RAW Jazz Effect

Rapper P9D’s album RAW Jazz Effect was released in 2017. Each CD (packaged in a DVD case) is signed by the artist and inscribed with a line from the track Light On. The album’s full title is Ruthless and the Whole Jazz Effect.

Like his fellow Thai bands Rap Against Dictatorship, Dogwhine, and The Commoner, P9D’s lyrics are often political. The track Section 44 begins with the line “Fuck the section 44,” in reference to article 44 of the interim constitution, which granted absolute power to the military junta.

The Thai experimental noise band Gamnad737 also released a song in opposition to article 44, though the track—Kill the Section 44, from their album Lets Kill [sic]—has no lyrics. (Lets Kill is available on cassette and CD, and in a unique CD edition splattered with founding member Arkat Vinyapiroath’s blood.)

The New York Times Book of Movies

The New York Times Book of Movies: The Essential 1,000 Films to See is the third edition of a film guide that was first published in 1999 (not, as the new edition says, 1987). The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made was updated in 2004, and the retitled third edition appeared this month. The 1,000 films were selected by New York Times film critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis.

This is not the only guide to 1,000 classic films. Others include: Halliwell’s Top 1,000 by John Walker, Time Out’s 1,000 Films to Change Your Life, The Guardian’s 1,000 Films to See Before You Die, and Have You Seen...? by David Thomson.

Siri House

To celebrate Halloween, Siri House in Bangkok will be showing Kubrick’s The Shining tomorrow. The screening is free of charge.

Framed

A Freedom of Information request by BuzzFeed News has revealed that the Secret Service interviewed Eminem on 16th January 2017. The rapper was questioned about his single Framed, from his album Revival, after a TMZ reporter alerted the Secret Service to the song’s lyrics. (The song is about a man who kills Trump’s eldest daughter: “how the fuck is Ivanka Trump in the trunk of my car?”)

After two days, the investigation was closed and no further action was taken, though Eminem referenced the interview in a later song, The Ringer: “Agent Orange just sent the Secret Service / To meet in person to see if I really think of hurtin’ him”. The case lends credence to another rapper, YG, who previously claimed that his single FDT was censored at the request of the Secret Service due to its violent anti-Trump lyrics.

Dog of God

Dog of God is the debut EP by Thai band Dogwhine, and is available on CD from the Ageha café in Bangkok. The EP includes a couple of overtly political tracks: Leader is a dig at unelected Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha (“Leader must come from election”), and Democrazy comments on the country’s cycle of military violence (“Nowhere to hide, no way to run / Not your first time to see the dictator”).

The animated promo video for Democrazy features the folding chair and hanging corpse from Neal Ulevich’s famous photograph of the 6th October 1976 massacre. (The video’s director is credited only by his nickname, Jung.) The song’s Democrazy pun echoes the name of Bangkok’s Democrazy Theatre Studio and the titles of the short films Democrazy.mov (by Thunsita Yanuprom and Sarun Channiam) and Demockrazy (by Duangporn Pakavirojkul).

Dogwhine are part of a wave of musicians using protest songs to comment on contemporary Thai politics. Rap Against Dictatorship’s anthemic My Country Has (ประเทศกูมี) is the most prominent example, though others include The Commoner’s EP สามัญชน (‘commoner’), P9D’s single Section 44, and the จะ4ปีแล้วนะ (‘four years already’) and BNK44 concerts.

For the Record

Just as Tony Blair’s legacy is defined by the Iraq war, David Cameron’s premiership will also be judged by a single decision: to hold a referendum on the UK’s EU membership. Thus, it’s inevitable that Europe also overshadows Cameron’s new memoir, For the Record.

In his memoir, A Journey, Blair acknowledged the polarisation and anger caused by his support for George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion, though he also insisted that he took the decision in good faith. Similarly, For the Record begins with Cameron’s apology for the consequences of Brexit: “I am truly sorry to have seen the country I love so much suffer uncertainty and division in the years since then. But...”

Cameron also accepts some of the responsibility for losing the referendum campaign: “I deeply regret the outcome and accept that my approach failed. The decisions I took contributed to that failure. I failed. But, in my defence...”

