Beneath the state and red rhetoric - is it "tightening the area" or "a crackdown"?; is it "a crackdown" or "a massacre" - words and visuals offer deeper reading of the ongoing war to capture space, literal or psychological. Euphemisms are as prevalent as vitriol: snipers = phantoms, harmony = oblivion, love = limbo, oblivion + limbo = unity, and so on. Also on the streets around the clash sites, we're witnessing Bangkok's golden age of incidental performance art and semantic puppetry.
The Ratchaprasong signpost was defaced, removed, cleaned and reinstalled. Even guarded. The connotation of the intersection's name has also been pondered and dissected, proving how language is the ultimate form of power and mind control.
This was after Sombat Boon-ngam-anong publicly tied a red sash around the signpost, attempting art from non-art and politicising what's characteristically non-political. He was promptly arrested. Now every Sunday, the red supporters gather to show force and stage plays to remind people of what happened two monthths back right in front of Gaysorn Plaza. It' never be as well-attended as the Silom oh-yes-we-can grand sale, but never mind.
On the skywalk between Siam and the former Central World, someone spray-painted outlines of dead bodies on the floor, like police procedure at murder sites. If the perpertrators had done it with greater skill and covered wider areas - perhaps enlisting the help of graffiti artists - it could have worked as an underground art piece with the subversive intent worthy of Guy Fawkes. A few days later I checked again and the red outlines had been cleaned and even repainted. Now a guard is positioned day and night at the BTS pillar where the paint was sprayed. Is he part of the installation art, too?
Then I wonder if readers of English news could grasp the social and cultural meanings buried in all the Thai terms that have signified the gravity - and folly - of our current woes. The idiocy of krachab puen tee ("tightening the area"), which has spawned a number of ribald jokes I would rather not repeat; or salim, a phraseology given by the red to the multi-coloured shirt, so dubbed after a colourful Thai dessert; or the fact that abhisit means "privilege", a word that, not only because of the current situation, carries a darker shade of meaning in itself; or the gross exaggeration preferred by Thaksin Shinawatra and how he manages to make the utterance of "sincere" the insincerest utterance of all.
Politicising language is necessary in media-heavy politics, from Bush ("war on terror") to Hamas ("freedom fighters") to Obama ("hope") to Netanyahu ("settlement") to Abhisit ("reconciliation"). As our PM was named one of the Best Users of Thai Language by the Ministry of Culture this week, the subversive camp, deprived of legitimate channels, reels out the stickers and Facebook logo: chan hen khon tai - "I see dead people", borrowing from a movie catchphrase. It's a bit coarse (compared to, say, the red outlines on the skywalk) but strategically, for the underdogs it may be even more necessary.
This week, the rabid criminalisation of language has gone to the imbecilic extreme. This time the sinned word is "father", or poh. In May, actor Pongpat Wachirabanjong gave an (overly) sentimental speech about how we should love our father and protect the land. Now a country singer has filed a lese majeste lawsuit against him for denigrating the word "father", which in this case referred to His Majesty the King. But wasn't Pongpat exalting the King in his speech? Compounding the mess was the spokesman of the yellow shirts, who came out gallantly to attack the police for siding with the reds in scandalising the Royal Family. To be frank, the logic of this nonsense eludes me.
We're stuck in a time when political subterfuge is masked as linguistic cartwheeling, or vice versa. This shows the richness of the Thai language, sure, and the Thai imagination for stretching the meanings of simple vocabulary and gestures. What's next: Mother? Granddaughter? Red Bull? Yellow Lizard? Smiling Cat? =^.^=? ^*@@-;?
Because he is exemplary in both Thai and English, maybe we should consult the PM.
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