Creative Economy: Thai style

Our beloved PM Abhisit Vejjajiva announced that, by using our cultural diversity, creative economy will boost Thailand’s economic growth. And I’m sure it will, just not with current implementation.

In my opinion, South Korea is one of the biggest cultural exporters and I think S.Korea’s creative economy is very unique and effective. Let’s see some examples:

2PM & SNSD on Water park campaign

SNSD’s first debut single which resurrected skinny jeans

Dae Jang Geum (Jewel in the Palace) – a popular Korean drama that put Korean cuisine on the map (at least in Thailand) [Credit: http://english.people.com.cn/90002/96021/6547165.html]

There are so much more of Korean advert that use famous bands, or actors/actresses to sell stuffs: from cosmetics to air conditioners, from microprocessor to mobile phone. And don’t also forget that S.Korea has one of the biggest games industries in the world. Consider the fact that S.Korea is a small country that share a borderline with North Korea – which often have dispute with each other – I’ll say this is very impressive.

Look back to Thailand, even though the PM gave the green light on this matter, the reality doesn’t look good for creative economy in Thailand. Thai cultures are not any poorer than Korean, but the vulnerable politics, suppressive laws, and pretentious morality can make this harder to happen.

Thai movie industry is the best example for this. There are so many films that weren’t allow to show to public. Because they contained some ‘inappropriate’ – but true – scenes:

A true story about problems in our society and it’s banned even though we have such perfect movies rating system *sarcasm*

Just because doctors have sex during the day, this was also banned.

But this movie got “E” rate (Everyone)

Yeah, a movie with bone-crushing, blood-spewing scene is suitable for everyone.

What the f**k!? Just because the movie presents the nationalism doesn’t mean it could get through the censorship. I wanted to see this movie actually, but when I saw the rate of this movie with the news about ‘Insects in the backyard’ got banned (ironically these happened at the same timeframe), I changed my mind. I don’t want to support Thai movies industry if we have such unethical, shameless policy.

Creative economy is a great idea and I think it’s the right way for Thailand to move forward to. But we have to except the truth. Stop being pretentious. Enough with the censorship or at least have better and acceptable standard for it.

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