This remorse and regret is always followed by a qualifying ‘but’, and he insists that the referendum itself was justified: “I am not apologetic about having been the prime minister who promised a referendum and delivered on the promise.” Cameron is equally unapologetic about austerity. Quite the opposite, in fact: “My assessment now is that we probably didn’t cut enough.”

As for Boris Johnson, Cameron calls him “an irritation” and later, for good measure, “a massive irritation.” He’s also clear about Johnson’s motives for supporting Brexit: “while Boris cared about this issue, it was secondary to another concern: what was the best outcome for him?”

As even Vote Leave admit, the £350m-a-week on the bus was a calculated deception. Cameron puts it rather effectively: “As Boris rode the bus around the country, he left the truth at home.” Absolutely, except now Boris is in the driving seat and, like the end of The Italian Job, we’re teetering on the edge of a cliff.

The Amazing Thai-Land

The Amazing Thai-Land, is graphic artist Chalermpol Junrayab’s debut solo exhibition. (The title is an ironic reappropriation of the Tourist Authority of Thailand’s slogan ‘Amazing Thailand’.) Chalermpol creates parodies of comic-book covers on his iPad, satirising Thai politics.

Junta leader and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is caricatured in several of Chalermpol’s prints. In Final Curve, for example, the 24th March election campaign is depicted as a dodgem race, which Prayut (car number 44) wins with the help of a turbo engine representing the 250 senators he appointed. Another print, Buddha Man, refers to the recent Ultraman Buddha controversy, with an inset portrait of the Buddha wearing Ultraman’s costume.

The Amazing Thai-Land opened on 12th October at Sathorn 11 Art Space in Bangkok. Free copies of Chalermpol’s 2019 desk calendar are available at the exhibition, which runs until 25th October. (Political calendars caused controversy in 2016 and 2018, when calendars promoting Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra were seized by the military.)

1001 MoviesYou Must See Before You Die

The 2019 edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die was published last week. Edited by Steven Jay Schneider, the first edition appeared in 2003, and it has been updated annually ever since (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018).

This year’s edition, revised by Ian Haydn Smith, features twelve new titles: Phantom Thread, The Greatest Showman, Crazy Rich Asians, Capernaum, A Star is Born (the Bradley Cooper remake), Avengers: Infinity War, Roma, Hereditary, The Favourite, Sorry to Bother You, Vice, and BlacKkKlansman. The new entries were all released between 2017 and 2018.

To maintain the 1001 total, a dozen films from the previous edition have been deleted: Buffalo ’66, Three Kings, Magnolia, Kippur, A One and a Two... (一 一), Amores perros, Talk to Her (Hable con ella), Victoria, Spotlight, Dawson City: Frozen in Time, Lady Macbeth, and Under the Shadow. Most previous updates removed only recent films, though this year’s deletions include some twenty-year-old classics (such as A One and a Two... and Amores perros).

There are also a couple of minor changes to the illustrations. The entry for The Burmese Harp (ビルマの竪琴) previously featured an English-language poster, though this has been replaced with the correct Japanese version (page 318); and the poster for The Gleaners and I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse) has been mistakenly replaced by a duplicated photograph (page 883).

ราษฎรกำแหง

ราษฎรกำแหง: บันทึก 9 คดี ต้านรัฐประหารในยุค คสช. (‘dissident citizens: nine cases against the NCPO coup’), edited by Noppon Archamas, examines the charges brought against pro-democracy activists since the 2014 coup. Its spine has an anti-coup message in Morse code (“..-. ..- -.-. -.- -.-. --- ..- .--.”), and its cover features the three-finger salute appropriated by anti-coup protesters from the film The Hunger Games.

สามัญชน

สามัญชน (‘commoner’), a new EP from the Thai band The Commoner, was released on CD this month. The EP includes a booklet with a drawing inspired by Neal Ulevich’s iconic photograph of the 6th October 1976 massacre. (A previous album, Gigantrix Extinction, also featured artwork inspired by the image, and the photograph itself appeared on the cover of the Dead Kennedys single Holiday in Cambodia.)

The five tracks on the EP all comment on Thai political issues, and the EP is dedicated to “the commoners who fought against Thai Dictatorship.” The EP is part of a long tradition of Thai protest songs, known as เพลงเพื่อชีวิต (‘songs for life’). The genre was developed by the band Caravan, in response to the 14th October 1973 massacre, and was popularised by the band Carabao.

