What does contemporary Thai cinema tell us about
contemporary Thai cultural concerns and anxieties?
To answer this question, I will touch upon a number of
contemporary films; February, Monrak Transistor, Rahtree:
Flower of the Night and Sydnromes and a Century, in order
to discuss key sources of fear as portrayed by Thai
Cinema. I will then conclude that contemporary Thai
cinema acts as a window into Thai realities, whilst the
most interesting cinematic comment seems to be one of
reflection; reminiscing in order to inspire how best to
proceed in an environment influenced by Westernism,
crisis and ‘others’.
I will begin by touching upon the economic crisis, before
looking at Western encounters and then dystopias, the
perceived result of the aforementioned Westernism. I will
then look at forms of nostalgia that have risen out of
contemporary anxieties, before arguing that perhaps this
nostalgia is not about a return to the past, but
‘rerooting’ - taking influence from the past. I will
finish by discussing the concerns surrounding the
fracturing of society and state censorship.
Economic Crisis
Firstly, it is important to set the scene for
contemporary Thai cinema by acknowledging the Thai
economic crisis of 1997-1998. Tejapira describes it as
“the worst economic crisis in Thailand since 1929” (2001,
221), and Knee goes on to acknowledge the subsequent
“turn-of-the-millenium cultural and economic upheavals”
(2003, 102). Post 1997, Thailand bore a number of
reactionary films, loaded with different perceptions and
responses to the societal instability.
Western Encounters
February, by Yuthlert Sippapak and Monrak Transistor, by
Pen-ek Ratanaruang are two example of films that bring to
life contemporary concerns and anxieties revolving
around encounters with the West. Harrison describes this
exposure to Western environments as having a
“destabilising and emotionally debilitating impact”
(2010, 11).
This literal and metaphorical debilitation is most
visible in February, which becomes the visual site where
concepts of the national (Thai) and the Foreign (‘Other’)
dramatically collide. This collision is not only a
cultural one, but a dramatic reality when Thailand and
New York meet for the first time through a taxi driver’s
abduction of Kaewta. Kaewta comes to represent the Thai
geo-body, a body that is nearly destroyed by being hit by
a car, and hit by Westernisation.
Yuthlert plays with space and light to portray the danger
of the two protagonist’s situations. Night time shots,
dark lighting and repressive, claustrophobic spaces
transform the metaphorical darkness and danger of the
West into a literal darkness.
February does not only present the issue of the home and
the foreign to the viewer, but invites them to actively
engage with the protagonist’s desperate questioning of
home, identity and the self, so that the two might find
their way home, to Thailand, together.
Dystopia
In February, Kaewta may have made it home to Thailand,
but in My Girl, Killer Tattoo, 6ixty 9ine and Monrak
Transistor cinematic pictures are painted of what happens
when ‘home’ (Thailand) becomes tainted by modernising
forces. The dystopia that these films portray is a
comment on the contemporary fear of both westernisation
and globalisation. The idea of the urban dystopia warns
its audience away from such a vapid existence and towards
the vastly different, (imagined) utopia of the
countryside.
At the beginning of My Girl, the main character, Jaeb, is
in Bangkok. His city life is portrayed as a lonely,
dystopian existence, with little human contact. His urban
life lacks intimacy. This stilted existence is starkly
contrasted by his childhood memories which come gushing
forth upon a wave of catchy pop songs.
Whilst My Girl carries us from the city to the
countryside, Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Monrak Transistor
begins with Pan and Sadao leading an idyllic, if not
clichéd, life in the countryside.
The couple’s combined and individual trials present the
audience with important comments on the gradual
degradation of traditional Thainess. Pan’s character
warns us away from the urban dangers of Bangkok, whilst
Sadaw, his literal (wife) and metaphorical (countryside)
counterpart, reminds us of ‘Thai’ morality.
As the film progresses, Pan is carried further away from
his rural beginnings. The further away from the
countryside, the more things begin to degrade. Pen-ek
plays with this concept of space; Pan’s location becomes
representative of the void growing between his true Thai
values, and urban corruption.
