absolutelyBangkok archive · News & Media
Originally published March 29, 2009
One of the great wonders in the kingdom of Thailand is when you meet a local who understands satire, irony, sarcasm, cynicism — common ways of expression in the West. Thai humor is quite different to the one you come from. But who’s to blame. Look at the state the country is in, when nothing real is really real anymore and nothing wrong really wrong.
In politics we’re governed by an undemocratically enthroned government claiming to have a democratic mandate. The runaway opposition leader claims to be the democratically elected leader while when in power he had abused that mandate by every trick in the book. What can be more satirical than these real life events.
Is it that most Thais have hardly any understanding of satire because their own world has become an own kind of satire? A world where fiction feels so real? You see a soap opera and must think “Hey, that’s like us!” Still, many honest dedicated Thai people keep on trying to build a better, transparent society where white is white and black is black. But:
Failure is never far away when a nation aspires in its quest to transform from a more harmonious, environmentally sensitive and nirvana-like sufficient life forward into rampant consumerism, materialism and greed. What if that new life fails? What’s left to believe in?!
But then again, Thais are famous for their smiles, laughing and having fun. Especially loved are slapstick humor followed by some sort of sound effect. Not too long ago making humiliating, degrading fun of mentally and physically handicapped people was quite common in TV shows.
That’s luckily a thing of the past — while Thai TV still uses Isaan bumpkins in a racist manner and gays and ladyboys serve for “really funny” penis and sex jokes…
Still, Thai humor has kind of matured. And Thailand is by no means alone with her twisted reality. Less and less people around the world seem to take real for real. Take Americans:
As a reader wrote me: “A survey was done in the U.S. recently which showed that something like 80 percent of all people 25 and under get 100 percent of their daily news from the Jon Stewart The Daily Show.”
The Daily Show is a satire on regular news shows. The surveyed people do not watch those regular news shows at all.
But now get this: “Then a follow-up survey was done on which group was better informed about current events. The group watching the satire fake news show by Jon Stewart or those people watching the regular news shows on CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, etc.”
Take a wild guess: “It turned out the people watching the fake news show by Jon Stewart were significantly better informed.”
Which gives us hope for a Thailand where reality has become such an entangled jumble that anyone can claim anything and no one can prove it right or wrong. With the difference being, Stewart’s Daily Show informs viewers The show you are about to watch is a news parody. Its stories are not fact checked. Its reporters are not journalists. And its opinions are not fully thought through.
And its viewers are better informed?!…
The other side of the coin: Not understanding satire keeps us Not The Nation on the air, the Thai news site so much more accurate than most of the rest.
From the absolutelyBangkok archive. Back to all stories