“I hope I can always stand on the side of the sheep...”

Five publishers of children’s picture books were each given nineteen-month prison sentences in Hong Kong yesterday. They had been held in custody since their arrest more than a year ago, and were all convicted of sedition after a two-month trial. The defendants were members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists, which has since been disbanded. They had published three books about a sheep village (羊村) facing attack by wolves, a metaphor for China’s dominance over Hong Kong.

One of the titles, The Guardians of Sheep Village (羊村守衛者), is an allegory of Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests. Another, The Twelve Warriors of Sheep Village (羊村十二勇士), refers to a dozen Hong Kongers who were arrested in 2020 when they attempted to escape into exile by speedboat. The third book in the series, The Cleaners of Sheep Village (羊村清道夫), is a reference to medical workers who went on strike in an attempt to force Hong Kong to close its border with China at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

District Court Judge Kwok Wai Kin condemned the publishers for what he described as “a brain-washing exercise with a view to guiding the very young children to accept their views and values”. The defendants—Man-ling Lai, Sidney Ng, Samuel Chan, Tsz-ho Fong, and Melody Yeung—had all pleaded not guilty, and Yeung said in court: “My only regret is I couldn’t publish more picture books before getting arrested.” Referring to the political analogy in the books, she added: “I hope I can always stand on the side of the sheep.”

Nevermind

A lawsuit against grunge rock band Nirvana was dismissed by a Central District of California judge yesterday. Spencer Elden, who was photographed as a baby for the cover of the classic album Nevermind in 1991, had filed three legal actions against the band, seeking compensation for alleged sexual exploitation. Judge Fernando Olguin ruled that the ten-year statute of limitations had expired, and therefore “it would be futile to afford plaintiff a fourth opportunity to file an amended complaint.”

Although Elden was clearly unable to consent to the use of his image at the time, he has since publicly endorsed the album cover, somewhat negating the accusations in his lawsuit. Nevermind is one of the most acclaimed albums of the 1990s, and its lead single, Smells Like Teen Spirit, is one of the most iconic songs of the decade.

Battleship Potemkin

The classic Battleship Potemkin (Бронено́сец «Потёмкин») will be shown at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya on 7th September. The film is an agitprop dramatisation of the 1905 Russian Revolution, though it also demonstrates director Sergei Eisenstein’s revolutionary montage editing technique, and the ‘Odessa steps’ massacre is arguably the most famous sequence in silent cinema.

The archive’s 16mm print was donated by the embassy of the Soviet Union and first shown as part of the หนังดีที่สุดในโลก (‘greatest films in the world’) programme, one of the inaugural events of the Thailand Cultural Centre in 1987. The print is an unrestored, edited version (just under an hour long), with an English-language voice-over that fills in the gaps in the narrative.

Battleship Potemkin was previously screened at the archive in 2011, with live music by Nipat Chaisap. It was shown twice at Bangkok Screening Room, in 2018 (with a soundtrack by the Pet Shop Boys) and 2020 (with live music by Viveka).

“He went to an Imam Hatip school, that’s why he’s perverted...”

Gülşen, one of Turkey’s most popular singers, has been arrested after joking about the country’s religious school system. At a concert on 30th April, she teased a member of her band, saying: “İmam hatipte okumuş daha önce kendisi, sapıklığı oradan geliyor” (‘he went to an Imam Hatip school, that’s why he’s perverted’).

A video clip of the on-stage comment, filmed at the JJ Arena in Istanbul, was posted online by an audience-member. The singer has been charged with inciting hatred and division. She was detained in custody yesterday, after bail was denied. Ironically, she also appeared behind prison bars in the music video for her most recent single, Lolipop, released earlier this year.

ไม่มีคนบนฟ้า(‘no one in the sky)’

The ไม่มีคนบนฟ้า EP was released on CD by t_047 last year. The title track, which was also released as a single, translates as ‘no one in the sky’, and in Thailand the sky is often used as a metaphor for the monarchy. The lyrics also criticise “people who claim to be deities which I find so lame”. But, perhaps to avoid accusations of lèse-majesté, the band added a disclaimer on their YouTube channel: “ไม่ได้มีเจตนาเพื่อโจมตีบุคคลใดบุคคลหนึ่ง แต่มีความตั้งใจตักเตือนบุคคลหลายกลุ่ม ที่ตั้งตนสูงส่งกว่าสามัญชนคนธรรมดา” (‘it was not intended to attack any individual, but with the intention of admonishing many groups who elevate themselves above ordinary people’).

