Two headlines caught my attention over the past week. First, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha wishes to see more movies that promote Thai values and historical education. Second, Hello Kitty is not a cat.
Both are comprehensible, and both deservedly made it past a glut of other nonsense to prime-time news. Both smell like propaganda and above all, both are not surprising. Both also tell us a few things, or a lot of things, depending on your mood and the intensity of your inner life, about the two countries from which the news originated.
A leopard can't change its spots — and a cat is never a cat, as Lewis Carroll made it clear once and for all and Sanrio has now made even clearer. In your mind, how do you see your own country? How do you wish others would see your country? And how do you reconcile those two images to confirm yourself, your ego, your delusion, your myth of your own worth, while also reinforcing the image that you wish to appear to the rest of the world?
As a mighty nation riding to war on the back of an elephant, maybe, as we've seen in many Thai movies made even before the PM's ingenious initiation. Or as a proud, smiley kingdom of bliss since all dust was shoved under the carpet, as we've seen aplenty after May 22. When it's time to cure our insecurity, nationalistic literature, music and movies are a powerful drug. Since we don't read so much — and since the musical front has been won through the interminable repetition of that wonderful song authored by the PM — it's the movies that need to be worked on; this is supposedly most effective, and supposedly makes the authorities sound cooler and more modern than they actually are or ever will be.
The memory of movie-lovers stampeding to watch the free Legend of King Naresuan screenings still plays in my mind like ecstasy. If the PM's wish is granted, and it will be, I look forward to more on-screen bravery, glorification, murders of enemies and narrow history.
This isn't surprising: Authoritarian leaders always look to the movies as a tool to help them spread ideas. The epitome is Kim Jong-il, who wrote a book called The Cinema and Directing, a weird and passionate manual on how to use filmmaking as a tool to build a nation. Then you have the Third Reich, the smart lot, with Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia — her idealisation of the Aryan race is a work of shuddering self-canonisation — and Triumph of the Will, with its fancy technique to present the Fuhrer and to confuse the audience between beauty and terror. And since we're discussing Hello Kitty, Japan saw its fair share of cinematic propaganda made during the height of militarism, such as Evil Mickey Attacks Japan (1936) and The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya (1942), which shows off stylistic heft in promoting the "values" of the warring nation.
Which one should our dear leader take a leaf out of? Is the term "historical education" that PM Prayuth cited referring to "history" as the bubble fossilised in the past without regard for the present? Besides North Korea, whose grip remains strong, the above cinematic examples sound quaint and almost embarrassing for both Germany and Japan today. Japan, above all, learnt a hard lesson on what misguided nationalism could bring; moreover, I think democratic Japan has realised that conquering the world through the mouthless, non-cat Hello Kitty is much more effective and indisputable than a bunch of kamikaze pilots and militaristic propaganda films.
The non-cat Kitty is an epitome of soft-power blitz, a commercial and cultural vanguard with overwhelming power (just check out the Sanrio Café at Siam Square One). If nationalism is necessary, and I doubt it is, its definition shouldn't be restricted to an act of war, a sense of superiority, or a grossly selective lens of history that makes us feel good about ourselves: the "values" and "historical education" should mean a systematic urge for people to reflect on the past and keep it relevant to the present. It should mean an open-mindedness (stop banning movies, for a start) that welcomes a healthy debate on what Thai "values" are, not what some old guys force us to think they must be. Nationalism, if it's necessary, should be based on what we think, create and contribute — even if it's just something so trivial like Hello Kitty — and not what we brag about but we'll never be.
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.