To make it popular, ban it | Bangkok Post: opinion

POSTSCRIPT

One would have thought that by now the authorities would have realised that if you ban something it will become popular, or at least more widely known. That will probably be the case of the film Shakespeare Must Die, a Thai adaptation of Macbeth. It was originally banned in April and an appeal by the film-makers was rejected last week. The authorities seem to think that the Thai public is incapable of making up its own mind whether a film is any good. Of course, the publicity created by the ban means that the news has gone around the world _ not exactly what the moral guardians responsible for the ban had in mind.

Shakespeare himself would not have been too impressed that something based on one of his major works would be thrown in the bin. The Bard would most likely have agreed with respected US judge Potter Stewart who once observed: ''Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.''

Saving our wicked souls