Foreign Correspondent Thailand’s Bad Monks

Thailand’s Bad Monks, last night’s episode of Foreign Correspondent (one of the flagship current affairs programmes on the ABC in Australia), highlighted the growing number of monks succumbing to the temptations of sex, drugs, and money: “In Thailand, constant scandals involving monks are threatening a crisis of faith.” Al Jazeera broadcast a similar exposé a decade ago—101 East: Thailand’s Tainted Robes, on 18th December 2014—which reported that reverence for monks was in decline “as a series of scandals shake the public’s faith in the monkhood.”

Despite controversies involving corrupt monks, there are strict censorship rules governing the representation of the monkhood, in an attempt to protect the image of the institution. Thai Cinema Uncensored describes a ‘Buddhist lobby’ of religious organisations engaged in reputation management, campaigning against negative representations of monks in movies, and the book examines more than a dozen films either cut or banned for their portrayal of monk characters.

In some cases, the movies were inspired by real life, such as หลวงตา 3 สีกาข้างวัด (‘Luang Ta 3’), based on Nikorn Dhammavadi, a monk who dominated the headlines in 1990 when he fathered a lovechild. The film was criticised for bringing Buddhism into disrepute, though surely more reputational damage was caused by Nikorn than by the movie. Similarly, Poj Arnon, director of a series of monk comedies, told The Nation newspaper: “The way some monks behave in real life is far worse than anything I present on film” (16th March 2016).

When Ing K.’s film My Teacher Eats Biscuits (คนกราบหมา) was banned for its depiction of debauched monks, the director protested that she was merely reflecting incidents reported in the news. The censor’s candid reply was: “ข่าวสารเรา control ไม่ได้ แต่หนังเรา control ได้” (‘we can’t control the news, but we can control movies’).