“His movies cannot help us.”
— Surapong Suebwonglee
Today sees the return of Dateline Bangkok’s ‘quote of the day’ feature, an occasional series of I-can’t-believe-they-said-that quotes from Thailand. Surapong Suebwonglee, deputy chair of the Thailand Creative Culture Agency, was asked about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s potential impact on the country’s soft power, though his reply was surprisingly dismissive: “He’s one of the top artists in the world... But if we think about soft power as an economic tool to help us to get out of the middle-income trap and become a high-income country, his movies cannot help us.”
Surapong was interviewed by Max Crosbie-Jones for an article published on the Nikkei Asia website yesterday. His comments echo those of Ladda Tangsuppachai, a Ministry of Culture official who dismissed Apichatpong’s work in 2007: “Nobody goes to see films by Apichatpong... Thai people want to see comedy. We like a laugh.” Unfortunately, it seems that the state’s attitude towards Thailand’s most acclaimed and influential artist has barely improved in the intervening seventeen years.
Quotes of the day from yesteryear: a government spokesperson insisted that coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha didn’t consider himself above the law, Prayut claimed to “respect democracy” barely a fortnight after his coup, and admitted that the army still used GT200 devices after they were exposed as a hoax, a yellow-shirt leader said that Thailand should be more like North Korea, the Information and Communication Technology Minister openly admitted to violating the Computer Crime Act, Suthep Thaugsuban hypocritically condemned protesters for blocking roads, and an Election Commission spokesman claimed that an election would lead to a coup.
— Surapong Suebwonglee
Today sees the return of Dateline Bangkok’s ‘quote of the day’ feature, an occasional series of I-can’t-believe-they-said-that quotes from Thailand. Surapong Suebwonglee, deputy chair of the Thailand Creative Culture Agency, was asked about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s potential impact on the country’s soft power, though his reply was surprisingly dismissive: “He’s one of the top artists in the world... But if we think about soft power as an economic tool to help us to get out of the middle-income trap and become a high-income country, his movies cannot help us.”
Surapong was interviewed by Max Crosbie-Jones for an article published on the Nikkei Asia website yesterday. His comments echo those of Ladda Tangsuppachai, a Ministry of Culture official who dismissed Apichatpong’s work in 2007: “Nobody goes to see films by Apichatpong... Thai people want to see comedy. We like a laugh.” Unfortunately, it seems that the state’s attitude towards Thailand’s most acclaimed and influential artist has barely improved in the intervening seventeen years.
Quotes of the day from yesteryear: a government spokesperson insisted that coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha didn’t consider himself above the law, Prayut claimed to “respect democracy” barely a fortnight after his coup, and admitted that the army still used GT200 devices after they were exposed as a hoax, a yellow-shirt leader said that Thailand should be more like North Korea, the Information and Communication Technology Minister openly admitted to violating the Computer Crime Act, Suthep Thaugsuban hypocritically condemned protesters for blocking roads, and an Election Commission spokesman claimed that an election would lead to a coup.
