The good individuals of the state: middle-class culture and politics in Thai biographical films after 2006

Abstract

This thesis studies Thai bourgeois individuality as reflected in selected Thai biographical films released since 2006, an important year in Thai political history, when the military staged a coup, toppling former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. In particular, it examines how different forms of individuality in these films allow us to understand the political agenda or desire of many members of the urban middle class in the midst of on-going political crises and conflicts after 2006. Since the late 1990s, Thai film culture has seen a rise in the number of biographical films. However, in academic literature this film genre has remained under- explored and theorised, notably in the context of the socio-political transformation of Thailand in the same period of the emergence of these films. In this thesis, I attempt to provide both a theoretical understanding of the rise of biographical films and critical insight into how the production of these films can be viewed as integral to the conservative Thai middle-class culture of the present time. I approach these biographical films by using a framework that combines knowledge of the historical development of the Thai middle class—in which this thesis posits that this class has emerged and developed by allying itself with the power of the feudal establishment— and how this class‘s ideology is represented in biographical film narrative. Each chapter reveals how different aspects of Thai middle-class ideology are portrayed through forms of individuality represented in each film, particularly the form of individuality that is embodied in the characterisation of the protagonist. The central argument of this thesis is that the forms of individuality embedded in the protagonists of biographical films reflect the hybrid bourgeois-feudal cultural values of the Thai middle class. These hybrid cultural values of the Thai middle class serve to promote the power of the traditional establishment group as well as to maintain the middle class‘s coalition with the establishment. Most importantly, when looking at the political situation in the country after 2006 through these biographical films, the forms of bourgeois-feudal individuality and cultural values depicted in the films become a set of parameters that helps identify and specify different kinds of political agendas and desires of many members of Thailand‘s urban middle class in the context of the challenging political situation in this period. In particular, this thesis studies Thaksin‘s political group and the Red Shirt movement as forces which, since 2006, have challenged the coalition of the middle class and the establishment.