So, in the past week, what has got through the censors? What, in art and in academia, has slipped past the iron curtain of our saintly, this-is-not-dictatorship authorities?
As troops showed up at a Thong Lor theatre and black-clad agents tried to snatch sensitive materials from a university parade, what has escaped the all-seeing eyes of the thought-control regime? A few things actually.
For starters: Fifty Shades of Grey, aka that lubed-up, bourgeois bondage erotica that manages to become accidental comedy and bona fide global yawning. Bitten lips, muscled thighs, whiplashed bottoms, smothered gasps − the sadomasochistic fantasy of the hyped-up yet tedious romance plays out like an allegory for a helpless country, which allows the whole film to screen uncut anyway (not that this sanitised S&M has much to offer). Here, the censors gave it a 20-plus rating, mandating ID checks. In the UK, it’s 18-plus. In Australia, 15-plus. In Singapore, 21-plus. In France, Cinquante Nuances de Grey gets a very French rating of 12-plus. In Malaysia and Kenya, it has been banned (we count our blessings).
Has the clenched fist gone soft? Not really. That Fifty Shades has slipped through intact and un-Vaselined isn’t a positive development in the free-speech department. The leniency toward a big Hollywood movie isn’t unusual, because American nipples aren’t as bad as local ones. Flesh-flashing foreigners are okay to our mostly-male censors, but the pillars of virtue tremble when native breasts go on the big screen. A Thai film with the same graphic nudity, I don’t believe, would pass the virtuous scissors, especially in our current morality binge. Try this: With Fifty Shades, no one under 20 will be admitted − but if you’re under 20 and married, meaning no human organs can still shock you, you have to prove it by showing your marriage certificate at the doors. Are you kidding me? Certainly not.
In the history of censorship, anarchists, agitators and pornographers were viewed as equally immoral. Communists, feminists and modernist writers were persecuted with the same passion. Non-conformity was a federal crime. But that was the early 20th century − it was the past tense. In Thailand, however, the clock moves slower, lurches and sometimes stops, and we’re still familiar with authorities − even before the junta took over − going after “inappropriate content” through order and cunning. That’s why Thailand hardly has any political films or biopics of historical figures, even when those subjects are so common in every country. In an odd Cold-War hangover, movies are singled out: If you paint or write, the law doesn’t require you to show your sketch or manuscript to the censors. If you make a film, the pre-crime approach applies, and you need permission before you can legally show your movie.
In the 2007 constitution − sorry, that thing no longer functions − freedom of expression was guaranteed for newspapers, television, literature, but not film.
That, as I said, was even before the military took over. Now the tentacles of control are more sinister when morality and military join hands in a dominatrix dance, and film is no longer the lonely target. A widespread report earlier this month concerned a Thong Lor theatre performance in which the artist, Ornanong Thaisriwong, delved into human rights violations in her show Bang-la-merd. After the opening night, a soldier called up. Ornanong recalled that a voice asked her, “Did you ask for our permission?” Well, did she have to? The next day − and next and next for the rest of the show that ended last Monday − soldiers showed up and sat with the audience as the performer, unfazed, went on doing what she had to do. The play slipped through the clamped fist, but the message is clear. Now artists (agitators? anarchists? practitioners?) should ask for permission from someone who presumably knows a few things about art, even though that’s not written in any law. You don’t have to pull a trigger when everyone in the room knows who has the gun.
Even then, things are bound to slip through your fingers, and the great escape took place last Saturday at the National Stadium when some Thammasat University students smuggled anti-coup messages into a pre-match football parade, evading the inspection of plainclothes agents. The authorities weren’t pleased, though they’d learnt to let it go and be a sport by not summoning them. There are fifty shades of censorship, but there are a million shades – 65 million– of individual thoughts, beliefs, dreams and ideals. The all-seeing eyes will keep watching, but only in the wildest sadomasochistic fantasy will someone believe they have total, uncontestable control.
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.