Commoner’s Anthem (บทเพลงของสามัญชน) is a tribute to those detained in ‘attitude adjustment’ sessions after the 2014 coup. We Are Friends (เราคือเพื่อนกัน) was written for those campaigning against military graft, particularly a group arrested in 2016 while travelling to Rajabhakti Park in Hua Hin. Apology Flowers (ดอก) is about the arrests of activists campaigning for a ‘no’ vote in the 2016 referendum. The Loop (วังวน) refers to two long-standing injustices: the unsolved murder of Somchai Neelapaijit (who was abducted in 2004 after he accused the police of torturing Muslim detainees) and the 6th October massacre. Imprisoned Butterfly (ฝากรักถึงเจ้าผีเสื้อ) is dedicated to Jatupat Boonpattararaksa, who was jailed for more than two years after sharing a BBC article about King Rama X on Facebook in 2016.

Museum of October 6

Today marks the anniversary of the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University. To commemorate the event, this weekend there is an exhibition at Thammasat organised by the Museum of October 6. For the first time, artefacts from the massacre itself are on display, including a megaphone—riddled with bullet holes—used by student protesters.

The exhibition, titled ประจักษ์ / พยาน (‘evidence / witness’) is dominated by a large gate, red with rust. Two activists were hanged from this gate on 25th September 1976, after they campaigned against military dictator Thanom Kittikachorn’s return from exile. Their hanging was reenacted by Thammasat students on 4th October 1976. The reenactment was falsely portrayed by the right-wing tabloid Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) as an attack on the Crown Prince, and this incendiary report precipitated the massacre at Thammasat.

The red gate had remained undisturbed ever since the massacre, until it was rediscovered by Patporn Phoothong in 2017. Patporn, who curated the exhibition, has also made three documentaries about 6th October: Silenced Memories (ความทรงจ ไรเสยง), Respectfully Yours (ดวยความนบถอ), and The Two Brothers (สองพนอง). The red gate is also the subject of a painting at the ศิลปะนานาพันธุ์ ศิลปะประชาธิปไตย (‘art for democracy’) exhibition, currently on show elsewhere in Bangkok; and Pachara Piyasongsoot’s Anatomy of Silence (กายวิภาคของความเงียบ) exhibition included a painting depicting the hanged men’s view from the red gate.

ศิลปะนานาพันธุ์ ศิลปะประชาธิปไตย

The group exhibition ศิลปะนานาพันธุ์ ศิลปะประชาธิปไตย (‘art for democracy’) opened on 28th September at Angoon’s Garden in Bangkok. Most of the paintings in the show are displayed outside, with some hanging next to a small pond. The exhibition (a less provocative equivalent of the political art show Uncensored) runs for exactly one month.

Each artwork is a response to the Thai military’s political influence over the decades. For example, Jirapatt Aungsumalee’s painting ประตูแดง (‘red gate’) depicts the outlines of two men hanged from a red gate in 1976, the extrajudicial killings that precipitated the 6th October 1976 massacre. A painting by Ekalux Julsukont also refers to 6th October: a man ready to strike a corpse with a chair, a figure from Neal Ulevich’s iconic photograph of the massacre.

The exhibition includes a single sculpture, Pin Sasao’s ถังแดง​: ความตายของบิลลี่ (‘red barrel: the death of Billy’), which uses a mannequin and barbecue to represent the murder of human rights activist Porlajee Rakchongcharoen. (Porlajee, nicknamed Billy, was stuffed into an oil drum, in an echo of the ‘red barrel’ killings of Thailand’s anti-Communist purge.) There are also photographs of performance art events by Sinsawat Yodbangtoey, Memory / History / Democracy (ความทรงจำประวัติศาสตร์ประชาธิปไตย), taken at monuments marking various Thai political upheavals.

The short film The Two Brothers (สองพี่น้อง) and the Anatomy of Silence (กายวิภาคของความเงียบ) exhibition were also inspired by the ‘red gate’ hangings; the gate itself will be shown at an exhibition marking the anniversary of 6th October this weekend. The man with the chair has been painted by numerous artists, including Headache Stencil and Tawan Wattuya.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is, as its poster proclaims, the ninth film by Quentin Tarantino. It’s also, apparently, his penultimate work. (Tarantino’s previous films are Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill I and II, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight.)

