Strange things have happened at the cinemas. First, Hitler showed up in a Thai short film sponsored by the government (meaning by taxpayers), the radioactive gatecrasher into a party of virtuous citizens. Second, another Thai film featuring, among other things, a joke about the anal cleft — it's funny as long as it's not your anal cleft — is raking in a huge amount of money at the multiplexes, likely surpassing the 100-million-baht mark as you're reading this, which is after just four days of release. Cinema enlightens, even in the dark forest of swastikas and bodily bergschrunds.
Anyway, Hitler, who made a cameo in a movie done as part of the 12-film "Thai Pride" anthology exalting the 12 Values prescribed by the premier, provoked an uproar and was later removed by the authorities who financed it (why you are embarrassed by something you've proudly backed is beyond me). Meanwhile the other film, a romantic comedy called I Fine, Thank You, Love You — a lovely malapropism that shows our readiness to be an Asean leader — is on its way to becoming the highest grossing title of the year, at a projected 250 million baht or more. The first film has shored up our moral quotient, the latter has boosted our sagging mood and flagging economy. In just one December week, what more could you have asked for?
If Thai popular culture were a house, where would we fit our different breeds of movies? First of all, I would make all the arthouse and documentary movies that win critical applause the foundations and the roof of the house, since we need quality materials for those parts even though we never really look at them. Then the moneymakers, such as I Fine, Thank You, Love You, would be pretty vases that entertain all eyes in the living room. Maybe we'd have bloated historical epics as a doormat. All the silly comedy would be a rubbish bin in the guest's toilet. Then the films made by order like those in the "Thai Pride" project — the Fuhrer one as well as most others in the pack — would be put in a box that would then be sealed and put beneath other boxes stacked in the basement, behind a locked door down the cobwebbed stairs in the back of the house. Someone would open the box one day, then he'd cry and laugh, or laugh and cry.
To me, the Nazi iconography isn't really the problem (the actual title of that problematic short film is 30, an uninspiring choice by director Kulp Kaljareuk). It's insensitive, but it's not forbidden for a film to show an image of Hitler or any other homicidal dictator, and I disagree with it being censored. Instead, what bugs me about the film, as well as about most others in the 12-film bundle that I've seen, is their naive oversimplification of all the complicated issues this country is facing, from corruption to elections to the southern unrest. These films are not made to ask hard questions but to presume that they know all the easy answers — false, unrealistic, moralising answers whose only benefit is to drug us into greater depths of denial and feather-headed innocence.
In 30, a precocious, annoying schoolboy is pampered by his rich, cunning mother (they live in a Versailles-like mansion, where the boy paints the image of Hitler as a hobby). The boy dishes out a mildly racist joke at his Indian-looking friend but somehow — the storytelling is so weak — he realises that being clever isn't enough and he has to be a good boy by standing up against his mother's string-pulling. Moral: Cheating is bad.
In another short, a Muslim boy joins a band of gun-wielding terrorists in the jungle but changes his mind after seeing the sacrifice of his hijab-wearing teacher (the most unconvincing hijab-wearing teacher I've ever seen in the history of cinema). Moral: Sacrifice is good, terrorists are bad. In another film, a drug-addicted hoodlum-schoolboy shouts at his teacher: "How can you fire me [from being class president], I was elected!" Moral: Do I even need to spell it out?
The 12 Values aren't a problem in themselves — the problem is when they're weaponised against those who have different views as morally inferior. In these films, the dumbing-down of the "messages" shows the fundamental flaws of these "made to order" movies: When critical opinion is discouraged, what's left is propaganda.
When questions are snubbed, what's left is force-fed answers. When art is prescribed by the state, it requires great artists to smuggle in subterfuge and contraband commentaries. That doesn't seem to be the case here. Hitler or no Hitler, we grow dumb and dumber, and the screen is darkened and dulled. I'll go watch I Fine, Thank You, Love You and keep that box in the basement locked, preferably forever.
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life editor, Bangkok Post.