Uploaded 1 November 2000
One of the most startling groups of images in the visually arresting Thai science fiction film Kawow tee Bangpleng (1994, directed by Nirattisai Kaljareuk) [2] occurs a few minutes after it opens, as a massive spacecraft hovers over a Thai village, shining a beam which, we later learn, is impregnating village women. During this sequence the camera returns repeatedly to shots which pointedly juxtapose the local Buddhist temple with the spacecraft; the image of an ancient statue of Buddha with the craft visible through windows behind it in particular stands as a striking and fertile emblem for the film, forcing a negotiation between Asian and alien, ancient and modern, static and mobile. Alien images – in the sense of Hollywood film products – are of course often found “framed” on Asian screens just as the alien craft is framed in the temple’s windows, and one unsurprising corollary of the success of these products in many Asian film markets has been the importation of Western generic forms into Eastern film production. In the popular cinemas of Hong Kong and India, for example, it is not in the least unusual to see Hollywood genre productions alluded to through a variety of means – sometimes parody, sometimes wholesale (even unacknowledged) borrowing. While on one level such borrowings would seem to reassert the cultural hegemony of Western cinema, part of what makes them of interest in the analysis of the cultural dynamics of globalisation is how they often suggest the appropriation of Western or global trends for specifically Asian purposes, demonstrating a translation or reworking of Hollywood generic forms to render them more germane to the local context.
This essay will offer an analysis of Kawow tee Bangpleng as one such case of generic appropriation in the context of Thai cinema. Thailand’s box office was, like many others, dominated by Hollywood productions throughout the 1990s, and there are clear Western influences (as well as, it should be mentioned, Hong Kong influences) in many domestic Thai films. The distinctly Western genre of science fiction, however, is rather uncommon in Thai cinema, perhaps in part because of the financial and technical resources required to achieve special effects at contemporary Hollywood standards. In any event, Kawow did exceptionally well in terms of its box-office gross, and was one of the most successful releases (among both Thai and Hollywood films screening in Thailand) up to its time. [3] It would not be surprising if some of the film’s success was owed to its relatively high production values – in particular its special effects technology – and to the popularity of Hollywood science fiction films generally. Part of what is quite striking about Kawow, however, is the way in which it diverges from Western science fiction, in effect localising an alien form by shifting the genre’s concerns to give them a distinctly Thai resonance – in this case literally putting the alien into an encounter with the Buddha. This analysis, then, will be concerned with showing how Kawow makes over science fiction’s alien invasion subgenre in such a way that its narrative, iconographic, and thematic elements all speak more directly to a Thai cultural context.
Owing to the relative unavailability of the film outside of Thailand, this discussion will be prefaced by a brief plot summary. In the midst of a small-town festival, revellers suddenly become frozen in place. A spacecraft appears and shines a beam throughout the town, and when it departs people begin to move again, with no memory of what has happened. Within a day, it is discovered that all of the women in the town, whether sexually active or not, have become pregnant. Professor Somsak (who is sterile but whose wife, too, has become pregnant), has a biologist acquaintance, Siri, come from a university in Bangkok to examine the phenomenon, and they soon suspect alien involvement in the pregnancies. Within a relatively short time, the women all give birth to seemingly normal babies. The children grow and learn their school lessons at an unnaturally rapid pace. They seem overly obedient, but also oddly unaffectionate with their parents, and they begin to demonstrate the ability to communicate telepathically amongst themselves. Tensions grow as the children start to show physical differences with the evident onset of their adolescence (pointy ears, triangular dot patterns on their faces, eyes that sometimes turn blue and blink from the lower lids) and to spend most of their time isolated from their families – often at the schoolhouse – and under the evident leadership of one child, Somporn. Livestock begins to disappear, as, unbeknownst to the townspeople, the youths are consuming it, and in two instances individual townspeople are killed (after apparently being hypnotised) when they find out too much about the group. Somporn pays occasional visits to the town’s head monk to question him (scornfully and condescendingly) about human habits and discovers that the monk, too, can communicate telepathically, through Buddhist meditation. This communication is put to use on one occasion when the youths have massed at the town police station, angered that some among them have been detained for questioning, and the monk appears to intervene telepathically to stem any violence.
Incidents such as this make it clearer to the townspeople that the adolescents are of alien origin, that they are the source of many of the mysterious goings-on, and that they are to be feared; at the same time, however, the parents are for the most part deeply attached to their “offspring” and want no actions taken against them. Tensions become still worse when one father, drunk and in a rage about the ostracism that his alien son is bringing to his family, tries to burn his son alive. It becomes clear to Siri and others, moreover, that the eventual alien goal is to take over the nation and the planet; and Somporn admits as much to the monk, indicating that people were dying out on his home planet. The monk continues to try to convince Somporn, however, of the importance of keeping his emotions in check, as well as of “extending compassion” to others, along the lines of Buddhist teachings. Somporn generally scoffs at these suggestions, and is concerned that Yuwasak, the son of Prof. Somsak, is gaining too human a sense of filial empathy and obligation. Somporn nevertheless grudgingly agrees to let some of the youths use their alien powers to help the humans when floods threaten the town. As an indirect result of their exertions, however, the youths start to fall ill and die; an autopsy reveals that another physical difference–a lack of a spleen–has rendered them susceptible to earthly diseases. The aliens realise that the planet will not sustain their race and that the survivors must return to the ship; Somporn now comes to appreciate the monk’s message of empathy and bids him an affectionate farewell, as do the other alien children to their sobbing human parents, before ascending to the sky.
