Bad neighbours, woman warriors, and paddles

9 July 2001

Three times over the past 100-plus years, little countries have been worried that big countries will gobble them up. In the late nineteenth century, European powers grabbed colonies. In the 1930s/40s, a few countries thought they had the racial ‘destiny’ to control everyone else. Now, the world’s richest nations say weaker economies must submit.

Each time there has been resistance. And each time in Thailand, these movements have had certain themes.

First, though the threat comes from the great powers, Thailand treats its neighbours as the enemies. During the colonial scare, Siam’s rulers built up Burma as the threat which required Siam to be strong and united. In Our Wars with the Burmese, Prince Damrong portrayed Siam fending off Burmese attacks for 300 years. During the 1930s fear of fascism, Luang Wichit Wathakan took stories from Damrong’s book and turned them into nationalistic plays. In 1997, the financial crisis was described as a third ‘sia krung’, the shorthand for the Burmese destruction of Ayutthaya. The Bang Rachan story, the climax of Damrong’s history, became Thailand’s most successful film ever. The daily newspapers present Burma as a primitive neighbour attacking Thailand with millions of little pills.

Second, each time the leaders try to militarize society. In the 1910s, King Vajiravudh set up the Wild Tiger Corps and made civilians play at being soldiers. In the 1930s, Wichit Wathakan’s plays and songs idealized the Thai as a martial race. Recently the stock TV dramas of teenage romance, family crisis, and ghosts have been swept aside by the uniformed action drama — tales about brave soldiers, rangers and policemen defending Thailand from corruption, gangsters and drugs. In the recent Phet Tat Phet, the channel’s entire stable of beautiful boys and beautiful girls was mobilised to give this militarisation a real mass feel. The channels’ self-censorship of violence has disappeared. Only a couple of years ago, really violent scenes were rare. These uniform dramas expend a small war’s requirement of ammunition in a single episode. In the title sequences, the body count is several per second.

Third, these tales of resistance feature the Woman Warrior. In the anti-colonial phase, these were fighting queens. In the old chronicles, Suriyothai got only a single line. By the time of Damrong’s Wars with the Burmese, she had expanded to a full-length story. Now she is revived as a 3-hour film epic. In the 1930s, the new anti-absolutist leaders looked round for commoners in this role. Suranaree of Khorat was rescued from the obscurity of a very brief, vague historical reference, and given a whole story and a statue. Now she too may find her way onto celluloid. But these revivals are self-conscious remakes. The interesting update of the Woman Warrior is on TV. For the last couple of years, the image of a very beautiful woman carrying a very big gun has appeared time and again. In one drama last year, the audience waited weeks to find out whether the beautiful, athletic, sharp-shooting and strangely ascetic female police ranger would blow away the gangster who had killed her father. In another, three achingly beautiful couples spent months wandering around the jungle. Several times each episode, the heroines (with some male help) blew away a pursuing army of gangsters with AK-47s, revolvers and cross-bows.

The uniformed action dramas are strewn with these modern Woman Warriors. They dash around in ultra-tight athletic outfits, then somehow produce enormous guns from nowhere. Only a couple of years ago, the aspiring starlet had to learn horse-riding, tennis and golf. Now she has to visit the police academy and learn how to heft a Colt.

Fourth, the threat of being gobbled up always produces a reactive movement to gobble up the neighbours. In the colonial era, Bangkok sent off armies and map-makers to enclose as much territory as possible before the colonialists got there first. In the 1940s, Wichit Wathakan explained why Siam had to invade Kengtung, Laos and Cambodia: ‘When the present war was over, there would be no small nations in the world; all would be merged into big ones. So we either become a Power or are swallowed up by some other Power.’ Last year, one of the businessmen who launched a “new nationalist” organisation urged Thailand to exploit the economies of Burma, Laos and Cambodia so Thailand would be strong enough to fend off globalisation. The new airport has been renamed from ‘cobra swamp’ to suwannaphum (golden land), the shorthand for this regional domination.

Fifth, these campaigns of resistance are used to justify strong leadership, but the qualifications of leadership change. Chulalongkorn and Vajiravudh opposed demands for democracy because of the need for unity against outside threats. They based their claim to leadership on tradition and absolutist right. In the 1930s, Phibun projected himself as phunam, the leader, explaining ‘The campaign is meant to demonstrate that we, the whole nation, can act as one person.’ Today, the old rhetoric of “unity” has become debased. Thaksin has subtly translated this into “Thais loving Thais”. In this era of economic competition, his personal claim is based not on royal right or military command, but on money. He is businessman number one. In the Constitutional Court his nominal defence was that his female entourage made silly mistakes. But his real argument was that he has “so much money” that he is the right man to lead.

Sixth, there is a tell-tale metaphor which appears when these leadership claims come under attack. Vajiravudh reacted against democrat critics by imagining Siam as a small boat lost in a threatening sea: ‘Each person must decide whether to paddle and not argue with the helmsman, or jump out of the boat and swim’. In the 1930s, Wichit Wathakan wrote: ‘The waters are treacherous; submerged rocks and whirlpools abound, deadly sharks swim freely. It is essential that we help each other and paddle as one.’

In the current round, the paddle hasn’t appeared yet. But look out for it later this year.