “Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art | Book to Screen: Viet Thanh Nguyen on Adapting the Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen.” Vietnguyen.info, 20 June 2024, vietnguyen.info/2024/smithsonian-national-museum-of-asian-art-book-to-screen-viet-thanh-nguyen-on-adapting-the-sympathizer. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024;

9. Kang, Inkoo. “’The Sympathizer’ Has an Identity Crisis.” The New Yorker, 15 Mar. 2024, www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/the-sympathizer-has-an-identity-crisis

10. Wolfe, Jennifer and Emily Reigart, “The (Subversive) Storytelling Style for Park Chan-wook’s ‘The Sympathizer,’” May 26, 2024, https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/create-the-sympathizer-park-chan-wook/.

11. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford England, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp.115-127.

12. Grandin, Greg. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. Metropolitan Henry Holt, 2020; Appy, Christian G. American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity. Penguin, 2015; Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. New York, Atheneum, 1992. [return to page 5]

13. Fitzgerald, F. Scott, “The Crack-Up,” Esquire, February 1936. Quoted at https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/01/05/intelligence/. Nguyen’s conflicted humanism comes through in interviews, including “Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art | Book to Screen: Viet Thanh Nguyen on Adapting the Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen.” Vietnguyen.info, 20 June 2024, vietnguyen.info/2024/smithsonian-national-museum-of-asian-art-book-to-screen-viet-thanh-nguyen-on-adapting-the-sympathizer. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.

14. “All for One.”: The Sympathizer, Episode Five, written by Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar, directed by Marc Munden. HBO Max, May 2024, https://play.max.com/video/watch/6c346702-0133-4b04-86e3-84f6547dee27/77098e2a-a44f-4a5c-8237-4126988c5961.

15. Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York, N.Y., W. W. Norton & Company, 1979.

16. Nicosia, Gerald. Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans’ Movement. New York, Three Rivers Press, 2001; “Winter Soldier.” New Yorker Video, 1972, 95 min., kinolorber.com/product/winter-soldier-dvd?gad_source=1&gclid=
Cj0KCQjwjNS3BhChARIsAOxBM6qqEAX8zhjzUuQkPRGeUxf3g_
W0XvZGWQQ9b0WasbiUoOhvzl7-yX0aAjJzEALw_wcB. Accessed 2024; cld. “David Zeiger - Sir! No, Sir! (2005) [1080p].” YouTube, 13 Dec. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AOQvFPb7aU; See also “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.” Haymarketbooks.org, 2024, www.haymarketbooks.org/books/864-winter-soldier-iraq-and-afghanistan. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.

17. Lifton, Robert Jay. Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims nor Executioners. Simon & Schuster, 1973.

18. Turse, Nick. Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2013.

19. Rambo: First Blood Part II. Directed by George P. Cosmatos, Tri-Star Pictures, 1985. Similar historical situations include the Nazi narrative blaming leftists, Jews and other traitors and conspirators for “stabbing the nation in the back” leading to Germany’s defeat in World War I, since for fascists the heroic German military could never otherwise have been defeated. In addition, the unsuccessful reinvasion of Vietnam by the small force of fictional South Vietnamese in The Sympathizer strongly echoes the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles, trained in Florida, supported by the CIA and defeated by the Cuban military.

20. William Appleman Williams, and Andrew J Bacevich. Empire as a Way of Life: An Essay on the Causes and Character of America’s Present Predicament along with a Few Thoughts about an Alternative. Brooklyn, N.Y., Ig Pub., Cop, 2007. First published 1980.

21. Nadia Abu El-Haj. Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. S.L., Verso, 2022.