The film’s reference to and use of Western cinematic conventions are clear from its plot premise – humans give birth to alien beings – and from some of its science fiction iconography and special effects technique. While, as Carlos Clarens points out, the theme of non-human birth from humans extends back to antiquity, in various myths of immaculate conception for example, and across cultures, [4] the science fiction thematic of aliens from other planets (rather than supernatural beings) somehow colonising the human reproductive process came to prominence more specifically in science fiction film and literature of the 1950s – in particular in the American film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, based in turn on Jack Finney’s serial and novel The body snatchers) and the British film Village of the Damned (1960, based on John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos), but also in such less-celebrated 1950s science fiction films as I Married a Monster from Outer Space (US 1958) and Night of the Blood Beast (US 1958); in subsequent decades there appeared a host of other more graphic US and British science fiction films depicting alien/human birthing processes, for example Alien (US 1979), Inseminoid (Britain 1980), Xtro (Britain 1982), various remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (US 1978, US 1993), and a remake of Village of the Damned (US 1995). The plot of Kawow has particularly striking similarities to that of Village of the Damned (1960), as that earlier film also concerns a period of mass unconsciousness in a small town, followed by mass unexplained pregnancies and mass births of telepathically-communicative, unemotional alien children who end up taking up residence in the schoolhouse and whose eyes glow when they turn on townspeople. It could also be noted that the author of the novel on which the Thai film was based, Oxford-educated Kukrit Pramoj (later the Thai Prime Minister), was in the West – indeed, working for Hollywood as an actor (on the film The Ugly American (US 1963)) – not too long after the release of Village of the Damned, so he might well have had occasion to see or hear about the film and certainly could have had opportunity to read the novel. The film’s director indicates that he himself had not been familiar with the earlier film [5] – but for the sake of the argument to be made here, however, it does not matter if in fact neither the novelist nor the director happened to know of that specific earlier novel and film; what is pertinent, rather, is that some of the discourses of an anglophone science fiction tradition made their way into the Thai film, as is evidenced for example in several plot elements, no matter by what specific route they arrived there.
The influence of an alien (in two senses of the term) genre is also evident in certain aspects of the look of Kawow tee Bangpleng, in particular in the design of the enormously detailed “mother ship” which appears at the opening and close of the film; the look and the scale of the spacecraft – as well as the narrative context of its second appearance, in which emotion-wrought but not terrified earthlings are bathed in the craft’s light – bring to mind certain scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (US 1977), a film for which the director, who played a major part in designing his own special effects, has expressed his admiration. [6] One might note as well a couple of details vaguely reminiscent of the perennially popular sixties American science fiction television series Star Trek; the bright green t-shirts the alien youths wear recall the simple and brightly colored skin-tight tops of the Enterprise crew, while their pointy ears readily bring to mind those of the alien member of that crew, Dr. Spock.
But while the engagement with a foreign generic tradition is immediately clear enough, the dislocation of that form, in several senses, is rendered equally obvious, as should be suggested by the description of the spacecraft/Buddha shots above. The opening of the film is set not at a generic small town – often the target of choice for invading aliens – but at one well immersed in symbols of “Thai-ness,” a setting in which markers of the “local” are foregrounded. We see the upcountry village of Bangpleng in the midst of the uniquely Thai Loy Kratong festival, in which little floats are constructed and sent out on the river in hopes that the goddess of the waters will answer the senders’ prayers. The ritual is also intended to ask forgiveness for the abuse of the river over the course of the year – a fact which points to the traditional and on-going importance of Thai waterways to village life in providing sustenance, helping with agriculture, and so on. The film cross-cuts between this culturally specific festival (which in this instance also includes exhibitions of Thai boxing and Thai dance) and another culturally-loaded site, the local wat (temple), at which young novice monks are experiencing difficulty focussing on their meditation, with the excitement of the festival so near. The abbot notices their distraction, but he responds not with severity, but with an easy-going response many would characterise as distinctively Thai, granting the children leave to enjoy themselves at the festival. As a small town, moreover, Bangpleng is distinctively beyond the reach of the international currents of cosmopolitan Bangkok; it is also not distinguished as a border town. The alien invasion which ensues, then, is into a space which has been marked as distinctively and purely Thai.
