Alarmed by the sight of zombies stampeding to get free tickets to see the film Legend of King Naresuan 5, former Culture Minister Nipit Intarasombat, of the Democrat stripe, lamented aloud about the need for a “cultural revolution”.
His remark made the news, as it should, though its significance was sadly drowned by another stampede — the exodus of migrant workers bolting for the border like Israelites fleeing the mad Pharaoh.
I wonder if the mass flight had anything to do with the freebie movie, because the chest-thumping film involves our soldiers killing a lot of our neighbours. The way we make ourselves feel good often makes others feel bad.
But back to the cultural revolution as hinted by Mr Nipit. Luckily, the term is still spelled in the lower case, and typical of Mr Nipit and his CV as a former culture minister, he seems happily oblivious to the historical gravity of the phrase and the ominous memories it specifically carries. (If you type “cultural revolution” in MS Word, the software warns you that the letters C and R need to be capitalised).
The last time a leader envisioned that sort of revolution, millions suffered and died — tortured, humiliated, executed — meanwhile The Red Guard was formed and “re-education” was enforced to ensure that free will was demolished. Thinking was basically outlawed.
Of course, our former MP wasn’t imagining a scenario like in 1960s China — who in their right mind would? But by evoking that phrase and especially at this time, when “attitude adjustment” is dished out like Russian roulette and reports of online surveillance are rampant, the chill that ran down our spines was inevitably disturbing.
What appalled Mr Nipit was the inability of his compatriots to queue up properly to get the free movie tickets (he should be appalled by the poor organisation of the military and the cinemas too). The freebie pandemonium last weekend was unsightly and undemocratic — that’s rich coming from a Democrat — and he cited the perennial example of Japan, whose citizens form orderly lines even in the most inconvenient circumstances.
He’s right and his point is valid, but what totally escapes Mr Nipit, an incorrigible conservative whose achievements include banning a movie, is that a real revolution doesn’t just mean forming a queue. It means queuing up in the right line and breaking away from one that’s not; it means denouncing the line that’s unfairly roped and tightened on you. It means diversity, heterogeneity, even unorthodoxy. It means an open society with a rule of law that respects free will.
I’m sure the former cultural chief meant well when he said Thai people needed to learn to form queues, and yet his statement reinforced the junta’s hard-drug prescription of uniformity — of all citizens staying in the same line, and of wanting, like Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, the entire population to think the same thoughts. Sixty-five million people with only one belief? Really? That’s not a revolution, and certainly not the democratic culture that Mr Nipit longs to see.
When he served briefly as the culture minister in 2010, Mr Nipit talked with pride about the exclusivity of the Thai smile. He also presided over the banning of the film Insects in the Backyard, which features a transvestite father, student prostitutes and a shot of a penis. He stressed his right as a moral gatekeeper — the judge who decided what the rest of the country should be allowed to watch on screen.
But since he cited Japan as an example of a place of enviable public order and discipline, it’d be good to point out to him the fact that in Japan, pornography is legal. Well, pornography is a sub-culture there. And while Japan makes chest-thumping nationalistic movies, they also allow subversive films that question their own historical evaluation (a documentary on the Yasukuni Shrine, for example). Diversity, controversy, even unorthodoxy — that’s integral to the open society whose people form queues even in the unlikeliest circumstances. Don’t pick and choose for self-serving bombast, for it’s wise to see the entirety of your role model.
With democracy suspended, maybe cultural thinking is put on hold too. Culture without openness is not culture; it’s a straitjacket, a noose that’s waiting to be tightened, like in China half a century ago. For the revolution in democratic spirit that the Democrat MP envisages, let’s start with other freebie movies, something that asks hard questions rather than force-feeds easy answers. Something that’s different, something that was once banned by the man who believes in a revolution. We’ll make sure to queue up for that one.
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.