Mi Arai Mai Mai Mai?
Thai–Australian Video Ways
Glen Lewis and Chalinee Hirano
“Mi arai mai mai mai” (Is there anything new?) is the first question often asked by Thai expatriates living in Australia when they visit their local Thai video rental store. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how two Thai expatriate communities in Sydney and Canberra use the media to fulfil their needs for cultural continuity. It will consider whether their mainstream media use facilitates their cultural relocation within Australian society, and how they interpret the cultural text of the Thai videos they watch so eagerly. These rented Thai videos are viewed as cultural objects, conveying meanings which are reinterpreted by individuals as their readings of the videos and the mainstream media intersect with their everyday life experience.
Australia has one of the highest levels of VCR ownership in the world. Also, as in other expatriate communities—such as Cambodian refugees in the United States (Smith, 1994) or Punjabis in London (Gillespie, 1995)—Thai expatriates and students mainly rely on the inexpensive rental of free-to-air TV programs copied in Bangkok that are flown to Australia, usually within a week of their broadcast. This phenomenon has attracted some comment and movement in Thailand itself, as in an August 1996 Bangkok Post feature on the “Video Link Home”. Yet, although these programs are invariably pirated, Thai TV stations and producers have made no serious objection to the widespread use of their material by Thais in Australia or the United States.
The media channel that is the main agency of cultural retransmission for the Thai diasporas in Australia is clearly Thai-language rented videos. Although Kolar-Panov’s (1997) research on expatriate Croatians in Western Australia found that the use of specially recorded family video newsletters was a feature of that community’s media use, we found no evidence that the Australian Thai community uses video in that way. Rather, the rented videos are primarily used for two reasons. The first is for keeping up to date with news and current affairs. These are mainly from Channel 7, the top-rating Thai news channel. Second, they are used for entertainment and cultural transmission between the generations. Thai game shows and variety programs, as well as drama series (lakorn), were mostly favoured by our respondents.
The methodology of this study combined ethnographic audience analysis and social survey research into the studies of media consumption of Thai audiences. As Ang (1996: 136–37) suggests, qualitative reception analysis needs to be placed in a broad theoretical framework, one that encompasses the understanding of both structural and historical factors and the place of media in society. Accordingly, this study conducted its inquiry on three levels between October 1996 and May 1998. The first looked at the video industry, its history and the availability and distribution of Thai videos. In-depth interviews with the owners of seven selected stores were conducted. Most of them were cooperative, with the exception of some who suspected an attempt to inquire into video piracy.
The second level studied media consumption among the Thai-Australian community. A survey form about Asian-Australian diasporic media use was designed for interviews with adult members of the household. This asked about their television viewing habits and preferences, with particular attention to Thai-related materials and video viewing. It also asked about their use of radio, newspaper, computers and films. Additional questions were about their birthplace, citizenship and cultural identity, as well as socio-economic status indicators, such as household income, occupation and education. A sample was selected from the Thais living in Sydney and in Canberra. There were approximately 5500 Thailand-born immigrants in Sydney and fewer than 1000 in Canberra in 1997. Our study conducted a two-hour long interview with twelve households in Sydney and eight in Canberra. Except for two Laotians, almost all the respondents were born in Thailand.
The final level concerned the textual analyses of Thai programs. These were conducted to understand how particular Thai popular programs, such as variety shows and drama series, are interpreted in a diasporic setting. First, an audience-based textual analysis was made of a 22-minute selection of programs, including a variety show (Jan Kra Prib/Blinking Moon), news from Channel 7, an historical drama series (Rattanakosin/Bangkok Dynasty) and five commercials. This was done by showing excerpts from those programs accompanied by questions to the ten selected survey respondents (five each in Sydney and Canberra) after the two-hour interview. Second, a further textual analysis was conducted of two popular talk and variety shows—The Twilight Show from Channel 3 and Si-Tum Square (Ten O’clock Square) on Channel 7—and two drama series from Channel 3—Jintapatee and Por-Krua-Hua-Pah (The Chef)—by showing fifteen-minute excerpts of each to two additional focus groups in Sydney and Canberra. These programs were selected on the basis of their popularity and their ready availability in the video rental stores.
Our study has assumed that the degree of difference in video consumption and reception patterns among the Thai ethnic audience will depend on the extent to which a person is incorporated into the mainstream culture. The basic factors influencing this are their length of residence in Australia, their English language ability, their educational level and their age. Accordingly, Thais aged between 27 and 65, who had not been in Australia more than five years and had little English language ability, were selected for the Sydney focus group. The Canberra participants comprised those who could be considered second-generation migrants: teenagers between fifteen and twenty years of age who had grown up in Australia and were fluent in English. These demographic choices were made partly out of the constraints of availability, but also to highlight the possible role of generational difference in program reception.