Given this nationally connotative set-up, it is not surprising that the narrative focuses on characterising the aliens (and implicitly, through opposition, the Thais), revealing the nature of their incursion, and providing an exposition of Bangpleng’s response (and by extension Thailand’s response) to the alien presence. This premise of invasion (and the subsequent discovery of and response to the alien) is of course the stuff of many an anglophone alien invasion or visitation film, shared, for example, by most of the science fiction films cited earlier, as well as by such classics of the genre as The Thing(US 1951 and the 1982 remake), Invaders from Mars (US 1953), It Came from Outer Space (US 1953), The War of the Worlds (US 1953), The Quatermass Experiment (Britain 1955), Quatermass 2 (Britain 1957), and E.T. the extra-terrestrial (US 1982). Kawow certainly has in common with these films a concern with what defines the alien and what kind of threat to nation it may pose – yet it is also precisely in this realm that the film’s operations of generic dislocation become most pronounced. Western science fiction films have tended to contain within them ideological traces of the Cold War 1950s, the paranoid heyday and key defining moment of the science fiction genre, and as a function of this even those films which position the alien visitors as relatively benign figures (It came from outer space) if not downright divine ones (E.T.) include sequences which nevertheless bespeak a profound revulsion for and fear of an alien body that is irreducibly other and give voice to human alarm (justified or not) over the alien presence. In Kawow, on the other hand, while the aliens give rise to some in factjustified anxieties over possible harm to Thailand and to the planet, they do not precipitate the kind of profound revulsion and fear of the other evidenced in the Western films.
In terms of figurations of bodily difference, an instructive comparison can be made between the Thai film and the two films of Village of the Damned. In all three films human mothers give birth to alien children through some unknown process of reproductive colonisation, and in all three films the children are initially human in appearance (and evidently share genetic characteristics with their parents commonly understood as racial), if also intellectually precocious and unaffectionate in their behavior. In the case of the Western films, certain physical characteristics – specifically, shocks of white-blonde hair and eyes with strange powers – distinguish the alien children from relatively early on, but in the Thai film, too, adolescence brings on certain corporeal markers of difference (as described earlier). Yet in the Thai film these quirky traits do not so strongly mark the offspring as racially (if not species-wise) alien as do those in the British and US films; these are relatively subtle characteristics, not so immediately and strikingly noticeable as the strange coifs of the anglophone films. More importantly in the Villagefilms, doctors discover early on from microscopic examination that the children have shared unusual hair and nail patterns–that is to say, that at a hidden, cellular level they are a priori alien, that their very systems are inhuman, as is their genetic make-up; in the 1995 version of the film there is the further suggestion that the human appearance hides an alien one, the latter being visible in an autopsied alien fetus and also through the skin of all the youths when they exert their mental energies at the film’s climax. In the Thai film, on the other hand, the alien’s physical difference proves to be not such a profound systemic one; what is ultimately revealed is not a cellular or global difference, but a flaw in structure, the lack of a spleen.
As the Western films, in keeping with dominant science fiction conventions, figure the alien body as profoundly, irreconcilably other, so do they figure the alien race as beyond any political reconciliation with the human race; in both versions of Village of the Damned, relationships between the interlopers and other town residents become increasingly suspicious and hostile as the children’s difference becomes more evident, and interactions between the two groups result in the deaths of a number of townspeople, victims of the children’s developing powers. After efforts to inculcate human values and feelings of empathy in the alien youth fail, the main protagonist – the terrestrial “father” of one of the aliens – eventually sets aside his paternal feelings and sacrifices his own life in order to blow up the alien youths under his charge, thereby preventing the colonisation and dominance of the earth clearly planned by the intruding race.
In Kawow tee Bangpleng, on the other hand, the alien youths are presented as not beyond redemption, and while a few of the more informed characters do surmise that they are part of an alien plan to take over the village and then the nation, even they are not so alarmed that they feel the youths must be immediately destroyed. This is not to say that the town accepts the strange youths in their midst with open arms; after the youths start exhibiting physical differences and isolating themselves in particular, they clearly evoke much the same hostile reaction from many of the townspeople as do their counterparts in the Village films. Nevertheless, the town seems prepared to tolerate their presence and their terrestrial “parents” for the most part prepared to defend them as their own. The narrative does include a few deadly encounters – but it emphasises just as much a mutual process of learning and adjustment on the part of the villagers and the youths. The alien children do successfully complete their schooling – albeit with unaccustomed speed – in the village school, a key place for the inculcation of national values in all Thai children (a connection alluded to in a scene of a school flag-raising). The parents do come to realise their profound attachment to their children, in spite of the youths’ aloofness and strangeness. And some of the children evidently come to realise their own sense of empathy and obligation towards their terrestrial parents – a distinctively Thai sense of obligation sufficiently strong that when flood waters threaten the town, they are willing to put themselves at risk and to delay work on an alien-dictated colonisation plan in order to help hold back the waters. [7]
The emphasis in Kawow then – very unlike that of most Western science fiction films – is on local adaptation to rather than expulsion of the alien, which is met in turn by learning and adaptation on the part of the alien. This is made most explicit in the extensive scenes of interaction between the abbot and Somporn, the leader of the alien group and correspondingly the most recalcitrant, as well as the most disdainful of human habits and, more specifically, the Thai-Buddhist worldview. His constant returns to the monk, however, suggest a certain curiosity about this worldview, as well as, perhaps, a desire for terrestrial parental guidance. Somporn scoffs at the calm Buddhist acceptance of suffering and death as inevitable aspects of the cycle of life in which all beings and events are profoundly interconnected, at Buddhist teachings of extending compassion in order to diffuse possible conflict, and at Buddhist notions of achievement through a selfless on-going performance of good deeds, rather than a focussed pursuit of personal gains. [8] “That’s weak,” the youth insists regarding the Buddhist acceptance of life’s inevitabilities, “You all give up. This is the planet of the powerless.” Somporn’s contrastingly aggressive, hot-blooded attitudes are illustrated in his decision to blow up a threatening snake (using his mental powers) rather than, as the monk suggests, extending compassion to it and avoiding violence.