The ไม่มีคนบนฟ้า music video features footage of riot police deploying water cannon against anti-government protesters. The EP also includes ความฝันยามรุ่งสาง (‘dreaming at dawn’), which was one of several singles released on the 45th anniversary of the 6th October 1976 massacre.

Songs by a more controversial Thai band, Faiyen, have resulted in lèse-majesté charges against the band members themselves and protesters who sing the tracks. Protesters sang Faiyen’s song โชคดีที่มีคนไทย (‘lucky to have Thai people’) outside Bangkok South Criminal Court on 28th July; they also sang it, along with another Faiyen track—ใครฆ่า ร.8 (‘who killed Rama VIII?’)—at Victory Monument yesterday.

The Genius of Prince

The US Supreme Court will rule later this year on a long-running copyright lawsuit between photographer Lynn Goldsmith and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Warhol was commissioned by Vanity Fair to create a portrait of Prince, and the magazine paid Goldsmith for the rights to use her black-and-white Prince photograph as the basis for Warhol’s painting. Both Warhol and Goldsmith were credited when the image was published in the November 1984 issue (on p. 67), to illustrate an article titled Purple Fame.

The dispute stems not from that original publication, but from a commemorative magazine, The Genius of Prince, released in 2016 by the publisher of Vanity Fair. The cover illustration for The Genius of Prince was another Warhol portrait, also based on Goldsmith’s photo, and this time she wasn’t credited. Goldsmith sued the Warhol Foundation, though the Foundation counter-sued and argued that Warhol’s manipulation of her image was sufficiently transformative that it did not infringe her copyright.

The precedent for transformative works constituting fair use dates to a 1993 Supreme Court verdict that permitted The 2 Live Crew’s sampling of Roy Orbison’s single Oh, Pretty Woman. Even more directly relevant is the case of another photographer, Patrick Cariou, who sued the artist Richard Prince for copyright infringement. In that instance, most of Prince’s images were deemed fair use, though the legal status of five works remains unresolved, as the appeals court was unable to “make a determination about their transformative nature” and the case was ultimately settled out of court.

Uninspired by Current Events: Sorry Stories

Saratta Chuengsatiansup, the artist behind the Uninspired by Current Events page on Facebook, has released a book of his work. Uninspired by Current Events: Sorry Stories reproduces some of the digital artworks he has been posting daily since last year, alongside a handful of new images.

Despite the ironic disclaimer in its title, Uninspired by Current Events provides a topical, satirical commentary on Thai news and politics. The book also features short poems, in both English and Thai, to accompany each illustration, and the poetry is as sharp and subversive as the images themselves.

WeVo

An exhibition in Bangkok yesterday and today marked two years since the formation of WeVo (We Volunteer), a group of volunteer guards who provide protection for protesters at anti-government rallies. The guards, led by Piyarat Chongthep, have previously been labelled agitators, and they were accused of using violent tactics—throwing firecrackers and other projectiles—to repel riot police (on 28th February last year, for example).

The 2nd Anniversary of We Volunteer (งานครบรอบ 2 ปีกลุ่ม We Volunteer) exhibition was held at the Jam Factory. Rubber bullets fired by riot police were on display, as was the mock guillotine previously seen at Democracy Monument on 18th July last year. Supong Jitmuang’s documentary Mob 2020–2021 was shown at the event yesterday.

Quote of the day...

“Prayut will respect the court’s opinions because he has never thought of himself as being above the law.”
— Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana

Today sees the resurrection of Dateline Bangkok’s ‘quote of the day’ feature, an occasional series of I-can’t-believe-they-said-that quotes from Thailand. A government spokesman was quoted by the Bangkok Post newspaper today, assuring Prayut Chan-o-cha’s critics that the Prime Minister “has never thought of himself as being above the law.” This is, to say the least, somewhat ironic given Prayut’s role as leader of the junta that overthrew an elected government in 2014.

Prayut himself has provided two previous quotes of the day: he claimed that “we respect democracy” barely a fortnight after his coup, and he admitted that the army still used GT200 devices three years after they were exposed as a hoax. Other quotes of the day from yesteryear: 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, an Election Commission spokesman claimed that an election would lead to a coup, and a Ministry of Culture official dismissed the work of Thailand’s most acclaimed filmmaker.