In a poignant shot, we watch as Pan, who has been
relegated to backstage garland making, sings to his
reflection in the mirror. The mirror however, is cracked
and broken, just like Pan’s city dreams. The film teaches
us that city life is not the dream existence that so many
aspire to, but instead, is a strange bubble where nothing
is as it seems: Pan is a cleaner; the choreographer is a
transvestite; and Dao, the folk singer, slept her way to
a ‘stardom’ that is far from starry.
It is safe to say that the film presents such bleak
disillusionment that it is near comical: Pan came to the
city to be a singer, yet ends up a cleaner, a murderer
and narrowly escapes becoming a victim of homosexual
rape. Pen-ek’s dark sense of humour comes into play once
more when Pan and his friend find themselves at a city
party thrown to raise money for the poor. The rich
Bangkokians have all come out to partake in the worthy
cause, which involves a wonderfully satirised competition
for who can dress in the most convincingly impoverished
outfit. Pan and his friend are the bedraggled belles of
the ball until it is realised that they are genuinely
poor, at which point they are assaulted and thrown to the
gutter. The comedy of this scene is an important comment
on the distortion of society and class structures at
play.
Through Pan’s tumultuous journey back to the countryside,
and the lessons that he learns along the way, Pen-ek
simultaneously maps out lessons that Thailand too needs
to learn in the face of modernisation, Westernisation and
internationalisation. We see Pan develop from a buffalo-
horned country bumpkin sitting in Daddy, the dubious luk-
toong manager’s office, to a man that returns to the
countryside to uphold his familial duties.
The character of Sadaw also carries with her an important
comment on the emotional state of society. Knee argues
that she represents “a concern for basic human needs and
emotions that are, by implication, under threat in modern
Bangkok and modern Thailand” (Knee, 2003, 119).
Nostalgia and State Nostalgia
Nostalgic films are contemporary Thai cinema’s most
common response to the the country’s cultural concerns
and anxieties. Through the popularity of nostalgic films,
and of course the state’s exploitation of this sentiment
to create ‘state nostalgia’, Thai cinema demonstrates
that post 1997, contemporary society was eager to escape
social realities.
My Girl, was a huge success at the Thai box office. So
successful in fact, that it was the ninth top grossing
Thai film of 2000-2010. This popularity reflects that in
the wake of the economic crisis, and an influx of post-
modern films such as Tears of the Black Tiger and 6ixty
9ine, Thai audiences welcomed an easy-to-digest film.
My Girl created a nostalgic space that was a safe
distance from Thailand’s crisis. In essence, the film’s
six directors invited Thais to step out of their adult
lives and enjoy nostalgic reflection through the vehicle
of childhood.
Whilst Tears of the Black Tiger is a nostalgic film, its
lack of national success demonstrates that it was not
accessible to the Thai masses. My Girl, however, is
safely located in childhood. As Kong Rithdee writes, film
is an “effective tool in helping us remember, and the
cute kid flick Fan Chan is a romantic feast of
remembering.” (2003)
Whilst the film is located in Jaeb’s memory, the ending
pulls the audience back to the present. We, along with
Jaeb, witness how much of his rural town has been changed
by time. The family run corner shop has been taken over
by 7/11, dusty lanes have become busy roads, and Noi Nah
is getting married. It is safe to say that we are no
longer within the realms of childhood Narnia. As the film
draws to a close, Jaeb says that “the trip back home made
me realise how much things had changed”. Despite these
physical changes, Jaeb’s memories remain unweathered by
time, just like his frozen image of Noi Nah, just like
the perceived idea of what it is to be Thai. Both are
preserved within the audience’s memory, ready to be
carried into the uncertain future.
State Nostalgia
State Nostalgia tugs upon similar heart strings, however
in a way which is more calculated and finds it roots in
propaganda.
The Legend of Suriyothai and The Legend of King Naresuan,
both by Chatrichalerm Yukol, present us with a different
type of nostalgia, and a different bundle of cultural
concerns and anxieties. These two films exemplify the
commoditisation of nostalgia, and the creation of state
nostalgia. McCormick describes “nostalgia’s political
potential” (as quoted in Sprengler, 2009, 22), something
that was very much exploited by these two national
blockbusters.
