Showing 11 - 19 of 19
Serving up cruelty, a taste of 'Thainess'
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/08/2016
» The debate on the meaning of "Thainess" always fills me with patriotism and stomach ache. After last week's bombings, the army chief warned us to look out for people who wore hats, glasses and carried backpacks, because "Thais don't do that". The general meant well -- that we should watch out for suspicious agents of terror -- but the way he framed it was a crass, militaristic way of monopolising the definition of something that is shifting, malleable, even undefinable.
Prayut losing his cool
News, Postbag, Published on 31/03/2016
» Re: "PM says he won't take more jibes" (BP, March 29).
Fed up power base forces PM to repent
News, Atiya Achakulwisut, Published on 19/01/2016
» It must have taken an exceptionally strong force to make a feisty character like Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha flinch.
Seeing the world through another's eyes
Life, Kaona Pongpipat, Published on 13/11/2015
» As much as Facebook is a virtual space of borderless interaction, it has, for many, undeniably become our most immediate and primary news source. It's a personalised pool of information, which though we have chosen consciously, can transform who we are and the way we think without our even realising it. And I have often wondered what it would be like to live, maybe for a day, in the social media world of other people's Facebook accounts.
This is no time for nationalism
Life, Adam Kohut, Published on 28/08/2015
» Tragedy is a strange, contradictory thing. It breaks and it binds. It destroys and it builds. It opens and it closes. When an earthquake, or a storm, or a man's gun, or a bomb takes human lives, there is first anger, sadness, confusion. There is fear. There is grief. There is great pain. But this is followed by a period of mourning, and then of consolation, of comfort, of determination and of strength.
Thai tolerance abounds, as long as it's fashionable
News, Wasant Techawongtham, Published on 27/03/2015
» Thai people are generally tolerant towards people different from them — except when they are different from them.
The call of the mild
Life, Published on 21/01/2015
» Last week there was a big parade. People danced and sang and ate special food, all right in the streets. They were celebrating something called "Thainess".
Autocratic filmmaking is our forte
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/12/2014
» In the week Sony censored itself and shelved the Christmas Day release of The Interview, a comedy about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, I'm reminded of this slim book on my desk which I sometimes flip to random pages. One has this: "In the capitalist system of filmmaking the director is called 'director' but, in fact, the right of supervision and control over film production is entirely in the hands of the tycoons of the filmmaking industry who have the money, whereas the directors are nothing but their agents."
Force-fed film belongs deep in dark vaults
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/12/2014
» Strange things have happened at the cinemas. First, Hitler showed up in a Thai short film sponsored by the government (meaning by taxpayers), the radioactive gatecrasher into a party of virtuous citizens. Second, another Thai film featuring, among other things, a joke about the anal cleft — it's funny as long as it's not your anal cleft — is raking in a huge amount of money at the multiplexes, likely surpassing the 100-million-baht mark as you're reading this, which is after just four days of release. Cinema enlightens, even in the dark forest of swastikas and bodily bergschrunds.