“I have decided to take legal action against The Economist...”

An Iraqi soap opera actress has announced that she plans to sue The Economist over its use of her photograph. The magazine used a photo of Enas Taleb to illustrate an article about female obesity in the Middle East. Taleb told the online magazine New Lines: “I have decided to take legal action against The Economist... I am demanding compensation for the emotional, mental and social damage this incident has caused me.”

The article, headlined Weighty Matters, appears on p. 34 of the current issue (vol. 444, no. 9,307) of The Economist, published on 30th July. The Economist was last successfully sued for damages in 2004, after it alleged “a whiff of nepotism” in the appointment of the Singaporean Prime Minister’s wife as head of a state investment agency.

Dianagate

This month marks the thirtieth anniversary of the so-called ‘Dianagate’ scandal, the publication of a telephone conversation between Princess Diana and James Gilbey, with whom she was having an affair. A transcript of their phone call was printed in The Sun newspaper on 24th August 1992, under the banner headline “MY LIFE IS TORTURE”. The headline is a quote from the tape: Diana says that Prince Charles “makes my life real, real torture, I’ve decided.” (The tape was later sampled by the techno band House of Windsor for their novelty single Squidgy, a reference to Gilbey’s pet name for Diana, and Dianagate is also known as ‘Squidgygate’.)

According to The Sun, the call was accidentally recorded by a radio ham, Cyril Reenan, on New Year’s Eve 1989. A second amateur radio enthusiast, Jane Norgrove, subsequently provided the paper with her own tape of the call. The clarity of the tapes, and the unlikely coincidence of two accidental recordings of such a significant conversation, led to (as yet unproven) allegations that landlines in royal residences had been tapped.

Such speculation increased when a phone call between Charles and his mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, was also leaked. The transcript of this so-called ‘Camillagate’ tape—recorded a fortnight before Diana’s call, on 18th December 1989—was first published by New Idea on 23rd January 1993. At the time, the magazine was owned by Rupert Murdoch, proprietor of The Sun, and it’s likely that the story was planted in an Australian magazine to provide some distance from Murdoch’s UK tabloids. Camillagate caused even more of a sensation than Dianagate, as the conversation was more directly sexual, and Charles was recorded joking about being reincarnated as his lover’s tampon: “God forbid, a Tampax!”

Ornament and Crime: Thoughts on Design and Materials

Ornament and Crime (Ornament und Verbrechen), first delivered as a lecture in Vienna and later published as an essay, is one of the most famous polemics in the history of architecture and design. Architect Adolf Loos abhorred the decorative ornamentation of Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession, as he proclaimed in Ornament and Crime’s succinct central thesis: “the evolution of culture comes to the same thing as the removal of ornament from functional objects.”

Linking ‘primitive’ ornamentation to evolution is the most problematic aspect of Ornament and Crime, as Loos equated the tribal tattoos of Papua New Guinea with “degeneracy”. The essay is stridently moralistic, though it’s also arguably one of the first modernist manifestos, anticipating the functionalist architecture of Le Corbusier. Ornament and Crime: Thoughts on Design and Materials features two dozen essays by Loos, newly translated by Shaun Whiteside.

The Grammar Of Ornament, by Owen Jones, was the first systematic analysis of ornamental art, influencing Auguste Racinet’s L’ornement polychrome (‘polychromatic ornament’) and many other compendiums. Stuart Durant’s Ornament is a comprehensive history of pattern design and ornament since the Industrial Revolution. The more recent Histories of Ornament, edited by Gülru Necipoğlu and Alina Payne, is the first attempt at a global history of the subject.

Kenduri Seni Nusantara(‘Nusantara arts festival’)

Kenduri Seni Nusantara (‘Nusantara arts festival’), featuring more than fifty artists exhibiting at various venues in Pattani, opens on 13th August and runs until 30th November. The festival’s title refers to the Malay archipelago incorporating Indonesia, Malaysia, and the surrounding region, including Thailand’s southernmost provinces.

Thunska Pansittivorakul will be showing three video works at the ETAM Gallery: his short film Middle-earth (มัชฌิมโลก), an extract from his feature film Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), and a preview of his forthcoming collaboration with Nontawat Machai. Middle-earth premiered at the 11th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 11) in 2007, and has also been shown at the 5th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (หนังทดลองครั้งที่ 5) in 2008 and at the Jim Thompson Art Center in 2010.

