Ghosts: Confronting the Dead in Thailand

Ulf Svane and Paul McBain’s new documentary Ghosts: Confronting the Dead in Thailand includes an interview with Thongchai Winichakul filmed at Thammasat University. Dozens of students at Thammasat were killed on 6th October 1976, and Thongchai is Thailand’s foremost authority on the history of that brutal event. (He has written about it extensively, including in his English-language book Moments of Silence.)

In the documentary, Thongchai discusses Thammasat’s notorious ‘red elevator’, which — according to legend — is haunted by victims of the 1976 attack. There are unlikely to be genuine apparitions haunting the lift, though such tales of ghosts are a reminder of the spectre of history: Thongchai stresses the need to “confront the ghost, or talk about the ghost”, in order to come to terms with traumatic historical events.

Ghosts is the latest of more than fifty films that refer to 6th October 1976. Previously, the Thammasat elevator inspired the horror film Haunted Universities (มหาลัยสยองขวัญ), which was censored to remove dramatisations of the violence that took place on that day. Also, a photograph of the elevator doors, titled Half Day Closing, was part of filmmaker Taiki Sakpisit’s exhibition Dark Was the Night (ผีพุ่งไต้).

It’s about Time:Performing between the Past and Tomorrow in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s I a Pixel, We the People

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s exhibition I a Pixel, We the People (ข้าพเจ้าคือพิกเซล, พวกเราคือประชาชน) will close later this month, and the artist took part in a Q&A session with Sam I-shan at BangkokCityCity Gallery yesterday. The event was titled It’s about Time: Performing between the Past and Tomorrow in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s I a Pixel, We the People, named after an essay on Chulayarnnon’s work published by the gallery.

Chulayarnnon spoke about the two phases of his artistic career. His early short films were more personal, whereas his work became more overtly political following the Ratchaprasong crackdown in 2010: “it quite changed my life when the Thailand political crisis came, about 2010”. This aligns him with the “Post-Ratchaprasong art” movement identified by the journal Read (อ่าน; vol. 3, no. 2), and he made a similar comment in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored, explaining when he “turned to be interested in the political situation.”

In the Q&A, Chulayarnnon also discussed the consequences of the political climate for artists: “self-censorship is still existing: for me, sometimes I did that.” He contrasted the student protests of 2020 and 2021 — when Thai artists were more blunt in their political satire — with the current atmosphere: “for now, we need thought-provoking [art], but no need to be hardcore”. He also highlighted the threats that “hardcore” artists face: “I don’t want to be in jail, but I respect them.”

Sam I-shan’s essay booklet is twenty-four pages long, and has been published in a limited edition of twenty-four copies (each with a unique cover photos), reflecting the twenty-four-hour duration of Chulayarnnon’s video installation. The author identifies subtle political metaphors in the exhibition: she notes that the day-long running time “might parallel the cyclical nature of Thai politics,” and she argues that the piles of clothes in the gallery space “stand for all people disenfranchised by... Thailand’s political system, with some of these bodies literally absent, having been imprisoned, exiled, disappeared or killed.”

Paris Match

French magazine Paris Match has agreed to pay Gisèle Pelicot €40,000 in damages for invasion of privacy. Pelicot sued the magazine after it published paparazzi photographs of her in its 17th April issue (no. 3963). The settlement was confirmed on the eve of the court case, which was due to begin yesterday, and Pelicot will donate the money to charity.

Pelicot’s former husband was convicted on multiple charges last year, after systematically drugging her and allowing other men to rape her, in a case that shocked the country. Considering the trauma she went through, splashing her photo on Paris Match’s front page was clearly insensitive.

Famously, almost thirty years ago, Paris Match published an unauthorised photograph of former French president François Mitterrand on his deathbed (in its 18th January 1996 issue, no. 2434). The magazine was also censured after it printed CCTV images of a 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice.

Privacy is generally respected by the French media, with the exception of celebrity magazines such as Paris Match, Closer, and Voici. Prince William and Kate Middleton won damages from Closer after it printed topless photos of Middleton in 2012. George and Amal Clooney sued Voici in 2017. Valerie Trierweiler sued Closer in both 2012 and 2014. Also in 2014, Julie Gayer sued Closer, and Aurelie Filippetti won damages from the magazine.

Sunset Boulevard

This year is the seventy-fifth anniversary of Billy Wilder’s bitter Hollywood satire Sunset Boulevard. The film will be shown at House Samyan in August, as part of the cinema’s House Classics strand.

Sunset Boulevard was also screened at the Thai Film Archive last year, at Smalls in 2019, and at Bangkok Screening Room in 2016. The House Classics programme began in 2019, to celebrate House relocating to Samyan Mitrtown in Bangkok.

Justin Baldoni v. The New York Times

As expected, actor and director Justin Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times has been dismissed, after judge Lewis Liman concluded that the NYT’s coverage of Blake Lively’s allegations of sexual harassment against him was not biased. The judge wrote: “the Times reviewed the available evidence and reported, perhaps in a dramatized manner, what it believed to have happened. The Times had no obvious motive to favor Lively’s version of events.”

