Prumsodun Ok |
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I Don’t Feel Any Resentment Do you feel any resentment toward the US and American policy in Southeast Asia back in the day? I don’t feel any resentment, because I was born and raised here. You know, America has always been what I’ve known. So I don’t feel any resentment because one thing is that you can’t hold anger in the heart. I know many Cambodian-Americans who are so angry at the situation in Cambodia right now. It’s not as developed as it can be, there’s so much corruption. I think about cycles of violence, about cycles of power; so in Cambodia, since classical days, you’ve always had a king and his elites, and everyone else is just dirt poor. And the king is worshiped almost as a God in Earth. And it’s really easy to be authoritarian in that type of political environment. For centuries, that’s all that Cambodia has known, that authoritarianism. So what you have the communist, the Khmer Rouge. No I don’t think what they did was right, but what they were trying to do was to eliminate that authoritarianism; that quality of being led by a despot, where only one person’s authority matters. They were trying to eliminate that, they were trying to create a egalitarian peasant society. What they ended up doing was actually tripping and choking on their own power; becoming the same despot that they didn’t want to serve. So now in Cambodia, today when you’re out in Phnom Phenh, you really see the violence that’s perpetrated between the rich and the poor. Usually the rich have big cars, and when they’re driving they honk really quickly, really furiously for you to move out of their way or else they’re going to run you over. People in Cambodia do everything to demonstrate their wealth and how that wealth makes them better than someone else. Hun Sen himself was a Khmer Rouge, was involved in a Khmer Rouge. So what you have is a cycle of violence and a cycle of power where one group replaces another but does the same thing. So for me, I don’t say, “Oh, the Americans caused the war,” they didn’t. What’s happening is that the people inside of Cambodia were trying to change that and they got lost along the way, they got horribly lost along the way. Anger doesn’t get anyone anywhere. Secondly, I think as Americans, we have a responsibility to question our role in the world. It’s really interesting to have Cambodian groups and say, “My country was formally colonized”; but at the same time say, “but my other country is the empire of the world right now.”
Object Description
Profile of | Prumsodun Ok |
Title | Resilience: Fuel to Push Us Further In Our Lives |
Profile bio | Prumsodun Ok was born and raised in Long Beach, California, the heart of the Cambodian community in Los Angeles and adjacent areas. Prumsodun dedicated his time and effort to transform the world with his interdisciplinary performances and his practices as an artist, writer and experimental filmmaker. He is currently the Associate Artistic Director of Khmer Arts, a transnational organization at the forefront of Khmer dance practice and serves as on the Board of Directors for the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, showing his extensive involvement in the art. Prumsodun’s parents wanted him to pursue a stable career. However, guided by his passion for performing arts and Cambodia's rich art culture, Prumsodun decided to pursue Khmer classical dance under the instruction of award-winning choreographer Sophiline Cheam Shapio. He later studied experimental filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. He also trained in Takhmao, Cambodia, where he spent a couple of years with master artist Penh Yom of the Khmer Arts Ensemble, Cambodia’s leading ensemble of classical dance and music to master his skills. In Cambodia, Prumsodun confronted his memories of Cambodia learnt from his parents with the reality presented in the country. |
Profiler bio | Students at USC in The American War in Vietnam course who researched and interviewed to result in this project. Alexa Smith is a junior majoring in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention from Moraga, CA. Anh Tran is a senior majoring in Business Administration from Vietnam. Luis Vega is a sophomore majoring in Applied Maths from Los Angeles, CA. |
Subject |
Vietnam war immigrant Khmer Rouge diaspora viet cong |
Profiled by | Smith, Alexa; Tran, Anh; Vega, Luis |
Profile date | 2014-03-08 |
Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Long Beach; Krong Ta Khmau |
Geographic subject (county) | Los Angeles |
Geographic subject (state) | California |
Geographic subject (country) | USA; Cambodia; Thailand |
Coverage date | 1979 |
Publisher (of the original version) | http://anotherwarmemorial.com/prumsodun-ok/ |
Type |
images video |
Format | 1 image; 3 video files (00:19:49); 3 transcripts |
Language | English |
Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
Part of collection | An Other War Memorial -- Memories of the American War in Viet Nam |
Filename | okprumsodun |
Description
Profile of | Prumsodun Ok |
Title | I Don't Feel Any Resentment |
Format | 1 transcript, 1p. |
Filename | okprumsodun-vid2_tr2.pdf |
Full text | I Don’t Feel Any Resentment Do you feel any resentment toward the US and American policy in Southeast Asia back in the day? I don’t feel any resentment, because I was born and raised here. You know, America has always been what I’ve known. So I don’t feel any resentment because one thing is that you can’t hold anger in the heart. I know many Cambodian-Americans who are so angry at the situation in Cambodia right now. It’s not as developed as it can be, there’s so much corruption. I think about cycles of violence, about cycles of power; so in Cambodia, since classical days, you’ve always had a king and his elites, and everyone else is just dirt poor. And the king is worshiped almost as a God in Earth. And it’s really easy to be authoritarian in that type of political environment. For centuries, that’s all that Cambodia has known, that authoritarianism. So what you have the communist, the Khmer Rouge. No I don’t think what they did was right, but what they were trying to do was to eliminate that authoritarianism; that quality of being led by a despot, where only one person’s authority matters. They were trying to eliminate that, they were trying to create a egalitarian peasant society. What they ended up doing was actually tripping and choking on their own power; becoming the same despot that they didn’t want to serve. So now in Cambodia, today when you’re out in Phnom Phenh, you really see the violence that’s perpetrated between the rich and the poor. Usually the rich have big cars, and when they’re driving they honk really quickly, really furiously for you to move out of their way or else they’re going to run you over. People in Cambodia do everything to demonstrate their wealth and how that wealth makes them better than someone else. Hun Sen himself was a Khmer Rouge, was involved in a Khmer Rouge. So what you have is a cycle of violence and a cycle of power where one group replaces another but does the same thing. So for me, I don’t say, “Oh, the Americans caused the war,” they didn’t. What’s happening is that the people inside of Cambodia were trying to change that and they got lost along the way, they got horribly lost along the way. Anger doesn’t get anyone anywhere. Secondly, I think as Americans, we have a responsibility to question our role in the world. It’s really interesting to have Cambodian groups and say, “My country was formally colonized”; but at the same time say, “but my other country is the empire of the world right now.” |
Archival file | Volume3/okprumsodun-vid2_tr2.pdf |