Somporn, however, is himself eventually forced to come face-to-face with life’s inevitabilities, and with the intertwining and interdependence of people’s fates, as sickness overwhelms the alien group (because of their missing spleens), their colonising goals notwithstanding, and they are forced to seek assistance from the town hospital and then return to their ship to save their lives. By this time most of the aliens have begun to appreciate (along the lines of Buddhist precepts) the inescapability of fate, the interrelatedness of all beings’ existences, and, hence, the need for extending kindness and compassion to others; and they have also come to feel profound attachments towards their terrestrial parents, so the departure is both tearful and, in that the ascending visitors have now attained a new level of wisdom, quite literally uplifting. This particular deus ex machina readily recalls that of another Hollywood science fiction film, The War of the Worlds, in which invading aliens are likewise suddenly dispatched by terrestrial germs. The differences, however, are again striking and illuminating. In the American film, the defeat of the aliens is presented as rather directly resulting from the hand of God, the narrator telling us that they are destroyed by “the littlest things that God in His wisdom” chose to create on the planet; it marks the inevitable achievement of America’s Manifest Destiny. In Kawow, on the other hand, the disease is not figured as an act of divine intervention, but rather simply a manifestation of the continuing, natural cycle of life, in which, as the abbot reminds, everyone has to face pain, sickness, and death at some point. There is no emphasis on human triumph over an evil invading force (although the narrative economy does in fact now obviate the problem of the alien threat to human existence); the main sense of resolution, rather, is in the alien youths’ (and especially Somporn’s) learning to appreciate the Buddhist order of things on Earth.
In another related divergence from the climax of a Hollywood narrative, there is no ultimate focus here on the individual achievements of a clearly delineated main protagonist. Some of the functions of the main protagonist of the Hollywood model, rather, are dispersed among a number of characters – in particular the abbot, the school principal, Siri, and Somsak and his wife–and this is interestingly in keeping with the film’s Buddhist preaching against individualistic, self-centered drives and goals. Certainly there are distinct struggles and tensions between certain key protagonists and antagonists, but these seem to be more in the service of a portrait of broader tensions, exchanges, and compromises both within and between two key character groupings – the villagers and the aliens. This focus on collectivities and on collective consciousness is also a feature of the Western science fiction film – especially those of the 1950s–but there the figuration is almost invariably a negative one: What marks the alien as unforgivably other (as well as akin to invading communists and/or oppressive McCarthyites) in such films as The War of the Worlds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Village of the Damned is its propensity for group-think, the extinguishing of all individualistic drives and desires in the service of collective needs. In Kawow on the other hand, collective thinking is not presented as a necessarily evil or wholly alien venture; the problem with the aliens, for example, stems not from the fact that they share thoughts collectively and telepathically, but that they are initially unwilling to share thoughts beyond their immediate grouping, to extend their considerations to the larger Thai community in which they have been reared. The fact that the abbot is able to also share thoughts with the alien collective telepathically through his Buddhist meditation is shown as an affirmation of the monk’s strength of character, rather than something which casts doubt upon his sympathies (as it would most likely have been represented in a Hollywood film). [9] Again, the film’s conclusion, in which the aliens, forced of necessity to seek help from the townspeople, come to a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of the larger community, affirms the importance of a broader collective awareness over individual achievement and selfish drives. (The film’s striking camerawork, which includes a number of impressively choreographed tracking shots, operates to highlight the importance of this collectivity as well: The more extended tracking shots are specifically employed in sequences of broader community interaction, such as at the festival and at the village hospital, and function to visually draw connections among members of the community.)
It is hoped that the foregoing discussion has begun to suggest some of the ways that Kawow tee Bangpleng makes adjustments in characterisation and plot which appear to render the science fiction narrative more germane to Thai contexts. Western abhorrence of otherness gives way to relative tolerance and adjustment, with violent confrontation diffused to allow for an emphasis on the dissemination of a distinctively Buddhist wisdom, [10] and all of this occurs within a Thai-specific visual and cultural field. I would now like to look more closely and concretely at the cultural logic behind some of these adjustments, to suggest more exactly their ramifications and resonances in the particular national and historical contexts of Kawow’s production. More specifically, I would like to now go further in suggesting why it is that the representation of alien visitation takes the form it does and what relationships this representation bears to Thai history and culture.
