The Hamlet is a parody of
Apocalypse Now, which was a revision of Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness. One of the critiques of the film is that it failed to depict the Vietnamese people as fully-realized human beings, instead presenting them as grotesque enemies. Nguyen addresses this aspect of grotesqueness by nicknaming the group of Viet Cong “King Cong,” which is a re-appropriation of the title of the 1933 film
King Kong. The latter has often been analyzed as a depiction of Americans’ racist fears.