King still with us, in photos and memories
On the screen we see the King in his Land Rover sluicing through mud in rough terrain. Again on the screen, he is a wiry young man in dark sunglasses and saffron robe, walking barefoot in a royal temple. Next, His Majesty King Bhumibol in dinner jacket — the footage slightly scratchy — is deep in a jam session with Western musicians sometime in the last century. Then we see the monarch in full regalia, captured on a Kodak motion picture film, as he proceeds down the street in the opulent pomp of Coronation Day in 1950.
Of 65 million Thais, only the fortunate minority had a chance to see His Majesty in person. The rest, like myself, have only seen him as the atomised light beamed or broadcast on screen (in the 1950s it was the cinema screen, and later the television screen). In the past 10 days, Thai television has turned off the usual soap opera hysterics and devoted air time to the late King, showing news clips, historical footage, documentary films, and live broadcasts of the funeral rites. This will continue for a few weeks, and while there are some valid complaints, the fact is that we’re watching perhaps the world’s richest treasure trove of moving images whose significance in shaping the consciousness of the nation is unsurpassable. Scholars of visual culture can’t possibly find a more solid case study of how the image of a person could define and anchor the soul of a country — for 70 years and counting.
The King was charismatic, dignified and powerful. His image — in still pictures but especially in moving pictures — encapsulates and spreads that charm, dignity and power, and now the gravity of his life and his reign is not only preserved but intensified through the present-tense power of film. He is still here, the pictures remind us.
What we have seen on TV in the past 10 days apparently comes from many sources (not to mention various clips shared online). But the most valuable is the footage shot by His Majesty’s personal Film Department working in the palace: Remember that the King reigned for 70 years, and almost every day the department filmed royal activities, everything from his traversing up and down the longitudes of the country, the royal projects, the state functions, the boarding of the train to the South and the Jeep trek to the North, royal family life, the serious and the playful. It must be many millions of hours of priceless motion picture.
Imagine the 1950s when television was not common. How could the citizens connect with their King, or the idea of having the King? The answer is photographs and film. Research in 2006 conducted by the Thai Film Archive shows that on May 1, 1950, Bangkok spectators flocked to Sala Chalermkrung Theatre to watch the film of the Royal Coronation and the Royal Wedding ceremonies on the big screen, and that marked the first time Thai audiences ever laid eyes on His Majesty’s “personal films”. At least 16 or more royal films were released in the cinemas between 1950 to 1967, during the Cold War. They include, for example, clips shot by His Majesty himself when he was in Switzerland; the announcement of the birth of HRH Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn; and daily life in the palace. Some of them, according to the study, were box-office hits that sold more tickets than Hollywood titles that shared the marquee.
After Bangkok, the films usually toured the provinces, screened free of charge at schools, hospitals and outdoor cinemas. Former Royal Household secretary-general Kaewkwan Vajarodaya, who shot a number of royal films in the mid-century, said in an interview with the researchers from the Fine Arts Department many years ago: “Four or five of us would travel in a van, modified to house a film projector in the middle … each trip took us a month away from Bangkok.” He added that the team would “ask the drive-by announcers to drive their pickup trucks around the city and advertise [our film] through their loudspeakers, to spread the word to the people, just like other regular movies”.
The last royal film to hit the cinemas, according to the study, was in 1967 (it included scenes from the end-of-term party at Chitralada School the King’s children were studying). With the spread of television in the late 1960s, royal footage, or royal news, became more accessible to households.
And now that the pictures and footage of His Majesty are everywhere, we’re reminded that the power of image is the power of memory — inspiring, melancholy, political, emotional, historical and sometimes eternal. The King is no longer here, but his photographic and cinematic representations still hold power unlike any other — the power that shaped the past and probably outlines our future.
Kong Rithdee is Life editor, Bangkok Post.