As I have earlier indicated, the preoccupation with the defining of, and the response to, things understood as foreign/alien/other is a key area of both continuity with and divergence from the Western alien invasion subgenre. Again, where Kawow tee Bangpleng appears to diverge from Western precedents is in figuring alien beings not only as corporeally similar to the Thais but also, ultimately, as spiritually and politically compatible after sufficient mutual Thai-alien interaction. And just as anglophone science fiction’s abhorrence of the other resonates with contemporary negative cultural discourses about persons considered politically, nationally, racially, or sexually other (e.g., the fear of Russians and communists in the 1950s or the denigration of immigrants in the 1980s), so can Kawow’s narrative of adjustment to alien visitors be seen as having culturally-specific resonances. Thailand’s history of interaction with outsiders in its midst – both from elsewhere in Asia and from the West – is a lengthy and complex one, and Thailand is, significantly, a country with a history of heterogeneity, a tradition of both adopting and adapting to foreign entities of various kinds. The development of Thailand involved the migration and incorporation of peoples from various neighboring nations – notably from regions of China and Laos. [11] As elsewhere, the involvement of ethnic Chinese in trade, dating back to the turn of the last century, has been particularly important – but significantly without the same level of anti-Chinese sentiment which has been and continues to be witnessed in other countries in the region (such as Indonesia and Malaysia). While there have been anti-Chinese policies under the more nationalistic Thai administrations of the 20th century, the Sino-Thais have nevertheless retained a general social acceptance if not a high social standing within Thailand, and they today remain a central part of both Bangkok’s commercial world and its more financially well-off social classes. [12]
A far better-known tradition of Thai survival through adjustment to foreign influences is that of Thailand’s response to the West. It is commonly understood that Thailand’s distinction of having avoided the sweep of Western colonisation through Asia (just as it holds off a colonisation by intermittently blue-eyed aliens in Kawow) rested in substantial measure upon its canny acceptance of a measured amount of trade and diplomatic interaction with the Western powers, as well as the delimited importation of Western technologies, styles, customs, laws. By giving in to some of the West’s desires, Thailand thus diffused some of the usual economic and political motivations for colonisation while, in providing the appearance of Western-style “civilisation,” lessening the usual justifications for foreign conquest. (It is ironic that, in a further Thai adoption of Western perspectives, the power of that very monarchy which initially fostered interaction with the West as a self-protective measure was significantly decreased, when Thais presumably influenced by Western ideas successfully agitated for an end to absolute monarchic rule in 1932.)
As important as these interactions with foreign influences were to the development of modern Thailand, outside forces were once again very much in the minds of Thais at the time Kawow tee Bangpleng was being made, as this was at the crest of an historically unprecedented amount of foreign investment in the country (from the late 1980s up to the economic crash of 1997), both Western and, quite substantially, Japanese. [13] As at the turn of the century, it was Thailand’s cheap resources and economic potentials which attracted outsiders, while Thailand’s malleability (in terms of trade policies) made it an easy country for outsiders to interact with. While Thailand managed to benefit from the monumental influx of foreign capital, there were also concerns about the extent and range of foreign influence, about the atrophy of Thai culture in the face of foreign products and fast foods and media, which led in turn to efforts to promote local businesses and products. Along similar lines, a burgeoning Western and Japanese tourist trade in this boom period was also seen as providing welcome economic benefits, while posing a potential danger if left fully unregulated – specifically in the form of foreign cultural influence and, in the case of sex tourism, the exploitation of Thais as sex-workers.
Kawow tee Bangpleng appears to draw considerably from these various Thai discourses about the nature and history of Thai-foreign interaction. The aliens, like many outsiders in Thai history, come to the Kingdom to take advantage of Thai resources and bodies – suggested here in their plundering of livestock for nourishment and their use of Thai women’s reproductive systems for the gestation of their young. Indeed, we learn that the alien motivation for their procreative excursion is the failure of child-bearing on their own planet; Thailand is thus figured to stand in on several levels as a realm of fertility and nourishment, both physically and (through Buddhist teachings) spiritually, as that with the potential to provide what is lacking in barren lands elsewhere. Yet at the same time, in a kind of reciprocity, the alien visitation appears to increase Thai fertility, giving babies to couples who, owing to age or sterility, have not been able to have children. In a similar kind of duality, the Thai community is threatened by the alien intruders, but also is protected by them when floods arrive (just as, for example, the US threatens economic domination but also protects through extensive investment and advisement, as well as military cooperation and training); and the Thai parents of alien children are not willing to give up their feelings of love and affection for them, be they potential colonisers or not – just as, I think it can be readily argued, the Thais have their own deep and historically significant long-standing fascination with various foreign cultures which are nevertheless also potentially dominating or exploitative. The alien threat is held off both because of Thai compromise and malleability (which makes the villagers not immediately worrisome for the aliens) and because of the Thai ability to impart some of its own values and perspectives to the aliens, who become more and more humanised. This sense of a bi-directional influence also jibes with the economic analogy: as foreign funds flowed into Thailand during the boom period, so did Thai products flow outward, followed soon afterwards by Thai capital – from more successful Thai companies making international investments. [14]
On an extra-diegetic level, this whole Thai-foreign dynamic can be seen to resonate in the production context of Kawow tee Bangpleng as well. It is the work of a Thai production company, which adopts and adjusts an “alien” form in order to succeed in a realm (Thai film exhibition) in which foreign elements and foreign funds have come to dominate. This large-budgeted Thai production was only able to come into existence, moreover, because of the kinds of funds that were available at the time of the alien-driven economic boom. And the production company itself (the Kantana Group) is one of those Thai businesses which, doing sufficiently well in strong economic times, chose to start sending its own Thai monies and influence outward – not only in the form of the film at hand (which made the rounds of international film festivals and was eventually shown on Australian television), but, more substantially, in selling and acquiring television programming internationally and in operating a Cambodian-based television station.
