Beauties and the beasts of coup regime
It’s just too rich to pass up, too weird and symbolic to ignore. The summit of the week between members of the girl group BNK48 and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was the moment when politics met pop-culture, when new met old, when cuties met coupmaker, when teens met tank, when beauty met … whatever.
As typical, the internet exploded, with memes flooding newsfeeds just hours later. Fans of the girl group were in an online uproar when they saw that the PM got to shake hands with their idols without having to queue up like they had to at handshake events (usually the queues take hours, many hours). The allegory was quickly drawn, for once again Gen Prayut jumped the queue and broke the rule to get to the position where others have to work hard for.
BNK48’s visit to Government House to promote a radio station run by the Public Relations Department may be just a fluffy photo-op that merited no attention (the picture was on the front page of this newspaper by the way). But to many, this is another development in the “political career” of the military prime minister as he strives, clumsily, to connect with the younger crowd by hitching on the infectious popularity of these white-teethed girls in a striped uniform (he tried to mime their dance moves, with disastrous results), in addition to his meeting earlier this month with the cast of the smash-hit series Bupphaesannivas.
And still, another debate that’s raging concerns the girls themselves and the tricky relationship between celebrities and ideology, between stardom and politics. By cosying up with the PM, did these cute girls endorse the military regime and thus become enemies of the democratic struggle? Are they less cute now that they’ve aligned themselves with the conservative camp? Or not really, for the girls of BNK48 were just doing their job, speaking their lines and smiling their smiles as their contracts demand them to. This is an issue we can expect to hear more when the election season actually arrives.
The thing with Thai celebrities is simple: To preserve their status and prolong their careers, they float above politics, but if they have to show in which direction they lean, it’s always the conservative and the right-wing end.
The image of superstars being all-tooliberal belongs only to Hollywood, to George Clooney and Meryl Streep and Lebron James; in Thailand (and Asia in general), stars and celebs are expected to conform to traditional values, to reinforce the narrative set by officialdom and live their lives as model citizens according to the middle-class khon dee — good person — ideal.
For those in the profession who rely on creativity and progressive thinking, the embrace of conventionalism can be counter-intuitive — but it’s the norm here. And when it’s time to choose politics, they play it safe, too, by leaning right, sometimes extreme right.
A good number of Thai actors and celebrities marched raucously against the Yingluck Shinawatra government — which was perfectly reasonable up to a point — and then remained absolutely, astonishingly silent after May 2014 or, worse, become pom-pom girls for the junta, even though there were clear reasons to be as indignant as they once were. Hardly any celebrities dare speak up about human rights, the coup, the constitution, the treatment of minorities, let alone about the “sensitive” subject of the election. Even if some of them want to, they know the risk of saying those things out loud, for in Thailand, supporting an election is more disturbing than supporting dictatorship.
Last year, singer Suthita “Image” Chanachaisuwan lashed out against poor public transport and complained that Thailand was an inefficient country. She was met with such a rabid backlash from those who called her naive and unpatriotic that she had to apologise. Earlier this month when the cast of the soap series Bupphaesannivas went to meet the PM, an election joke was thrown in between the pleasantries, and one of the actors had to douse it as if in fear of provoking Gen Prayut.
Why should we expect anything from celebrities, stars and entertainers when we can’t expect anything from the government, the military, politicians or the prime minister? Because, in the logic of pop culture, these celebrities in a way are a reflection of our dream, a representation of what we want to be, or what society aspires to be. I don’t want to generalise, and I may be wrong. But going by that logic, if BNK48’s lovey-dovey meeting with the PM is an encounter between the new and the old, the future and the past, the cuties and the coupmaker — we know who’s winning. We know who will keep winning, at least for a while.