The wife and I, that is. Fluff, but we never miss them.
We just saw “Music and Lyrics,” which opened this month in Bangkok, and apparently there are a lot of Buddha motifs in the movie, and the censors here have pixellated them all out. At first, I didn’t catch on what was being censored. I knew there was no nudity in the film, which often, but not always, gets the chop. Eventually, from the context of the film, I figured out it was Buddha being censored. This was confirmed later out in the lobby where previews were showing on television screens, and the images there were NOT censored. They can be funny about that sort of thing here.
Just out of curiosity, but why would Thai authorities censor images of the Buddha when Buddhist cultures are not (and never have been), AFAIK, iconoclastic with respect to depictions of him?
Because they’re very sensitive to that sort of thing here, overly so in my opinion, AND in my Thai wife’s opinion. The authorities feel too many people would be offended by what could be perceived as crass commercialization of a sacred object. Fair enough, but they tend to go overboard.
On television, too, they pixellate out cigarettes and alcohol, even if it’s just a drink sitting on a table. Sometimes guns, too, I think. This renders Thai television even more unwatchable than it is anyway. These things tend now to appear mostly in foreign programming, as locally produced fare now works around that. But the foreign shows are dubbed into Thai anyway, no subtitles, and I can’t stand dubbing in any language, even English. Local shows are amateurish and silly at best. So we don’t watch television. Of course, all of this applies only to free television, cable still shows cigarettes, guns and alcohol, but we’re just too busy to fool with television, so we don’t even subscribe.
But back to the Buddha. Anytime someone anywhere in the world uses a Buddha image on a product, there’s always an official protest from Thailand. I seem to remember it being featured on a brand of liquor in Europe, and that resulted in protests. If there’s references to Buddha in Western movies, that’s often good for at least one organized “spontaneous” protest from the masses. The whole thing is rather silly, and the more educated Thais don’t approve of that sort of behavior. I’m sort of surprised the Buddha images in “Music and Lyrics” were quietly pixellated out without a mention in the media or a protest; it could be that Thailandn is getting tired of popping up in the Weird News sections of the Western mendia.
Of course, they have Blue Nun wine here, and any references to Jesus or any other religion’s top guys are fair game.
File this under Something New I Learned Today. I’ve heard of Muslim countries censoring Buddhism, and Christians censoring sex, etc. out of movies, but never woulda guessed about this.
Update! They DO pixellate cigarettes and alcohol on cable, at least some of the time. Someone mentioned to me today that he’s watching “Deadwood” on HBO right now, and the language has been cleaned up and the smoking and drinking pixellated out. What the??!!!
HBO here comes out of Singapore, and they’ve always cleaned up the language, which irritates me no end, because that was the whole idea behind these pay channels originally: Uncensored TV! I think the studios work with markets around the globe, because we’ve seen shows taped off of HBO and other movie channels here, and I swear it’s the very same voices saying “Darn!” instead of “Fuck!” But until now, I thought only the free local chanels pixellated out the smoking and drinking. This makes me doubly, nay triply glad we do not subscribe to cable in Bangkok. We’ve seen all of “Deadwood” on DVD, and I can’t even imagine what it would be like with clean language and pixellated-out smoking and drinking.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, smoking and drinking are pixellated out as a public-health measure. If you can’t see it being done on television, then you won’t start doing it in real life. Or so the theory goes. This has only been happening for, oh, maybe five years or so I think, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to go away any time soon.