The title is both a tribute to Once Upon a Time in the West (C’era una volta il West) and a signal that this version of 1960s Hollywood is ultimately a fairy tale. Inglourious Basterds began with the caption “Once upon a time... in Nazi-occupied France”, and the new film features a similar form of revisionist history. It’s also unashamedly nostalgic, recreating the Hollywood of Tarantino’s childhood.

All of Tarantino’s films have superb soundtracks, and Once Upon a Time... is no exception. In this case, the music is all from the period, a great early example being the lip trill from Billy Stewart’s Summertime matched to a sputtering car engine. (It’s a reversal of the moment when the music slows as the car runs out of gas in The Graduate.) In fact, the best scenes all feature Brad Pitt driving around LA listening to his car radio. However, that also hints at one of the film’s flaws: for long stretches, we simply watch the characters hanging out. This may be fun, but it’s not particularly ambitious on Tarantino’s part, especially given the epic running time.

Stone

Stone is the latest in a series of coffee-table books on building materials, edited by William Hall and published by Phaidon. Like its predecessors Concrete, Brick, and Wood, Stone features stunning full-page photographs of more than 150 buildings, each with a paragraph-length caption.

“Many of the world’s most significant, revered, influential and memorable structures are built with stone,” Hall notes in his preface. Stone is the oldest and most durable of building materials, and the book includes such architectural masterworks as the pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon, and the Taj Mahal. Various forms of stone are represented, including basalt, limestone, marble, and sandstone.

“...a long and disturbing pattern of behaviour by the British tabloid media”

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, are suing The Mail on Sunday for breach of copyright, after the newspaper printed extracts from a letter she wrote to her father, Thomas. In a statement released yesterday, Harry said: “This particular legal action hinges on one incident in a long and disturbing pattern of behaviour by British tabloid media.”

The Mail on Sunday published the letter on 10th February, in a four-page article written by Caroline Graham. Thomas Markle—who supplied it to the newspaper—has legal ownership of the letter as its recipient, though copyright is retained solely by his daughter, as its writer. Thus, the newspaper was not legally entitled to reproduce it.

The Queen sued another UK tabloid, The Sun, for breach of copyright in 1992, after it published a transcript of her Christmas broadcast two days early. More recently, Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, sued the French magazine Closer for invasion of privacy.

Thailand’s Movie Theatres

Thailand’s Movie Theatres: Relics, Ruins and the Romance of Escape features photographs of more than fifty vintage Thai cinemas. The book, by Philip Jablon, also includes a brief history of film exhibition in Thailand. (A Century of Thai Cinema, by Dome Sukwong, also covers Thai film exhibition, though Jablon goes into a bit more detail.)

As the book’s subtitle suggests, many of these stand-alone cinemas have been abandoned; in his preface, Kong Rithdee laments this “glorious dereliction”. Notoriously, Siam Theatre was destroyed by arsonists in 2010, a great cultural loss (as it was the first venue to draw crowds to Siam Square in downtown Bangkok), and—to add insult to injury—its demolition gave developers an ideal opportunity to build yet another shopping mall (Siam Square One). Fortunately, the Scala cinema, which Jablon calls “Bangkok’s last movie palace”, is still open for business. Others have been repurposed, such as the Prince Theatre, which was converted into an impressive movie-themed hotel.

Thailand’s Movie Theatres also examines the social history of film exhibition, profiling poster artists such as Somboonsuk Niyomsiri (Piak Poster) and voice dubbers like Sirichai Duangphatra. It includes a fascinating account of Sirichai’s dubbing of a Hollywood thriller in 1973: “He had a penchant, moreover, for using his role as dubber to address the day’s top political scandals, both at the national and local level. And corrupt politicians were his number one target. With Serpico, making political satire for Sirichai was like shooting fish in a barrel; it turned out to be his voice-over magnum opus.”

Sonthaya Subyen and Morimart Raden-Ahmad’s Once Upon a Celluloid Planet (สวรรค์ 35 มม.: เสน่ห์วิกหนังเมืองสยาม) is another tribute to Thailand’s stand-alone cinemas, with multiple interior photographs of each venue. Once Upon a Celluloid Planet was published five years before Thailand’s Movie Theatres, though the two projects were developed in parallel.