While the film’s encounter with the alien appears to engage most centrally discourses about the historical dynamic of Thai-foreign relations, a number of other important and related metaphors suggest themselves as well. Perhaps the most explicitly articulated of these is the alien interaction as a metaphor for the Thai encounter with modernity. Again, that opening Buddha/spacecraft juxtaposition highlights this thematic, the technology being worlds apart from Thai village existence, either of the 1930s (when the film seems to be set) or the 1990s. The sense of the aliens as not just a foreign, but also a specifically modern force is suggested as well in some of the exchanges between Somporn and the abbot, where the alien scoffs at the village’s old-world instrumentality, its reliance on metal, paper, and gunpowder for data-storage and weaponry purposes, rather than on the energy fields the aliens have learned to manipulate; the clear reference to computers and modern weaponry, technologies which Thailand has been eager to have but for which it has depended on foreigners, readily link the foreign and modern analogies. In the film’s terms, these would seem to be tools of speed, aggression, and violence, linked to Somporn’s colonising drives and his disdain for Buddhist reflection and pacifism. (The connection thus suggested between technological advancement on the one hand and spiritual impoverishment and physical devolution (here, in lacking a spleen) on the other is interestingly shared in the alien representations of a number of 1950s Hollywood science fiction films, such as Rocketship X-M (1950) and Invaders from Mars(1953).) Yet the aliens’ powers are put to good use when helping stave off the floods: It would appear that a proper balance is required between foreign technology and local spirituality. On an extra-diegetic level again, the film itself constitutes another effort at such balance, as it makes use of alien film technology for local expression; and this relationship is redoubled in the film’s special effects technology, the key tool for visually representing the modern, developed by the film’s Thai director – an admirer of a number of Hollywood UFO narratives – after consultation with a Western special effects technician. [15]
A third, somewhat more implicit opposition lined up with those between the traditional and the modern and between Thai and foreign is that between non-urban and urban – more specifically, of course, between village existence and Bangkok. Bangkok is itself a ready emblem for Thailand’s often awkward and often incomplete embrace of the modern, with its notoriously unruly traffic flows, its long-stalled urban rail projects intended to partially take over from its 10-cent-fare ramshackle public buses, its chaotic growth of skyscrapers and shopping malls, centred over several areas (or, rather, over no one area in particular), many projects halted midway due to poor financial planning. And Bangkok is also plainly linked to Thailand’s foreign encounters, it being the modern port of entry for most foreign visitors, as well as the place most visibly reshaped by global influences. The opposition between the village and Bangkok is a long-standing and central one in Thai politics, culture, and social existence – so even a passing textual reference to it is worth noting, particularly if, as in the case of Kawow tee Bangpleng, it operates in conjunction with these other related thematic oppositions. By the time of the film’s production, moreover, the forces of globalisation had made the capital city’s presence in village existence even more acute; as Craig Reynolds describes (in 1998), “As Thailand’s economic boom has pushed Bangkok-based business to the far corners of the country over the past decade, it has become increasingly difficult to speak of any part of the country as remote.” [16]
Bangkok’s importance as the nation’s economic centre, its population growing and shrinking substantially with the numbers of villagers who travel there for work in more difficult times, is alluded to very near the film’s opening (and moments before the alien visitation) as a young man tells his girlfriend he wants to return to Bangkok to work some more years before returning again to start a family with her; the initial reference to the capital city is thus not only syntactically linked to the alien visitation, but also causally tied to fertility and enrichment (the economic ability to rear children) and, paradoxically, to bodily exploitation (the village man’s urban labor). The opposition between Bangpleng and Bangkok is figured again when Somsak goes to the larger city to fetch Siri–the possessor of modern knowledge – and his position in the village (as a Bangkokian) remains one of outside observer throughout the film. Even Somsak’s wife, in a moment of emotion, deprecates Siri as an outsider in their home (where he takes lodging during his investigations) because he is prepared to blame the village’s livestock disappearances on their (alien) children. Siri becomes aligned with another outsider (one who is also critical of the aliens) because of his status – specifically, the school principal, who is away in Nakhom Pathom (a more developed province close to Bangkok) during the alien visitation and hence does not fall pregnant, a fact which makes the other villagers oddly wary of her. Even when the extent of the potential alien danger becomes clearer, the village chooses not to call upon Bangkok for assistance, but to face its problems at the local level. It is interesting in this regard that the problem with which the aliens assist the villagers is flooding – as flood control is an area in which villages are largely dependent on the administration in Bangkok, while at the same time water management policy (especially the construction of dams) has been a central source of political tension between the villages and Bangkok. Thematically relevant as well is the fact that the river is set up in Kawow as not only a potential threat, but also as a key transportation link – a literal line of connection – between Bangpleng and the urban realm, and by extension the global realm.
