Peril

Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, completes a trilogy of Woodward’s books on Donald Trump, following Fear and Rage. Peril examines Trump’s final year in office and the first few months of Joe Biden’s presidency, and its title is taken from Biden’s inaugural address, in which he described a “winter of peril.”

I Alone Can Fix It, by fellow Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, also covers the end of the Trump administration, and shares some of the same sources: William Barr and Mark Milley clearly spoke to the authors of both books. Milley confirmed as much to the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, though his description of the 6th January insurrection as a “Reichstag moment” — the standout quote from I Alone Can Fix It — is merely an hors-d’œuvre in Peril.

How to convey the madness of the Trump White House in its final months? Woodward and Costa opt for a cinematic comparison: “The scenes of a screaming Trump in the Oval Office resembled Full Metal Jacket,” and Trump reminded Barr of another Stanley Kubrick classic, “the character in the 1964 dark comedy Dr. Strangelove who ruminates about withholding his “essence” from women.”

Barr told Trump the unvarnished truth, that potential voters “think you’re a fucking asshole.” (Biden concurred, in a private White House conversation: “What a fucking asshole”.) Lyndsey Graham was equally blunt, telling Trump: “You fucked your presidency up.” After his election defeat, Trump ignored all such dissenting voices, and embraced Rudy Giuliani’s wild conspiracy theories, clinging desperately to data that Giuliani literally made up out of thin air.

One of Peril’s most extraordinary chapters reveals, for the first time, an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Mike Pence on the evening before the insurrection. This was Trump’s last-ditch attempt to convince Pence to decertify the election results. Trump offers Pence a Faustian pact: “wouldn’t it almost be cool to have that power?” When that fails, he turns into a petulent child: “I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.”

Peril includes equally dramatic material on the Biden administration, revealing an intelligence briefing that warned Biden of the disastrous consequences of a sudden withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Woodward and Costa summarise the briefing, which now seems remarkably prescient: “The capital, Kabul, and other cities ultimately fall and the Taliban take over, amounting to a collapse of the Afghan state in months to years.” As they demonstrate, “Biden was abandoning Afghanistan to civil war and potential collapse,” contradicting Biden’s claim that he had not received such warnings.

The book also quotes extensively from a phone call between Biden and Vladimir Putin. Rather than the usual diplomatic readout, we see how direct Putin can be when he tells Biden: “I’m upset you called me a killer”. In a later call, Biden warns Putin that Russia is vulnerable to US cyber espionage: “great countries have great responsibilities. They also have great vulnerabilities.” (Trump’s views on Putin are not mentioned in Peril, though he is quoted referring to Angela Merkel, with his usual charm, as a “bitch kraut”.)

Peril is the fifteenth Trump book reviewed here. The others are: Fear, Rage, I Alone Can Fix It, A Very Stable Genius, Fire and Fury, Inside Trump’s White House, The United States of Trump, Trump’s Enemies, The Trump White House, Too Much and Never Enough, The Room Where It Happened, Team of Five, American Carnage, and The Cost.

Develop Viriyaporn Who Dared in Three Worlds

Who is Viriyaporn Boonprasert? She has submitted quite a few films to the Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น), though the organisers have no idea who she is. Her short films, with their ironic juxtapositions of found footage, satirise the elitism and nationalism of the Thai political establishment.

Viriyaporn’s Ghost of Centralworld, from her Develop Blessing Giant Dhamma in Three Worlds (เจริญพรมหาธรรมใน 3 โลก) series, was made in response to the 2010 military crackdown. It features an emotional account from the father of Kittipong Somsuk, whose death was caused by arsonists who burnt the Zen department store, followed by news footage of the store’s reopening, when tragedy and political controversy were swept away in the name of consumerism.

Viriyaporn Boonprasert is a pseudonym, and presumably she disguises her identity because her work deals with Thai politics and touches on the ultra-sensitive issue of the monarchy. One of her short films, พ่อจ๋าหนูอยากกลับบ้าน (‘daddy, I want to go home’), submitted to the Wildtype programme, was too controversial even for that progressive group, and the organisers reluctantly declined to screen it. (The film features photographs of King Rama X and his youngest son living in Germany.)

The mysterious tale of the anonymous filmmaker is told in the short documentary Develop Viriyaporn Who Dared in Three Worlds (เจริญวิริญาพรมาหาทำใน 3 โลก), which was released on YouTube yesterday. Director Kanyarat Theerakrittayakorn interviewed various film experts — including Chalida Uabumrungjit, Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Jit Phokaew, and Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa — who speculate on Viriyaporn’s real identity. They even begin to suspect each other, as Thai cinephiles are a close-knit group and she seems to be an insider. This leads to bemused denials by some contributors, and Viriyaporn remains an enigma.

Danse Macabre

“Thunska who makes everything sexy.”
“But I’m talking about death in this one...”

