Our newest mission is to love the bomb

Like all soap addicts, I caught glimpses of the debut episode of the television series Love Missions last week. Not a strand of hair misplaced despite his dangerous expedition, Capt Purich (played by Sukollawat Kanarot) enters a red zone to battle terrorists after they’ve abducted foreign delegates from a conference in Bangkok. “This act of terrorism has a big boss behind it,” intones the captain.

In his free time, Capt Purich cavorts (topless) with three other soldiers by a beautiful beach, wrestling in the shallows and splashing water, their shorts very fashionable. Still with more free time, he exchanges romantic one-liners with a rural doctor who’s on her way to treat a sick grandma. She rides on his motorcycle as he cruises into the sunset where poverty and sickness will soon be eradicated. Love, and bullets, is in the air.

Pull the Trigger on My Heart, the episode is literally titled. To which I wonder: Your heart, yes, but what about my stomach?

Supported (not financed, they don’t need to) by the Thai military, Love Missions is a silly, amusing, unabashed propaganda. It is harmless in itself, as long as bullets are harmless when they’re sitting on a table, or as long as Top Gun (and Tom Cruise) is harmless as a recruitment poster for the US Air Force, or as long as Pearl Harbor is harmless with Ben Affleck looking constipated throughout the Japanese attack. A more salient comparison is the Korean series Descendants of the Sun, the PM’s favourite show that conspicuously “inspired” the Thai series. A milk-fed, fine-looking captain spars with a feisty, pretty doctor in a troubled area: You don’t have to be too original when it comes to propaganda, just cast a toned, tanned, chiseled performer and put him in a camouflaged uniform, and all is well. If the Koreans can do it (and they have a genuine threat), we Siamese (with no threat) should do it too.

Let’s enjoy it. Let’s learn to stop worrying and love the bomb, as Dr Strangelove said. Let’s watch the second episode of the show, which will air tonight with a promise of more Meet Cute moments and displays of Captain Purich’s hairless chest. After all, we grew up watching Thai soaps, and our concept of entertainment and escapism has been rigorously shaped by local drama series and the way their characters interact with the world. In fact, I would even say that our concept of reality has been shaped, or heavily influenced, by our heavy consumption of TV melodrama, with their romantic, uncritical worldview of all hardships. As a result, one of our quaint abilities is to (deliberately) confuse what’s real and what’s fiction, between make-believe and faith, between TV heroism and real-life villainy. In short, between truth and lies.

It’s true that the army didn’t finance

Love Missions; it doesn’t need to, since Channel 7, the broadcaster, is owned by the army, and since we taxpayers have been schooled in the glorification of military authority anyway. The portrayal of Thai soldiers and policemen) in movies and television series is a subject worthy of a thesis, including how the production of military-themed content often spikes during post-coup periods. Normally, in every visual culture, corrupt officials are ready-made villains, because the position of power is by nature intimidating, terrifying and prone to violence. Or if not a villain, then they represent figures with an inner conflict, someone whose ideology is at odds with the way of the world. Hollywood glorifies the military, but in a more sophisticated and at least a selfserious way. Korean cinema meanwhile is full of thrillers featuring bad police officers or devious generals, not to mention historical films about the cruelty and injustices of dictatorial rulers.

But here, the Cold War mentality persists, reinforced by a series of coups: In visual fiction, the military figure retains the full propagandistic quality of courage and heroism. Over the years, it metamorphoses into a “soft power” image of goodnatured soldiers or romantic captains who conquer the heart of a village beauty.

Love Missions is just another example in a long line of TV series that directly (the

Phukong Yod Rak series) and indirectly (everything with men in uniform) suck up to the army. This one is particularly obsequious since the main character serves in the 21st Infantry Queen’s Guard, like Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha did. On the other hand, if you make a film that criticises the military, do it at your own risk. Last year, the Hong Kong film Operation Mekong, which recounts the real-life drug trafficking case in the Golden Triangle in which the Thai military is allegedly involved, was initially threatened with a ban, before it slipped through and went for release.

The revolution will not be televised, so what will? Apparently the lovelorn captain, wielding guns and roses for the good of all Thais.