'Nua Mek 2' stirs up a storm (of hypocrisy)

'Nua Mek 2' stirs up a storm (of hypocrisy)

I disapprove, you know, of what you say but, like, I will defend to the death, baby, your right to say it, like totally, okie dokie?

Awesome. But what? Voltaire didn't say that? Panthongtae Shinawatra thought he did (and so did I in my autodidactic years) and proudly posted it on his Facebook until, Kleenex at the ready, the professional nitpicker from the Democrats - who's totally, like, the champion of free speech - Sirichoke Sopha, triumphantly reminded dear young Oak that, voila!, Voltaire didn't say it (what Voltaire actually said would skin the Democrats too, but we'll get to Candide and Pangloss later on).

Facebook philosophers of all stripes, anyhow, seem to suddenly become freedom-of-expression campaigners after the fiasco about the series Nua Mek 2 - a cross between Star Wars and The Exorcist - being pulled off the air on Channel 3 eight nights ago. National hysteria. Conspiratorial guesswork. The love of freedom spreads like ebola courtesy of two factors: first, the chance to maul the Yingluck government as being dictatorial, and second, prime-time series is a national institution worshipped through our tube-shrines on a nightly basis. Secret grief is more cruel than public calamities - now that's Voltaire but, excusez moi, he's dead wrong when it comes to Thai TV.

I don't think that anybody will be able to produce any written order from anybody, lurking here or lounging in Dubai, to prove the censorious intervention of the government in banning the show. It's not like cancelling KFC; if there's any, it won't be keyed into the system. The invisible tentacles - of all governments and authorities - work in far more mysterious ways, usually made even more effective by an enveloping sense of paranoia.

Channel 3 and the series producers are unlikely to hold a press conference on what they see as an internal hiccup either, and the public will have to keep the gossip mill running before something else causes a new bout of hysteria.

That's the point: is the Nua Mek racket a real love-moan for freedom, politicised self-righteousness from both sides, or just another sparring match of idle personalities? Mr Panthongtae, for instance, didn't bring up the I-disapprove-of-what-you-say-but-blah-blah faux-Voltaire when Shakespeare Must Die, the movie that's believed to be critical of a politician very much like his father, was banned by the film censor board. He could have said it wasn't his business, he could have said nobody gives a hoot about independent movies, but fans of Voltaire and freedom of speech shouldn't pick and choose, should they?

By the way, Mr Panthongtae's Facebook bravura of late has been a subject of much fascination, and it often reminds me of a quote by another writer of great acerbic wit, the composer Igor Stravinsky - a quote I plaster on my desk and my heart and recite like a prayer: "Little more can be needed to write such things than a large supply of ink". Or of assistants. Let us try every day not to do that - at this newspaper, sure, and on digital chalkboards everywhere.

Meanwhile, Mr Sirichoke and the Democrats have been rubbing their hands in glee at the Nua Mek 2 ban. For a week their MPs have implied with varying degrees of accusation that the government is the mastermind which killed the programme mid-air, and of course, the freedom-of-speech mantra has become suddenly fashionable. But really? The memory of Democrat MP and former culture minister Nipit Intarasombat banning the film Insects in the Backyard is still fresh like durians in the summer - and I don't recall any freedom-of-speech fighters from the party utter a single word of protest. In fact, the contempt expressed by some politicians against the banned film back then was much more disturbing.

To return to Voltaire for the last time (you two inspired me, Mr Panthongtae and Mr Sirichoke): in Candide Voltaire describes the French by saying that "[their] principal occupation is love, the next is slander, and the third is talking nonsense." I blush, because for a lot of us here, me included in most parts, it's those three in reverse. And what is so obvious and distressing now is that the aftermath of the Nua Mek case is not about free speech or a cry against censorship and state-sanctioned blindfolding. It's a game, an opening in a battle to lunge and take the moral high ground. It also shows that the definition of free speech for politicians only means criticism hurled at their enemies and not against themselves or the system. There's a word for that, and we don't even have to evoke any French or German or Russian writers: hypocrisy. We seem to have more of that around here.


Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.

Kong Rithdee

Bangkok Post columnist

Kong Rithdee is a Bangkok Post columnist. He has written about films for 18 years with the Bangkok Post and other publications, and is one of the most prominent writers on cinema in the region.

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