Such extensive exploitation of nostalgia seems to
demonstrate that the Thai government would like the
audience to forget that they have the capacity to forge
out a new future, one that takes influence from both the
past and present. Through epic battle scenes, warriors,
and admirable royal saviours, they foster (create) a
national pride in an effort to quash the perceived threat
of the foreign.
This ‘national nostalgia’ suggests an increase of Western
influence in Thailand and the state’s subsequent reaction
to it. It could be argued that the dedication of so much
money and air time to the monarchy in fact implicates the
monarchy’s declining influence, and subsequently, a
rather desperate attempt to reignite some semblance of
royal pride and nationalism.
Rerooting
McCormick (as quoted in Sprengler, 2009, 22), argues that
nostalgia “calls to mind a past, utopian time to which
the present should aspire and which it should make
efforts to recreate”. I would instead argue that rather
than recreating the past, nostalgic Thai films such as
Tears of the Black Tiger call for contemporary life to be
inspired by, rather than based upon, a fondly remembered
past.
Wisit Sasanatieng’s Tears of the Black Tiger is a
fantastic illustration of nostalgic rerooting; taking
nostalgia and blowing it up into a technicolor dream-
coat.
In the wake of the 1997 economic crash and the influx of
nostalgic film making, the film creates a new and
important type of nostalgia. The fake set, brilliant
overacting, and loud colours powerfully suggest that
Wisit is not being nostalgic because he wishes the
audience to step back in time, but that he does so in
order to pay homage to a passed time, in the hope that we
can take inspiration from the past and the foreign, in
order to transform the present. This is strongly conveyed
by the fact that Wisit has taken the classic cowboy genre
and turned a Western into a Thai.
Wisit uses prominent Thai actors from the seventies,
taking the old and making it new again. Another example
of this is Wisit drawing inspiration from Thai film,
director Rattana Pestonji.
Fractured society
In considering what contemporary Thai cinema tells us
about contemporary Thai cultural concerns and anxieties,
it is interesting to look at Thai horror, and the way
that this genre manipulates ideas of death, abandonment
and deceit to represent fractured Thai society. I will
use the examples of Nonzee Nimibutr’s Nang Nak, and
Yuthlert Sippapak’s Rahtree: Flower of the Night to
demonstrate this.
In Nang Nak, there is the fleeting possibility that the
dead Nak and her husband Mak can live in some sort of
harmony together. Similarly, in Rahtree: Flower of the
Night, Buppha begins a similar post-mortem relationship
with Ake. That is before we realise that Ake too is dead,
and what we have seen is the relationship of two ghosts,
alive, yet dead. This strange crossroads between life and
death reflects the social conflicts within Thai society.
Kong Rithdee writes that “the possibility of harmonious
existence between people of different learnings and
nature is precisely at the heart of our current social
conflict. The ‘ghosts’ are among us” (Rithdee, 2013).
Rahtree: Flower of the Night, is classified as a horror,
with the most obvious source of horror being Buppha: a
girl who bleeds to death after an abortion. However, I
would argue that the real horror resides within society
and their treatment of this young girl, who is raped,
lied to, impregnated, forced to abort, abandoned, and
murdered by society’s apathy.
The film is also an unflinching and comical comment on
‘Others’. At first, it seems Buppha is the ‘Other’, the
deathly monstrous feminine that must be banished. Indeed,
all of the characters in the film are desperate to evict
her not only from the apartment block, but from the face
of the earth. However, the characters that so fear Buppha
because she is different (ok, dead) are a group of
misfits themselves: corrupted, questionable, foreign, or
all of the above. They are the living ghosts of the urban
world. Perhaps then, we can understand their absolute
fear of Buppha as symbolic of a fear of their own
‘otherness’.
We have two fat, transgender hairdressers who never have
customers, a lazy and inept shopkeeper and his disabled
assistant; the corrupt, unfeminine, unloving wife who is
the apartment landlord, and her husband who does nothing
but pray; the landlord’s main employee who is also
disabled; Buppha’s sexually abusive and paedophillic
father-in-law; and finally Ake, a rich Bangkokian youth
who destroys Buppha’s life in order to win a bottle of
liquor, not to mention a parade of inept exorcists. It
does not look too promising for Thai society.
