Thai Censorship is a Disgrace

This post contains some pictures from Thai newspapers that some people might find unpleasant. It also describes the content of Thai television shows which are equally disturbing, so as a courtesy I'm putting this warning in for readers of a sensitive disposition. It's also a bit of a rant.

In my old blog I did write a small post about my opinion on censorship in Thailand, but I've been compelled to resurrect it in a new and longer form by a popular daytime TV show. As a bit of background, in Thailand daytime/evening programmes tend to last about 1 hour 30 minutes and can be on as many as 5 days a week for up to a month, like the much-loved Borp Apartment (a light-hearted evening programme about a bunch of idiots whose apartment building is being terrorised by two ghosts and who spend all their time coming up with schemes to outwit them, rather than moving away). Producers need to come up with a lot of content, therefore it's hardly surprising that most of it is repetitive. And terrible.

The show that has rattled my cages airs at around 1pm each day. I'm not going to name it in case I get into trouble, but I've nicknamed the programme “Stick-Hit-Rape” because this is what it's about. Characters fighting with sticks. characters hitting each other with their fists (as well as beating up women), and finally the rape and attempted rape of the women in the show. Every day.

I don't actively watch the programme, by the way, but it's being watched when I have lunch so I am forced to man-up and endure it. You'd think the routine violence against women would probably be the upper limit for mature content in a 13+ daytime programme, right? Wrong. I look on in amazement as I watch a terrified twenty-something in a bedroom, crying her eyes out, being told to undress herself by the criminal boss, who then climbs on top of her as the camera fades to black. I'm baffled how the censors allow this. It's not even an isolated event, a climactic and disturbing demonstration of the depth of the bad guy's callousness. It seems to be a routine part of most episodes at the exact time I watch them. For example, today we had an attempted rape by someone else, which included a 2-3 minute long physical struggle with the girl screaming and crying “I hate you, I hate you!” Don't forget that because this is at 1:30pm, on a Friday, during the Thai school holidays, I am sat watching this surrounded by young girls and boys.

Perhaps I'm unusually sensitive or my Western upbringing has given me a distorted view on the extent to which women being raped is a bad thing, but all I can say is “WTF is going on here?”

Thailand is a country that blocks adult-content websites because they are allegedly harmful to the morals and security of the country. Alcohol and cigarettes cannot be shown on TV because if children saw them they would become heavy drinkers who breathe smoke. This means that because the Korean Secret Agency programme is set in a bar about a third of the time, 50% of the screen has to be (clumsily) blurred. The three commercials that follow, strongly linking alcohol with friendship and fun (100 Pipers), with the ability to succeed against the odds (Jonny Walker) and with having exciting and fulfilling lives and success with women (Chang beer) are of course completely kosher. No to mention that once we return to the programme we might be treated to a rape or sexual coercion (though the Koreans don't seem to do this.)

It's not just the actual rape that I think is harmful to the impressionable psyche of the young viewers eating this wretched dross up every day, it's the way the aftermath is portrayed. In Stick-Hit-Rape, after a rape or attempted rape, the female characters seem to be as happy as Larry, continuing to live under the shadow of the rapist and in some cases continuing to interact with them. In an early-evening programme I watched, after one guy got drunk as a skunk and was helped back to his room by a lady, he aggressively told her they were going to spend the night together and then despite her crying and wailing protestations, he grabbed her and pushed her onto the bed (and fade to black – you know what that means). The next time I saw the programme, these two had decided to get married. I assume their proposal went along these lines:

“Kwan, sorry about, you know, getting drunk and forcing you to have sex with me. So, uh, will you marry me?”
“Jong, no worries, it's nothing, really. This is Thai TV – it's happened before. No-one ever asked to marry me though... I guess I won't do better than you, so yes I will marry you. I love you.”

What kind of message is this sending out to the male and female viewers? Watching television incredibly popular in Thailand and I think this widespread portrayal of sexual assault as fairly inconsequential, when you consider that children are seeing regularly it from a young age, could genuinely be influencing attitudes towards women and sex in the youth.

One of my few readers and regular commenter, “Moondoggy” replied to the previous post about censorship and said it seemed as though censorship in Thailand was controlled by a 12 year old boy with good intentions, so “Smoking and drinking = bad for you” and “Dead bodies in cars= cool!” I actually think he might be right and that censorship rules have genuinely been written by a 12 year old called Nit Wit. Nit won't have had sex-education yet and so doesn't know about rape, which explains why he allows it on TV. I was rather disturbed by the sight of seeing the silhouette of a man burn to death in the cab of a lorry on Thai TV, but I bet Nit Wit (probably high on a sugar) thought it was cool. Similarly, while I think that showing footage of a man attempting to jump off a roof to commit suicide but bouncing off a ledge and so not dying on the 19:45 news is highly unappealing, but Nit Wit presumably high-fives his friends and gives it the Okay.

Speaking of serious injuries, let's have a look at the newspaper reports of deaths. Remember that in Thailand you're not allowed to look at a photo of a naked lady or a film of someone drinking and smoking, because it's harmful the health and morals of the country. So, if we look at today's front page, I don't expect we would see anything unpleas-

My mistake. A dead woman in a car. Just imagine if that was your wife or daughter and you saw this. Still, although Nit Wit did quite like this photo, it wasn't gory enough for his tastes. Just a few days later though, his ship came in when this young man drove his motorbike into a truck:

Much better! A possibly missing leg and a dead teenager lying in a pool of his own blood. As long as there are no bottles of beer nearby, Nit deems this photo to be fine for children of any age to see.

The mildest death photo I found was of these two dead students, which I still thought was very grim. What I found very interesting was that when I asked anyone if they were bothered by the images, they said they weren't. Even the kids aren't bothered.

Is this what censorship in Thailand has sought to achieve? A nation of sober psychopaths completely desensitised to rape, violence and death. Nice.

Still, as a friend told me, “at least if you die in a sufficiently horrific motorbike accident you'll get your 15 minutes of fame on the front page of a national newspaper, so it's not all doom and gloom, Nick Towers!”

I won't be updating this blog any more - go to The Penang Blog to see my new and exciting Malaysia blog!