Bangkok Screening Room

To celebrate Halloween, Bangkok Screening Room will be showing a season of horror films this October and November. Highlights include Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Psycho, Nonzee Nimibutr’s Thai classic Nang Nak (นางนาก), and William Friedkin’s horror blockbuster The Exorcist.

Psycho will be screened on 29th, 30th, and 31st October; and 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th November. Nang Nak is showing on 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and 15th October. There will be a single screening of The Exorcist, on 11th October.

Transmissions of Unwanted Pasts

In Prabda Yoon’s short film Transmissions of Unwanted Pasts (วงโคจรของความทรงจำ), a satellite malfunctions and begins transmitting images that seem inexplicable until Pang, a young engineer, discovers that they represent “many important historical events in Thailand.” The mysterious images are never shown, though Pang lists the dates that they refer to: “2014, 2010, 2008, 1992, 1976, 1973, 1932...”

Of course, those are precisely the years that Thailand’s military would like us all to forget: the 2014 coup, the 2010 red-shirt crackdown, the 2008 police violence against yellow-shirt protesters, ‘Black May’ 1992, the 6th October 1976 and 14th October 1973 massacres, and the 1932 abolition of absolute monarchy. Pang excitedly suggests that historians could use the satellite data to study these events: “They might discover many new things, things that they were previously unaware of, or things that were never documented.” But her boss has other ideas, and three soldiers destroy all the material she’s gathered.

The science-fiction dystopia of Transmissions of Unwanted Pasts is, like the portmanteau film Ten Years Thailand and Thunska Pansittivorakul’s Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), also a comment on present-day Thailand. Like the soldiers erasing satellite images of ‘unwanted pasts’, Thailand’s successive military governments have sought to suppress discussion of these events. School history courses emphasise royalist-nationalist legends, while the secret history cited in the film is excluded from the curriculum. A plaque commemorating the 1932 revolution was removed without explanation. Bhandit Rittakol’s The Moonhunter (14 ตุลา สงครามประชาชน) describes the 1973 massacre as an event “that many would like to erase from history”.

The result of this whitewashing is a cycle of nascent democratic reforms repeatedly reset by military coups, as forgotten history is destined to repeat itself. In Prabda’s previous film, Someone from Nowhere (มา ณ ที่นี้), this cycle is symbolised by a violent argument between a condo owner and an interloper. The two figures represent military and civilian governments jostling for power, though their roles are later reversed, and they have no memory of their previous confrontation.

Madame X Tour

Madonna’s Madame X Tour began last night. Her previous world tours (Who’s That Girl, Blond Ambition, The Girlie Show, Drowned World, Reinvention, Confessions, Sticky and Sweet, MDNA, and Rebel Heart) were all held in stadiums or arenas, though Madame X is a theatre tour. This makes each concert a far more intimate experience, and Madonna interacted with the audience throughout last night’s show. She has experimented with smaller-scale performances before: she debuted her Tears of a Clown cabaret show in Melbourne and Miami in 2016, and played one night at the Paris Olympia during The MDNA Tour in 2012.

The new tour includes live performances of almost the entire Madame X album (Medellín, Dark Ballet, God Control, Future, Batuka, Killers Who Are Partying, Crave, Crazy, Come Alive, I Don't Search I Find, and Extreme Occident) and a handful of classics (Human Nature, an a cappella Express Yourself, Vogue, Papa Don’t Preach, American Life, La Isla Bonita, Frozen, and Like a Prayer). There are two cover versions (Fado Pechincha and Sodade), and the encore is I Rise.

Tropical Malady: The Book

Tropical Malady: The Book, published this month, is a deluxe facsimile of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady (สัตว์ประหลาด) shooting script. The full-size reproduction includes the film’s dialogue, directions, and storyboards, all annotated by the director. In addition to the lavishly reproduced screenplay, it also features an interview with Apichatpong and a booklet of English and Japanese translations. (A different copy of the script was featured in the exhibition The Serenity of Madness.)

Internationally, Tropical Malady is one of Apichatpong’s most acclaimed films, though it had only limited distribution in Thailand. When I interviewed him in 2017, he discussed its disappointing domestic theatrical release: “I think, from Tropical Malady, there’s this issue of releasing the film, and marketing, that I don’t like. And also the studio was not interested in the film, anyway, because there’s no selling point: there’s no tiger, there’s no sex, so it’s very personal.” Tropical Malady: The Book is an attempt to raise the film’s Thai profile.

