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Thai artists are stifled by stuffy establishment
by
Bill McCormick

RE; "Where is the literary voice in Thailand?" (Overdrive, October 8. Thaanonh Khangthong denigrates Thai writers for not being intellectual enough, and not being conversant (ie, well-educated enough) in Thai ways and history - in short, of lacking Thai ideas.

Not a single word of encouragement. Not identifying a single individual writer of promise. Not proposing a single new literary prize, contest or publishing venue to support and nuture Thai authors - new, struggling and long suffering in obscurity.

If Thanong's tired "intellectual" formula for international recognition really worked, "Suriyothai" would have terminated the titanic Trojans. Look at how various big-budget state promoters of all things try have treated our young "Kurosawa" who made it onto the intellectual (film) scene" at Cannes.

The fault dear Brutus, lies with a cultural establishment stifled by the remnants of clinging vines of third-world elitism, a defensive racial pride and a conflicted xenophobia. It is a cultual establishment clueless about nuturing their posterity, clueless on how to draw on, rather than away from, vibrant "globalised" Thai popular culture.


Chapter thirteen


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