Ing K.’s film Dog God (คนกราบหมา) will be shown at Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Social Sciences on 29th January, as part of their ดูหนังกับสังวิท (‘watch movies with Social Sciences’) programme. Her film Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย) was screened there on 22nd January, and both films were previously banned in Thailand for many years.
Dog God was banned in 1998 under its original English title, My Teacher Eats Biscuits. Ing re-edited the film in 2020, and this director’s cut—ten minutes shorter than the original version, and retitled Dog God—was approved by the film censorship board in October 2023. It was finally released in Thai cinemas last year.
My Teacher Eats Biscuits was banned on the day before its premiere at the inaugural Bangkok Film Festival, on the grounds that it satirised religion. As Ing explained in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored: “This is like banning John Waters’ Pink Flamingos for bad taste!” In other words, the religious satire was the whole point of the film. (Also in that interview, Ing referred to the censors as “a bunch of trembling morons”. Another reason for the ban was that the censors misinterpreted a character, Princess Serena, as an impersonation of Princess Galyani.)
Like Pink Flamingos, Ing’s film is a low-budget, independent movie shot on 16mm. (Coincidentally, Pink Flamingos was also passed by the Thai censors in 2023.) A plot synopsis—a monk catches another monk in the act of necrophilia, and a woman establishes a cult of dog worshippers—gives the false impression that the film is offensive or blasphemous. In fact, the film has a camp sensibility (which it shares with Pink Flamingos), and its tone is clearly parodic.
The film begins with a voice-over by Ing, describing her character’s previous incarnation as a devout monk. He reports the necrophile monk to his abbot, who seems completely unconcerned. Disillusioned by Buddhism, he burns his saffron robe, and is reincarnated as a woman, Satri, played by the director. At the end of the film, Satri explains her rejection of organised religion in an extended monologue: “I had to free myself from the pollution of the yellow robe, which, in my eyes, became a symbol of corruption.”
Satri’s cult is exposed as a fraud by two undercover investigators, though the film presents Buddhism as equally hypocritical. When an investigator tells a senior monk (who drinks whiskey) about the cult, his response is: “A dog in a monk’s robe is not so bad.” Reflecting on this, the investigator concludes: “With monks like him, no wonder the image of Buddhism gets worse and worse.” We are later informed that he has left to investigate “a drunken orgy with seven senior monks.”
Due to the ban, My Teacher Eats Biscuits was rarely seen, either in Thailand or elsewhere. As critic Graiwoot Chulpongsathorn wrote in 2009, it is “a film so controversial that it has been ‘disappeared’ from history.” It was shown at the Goethe-Institut in Bangkok in 1998, and at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science on 17th December 2009. At the Chulalongkorn screening, Ing explained that the necrophile monk character was based on a news story about a real monk, and that when she told this to the censors, their candid answer was: “ข่าวสารเรา control ไม่ได้ แต่หนังเรา control ได้” (‘we can’t control news, but we can control movies’).
The film had three European screenings in 2017. It was shown at the Close-Up Film Centre in London; at the Deutsches Filminstitut in Frankfurt, Germany; and at the Cinéma du réel (‘cinema of the real’) festival in Paris. To celebrate its return to Thai cinemas, Ing designed t-shirts with the slogan “กราบหมาเถิดลูก” (‘bow down to the dog’). After the ban was lifted, the film was shown at the Bangsaen Film Festival.
Dog God was banned in 1998 under its original English title, My Teacher Eats Biscuits. Ing re-edited the film in 2020, and this director’s cut—ten minutes shorter than the original version, and retitled Dog God—was approved by the film censorship board in October 2023. It was finally released in Thai cinemas last year.
My Teacher Eats Biscuits was banned on the day before its premiere at the inaugural Bangkok Film Festival, on the grounds that it satirised religion. As Ing explained in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored: “This is like banning John Waters’ Pink Flamingos for bad taste!” In other words, the religious satire was the whole point of the film. (Also in that interview, Ing referred to the censors as “a bunch of trembling morons”. Another reason for the ban was that the censors misinterpreted a character, Princess Serena, as an impersonation of Princess Galyani.)
Like Pink Flamingos, Ing’s film is a low-budget, independent movie shot on 16mm. (Coincidentally, Pink Flamingos was also passed by the Thai censors in 2023.) A plot synopsis—a monk catches another monk in the act of necrophilia, and a woman establishes a cult of dog worshippers—gives the false impression that the film is offensive or blasphemous. In fact, the film has a camp sensibility (which it shares with Pink Flamingos), and its tone is clearly parodic.
The film begins with a voice-over by Ing, describing her character’s previous incarnation as a devout monk. He reports the necrophile monk to his abbot, who seems completely unconcerned. Disillusioned by Buddhism, he burns his saffron robe, and is reincarnated as a woman, Satri, played by the director. At the end of the film, Satri explains her rejection of organised religion in an extended monologue: “I had to free myself from the pollution of the yellow robe, which, in my eyes, became a symbol of corruption.”
Satri’s cult is exposed as a fraud by two undercover investigators, though the film presents Buddhism as equally hypocritical. When an investigator tells a senior monk (who drinks whiskey) about the cult, his response is: “A dog in a monk’s robe is not so bad.” Reflecting on this, the investigator concludes: “With monks like him, no wonder the image of Buddhism gets worse and worse.” We are later informed that he has left to investigate “a drunken orgy with seven senior monks.”
Due to the ban, My Teacher Eats Biscuits was rarely seen, either in Thailand or elsewhere. As critic Graiwoot Chulpongsathorn wrote in 2009, it is “a film so controversial that it has been ‘disappeared’ from history.” It was shown at the Goethe-Institut in Bangkok in 1998, and at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science on 17th December 2009. At the Chulalongkorn screening, Ing explained that the necrophile monk character was based on a news story about a real monk, and that when she told this to the censors, their candid answer was: “ข่าวสารเรา control ไม่ได้ แต่หนังเรา control ได้” (‘we can’t control news, but we can control movies’).
The film had three European screenings in 2017. It was shown at the Close-Up Film Centre in London; at the Deutsches Filminstitut in Frankfurt, Germany; and at the Cinéma du réel (‘cinema of the real’) festival in Paris. To celebrate its return to Thai cinemas, Ing designed t-shirts with the slogan “กราบหมาเถิดลูก” (‘bow down to the dog’). After the ban was lifted, the film was shown at the Bangsaen Film Festival.