THAI HORROR FILM: GHOSTS, ARCHIVES OF HISTORY/IES, "REAL LIFE," AND COLLECTIVE TRAUMA

With their themes of ghosts, violence and monstrosity, horror films have been instrumental in capturing the ghostly returns of collective trauma. Thai horror, unsurprisingly, also cannot disassociate itself from history. Through their ghosts and, more recently, through their turn to “body horror,” contemporary Thai horror films come to terms with the “wounds” in the country’s social fabric. The strategies of archivization of Thai history and cultural memory used in these films vary, since some traumatic incidents in Thai history have been denied the right to be remembered by the state apparatus. Other, less politically-repressed events, such as murders, accidents, or cases of gross negligence are meticulously reconstructed from available authentic sources and reproduced in Thai horror films, which take on the function of becoming the archives of Thai popular memory. This article discusses Thai horror films’ strategies of archivization of Thailand’s past.

Published in Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 12.1 (2014).

THE TEMPORAL CITY: SPECTRAL TOPOGRAPHIES AND THE EPHEMERAL PERFORMANCE OF BANGKOK

Bangkok has been called the material metropolis, or the capital of the sensual, but in this consumer paradise, underneath the glitzy shopping malls, intimidating mega-buildings and stately temples, one may occasionally catch a glimpse of the second city, spectral and ever-changing, realized in its impermanence and temporality. This other Bangkok’s momentary existence is actualized through ritual and performance, ephemeral activity leaving its mark on the spaces of the city. This second city is known to freeze in time, living the memory of its ghosts, and to embrace continuous change to eradicate memory altogether. It explodes with the fireworks of light only to disappear in darkness. It has no past and no future, only the present. The material façade of the city dissolves in the presence of its illusions. This paper discusses Bangkok, as the city realized through ritualistic performance of its inhabitants: from the rituals of everyday life, through the state and royal celebrations, to superstition, animistic worship and popular religious practices, all of which affect the temporal, but also spatial organization of the city. Defiant of its cartographic reality, Bangkok refuses to be mapped, perhaps because mapping presupposes stability, while this city prefers to stay evanescent and elusive, coming to life through the theatrics of its people.

Published in 'Hours Like Bright Sweets in a Jar': Time and Temporality in Literature and Culture. Eds. A. Bemben and S. Front. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.

SPIRITS IN SUBURBIA: GHOSTS, GLOBAL DESIRES AND THE RISE OF THAI MIDDLE-CLASS HORROR

Horror films have played a significant role in introducing Thai cinema to international audiences and so inspiring Thai filmmakers to produce films that could be globally marketable. Though successful with broader Thai population, Thai horror films have been repeatedly rejected by Bangkok urbanites as formulaic ‘low-class’ entertainment. The unprecedented success of Sopon Sukdapisit’s Ladda Land (2011) with Bangkok audiences reflects the recent change of direction in Thai horror to cater to the tastes of the middle classes and invites a more thorough investigation. The article uses the example of Sukdapisit’s Ladda Land to discuss the effects of modernization and globalization processes on the development of the Thai horror genre, in particular with relation to the concept of the ghost as the figure of fear. With its reconfiguration of the typical Thai ghost story formula, Ladda Land brings horror closer to home for its middle-class audience but does so at the cost of replacing its earth-bound past-oriented revenants with the living ghosts, trapped within the temporality of a dream of social mobility and economic success.

Published in Horror Studies 5.2. (2014).

GHOST SKINS: GLOBALIZING THE SUPERNATURAL IN CONTEMPORARY THAI HORROR FILM

The article discusses the directorial debut feature of Thai director Sophon Sukdapisit, Coming Soon/Program Na Vinyan Arkhad (2008), in the context of Global Horror/Gothic. Since Thailand has embraced economic globalization, global cultural flows have had an enormous influence on Thai film industry, turning the country into a major film production and post-production hub. But while Thai filmmakers successfully offer professional services to international clients, the changes taking place within Thai film as such are more subtle and seem to be affecting mostly genre films, which are seen are potentially more marketable outside Thailand. The paper examines the selected film in relation to two aspects of globalization: the relationship between the local and the global and the similarity of globalization and modernization processes. The specific example used to further the discussion is the central figure of the vengeful spirit (phii tai hong) and its redefinition in terms of a “global ghost.”

Published in Globalgothic. Ed. Glennis Byron. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013.

GLOBAL SPECTROLOGIES: CONTEMPORARY THAI FILM AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF THE SUPERNATURAL

If we agree that globalization translates into a quick and massive flow of capital, people, products, services and ideas across borders then cinema has been a global enterprise since its very beginnings. While local film industries may not share the global distributing potential of Hollywood, this does not mean that their production and post-production methods lag behind. The case of Thai film is not so different here, negotiating the dynamics of the global (e.g. filming equipment, skilled crew, or distribution formats) and the local (e.g. conceptualization, scriptwriting, or narrative formation). Contemporary Thai horror film has long been Thailand’s calling card on international film markets. Known in Thai as nung phii (ghost films), the films remain faithful to their narrow supernatural formula focusing most commonly on the figure of a vindictive phii tai hong (a spirit of the violently dead). Recently, however, the familiar anthropomorphic renditions of ghosts known from older Thai horror films seem to undergo the steady process of de-materialization and de-literalization, challenged through the intervention of technology and reappearing as critically constructed metaphors. This article argues that this change in the way these ghosts are portrayed on film can be seen as a result of the increasing globalization of Thai film industry per se, as well as a reflection on the broader economic, political and social transformations brought about by the powers of globalization in Thailand.

Published in Horror Studies 2.1. (2011).

BANGKOK GOTHIC: URBAN SPACES OF TRANSGRESSION AND EXCESS

Frequently declared “the most exotic Asian capital” by Western tourist guides, Bangkok has been a subject of many a theoretical analysis. At the beginning of the 21st century it remains the city of extremes and paradoxes. The following paper attempts to re-define Bangkok in terms of an intersection of multiple spaces of transgression and excess. The said “spaces” taken into consideration in the article can be broadly categorised as urban, economic and cultural respectively and can be found both in the city itself and in its representations in Thai media. A juxtaposition of superstition and advanced technology, ostentatious luxury and utmost poverty, this hot humid and monstrous metropolis is simultaneously both a paradise on earth and the underbelly of the world. Seen through the prism of its art, architecture and urban infrastructure, its comodification, cultural heritage and everyday life, its transgenderism and spiritualism, Bangkok becomes the City of Different Angels and Bangkok bats circling over Sanam Luang suddenly begin to look ominous.

Published in Polish as "W przestrzeniach Gotyku: Bangkok, czyli Miasto Odmiennych Aniolow” in Znaki, tropy, mglawice. Ed. L. Drong and J. Mydla. Katowice: University of Silesia Press, 2009.