El niño con discapacidad en el grupo regular

Despite the increase of interest in studying Thai film genres, biographical films have remained overlooked and comparatively under-theorised. This thesis attempts to fill this gap by presenting a theoretical view of the film genre, which is also related to the culture of the Thai middle class in the present time.

By biographical cinema, I refer to the films that depict the lives of real persons, or persons who are believed to have once lived in Thai society. The essence of the biographical film‘s narrative is, as film scholar Dennis Bingham argues, an ―attempt to discover biographical truth‖ of that person for the audience (Bingham, 2010, p. 7). By this definition, biographical film is a kind of film whose aesthetic value lies in the audience‘s acknowledgement that the life of the protagonist projected on screen is that of an actual person in society, regardless of whether or not that person is still alive, and also emphasises that that person‘s life story is worth knowing and/or learning from.

From an empirical perspective, the biographical film genre—or films that are made to show the presumed ―truth‖ of someone‘s life—is relatively new to Thai film culture. The unpopularity of biographical film in Thai film culture until recent years has been due to many factors. One factor has been the disapproval by the person, or the family members of the person, whose life is to be portrayed in film. Another factor is the social pressure which might arise from making a film about a person whom many people respect, but which perhaps turns out to create a bad image of that person (Kong, 2011). However, these restrictive conditions seem to have changed at around the same time that the Thai film industry began to be transformed by the film culture of the late 1990s. From the late 1990s on, filmmakers and the market have become more interested in the biographical film genre. Within the 10-year period from 1997 to 2007, more biographical films were released to the Thai film market than in the preceding 30 years of Thai film history from 1960 to 1996 (see Table 1 in Appendix). This rise began with

the success in the box office of Daeng Bireley and Young Gangsters (2499 Anthaphan Khrorng Meuang, dir. Nonzee Nimitbutr), which was released in 1997. The film depicts a group of actual gangsters in 1950s Thailand who caused many problems for the authorities in Bangkok. The success of Nonzee‘s film, which depicts the lives of these real people in Thai society, was followed by many films including the famous The Legend of King Naresuan (Naresuan, dir. Chatri Chalerm Yukol, 2007). Even though The Legend of King Naresuan was promoted as a national historical film, the film, and its many sequels (The Legend of King Naresuan II, 2007; The Legend of King Naresuan III, 2011; The Legend of King Naresuan IV, 2011; The Legend of King Naresuan V 2014; The Legend of King Naresuan VI, 2015, all directed by Chatri Chalerm Yukol) are, in essence, the attempt to depict and construct the ―truth‖ about the life of King Naresuan, from his infancy to the day he became the great king of Ayutthaya.

One distinct characteristic of the biographical films made after the late 1990s that seems to be different from those made in previous decades is the function of the film as a form of didactic manual, providing guidance on how one can succeed or should behave in the rapidly transforming Thai society. In the past, the making of biographical films seems to have been related to and reinforced by important events or social issues in Thai society. 16 Pi Haeng Khwam Lang (―In the past 16 years‖, dir. Anumat Bunnag, 1968), a film that depicts the life of legendary singer Suraphon Sombatjareon, was produced in the year after he passed away in order to celebrate his artistic legacy. The Story of Nam Phu (Nam Phu, dir. Euthana Mukdasanit, 1984), a film about a drug addict, and Wanli (dir. ―Ekalak‖, 1986),6 a film about a female student who struggles with poverty and taking care of her parents, seem to have been made to reflect and raise concern about serious social problems, namely, drug addiction and

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The film‘s credits do not provide the last name of the director. I suspect that ―Ekalak‖ could also be the pseudonym of the director. Using pseudonyms was quite common in Thai film

poverty during that period. The issues represented in these two films also fitted very well with the then existing market of ―social critique‖ film, a cinematic form influenced by the ―art-for-life‖ (sinlapa pheua chiwit) movement which had a major influence on cultural production in the 1970s and 1980s (Anchalee, 2002, pp. 449−451). The ―art- for-life‖ movement will be discussed further in Chapter VI, as the movement is the context of the film, Young Bao (dir. Yuthakorn Sukmuktapha, 2013), analysed in that chapter.