As in the novel S., simulations of various documents have been inserted between the pages: a handwritten letter (from Keng, one of the film’s protagonists), a Risograph print of a fantastically lurid comic (สมิงมนต์คนอาคม/‘possessed by a tiger’), a temple booklet (พื้นเสือสมิง/‘tiger spirit tales’), a magazine serial (นารายณ์ทรงปืน/‘Narai with a gun’), and a poster. The premium edition also comes with a sticker and tote bag, both featuring the book’s calligram logo. The book is housed in a custom cardboard box with the same design.

Tropical Malady: The Book was edited by Sonthaya Subyen and Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa. This superb tribute to one of Thailand’s greatest films is the last of Sonthaya’s Filmvirus books, a long-running series that also includes Once Upon a Celluloid Planet (สวรรค์ 35 มม.: เสน่ห์วิกหนังเมืองสยาม) and another Apichatpong Weerasethakul monograph, Unknown Forces (สัตว์วิกาล).

จำนรรจา: อย่ามาขึ้นเสียงกับผม! (‘speak: don’t raise your voice to me!’)

An exhibition of paintings by Uthis Haemamool opens at Many Cuts Art Space in Chachoengsao tomorrow and runs until 5th January 2020 (extended from the originally scheduled closing date, 27th October). จำนรรจา: อย่ามาขึ้นเสียงกับผม! (‘speak: don’t raise your voice to me!’) is a collection of impressionistic portraits of leading figures from both sides of the political divide, finger-painted in acrylic on paper.

This is one of the first exhibitions of political art since the election. While most of the works are portraits, one—Nuamthong—depicts Nuamthong Praiwan crashing his taxi into a tank in a protest against the 2006 coup. The title of each work is the first name of its subject in English, such as Prayuth (Prime Minister and coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha).

Roar

Roar: Sulak Sivaraksa and the Path of Socially Engaged Buddhism, by Matteo Pistono, is an authorised biography of one of Thailand’s most respected and controversial public intellectuals. The book was published in the US; it’s on sale in Thailand, though it would surely be withdrawn if government censors ever read it. It includes a quote from Sulak’s interview with the Toronto Star newspaper (published on 3rd August 2011), which Pistono accurately describes as “a statement no newspaper in Thailand has ever been willing to print for fear of lèse-majesté.”

พระพุทธรูปอุลตร้าแมน

Paintings depicting the Buddha as Ultraman (พระพุทธรูปอุลตร้าแมน) have been removed from an exhibition in Nakhon Ratchasima. The works, part of a series titled Popularity, were put on display at the Terminal 21 shopping mall on 3rd September, though they were withdrawn following allegations of blasphemy. The exhibition, เต๊อ=เติ๋น (literal translation: ‘too much=terrace’), is scheduled to close on 11th September.

Far from being blasphemous, the paintings present the Buddha as a heroic figure for young Ultraman fans. Nevertheless, the student artist, Suparat Chaijangrid, was required to issue a tearful public apology at a Buddhist temple on 7th September. (This ritual, in which transgressors of social convention must repent and plead for forgiveness, is a regular media spectacle in Thailand.)

The case is similar to that of Withit Sembutr’s painting of Buddhist monks from 2007, Doo Phra (ดูพระ), which was withdrawn from a Bangkok mall under similar circumstances. Depictions of the Buddha in Thai art are generally reverential and thus uncontroversial, though an exception was Vasan Sitthiket’s Buddha Returns to Bangkok (พระพุทธเจ้าเสด็จกรุงเทพ 2535), a response to the 1992 ‘Black May’ massacre, which has never been exhibited in Thailand.

The controversy also recalls a notorious incident on 7th October 1971, when eighty students attacked a series of religious paintings by Thawan Duchanee, slashing them with knives. The paintings, described by Apinan Poshyananda in Modern Art in Thailand as “the most controversial works ever seen in Thailand”, are reproduced in ตำนานชีวิตของช่างวาดรูป ผู้ใช้โลกเป็นเวที ถวัลย์ ดัชนี (‘legendary painter Thawan Duchanee’) by Chalong Pinitsuwan.