From Eros to Thanatos: Danse Macabre (มรณสติ) begins with director Thunska Pansittivorakul explaining to a dance choreographer that his new documentary explores darker territory. Unlike his last film, the sexually frank Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์), Danse Macabre juxtaposes accounts of violent deaths with interpretive dance routines.

The film was codirected by Phassarawin Kulsomboon, and will have its world premiere at the Doclisboa film festival in Lisbon on 27th October. Thunska’s Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา) was named best film at Doclisboa in 2019.

As the proverb says, death is the great leveller. But in Thailand, one of the world’s most unequal societies, not even death can rupture the social hierarchy. Danse Macabre highlights the disparity between the deaths of royals and commoners: kings receive lavish state funerals followed by prolonged periods of national mourning, whereas murder victims become objects of public spectacle as undignified crowds of gawping onlookers gather freely at crime scenes.

The starkest contrast is that between King Rama VIII (who died from a bullet wound in 1946) and Porlajee Rakchongcharoen (a human rights activist who was murdered in 2014). The King’s corpse was placed in a golden urn atop a gilded chariot. Porlajee’s body, however, was stuffed unceremoniously into an oil drum. (Pin Sasao’s installation ถังแดง​ — ‘red barrel’ — also addresses Porlajee’s murder.)

In Thunska’s documentary Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล), one interviewee mentions “soldiers getting beaten to death during training” and shortly after that film was completed, army cadet Phakhapong Tanyakan died during a training exercise. Danse Macabre has an equally tragic topicality: on 20th July, just a few days after the rough cut was finished, three people dropped dead on the streets of Bangkok, and their bodies were left in situ for hours. (Thunska added an epilogue highlighting these recent cases.)

Danse Macabre also deals with Thai state violence, from the massacres of October 1976 — also covered in The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย) — May 1992, and May 2010, to the recent student protests. Footage of riot police firing water cannon last year is cut to the beat of the Subtitle Project’s song Remember. The track’s Thai title, วน, literally translates as ‘loop’, indicating the cyclical nature of violent state oppression. (Thunska directed the music video for Remember when it was released as a single.)

Like Thunska’s Reincarnate (จุติ), Danse Macabre begins with a written prologue explaining the Thai law under which “a film may be banned as unsuitable for public exhibition” and then proceeds to deliberately flout those rules. I interviewed Thunska about this law for Thai Cinema Uncensored, and one of his early features, This Area is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), was the first film to fall foul of it. Thunska uses explicit sexual content as a political commentary in many films, and Danse Macabre is no exception: it includes photos from vintage porn magazines to show how Thailand has since become more culturally — and, by implication, politically — conservative.

Even more provocatively, the indirect allusions to the monarchy in his sci-fi dystopia Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ) are replaced by a direct account of modern Thai royal history, including a subliminal image hinting at an explanation for the death of Rama VIII. Three men were executed for the King’s murder on 17th February 1955, and coded references to that date appear in Danse Macabre, Supernatural, and the Remember music video.

Keep in the Dark

Tawan Wattuya’s new exhibition Keep in the Dark features watercolour portraits of pro-democracy protesters and campaigners who have been jailed or abducted, including Panusaya Sithjirawattanakul (Rung), Arnon Nampa (Lawyer Anon), and Porlajee Rakchongcharoen (Billy), among many others. The first work in the exhibition is a portrait of Prayut Chan-o-cha, titled I ____ Too: the missing word is ‘hear’, a pun on the protest chant “ai hia Tu”. (Ai hia is a suitably strong insult, and Tu is Prayut’s nickname.) The work that gives the exhibition its title, Keep in the Dark, shows the announcement of Prayut’s 2014 coup.

The lavish exhibition catalogue comes with three postcards, and includes an essay by curator Kritsada Duchsadeevanich outlining Thailand’s recurring political crisis: “Young people take to the streets demanding political transformation. Those in power use brute force to suppress the young protesters mercilessly.” Keep in the Dark opened on 14th October at Silpakorn University Art Centre in Bangkok, and runs until 27th November. Tawan’s previous exhibitions include Amnesia, which coincided with the publication of his monograph Works 2009–2019.

Uncensored

Uncensored (ศิลปะปลดปล่อย), a group exhibition curated by Headache Stencil, opened today at the Jam Factory in Bangkok. The original Uncensored was a one-day event, though this new exhibition runs until 22nd November. (There was also a smaller-scale sequel, Uncensored 2, held in Chiang Mai.)

The exhibition features a mix of new and older works, by more than thirty artists. From Uncensored 2, there’s a collage by Spanky Studio featuring the Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) newspaper. Also on show again is The Sound of Elite, from the Propaganda Children’s Day (วันเด็กชั่งชาติ) exhibition. Both of these refer to the 6th October 1976 massacre, and in another reference to that event, a folding chair is suspended from the gallery ceiling.

A drawing by director Yuthlert Sippapak is also included, which shows Suthep Thaugsuban trampling on the constitution, a comment on the anti-democratic nature of his ‘Shutdown Bangkok’ campaign. Yellow!, a skateboard tucked away in a corner, features a painting by Nawat Lertsawaengkit.