Censorship
Films such as Syndromes and a Century powerfully convey
the political and social realities of contemporary
Thailand. Being bound and gagged by Thai censorship laws
is perhaps what makes these films such important comments
on contemporary Thai cultural concerns and anxieties. The
imposed gag order forces directors to find new means of
expression and therefore opens the door to a different
type of storytelling.
I would argue that Apichatpong’s work is the most
accurate and truthful portrayal of contemporary Thai life
and all of its concerns and anxieties, in that he does
not ascribe to a Thai ideal and throws off the chains of
‘Thainess’. In an interview, Apichatpong said of
Sydnromes, “my film will look back at the past in order
to see into the future. Just people living life, inhaling
and exhaling, meeting each other—these are already
miracles.” (Pansittivorakul, 2006)
Apichatpong’s works are often hard to grasp, but it is
this transience that is so integral to his work, that
transforms his films into an experience. Rather than
explicitly rampaging against a social and political
straightjacket, Apichatpong deftly creates a feeling that
conveys Thai realities. In Syndromes and a Century, the
majority of the film takes place within the walls of a
hospital. A place of healing, sickness, birth, life and
death, and all of it restricted within the hospital
walls. Not to mention doctors who hide alcoholic spirits
in artificial legs, folk singing dentists and tea
offering monks.
A particularly striking scene sees us in the bowel of the
hospital, watching a metal tube extract smoke. I
interpret this as Apichatpong’s visual representation of
the vapidity of life, having lost its spirituality and
concrete uniformity.
Schager (2006) writes that Syndromes is “not only a
loving tribute to the past, but [an] attempt at
experiential preservation”. I disagree with this and
argue that despite having a past and present aspect to
the film, one of Syndromes key features is that the past
merges with the present, memories mix with reality, and
time becomes timeless. Rather than understanding
Apichatpong’s work of art as an ode to the past, I
understand it as an unflinching ode to reality, where all
of the fragmented pieces of life and fractured society
come together to form what we perceive to be our own
reality.
Whilst Monrak Transistor, 6ixty 9ine, Killer Tattoo,
Hotel Angel, February
(and the list goes on) all explicitly comment on the fear
of Westernisation, and portray individual battles against
the urban evil, Syndromes accepts, embodies and consumes
the nostalgia, the dystopia, the fear, and produces a
drugged yet lucid, clear yet confusing, concise yet
intricate depiction of Thai life. All of the
contradictions and confusions act as building blocks
which convey an important message about Thai identity:
that there is not one. The fact that the film is hard to
understand is perhaps Apichatpong’s most important
comment on contemporary Thai cultural concerns and
anxieties. Rather than constantly trying to understand
the inexplicable social, political and economic ups and
downs of Thai society, perhaps it is better to accept the
political transience and proceed with the sentiment that
we are left with after watching one of Apichatpong’s
films.
Rithdee writes that
“The Thai word for nature…is dharma-chart, whose
linguistic root is based on the word dharma. In the
Buddhist dharma teachings we’re told that everything
is impermanent. It’s just illusion, or dream, or
memory. [Apichatpong’s] is the cinema of dharma-
chart—the cinema of impermanence. As he himself is
learning how to let things go, to not feel attached,
perhaps we should do the same when watching his
films.” (Rithdee, 2007)
Conclusion
To conclude, the multitudinous diversity of contemporary
Thai film portrays a whole host of Thai cultural concerns
and anxieties.
Particularly in post 1997 cinema, as well as in more
contemporary films such as Apichatpong’s, there is a
clear discomfort surrounding the acknowledgement of the
changing times, and a subsequent search for how to
proceed. The prevalent search and return to Thainess
through nostalgia is the most common answer. In spite of
this, the overarching message from contemporary Thai
cinema seems to be that there is no singular Thai
identity or Thainess to return to, and that instead, Thai
society should take inspiration from the past in order to
inform their present.
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Kong Rithdee
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