BOONRAK BOONYAKETMALA ON THAI FILM CENSORSHIP

BELOW IS AN ARTICLE WRITTEN BY BOONRAK BOONYAKETMALA IN THE NEWSPAPER "BANGKOK POST" on Tuesday, May 1, 2007.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/010507_News/01May2007_news23.php


Transcending Big Brother syndrome

The existing authoritarian film censorship code should be replaced by a mission-driven rating system
By BOONRAK BOONYAKETMALA

Though not well known among mainstream film consumers in Thailand, who are unconditionally in love with Hollywood with little attachment to their own breed of cinema, Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a unique contemporary Thai film director whose name is big internationally, with his own fan club and financier, and what not. Auteur of Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady, which won awards at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002 and 2004 with prix de certain regard and grand prix, respectively, Mr Apichatpong has been recognised in many film capitals around the world as a key figure of Thailand's increasingly more powerful avant-garde cinema, freshly arisen in the late 1990s in the face of financial meltdown.

Ironically, while his earlier films have attracted definite international attention to the little world of Thai cinema, Mr Apichatpong has remained on the periphery of the local industry. Invariably gracing the local theatres only briefly or not at all, most of his films have never been on the best-selling list of VCDs and DVDs in the Thai market. A great number of Thai film fans who have seen his films have often complained that they are difficult to follow, but those few in the know have hailed them as milestones of innovation.

For example, in a single stroke, Blissfully Yours has completely uprooted the conventional Thai-Burmese historiography, which typically focused on old-time conflict, warfare, and royal bravery, by inventing a sort of unprecedented friendly people-to-people relations on the celluloid frames by romantically linking up an ordinary Thai working woman with an illegal Burmese immigrant, arguably a taboo in many ways. Needless to say, such an achievement is a landmark for any art form, albeit with subversive implications.

But Mr Apichatpong's track record is apparently only the beginning of his likely long journey of wave-making. Now, his latest 2007 film, Syndromes and a Century, reportedly a rather comic memoir of his parents who are practitioners of the medical profession at a hospital in rural Thailand, has stimulated a major controversy in the normally low-keyed and eventless Thai film industry as the Film Censorship Board decided to clip four seemingly innocent scenes from this film as a pre-condition of releasing this already world-acclaimed film in the domestic market. Moreover, in response to Mr Apichatpong's refusal to accept the verdict, the board has confiscated the submitted footage by claiming that the director might use it for an illegal exhibition.

Rather than tamely accepting the cuts so as to get permission to release his film locally, which would earn him some bonus cash and profile, Mr Apichatpong has deemed it imperative to retain the artistic integrity of his film by bypassing the Thai market. The director's decision has stirred up a movement to struggle against the Film Act of 1930, a censorship blueprint which has been responsible for the non-stop reproduction of much of the conservative and stale cinema since its inception.

While signatures are being gathered from around the world to support his cause, a royal film personality such as MC Chatrichalerm Yukol, director of such epic films as The Legend of King Naresuan and Suriyothai, whose earlier stock of films earned him the "auteur" status of the first seeds of Thailand's new cinema, launched a fight against the film censorship establishment, whose ultimate objective is to lobby the constitution drafters to endorse film as a form of mass communication deserving an enlarged freedom of expression.

While protesting the censorship code is nothing new in Thailand, the outcome of this little incident has the potential to make or break a film industry increasingly global in its orientation. Under such circumstances, it is crucial that the nature and impact of film censorship are not taken for granted, but more fully understood.

Originally, when a score of adventurous foreign merchants first exhibited their film wares from Europe to the curious populace in Siam in the 1890s, they probably did not fully realise that such products would one day serve as a major mechanism to reorient their customers to a new culture, through which the forces of Western culture would gradually disintegrate a traditional culture rooted in a feudal social structure.

For decades, the Thai elite passionately imported films for commercial release with a sense of unreserved admiration, a stark contrast to the attitudes prevalent in the directly colonised societies in Southeast Asia. By the 1920s, as some local noblemen initiated some modest film-making enterprises, mainly for pleasure, King Prachadhipok, the first major importer and distributor of foreign cinema in Thailand, saw the need to launch the Film Censorship Act of 1930.

Primarily designed to control the contents of local cinema in service of the status quo, the key component of this code asserts the catch-all philosophy to prohibit the production, exhibition, and distribution of any film deemed to violate or disturb the public peace and morality, both internally and externally. In effect, this legal provision has systematically discouraged any Thai film-making efforts thought to be subversive by the powers-that-be.

Amazingly, despite all the social and cultural changes within and without the film industry during some eight decades of its enforcement, the spirit of this censorship law has been kept intact. If anything, its operations have worsened over time because more and more representatives of the major bureaucratic functions in the government have been included to its board membership. As such, this body has a built-in bias to stunt the proper development of Thai cinema.

Not surprisingly, much of Thai cinema that has been produced since the 1920s has been in a way an extension of the state ideology, whose definitions have been defined by the whims of the film censors through the ages, from the years of absolute monarchy to military dictatorship, and through democracy of sorts. Worse still, at some points in history, such as when Field Marshal Pibulsongkram acted as prime minister during the pre-World War II period, the state took the lead to produce and distribute a set of propaganda films a la Nazi, a rather comical episode in Thai cultural history which remains inadequately studied.

There are a number of possible explanations for the stubborn persistence of such an obviously obsolete legal code. First and foremost, an open secret is to employ a double standard, for instance, making exceptions whenever necessary, a pragmatic approach that has delayed the struggle for change. On the other hand, the dinosaur film censorship law seems to have survived many political changes through the decades because Thai film producers are either too fragmented or have become too complacent in living with the status quo to rock the boat.

Under such circumstances, any form of noteworthy achievement throughout the entire history of Thai cinema has been the product of the ingenuity of individual creators.

Often, some landmark films which managed to be passed by the censors achieved this feat because of the special stature of its director, notably MC Chatrichalerm Yukol, who made knock-out films of the 1970s and 1980s such as His Name Is Karn, Thongpoon Kokpo, Teacher Somsri, and The Elephant Keeper. Each in its own way spoke the truth about something that was wrong with the Thai state.

Another case in point is of course Mr Apichatpong himself, whose common technique is to primarily gather worldwide recognition by first releasing his films in foreign festivals and markets, and then in VCD and DVD forms, with the theatrical market at home only on the fringe. But the state censors are now alerted to this kind of strategy, to the point that some figures have actually expressed a personalised wrath at being bypassed.

The irony is that much of this 'new cinema', a phenomenon ushered in by a new generation of filmmakers in the 1990s, is funded by foreign capital and not even intended to be seen by mainstream audiences in Thailand, but yet are subjected to the horrors of the film censorship board which owes its existence to a clearly obsolete ordinance introduced by an absolute regime.

At this juncture, it is imperative that the existing authoritarian film censorship code be got rid of altogether. In its place, a mission-driven rating system which allows for the co-existence of a variety of filmmaking breeds should be instituted, allowing for a multi-pronged membership on the board, i.e. a combination of enlightened representatives from the state, the industry, and the independent artistic and intellectual elite, who must bear in mind the centrality of artistic creativity and freedom of expression.

In this manner, the progressively internationalised Thai film industry might be able to pass the longstanding bureaucratised bottleneck towards the path of economic prosperity, political integrity, and cultural relevance, without prematurely alienating any promising talents from the system.

Boonrak Boonyaketmala is a former dean of the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communications, Thammasat University.