Calmer Rouge

Calmer Rouge, a performance art event by Artn’t, is taking place until tomorrow in front of the Tha Phae Gate in Chiang Mai. The performance began on 6th October, and it marks the anniversaries of Thailand’s two historical October massacres: 14th October 1973 and 6th October 1976.

One of the props used throughout the event is a folding chair — in reference to a notorious Neal Ulevich photograph from 1976 — splattered with symbolic blue paint. A mock guillotine was similarly painted blue at an anti-government demonstration in Bangkok on 18th July.

Errata: Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories

The group exhibition Errata: Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories opened at MAIIAM in Chiang Mai on 30th July, and runs until 1st November (subsequently extended to 14th February 2022). Works relating to Thailand’s two notorious October massacres are included: Arin Rungjang’s And Then There Were None: Tomorrow We Will Become Thailand is a series of paintings based on news photographs from 14th October 1973, and Thasnai Sethaseree’s untitled collages feature partially obscured news photos of 6th October 1976.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s video The Class is also included. It was shown previously at two group exhibitions in Bangkok — Crossover and Dialogues — and a transcript of the video appears in Araya’s book Art and Words (ศิลปะกับถ้อยความ).

The Year of the Everlasting Storm

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s latest feature film, Memoria, won the Jury Prize after its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film received a standing ovation, after which Apichatpong memorably declared: “Long live cinema!” With coronavirus vaccines in short supply and the registration system in disarray, he also used his Cannes acceptance speech as an opportunity to call on the Thai government to “please wake up, and work for your people, now.”

A promotional clip from Memoria attracted attention in Thailand for its potential political meaning: Tilda Swinton’s character performs a magic trick with a red, white, and blue handkerchief, making the blue colour disappear. These are also the colours of the Thai flag, and in an online interview with the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, Apichatpong confirmed: “I chose the colours.”

Apichatpong’s short film Night Colonies also premiered at Cannes, as part of the anthology film The Year of the Everlasting Storm. Night Colonies combines two of the director’s consistent themes, light and the natural world, as it features insects buzzing around neon lights. The film begins with a poem paying tribute to “distant friends, and those who had disappeared”, a reference to pro-democracy campaigners self-exiled or abducted following lèse-majesté charges.

The poem continues: “The young leaves unfold, flushed with memories in the year of the everlasting storm.” In addition to giving the portmanteau film its title, these lines are also a metaphor for the student protesters campaigning for reform of the monarchy. In fact, the film’s soundtrack includes audio recorded at protests in Bangkok on 27th July and 20th August 2020.

Apichatpong’s exhibition A Minor History (ประวัติศาสตร์กระจ้อยร่อย) — now on show at 100 Tonson in Bangkok — also addresses the murder of lèse-majesté suspects, and the title of his short film October Rumbles (เสียงฟ้าเดือนตุลา) hints at the rumblings of dissent from the student protesters. He co-directed the video installation Silence — shown at 100 Tonson last week — which refers directly to the tragic “memories” mentioned in the Night Colonies poem.

Madame X:Music from the Theater Xperience

Yesterday, Madonna released a concert film and live album, edited from a dozen performances of her Madame X Tour in Portugal. Although the Madame X album was available in a range of formats, the Madame X Tour is the first Madonna tour without a physical release. Instead, the film is streaming on Paramount+ and being broadcast on MTV, and the album is available on the major music streaming platforms.

The Madame X: Music from the Theater Xperience digital album track listing is: God Control, Dark Ballet, Human Nature (followed by an a cappella version of Express Yourself), Vogue, I Don’t Search I Find, American Life, Batuka, Fado Pechincha, Killers Who Are Partying, Crazy, Welcome to My Fado Club (incorporating La Isla Bonita), Extreme Occident, Rescue Me (a pre-recorded spoken interlude), Medellín, Frozen, Come Alive, Future (with a new second verse), Like a Prayer, and I Rise. Two songs from the tour — Sodade and Crave — are not included.

Sun Rises When Day Breaks

Thanaphol Chumkhammool (known as View from the Bus Tour) released his new single Sun Rises When Day Breaks (ลิ่วล้อ) on 5th October, an appropriate date as it was written in support of the 5 ตุลาฯ ตะวันจะมาเมื่อฟ้าสาง (‘5th Oct.: sun rises when day breaks’) campaign and uses the campaign’s slogan as its English title. The song is one of several commemorating the 45th anniversary of the 6th October 1976 massacre.

The music video for Sun Rises When Day Breaks begins with a recreation of an iconic news photograph from the massacre. Not the ubiquitous image of a man hitting a corpse with a chair, but instead a photo by Kraipit Phanvut showing a police colonel (Watcharin Niamvanichkul) aiming his pistol while nonchalantly smoking a cigarette. Director Anocha Suwichakornpong restaged the same photo at the start of her film By the Time It Gets Dark (ดาวคะนอง), and it has also been reappropriated by artists such as Headache Stencil.