Material Gworrllllllll!

Madonna and rapper Saucy Santana have collaborated on a remix of his song Material Girl, which was, of course, inspired by Madonna’s classic 1985 single. Their new single, retitled Material Gworrllllllll!, is released on streaming platforms today, accompanied by an animated video. They previously performed it at Terminal Five in New York on 23rd June.

The Terminal Five show was titled Finally Enough Love, which is also the title of Madonna’s new dance remix album. Available on vinyl and CD, it features edited remixes of Madonna’s dance singles from throughout her career, though no new material. The title is a line from the lyrics to I Don’t Search I Find, from her Madame X album. (You Can Dance, her previous dance remix compilation, was released in 1987.)

The Finally Enough Love track list is: Everybody, Into the Groove, Like a Prayer, Express Yourself, Vogue, Deeper and Deeper, Secret, Frozen, Music, Hollywood, Hung Up, Give It 2 Me, Girl Gone Wild, Living for Love, Medellín, and I Don’t Search I Find.

Come Here

A group of four young friends, on vacation in Kanchanaburi, arrive at the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum, only to discover that it’s closed for renovation. After their initial disappointment, they decide to explore the woodlands surrounding the museum instead, and their interest in the World War II ‘death railway’ soon wanes. Their (improvised) dialogue is deliberately inconsequential, highlighting the contrast between the area’s dark historical past and the oblivious group’s contemporary preoccupations.

Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Come Here (ใจจำลอง) is one of a handful of recent Thai films that explore what the Dutch artist Armando called ‘guilty landscapes’: tranquil spaces that bore silent witness to past violence. (Anocha’s black-and-white cinematography is a reminder of the area’s historical significance, and another contrast to the film’s youthful protagonists.) Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถงลงบญม) and Thunska Pansittivorakul’s Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา) also examine Thailand’s ‘guilty landscapes’ (as discussed in Thai Cinema Uncensored), though Come Here has a closer connection to Taiki Sakpisit’s Seeing in the Dark, which also begins at the site of a state memorial.

Come Here also includes archive footage of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall and Dusit Zoo, two Bangkok landmarks that were closed to the public by royal decree. (Taiki’s Shadow and Act and Sorayos Prapapan’s Prelude of the Moving Zoo were also filmed at Dusit Zoo and, like Sorayos, Anocha captures the zoo’s final day of operation.) The zoo footage in Come Here seems unrelated to the film’s main narrative, though there is much that remains unexplained. Most puzzling is a subplot in which a young woman wanders around in distress, before morphing into a man, in a sequence inspired by An American Werewolf in London (and perhaps Michael Jackson’s Black or White music video).

Anocha is one of the most original voices in independent Thai cinema; her films Mundane History (เจ้านกกระจอก) and By the Time It Gets Dark (ดาวคะนอง)—and Krabi, 2562 (กระบี่ ๒๕๖๒), codirected by Ben Rivers—are truly unique. Like Come Here, Mundane History and By the Time It Gets Dark also draw on Thailand’s political history and feature repetition as a narrative device. Come Here feels less profound by comparison, though perhaps that’s inevitable, as its subtext of historical amnesia remains hidden beneath the surface.

Kaali

Indian filmmaker Leena Manimekalai is facing potential blasphemy charges after public outrage over the poster for her film Kaali. Manimekalai, who is based in Canada, portrays the Hindu goddess Kali in the short film, which was shown at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto on 2nd July. In the film’s poster, Kali is depicted smoking a cigarette and waving an LGBTQ rainbow flag. Complaints have been lodged with police in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

Thai Cinema Uncensored

Thai Cinema Uncensored is reviewed in the new issue of Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia (vol. 37, no. 2). In her review (pp. 374–377), Annette Hamilton writes: “This is a great read not just for those interested in film, but for anyone trying to understand the nexus between culture and politics in Thailand in recent times.” She concludes: “This book is a valuable addition to Thai cinema studies. It is well-written and instructive.” (The book has previously been reviewed by the Bangkok Post newspaper, Art Review and The Big Chilli magazines, and the 101 World website.)