Thai–Australian Connections
The Thai community presence in Australia is not a numerically strong one in comparison to other much larger Asian groups, such as the Chinese or the Vietnamese. In 1996 there were about 17 500 Thai-born residents in Australia, with an additional 5500 born in Australia who had at least one parent born in Thailand (Coughlan, 1996: 51). Although research studies of Thai expatriates in Australia are scarce, it would seem that one distinctive feature of their experience has been the predominance of women as immigrants.
Thai immigration to Australia began in the early 1970s, following the formal abolition of the “White Australia” policy by the Whitlam government in 1973. Most of these Thais gained entry as students or visitors, and later became permanent residents. Like the Thai women who migrated to the United States after the Vietnam War, the second stage of Thai emigration consisted of Thai wives of Australian nationals; this phase commenced in the late 1970s. During the 1970s and 1980s, there were many mail-order bride advertisements in Australia. Most of these were for Filipinas; however, a small proportion were also for Thai women. So the third main stage of Thai emigration to Australia in the 1980s and 1990s included the immediate family members of Thai wives and fiancees who had been sponsored under the family reunion category. Sixty per cent of Thai residents in Australia arrived under this category (Studdert, 1996: 2).
The greater international movement of Thai people in the late 1980s was the result of Thailand’s remarkable economic growth. Thailand had its own version of the Asian economic miracle through the 1980s, during which time it had one of the highest economic growth rates in the world (Pasuk and Baker, 1996). Because its centrality to the trade routes of mainland Southeast Asia and its history of never being colonised, Thailand is an important regional state—not only in economic terms, but strategically and politically. The spread of democratisation in East Asia since the 1980s has included Thailand. After the Black May crisis of 1992, the Thai polity has become more civilianised. Although corruption is still rife during Thai elections (McCargo and Callahan, 1995), the Chuan government since November 1997 has had a leader who is the first civilian to become an elected prime minister. Chuan Leekpai’s own political track record is a model of integrity, though his previous ministry was brought down in 1995 because of its involvement in land scandals in the South, the party’s power base.
Thailand traditionally has been one of the most outward-looking Southeast Asian states. Because it was never directly colonised, as most other Asian nations were, it has retained a very clear sense of its national and cultural identity (Reynolds, 1991). Also, the Thai capacity for cultural syncretism is comparable with Japan’s in its ability to incorporate overseas influences while retaining its own core cultural values and fostering what Barme (1993) has called “nationally-imagined nationalism”. Since the 1930s, this has been expressed in the slogan “My nation, Buddhism, and the King” (Barme, 1993). The image of King Bhumibol is broadcast daily on TV and radio at 8.00 a.m. and 6.00 p.m., with news of the royal family featuring nightly for ten to fifteen minutes at the end of each 45-minute evening news bulletin. Thai film audiences also still stand to attention for the national anthem at the start of each movie session.
The Thai media play a central role in this process of symbolic nation-building, both domestically and through a high level of engagement with the media and video use by Thai expatriates. In California, for instance, where there are an estimated 350 000 Thais, they have their own program slot on a Los Angeles cable television channel, while a 24-hour satellite radio channel is broadcast from Thailand to the US West Coast. Some cable broadcasts to Thais in Europe from England were made in 1996–97 by the Sahaviriya group, though this has now shut down (Thai Tourism Journal, 1996: 28). In 1998, Army TV Channel 5 commenced 24-hour broadcasting via the THAICOM-3 satellite to expatriates in Eastern and Western Australia, as well as to the United States and Europe. This new audience is limited to elite subscribers due to the high subscription fee of $1500 in Australia.
Thai–Australian trading and cultural links so far, however, remain quite limited. Thailand’s image in Australia is positively seen mainly as a tourist destination, while it is often negatively stereotyped by the international media as a global centre of prostitution, political corruption and AIDS. Thai culture in Australia mostly is physically visible in the large number of Thai restaurants. Conversely, Thai knowledge of Australia is limited, though it has become an increasingly popular destination for students and tourists. Closer links have been established more recently. The current Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Tim Fischer, has had a particularly close association with Thailand. The introduction of Thai language classes in several secondary and tertiary institutions has also helped make Thai culture more accessible to Australians (Coughlan, 1996: 50). Moreover, because of the growing affluence of the Thais, the number of Thai tourists and students coming to Australia has jumped sharply in recent years. Whereas there were 19 600 tourist arrivals in 1990, in 1994 there were 66 900, and there were 8844 Thai students in 1996 (ABS, 1995–96: 35). It should be pointed out that both tourist and student numbers have declined sharply since the economic crisis beginning in mid-1997; however, the field research for this study was completed before that time.