Baldoni had been seeking $250 million in libel damages from the NYT, after it published details of Lively’s complaints against him. But it reported Lively’s claims accurately, based on court documents, so Baldoni’s lawsuit was bound to fail: whether her allegations were true or not, it’s not libellous to report them. (Baldoni filed his legal action sixty years after a 1964 Supreme Court decision required proof of ‘actual malice’ in libel lawsuits against public figures, in a case that also involved the NYT.)

Pain(t)ing

Today is the final day of the Pain(t)ing thesis exhibition at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, featuring work by students from the Poh-Chang Academy of Arts. The exhibition opened on 27th May.

One of the highlights is Narissara Duangkhun’s No War but the Class War no. 4, a satirical commentary on contemporary Thai politics. The painting includes a depiction of a Reuters photograph taken thirty years ago during the notorious Tak Bai incident in 2004. Narissara’s work resembles that of Navin Rawanchaikul (albeit on a smaller scale), with its dense, brightly coloured collage of wide-ranging visual references. Her painting also features a slot machine displaying ‘112’, a reference to the lèse-majesté law, which is article 112 of the Thai criminal code.

Serving...

Miriana Conte’s song Kant was selected as Malta’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, though the singer was forced to change the title and lyrics, as ‘kant’ (the Maltese word for ‘singing’) was deemed too phonetically close to ‘cunt’. The song was a pun on the c-word, with its chorus of “Serving kant” sounding almost exactly like ‘serving cunt’. For the Eurovision TV broadcast, its title was changed to Serving, and the word ‘kant’ was dropped from the lyrics.

The c-word is becoming increasingly common in contemporary pop lyrics, thanks to the influence of ballroom drag culture. RuPaul’s Drag Race popularised ballroom terms such as ‘serving’, and used ‘cunt’ as an acronym for ‘charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent’, to describe drag queen qualities. Drag artist Kevin Aviance’s single Cunty was sampled by Beyoncé on her song Pure/Honey in 2022, and this year Marina released her single Cuntissimo, a feminist anthem from her album Princess of Power.

Veronica Electronica

Madonna will release a collection of remixes, Veronica Electronica, on 25th July. The new vinyl EP is named after her alter ego from the Ray of Light era, and it contains remixes of songs from that critically acclaimed album.

Veronica Electronica also includes one previously unreleased song, Gone, Gone, Gone (in a demo version). But it’s easy to see why the song was originally rejected: it’s a ballad (with simplistic lyrics) set to an inappropriate drum and bass track.

Veronica Electronica is one of several named alter egos Madonna has used at various stages of her career. Erotica begins with the line “My name is Dita”, a persona she also adopted in her book Sex. She performed Material Girl on her Blond Ambition tour as Gladys, wearing a bathrobe, and she played a character called Louise Oriole in the video for her single Bad Girl. She styled herself Madame X — complete with an eyepatch — for her most recent studio album.

Veronica Electronica features seven remixed tracks: Drowned World/Substitute for Love, Ray of Light, Skin, Nothing Really Matters, Sky Fits Heaven, Frozen, and The Power of Good-Bye. But unfortunately, most of them are edited versions, like those on her dance remix albums Finally Enough Love and 50 Number Ones.

“Salacious and defamatory accusations...”

Music producer Russell Simmons has filed a defamation lawsuit against HBO and the makers of the documentary On the Record, which features interviews with women who have accused him of sexual assault. He is seeking $20 million in damages.

On the Record (directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Zieling) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 25th January 2020, and was released on the HBO Max streaming platform later that year (on 27th May). The lawsuit describes the documentary as “a film that tremendously disparaged and damaged Mr. Simmons with salacious and defamatory accusations”.

Simmons is one of three disgraced figures from the music industry currently suing filmmakers who have exposed accusations of sexual misconduct, and all three men stand very little chance of winning their libel cases. Chris Brown filed a libel lawsuit in January, as did Sean Combs. Combs, better known as Diddy and Puff Daddy, has since filed another libel lawsuit: he is seeking $100 million in damages over allegations of sexual assault in the documentary Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy, which was released on NBC’s Peacock streaming service on 14th January.

Justin Baldoni v. The New York Times

A high-profile celebrity lawsuit was dismissed yesterday after Blake Lively withdrew her claims of emotional distress against Justin Baldoni, her co-star in the film It Ends with Us. Lively had filed a suit against Baldoni, who also directed the film, on 20th December last year, and the document was immediately leaked to the The New York Times, which published a lengthy article about the case on its website the following day.

The article, headlined “Alleged Effort To Strike Back At Star Actress”, appeared in the NYT’s print edition on 23rd December. It included extracts from text messages sent between publicists Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan, suggesting that they were attempting to smear Lively and protect Baldoni’s reputation. One message, sent by Nathan, said: “You know we can bury anyone”. (This was used as the article’s online headline.) The article included a disclaimer that “messages have been edited for length”, and Baldoni sued the newspaper on New Year’s Eve arguing that the messages had been “stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead”.

Lively’s claims against Baldoni, which included extensive allegations of sexual harassment, were criticised on social media, in the same way that Amber Heard’s reputation was trashed online after her allegations against Johnny Depp. Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit against the NYT, seeking $250 million in damages, is unlikely to proceed to trial: on 4th March, judge Lewis Liman noted that the newspaper had demonstrated “substantial grounds for dismissal”, and that “its motion to dismiss is likely to succeed on the merits.”