As the aliens are metaphorically aligned with foreigners, with modernity, and with the urban, they are linked still more concretely with adolescence; again, they look very much like Thai teens, and their key markings of alien difference arrive as typically adolescent body developments: an unexpected nocturnal protrusion (of the ears), accompanied by small spots on the face. Indeed, the foregoing account should strongly suggest similarities between Kawow and quite a number of “teens gone wild” films: the film focuses on a group of juvenile delinquents who choose the company of their school peers over their families, share rigidly conformist codes of dress and behavior, indulge in their carnal desires by cover of night, and openly flaunt their disrespect of community authority figures. But while these traits might recall the fears of 1950s America, they are quite germane to 1990s Thailand. Thai fears about changing – and increasingly Westernised – mores and lifestyles in the 1990s, in part a fallout of the accelerated development brought on by the economic boom, naturally often centered around young people and teens in particular: Thais often took note of the decline of old niceties, such as a lessening of traditional respect for elders (as exemplified by Somporn in the film) in conjunction with a decline of the Thai custom of immediatelywai-ing one’s elders, [17] and a falling away of fairly recent taboos against touching members of the opposite sex in public. And just as 1950s American fears of juvenile delinquency arose in conjunction with the delineation of a new, distinct teen subculture and identity, so too did Thailand’s 1990s fears arise at the same time as the appearance of a new Thai youth culture – a distinctively urban, individualistic, globally-influenced identity counter to many traditional Thai currents. [18] The film’s thematic of “alien as teenager” thus readily meshes with those of “alien as foreign/modern/urban”. The theme also has an analogue once more in the film’s industrial context: Thai filmmakers in the 1990s felt pressures to cater to the new economic force of teen consumers, and teen-oriented film projects thus displaced others. [19] Kawow’s own existence, then, with the teen emphasis of its storyline, may have been predicated in part on this new youthful “invasion” of the audience demographic, which likely also contributed to the film’s box-office success.
One further thematic resonance of the aliens does not quite fit into the constellation of meanings suggested above, but is strongly delineated and culturally relevant nevertheless. While engaging these other references, the aliens are also figured in such a way as to bring to mind a military unit. The youths move in regimented (and, in some sequences, highly choreographed) fashion, following the orders of their leader, and wear uniform, earth-toned (army green?) clothing. In fact, as gradually becomes clear, they are a foreign army of sorts, an advance party to spearhead an alien colonisation. In anglophone science fiction, alien groups are also often figured as like terrestrial battalions – as in, for example, The War of the Worlds, Independence Day (US 1996), and Starship Troopers (US 1997) – and in many of the 1950s examples explicit connections are drawn between alien armies and armies from behind the Iron Curtain, with which they are sometimes initially confused by earthlings. The important difference in the Thai film is that its alien army does not appear particularly foreign, that its soldiers look very much like Thai teens. In the Thai context, however, the intrusion of a Thai military into civilian life has strong and immediate historical resonance. Without going into substantial detail, it should suffice for the sake of the present argument to point out that the history of Thai government in the 20th century has included quite a few coups, often with direct military involvement, and that Thai rule has, since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, involved negotiations among a number of centres of power – the civilian government, the military, and the monarchy, with the last of these three sometimes interceding in cases of intractable tensions between the former two. At the time of Kawow‘s release, the violent, military-backed coup of 1992 would have been still fresh in the minds of Thai audiences. As a result of this failed coup, the military lost much of its influence, but, as one Thai commentator describes it in the mid-1990s, “authoritarian forces within the military and remnants of rightist groups and their allies in political parties remain important elements in the private sector and media and are standing in the wings,” though they have learned that “in the age of globalisation, the territory and sovereignty of the nation-state are not so easily controlled.” [20]
In pointing to this concatenation of resonances, it has not been the aim of this essay to impose a single, distinct reading upon Kawow tee Bangpleng, which undoubtedly holds multiple competing and possibly even contradictory significations – particularly when examined by viewers from both within and outside the originating culture. Such a multiplicity would appear all the more likely given the differing perspectives on the narrative material held by the two key “authors” linked with the text: the writer of the original novel, having been a Thai leader during a number of particularly turbulent times, was himself directly involved in quite a few of the historical events cited above and has been outspoken in his own concerns about the evolution of Thai identity in the face of foreign influence, [21] while the director of the film, beyond any concerns he might have about issues of Thai identity, also holds a genuine personal interest in alien visitation. [22] The aim here, rather, has been to show the presence of a number of Thai-specific discourses operating within the text, such as those pertaining to the centrality of Buddhist precepts in the Thai worldview, the Thai experience of foreign powers and of modernity, the opposition between village and capital city, the changing status of teenagers, and the role of the military in Thai life. This has been undertaken in order to make the case that, rather than merely adopting (or, more to the point, being colonised by) alien generic forms, Kawow tee Bangpleng puts such forms under the sway of a range of Thai discourses. To return to this essay’s opening image, the alien vehicle is viewed through the window of the Thai temple, not vice-versa. As Annette Hamilton has argued, because Thailand has never been colonised, “the idea of being confirmed in the eyes of an Other has never loomed large.” [23] [ In the case of Thai film, as in many other realms of Thai culture and life, the alien presence is nevertheless a real and potentially deleterious one. What Kawow offers us is an illustration of one possible – and distinctly Thai–response to such global currents: a modest gesture of inclusion, but one predicated upon an alien adaptation to Thai perspectives.
