Violet

Violet, the Auteur’s personal assistant, is the first intermediary between the unnamed narrator and the Hollywood production of The Hamlet. Her manner changes from conspicuously dismissive to professionally considerate, but that shift does not erase the film’s central problem: it needs Vietnamese knowledge and labor while keeping Vietnamese people largely outside its power to represent themselves.

Identity and First Encounter

The narrator first encounters Violet through the arrangements for a meeting with the Auteur. She sends a screenplay in a manila envelope with the narrator’s name misspelled, then calls to arrange the meeting without offering a greeting or farewell. When she opens the door at the Auteur’s Hollywood Hills home, she speaks in clipped fragments, omitting pronouns and sentence endings, and gestures him inside without making eye contact. Her blunt haircut, clean fingernails, and efficient pumps contribute to his impression of an aspiring bureaucrat.

The narrator suspects that Violet’s treatment of him may be racial. He has come to the United States with the credentials of an American citizen, yet interprets her manner as another instance of being treated as foreign because of his Asian appearance. The text presents this as his suspicion, not as a confirmed motive on Violet’s part. His emotional disorientation after the crapulent major’s death also colors the encounter: he wonders whether the injury to his confidence comes from Violet’s behavior, his own state of mind, or both.

At the Auteur’s home, Violet remains part of the machinery through which the director controls the meeting. He calls for her to bring scotch, and she serves it while he holds forth about the Hollywood sign, authenticity, and the story of The Hamlet. The narrator’s first impression of her is thus shaped by both her personal discourtesy and the deferential role she occupies in the Auteur’s household.

From Gatekeeper to Recruiter

After the narrator challenges the screenplay’s lack of speaking roles for Vietnamese characters, the Auteur dismisses his suggestions on the grounds that he has never made a film. Violet is present during the exchange. She argues that Vietnamese audiences are unlikely to buy tickets, making the intended audience—and therefore the commercial interests behind the production—a priority. Her comment gives the disagreement a practical edge: the issue is not simply what would make the fictional setting more credible, but whose attention the film considers worth securing.

The next week, Violet calls again. This time she uses complete sentences and explains that the Auteur has reconsidered the narrator’s advice. She says he respects the narrator for standing up to him and proposes hiring him as a consultant on Vietnamese matters. The production, she explains, has already researched history, costumes, weapons, and customs through books, but needs the human knowledge he can provide. It also plans to use Vietnamese refugees in the Philippines as extras, for whom it needs someone to work with them. Violet therefore turns the narrator’s confrontation with the director into a paid opportunity, while the terms of the offer reveal the production’s dependence on people whose knowledge its script had largely excluded.

That recruitment does not mean the production will cast Vietnamese performers in the roles the narrator expects. Violet later tells him that the filmmakers looked for Vietnamese actors but judged the available performers unqualified, describing most as amateurs and the professionals as prone to overacting. The choice, as the narrator understands it, is to have Asians from elsewhere play Vietnamese characters. Violet’s explanation makes her role more complicated than that of a simple advocate for cultural accuracy: she seeks the narrator’s expertise while conveying the production’s justification for substituting other performers.

Work on the Production

The narrator’s consulting work involves practical as well as cultural questions. Extras need to know where the wardrobe department is, when they are due on set, and how their needs and weekly wages will be handled. Casting also exposes the political discomfort of the film’s categories. Many refugees are willing to play South Vietnamese Army soldiers, but few want the role of Viet Cong guerrillas. The narrator persuades Violet to double the wages for those who will play the guerrillas, and she agrees. The increased pay enables performers who found the role repugnant to take it.

The relationship between the narrator and the Auteur worsens over the planned rape of Mai. The narrator objects that the scene may be unnecessary, and the director responds by accusing him of being a sellout. The dispute belongs to the production’s broader struggle over what it considers realistic and whose objections it will hear. Violet is a recurring intermediary in the film’s practical arrangements, but the evidence does not show her resolving this conflict; the narrator’s challenge and the Auteur’s response remain central to it.

The Explosion and Its Aftermath

After an explosion on the Philippine set leaves the narrator hospitalized with smoke inhalation, scrapes, bruises, mild burns, a bump on the head, and a concussion, Violet visits him with a representative of the film studio. She asks whether he remembers what happened. When he does not, she relays the Auteur’s explanation for his absence: he would have come himself, but President Marcos is visiting the set that day. Violet’s presence makes her the link between the injured consultant and a production whose leader does not visit him in person.

The studio representative offers to pay the hospital bills and presents a five-thousand-dollar check in exchange for a release from future obligations. The narrator negotiates the amount to ten thousand dollars. Violet does not conduct the negotiation, but she remains present as the studio’s dealings with him unfold. At the door, she looks back and tells him that the film could not have been made without him. The narrator wants to believe her, even as he recognizes the possibility that the reassurance is merely a convenient kindness. Her final gesture recalls the earlier employment offer: his contribution has mattered, but the production’s recognition of that contribution remains entangled with money, injury, and the limits it places on Vietnamese participation.