Thai Cinema Uncensored

The Thai news website The 101 World reviewed Thai Cinema Uncensored on 21st January 2021. (The book has also been reviewed by the Bangkok Post newspaper, and Art Review and The Big Chilli magazines.)

In his 101 World review, headlined “ภาพยนตร์ไทยไม่ต้องห้าม” (‘Thai movies are not forbidden’), Matt Changsupan writes: “นอกจากข้อมูลที่อัปเดตมากๆ... ได้ให้ภาพของการตั้งคำถามเกี่ยวกับการเมืองการปกครองร่วมสมัยผ่านภาพยนตร์ได้อย่างค่อนข้างครบถ้วน” (‘in addition to its very up-to-date content... it provides a rather complete picture of the questioning of contemporary politics through film’).

Mob 2020–2021

The third Moving Images Screening Night (คืนฉายภาพเคลื่อนไหว) took place at Doc Club and Pub in Bangkok on 30th June. (The first Moving Images Screening Night, on 28th April, featured Jittarin Wuthiphan’s powerful short film Still on My Mind, his record of a mob in Phuket attacking a man they accused of disrespecting King Rama IX. The second event, on 25th May, included Suwaporn Worrasit’s Ratchadamnoen Route View 2482+.) Each screening is divided into two themed programmes, which for the third event were Eclipse and Lucid Memory.

The highlight of the evening was Supong Jitmuang’s Mob 2020–2021, a chronicle of the current student protest movement. Supong told me that the film is “handmade”, emphasising the intricate nature of this two-hour documentary. Audience members received a Moving Images Screening Night brochure (Phase 01: Program Book), which the organisers also describe as “handmade”: a zine-style publication with a limited print run. Mob 2020–2021 postcards were also available.

Mob 2020–2021 covers the first twelve months of the anti-government protest movement. Supong and his camera were at Thammasat University on 19th September 2020, for the overnight rally that later occupied Sanam Luang. On 14th October 2020, he filmed the march to Government House, after which a state of emergency was declared. On 17th November 2020, he was on the front line when protesters used inflatable ducks to protect themselves from water cannon fired by riot police. (Sorayos Prapapan’s short film Yellow Duck Against Dictatorship documents the same event.)

The protests intensified last summer, and Mob 2020–2021 shows the rally at Democracy Monument on 18th July 2021 marking the first anniversary of the anti-government campaign. Last August, there were almost daily confrontations between riot police and protesters, but rather than filming each event, Supong summarises them in a general written caption noting the “multiple continuous clashes that lasted many weeks” (Hopefully, the ongoing Sound of ‘Din’ Daeng documentary series will cover this period, and the violent tactics employed by the riot police, in more detail.)

The closest equivalent to Mob 2020–2021 is probably Ing Kanjanavanit’s Bangkok Joyride (บางกอกจอยไรด์) though, of course, the two directors are from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Two renditions of Do You Hear the People Sing? in Mob 2020–2021, for example, serve as a counterpoint to Bangkok Joyride’s fetishisation of the national anthem. Bangkok Joyride and Mob 2020–2021 both provide an exhaustive record of street politics, though Mob 2020–2021 is a more objective account.

Mob 2020–2021 is the first feature-length documentary covering the recent protest movement. (The only other example, The Evil of Time’s Growth, focuses solely on the Thalufah group.) It’s an invaluable record of a profound social and political change in Thailand. Supong’s film also includes a written timeline of the protests, and its matter-of-fact neutrality is maintained throughout, except for a single reference to the “parasitic” government.

กรุงเทพ กลางแปลง(‘Bangkok open air’)

A three-week festival of open-air film screenings will take place around Bangkok later this month. The event, กรุงเทพ กลางแปลง (‘Bangkok open air’), is the brainchild of the city’s popular new governor, Chardchart Sittipunt, who was elected last month. (His unelected predecessor, appointed by the 2014 junta, had been in office for the past six years.)

The festival includes recent and classic films, all screening at outdoor venues between 7th and 31st July. Highlights include Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters [sic] (2499 อันธพาลครองเมือง) on 7th July at Lan Khon Mueang Square; and Monrak Transistor (มนต์รักทรานซิสเตอร์) on 7th July at True Digital Park, and (with an introduction by director Pen-ek Ratanaruang) on 15th July at Khlong Toei Youth Center. (Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters was previously shown at an outdoor screening in 2010. Monrak Transistor had previous outdoor screenings in 2011 and 2018.)