Footnotes:
[1] The author would like to express his gratitude to Nirattisai Kaljareuk, for granting an interview and supplying a videotape of his subtitled print of the film; to Pornpun Sungsilchai, for coordinating the interview and providing interpretation; to Pornpisuth Osathanond, for likewise coordinating and interpreting, as well as providing further (and patient) explanations of aspects of Thai language and culture; and to Chalida Uabumrungjit, for her helpful suggestions on pursuing the study of Thai film.
[2] The title is usually translated as Blackbirds at Bangpleng. A more faithful (and germane) translation sometimes used is Cuckoos at Bangpleng, as the kawow is a subspecies within the cuckoo family (specifically, the Malaysian koel) which is known to leave its eggs in others’ nests.
[3] “Top ten grossing films in Thailand,” Cinemag, September 1996. Cited in Stephen McElhinney, “Globalisation of film and television: a comparison of the preferences of adolescents in Australia and Thailand,” Revisioning the Future Conference, Macquarie University, Australia, 14 April 1999.
[4] Carlos Clarens, An Illustrated History of Horror Films (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967), 136.
[5] This and all subsequent attributions to Nirattisai Kaljareuk are from an interview with the author in Nonthaburi, Thailand in July 1998.
[6] Nirattisai interview.
[7] On the nature of Thai family obligations, see, for example, Bencha Yoddumnern-Attig, “Thai family structure and organization: changing roles and duties in historical perspective,” in Bencha Yoddumnern-Attig, Kerry Richter, et al, [eds.] Changing Roles and Statuses of Women in Thailand: A Documentary Assessment, (Nakhonpathom, Thailand: Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University at Salaya, 1992), 8-24; and Niels Mulder, Inside Thai Society: Interpretations of Everyday Life, 5th ed. (Amsterdam: The Pepin Press, 1996), 77-79, 89-93.
[8] For overviews of Buddhist precepts as understood in Thailand, see Mulder, chapter 2, and Pinit Ratanakul, “The dynamics of tradition and change in Theravada Buddhism,” in Pinit Ratanakul and U. Kyaw Than, [eds.] Development, Modernization, and Tradition in Southeast Asia: Lessons from Thailand, (Bangkok: Mahidol University, 1990), 115-52
[9] This notion of using Buddhist meditation to telepathically communicate with visiting aliens is not unique to the film; it is a concept often articulated within UFO enthusiast subcultures in Thailand (much akin to similar UFO enthusiast subcultures in the US). Indeed, time and location details of possible UFO visitations are sometimes disseminated in advance to enthusiasts by those who claim to have such telepathic connections with aliens.
[10] This is not at all to argue that there are no Thai films which emphasise violence or that all Thai films focus on Buddhist teachings; rather, I am claiming that this particular film’s adjustments to a Western model suggest these particular aspects of “Thai-ness.”
[11] Craig J. Reynolds, “Globalization and cultural nationalism in modern Thailand,” in Joel S. Kahn, [ed.] Southeast Asian Identities: Culture and the Politics of Representation in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1998), 120-22.
[12] Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker, Thailand’s Boom and Bust(Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1998), 172-76.
[13] Phongpaichit and Baker, 1-5, 28-43.
[14] Phongpaichit and Baker, 50-54.
[15] Nirattisai interview.
[[16] Reynolds, 116.
[17] The wai is the traditional Thai greeting, with the palms pressed together, fingers pointing upwards, and the head bowed.
[18]Phongpaichit and Baker, 154-58.
[19] Anchalee Chaiworaporn, “Behind Thailand’s silver screen,”Sawasdee 26, no. 9 (1997): 24-28; Annette Hamilton, “Cinema and nation: dilemmas of representation in Thailand,” East-West Film Journal 7, no. 1 (1993): 92; Boonrak Boonyaketmala, “The rise and fall of the film industry in Thailand, 1897-1992,” East-West Film Journal 6, no. 2 (1992): 90-93.
[20] Chai-Anan Samudavanija, “Old soldiers never die, they are just bypassed: the military, bureaucracy, and globalisation,” in Kevin Hewison, [ed.] , Political Change in Thailand: Democracy and Participation, (London: Routledge, 1997), 57.
[21] For some of Kukrit’s commentaries on issues of Thai identity, see the collected English-language writings in Steve Van Beek, ed., M.R. Kukrit Pramoj: His Wit and Wisdom (Bangkok: Editions Duang Kamol, 1983). In his introduction to the paperback edition of the novel (in Thai), Kukrit comments explicitly on his interest in exploring the interaction of Western forms and Thai culture;Kawow tee Bangpleng (Bangkok: Siam Rath, 1989).
[22] Nirattisai interview.
[23] Hamilton, 93.