The big issue: Breach of common sense

The big issue: Breach of common sense

Looking up: 'Arbat' has been edited and will be released in cinemas as 'Arpat'.
Looking up: 'Arbat' has been edited and will be released in cinemas as 'Arpat'.

Arbat means, literally, “breach”. In Buddhism it describes the un-holy acts committed by the monks of the original version of the movie now called Arpat and, of course, by many monks in real life.

It must be said that for a ministry devoted to the national culture, the Ministry of Culture quite often seems to be more of a scold than a mediator, more Puritan than Buddhist, all idealistic and seldom realistic.

The lack of self-awareness of the censors was clear. They seemed unaware of one of the country’s greatest cultural works, the epic tale of Khun Chang Khun Phaen. But this heroic tale is 200 years old, and perhaps the institutional memories and libraries at the culture ministry don’t go back that far.

Khun Chang Khun Phaen? It’s hard to improve upon Wikipedia’s summarising sentence of this classic: “Fast-moving and stuffed full with heroism, romance, sex, violence, rude-mechanical comedy, magic, horror, and passages of lyrical beauty.”

Anyone recognise a pre-butchered movie of 2015 in there? Yet Khun Chang Khun Phaen is a masterpiece; Arbat is for banning, or at least butchery into something called Arpat.

It reminds of the Culture Ministry bringing its puritanical hellfire and damnation down on two young women who showed their breasts at an impromptu Songkran dance several years ago. The ministry had to, had to humiliate them, name them, shame them, put them on TV. A day later without apology or a shred of irony when the public noted their hypocrisy, exactly the same officials took down the Ministry of Culture’s home webpage featuring frescos of bare-breasted dancing maidens.

A slow-motion replay of Arbat’s death throes reveals that the ministry’s censorship board obeyed the old adage about the squeaky wheel. The media described those making the case against release of the film as “hardline Buddhists”. This phrase used to be an oxymoron. Today, it is just another tautology.

Naturally, there is a Change.org petition to the ministry and the prime minister, demanding that they allow us to watch the film, uncensored. The petition is at goo.gl/Hqpdnt. It had more than 100,000 signatures at press time.

The censorship of Arbat, whether you credit the 4-to-2 vote to out-of-touch Culture Ministry phuyai or blame it on an intimidated, frightened committee, was not at all popular. Media, social media, coffee shops, personal conversations, you name it and the man on the street voted at least 5-to-1 to release the movie uncut and let the chips fall. It was close to a 6-to-0 vote.

But this is not a time where authority consults popular sentiment. Section 44 is standing in the wings in case you disagree with those who know better. The military regime has its thumb on the scale of public opinion.

The internet single-gateway is a major policy setback for the government, but not because of the public’s dismay and opposition. Powerful business forces swayed the decision to delay the Great Thai Firewall for a while.

The reason for even discussing the concept of a single internet gateway was the same as the reason to vote down the release of Arbat. Government knows best what people should have. And having made its point, authority has increased the scale and scope of both internet and movie censorship.

No doubt General Prime Minister Prayut believes the country should have an internet fit only for children. The army probably really believes that the nation will be better off because it used armed force to take down the Bangkok Post reports of the feud between the new and old army commanders. For that matter, officers probably believe you can delete stuff from the internet.

The competing view on the movie of the moment is that everyone knows some monks smoke, drink, chat up pretty young girls. The banned Arbat story was mild compared with a few real-life scoundrels, criminals and dreadful men in the monkhood. But banning Arbat and releasing Arpat never had anything to do with Buddhism, morals or religion. It was to protect the censors from a noisy, nosy, threatening group.

The late, not-so-great draft constitution is to be resurrected, something like a previously exorcised phi phob that never dies. This all stresses two co-related facts. First, citizens have few specifically unfettered rights, except, strangely, the right to marry and to own property — “strangely” because in real life both these rights have multiple and frustrating exceptions.

Pretty well all “rights” in recent constitutions were followed by “except”. That word appeared 48 times in the rejected draft, 49 times in the rubbished 2007 supreme law.

Rights in the constitution are granted by authority. Citizens are allowed to have rights; they do not have them automatically. Constitution writers, too, know better than the public.

Alan Dawson

Online Reporter / Sub-Editor

A Canadian by birth. Former Saigon's UPI bureau chief. Drafted into the American Armed Forces. He has survived eleven wars and innumerable coups. A walking encyclopedia of knowledge.

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