Unlike the foregoing films, biographical films made since the late 1990s, when Thai society entered the current phase of globalisation, are distinct in that their themes and subjects are more diverse and their plots are more related to representing

appropriate ways for an individual of the middle-class society to advance him or herself. The most idiosyncratic feature of biographical films of the contemporary period has been the direct involvement of the actual persons portrayed in some of the film productions. Beautiful Boxer (dir. Ekachai Uekrongtham, 2003), a film about a transgender Thai boxer, Parinya Charoenphol or Norng Tum, not only emphasises the willpower that a Thai individual should have despite being treated as an outcast, but also casts her to play a minor character who gives the protagonist, who plays her in the film, a beauty treatment before an important boxing match. The Billionaire (Top Secret: Wai Run Phan Lan, dir. Songyos Sugmakanan, 2011), a film about the struggle of a young billionaire, Aithipat Kulapongvanich,7 or Top, to become successful, does the same, by having the real Aithipat briefly play a minor role as a business investor who contacts the same bank as the protagonist for a loan. I examine The Billionaire in detail in Chapter V. Even though the involvement of these real figures may not have been significant to the overall messages of the films, in which they were played by other actors, this close involvement of the actual persons in the productions of films about

their own lives suggests that there has been a change in Thai middle-class filmmaking culture, especially in the status and function of biographical films in the film market since the late 1990s.

As mentioned in the preceding section, there has already been an attempt to study contemporary Thai biographical films. However, that study was done by including these films in the same category as the historical film genre. Kamjohn Louiyapong treats the biographical film genre as a kind of historical film, calling the films prawattisat bukkhon (history of an individual) (Kamjohn, 2009, p. 206), and argues that the emergence of the films is associated with the middle class and their ideological attempt to disseminate their worldviews in society.8 While I agree with Kamjohn that the middle class and their class ideology are integral to the making of biographical films, I believe that there are two problematic issues in his work that have not been clearly articulated.

The first problem is the categorisation of the biographical films exclusively within the historical film genre. It may be true that biographical films represent historical events, especially those that occurred around the lives of the persons represented in the films. However, this perspective tends to overlook the two most important aspects of the narrative of biography, which are the notion of personhood and the notion of individuality, or individualism, constructed about a person in the film,9

8 _{―ประวัติศาสตร์จากมิติคนชั้นกลางนี้ได้แพร่กระจายสู่คนทุกกลุ่ม ผ่านภาพยนตร์หลากหลายประเภท”}

(Kamjohn, 2009, pp. 214−215). Kamjohn makes the same argument in his 2013 study on the representations of history in Thai cinema, Phapphayon kap kan prakorp sang sangkhom (Films and Social Constructs), in which he categorises biographical film as another type of the historical film genre. Kamjohn argues, ―Historical films are the products of the middle-class worldview as seen in both the content and ideology of the films. In other words, the histories represented in these films are related to the middle-class people, or which middle-class people are interested in‖ (in original Thai, ―ภาพยนตร์ประวัติศาสตร์ที่ได้เห็นจึงอาจเป็นประวัติศาสตร์ตามทัศนะของชนชั้นกลาง ทั้งในด้านเนื้อหาและ อุดมการณ์ที่แฝงอยู่ กล่าวคือเป็นประวัติศาสตร์ที่มีความเกี่ยวพันกับกลุ่มคนชนชั้นกลางหรือให้ความสนใจ‖) (Kamjohn, 2013, p. 325).

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George Custen, who is one of the key scholars in the area of the biographical film genre, has argued that, indeed, the notions of personhood and individuality in biography can help scholars

which distinguish biography from other kinds of historical narratives. I will discuss these two aspects further below.

The second problem in Kamjohn‘s study is his view of the middle class. By claiming that the films function as disseminators of middle-class ideology without providing critical insight to explain what Thai middle-class ideology actually is, his study is at risk of generalising the Thai middle class and its class ideology as being the same as in other societies, where the middle class is an independent social group, distinct from and historically in opposition to, established feudal elites. As I have already suggested above, the formation of the Thai middle class and its class ideology cannot be viewed as totally separate from the sakdina or traditional feudalistic social structure and values. In this respect, the ideology of the Thai middle class that is disseminated through contemporary biographical films does not belong only to the middle class alone, but also to the sakdina values.

In the re-assessment of this film genre undertaken in this thesis, I attempt to clarify the two problematic issues above. Firstly, this thesis shows that Thai

biographical films can be treated as constituting a distinct film genre in its own right, which has emerged ―from different industrial and national contexts‖ (Vidal, 2014, p. 4), and provides a distinctive conceptual explanation for the emerging popularity and transformation of this genre that is different from the historical film genre. As Bingham argues, ―the biopic is a genre in its own right, one that has evolved dramatically, and which continues to change through its long history‖ (Bingham, 2010, p. 22). Secondly, I maintain that the middle-class ideological values represented in these biographical films do not belong purely to the middle class and, hence, do not work to maintain the society of the middle class alone. Rather, these ideological values are a mutually constructed set

an awareness that recorded or written history is a text that freezes the narrative in a particular, interested form. Biography, the isolation of a single life from the flow of history, can reduce the imputation of motive and the rendering of historical explanation to something even more facile‖

of ideologies between the middle class and the establishment, which aim to promote the respective interests of both social groups. In other words, this thesis argues that

contemporary Thai biographical films tend to have emerged to ideologically sustain the status quo of the current stage of Thai society.