In media terms, the ABC-TV show Bananas in Pyjamas has become extremely popular in Thailand, where in 1998 it was being screened weekly by Channel 7 on Tuesday nights between 8.20 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. (peak viewing time is 6.00–9.00 p.m.). The characters also have been successfully merchandised in Bangkok’s huge mega-malls with B1 and B2 even appearing on kids’ T-shirts promoting the “Amazing Thailand” tourism campaign. The cross-cultural appeal of the show builds on its suitability to be dubbed in Thai—as with other puppet, masked and animated programs for children, including the Japanese cartoons also popular on Thai TV. There is practically no English-language programming on Thai broadcast television. Two Australian daily news programs, Sunrise and Australia Television News, however, are available on Thai Pay TV, as are the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent and World at Noon. Australia Television, originally the ABC’s and now Seven’s regional channel, has been available via satellite since 1993, while News’ Star-TV service is available both by satellite and through the cable provider, UBC.
At some stages of the Pauline Hanson immigration debate in Australia, some leading Thai media figures, such as the editor of the Bangkok Post, Pichai Chuensuksawadi, criticised Australian attitudes to Asians (Lewis, 1997). Yet this probably goes against the long-term trend of Thai perceptions, as there is more coverage—and generally positive coverage—of Australia in the Thai media now than there was five years ago. Educational exchanges, as well as increased Thai tourism, have been the main sources of this change. An Australian Studies Centre, for example, was established in 1996 at Kasetsart University—one of Thailand’s premier universities in agricultural education (both countries are major primary producers)—with links to Griffith University. Some of the Thai elite also have been Australian-educated, such as the Crown Prince who studied at Duntroon, and Dr Meechai Viravaidya, a Melbourne University alumni who currently heads Thailand’s Telstra, the TOT. The Australian government also contributed A$1 billion to the IMF rescue package for Thailand in mid-1997.
However, the Thai community in Australia is a collection of individuals scattered across all states and territories, unlike the Vietnamese in Sydney’s Cabramatta, or the Chinese in Ashfield, Chatswood and Chinatown. This is perhaps due to the nature of their migration, which has been mostly on marriage grounds. The common physical place that the Thai communities can gather and share their stories of past and present Thailand is the Wat, or the Thai Buddhist temple. The Wat provides Thai migrants with a cultural space where the shared pull of symbols helps to create a sense of belonging, in the same way that ethnic clubs do for other migrants (Kolar-Panov, 1997: 76).
The Thai community in Australia is an homogeneous Buddhist group. There is little evidence of a Thai Muslim subculture in Australia, though there are some two million Patani-Thai Muslims in Southern Thailand. The Wat gives these Thai-Australians a space in which their members can share their spiritual beliefs, participate in regular merit-making rituals, speak their own language and build social networks of friendship and support. The Buddhist monks who reside in the temples carry out their duties, providing spiritual guidance for the Thais. Due to the limited support and counselling services provided for new settlers, these monks sometimes act as migrant counsellors, especially to Thai women who are married to Australians, giving advice on how to cope with lives in the new land (Chotimont, 1997).
The majority of Thai immigrants to Australia are women who migrated in the 1980s through marriage. While some of these have strong educational backgrounds and full-time jobs, and are well integrated into society, the majority are not qualified for the Australian workforce. Most stay home and are relatively isolated from non-Thai Australian society. Language and educational background are major obstacles preventing these Thai brides from assimilating themselves into the host society. The mainstream media provide little to help in terms of their settlement and English language education (Bednall, 1993). As a result, these media are not heavily used by these Thai brides. For those who work full-time outside the home, “Mai mee wae la” (No time) was often the answer when they were asked why they didn’t watch TV, or why they didn’t listen to the radio or read the newspaper.
What does it mean to be Thai-Australian in contemporary Australia? Questions of media use need to come back to this starting point. A simple answer to this might lie in the way the Thai migrants live their lives, eat their food, worship their King, visit Thai restaurants or decorate their houses. The Thai elements embedded in these activities are crucial in the process of self-identification of being Thai (ekkalak Thai). Most of the houses we visited were decorated with Thai ornaments, with Buddha statues set carefully in one corner as a shrine surrounded by plastic garlands and daily food offerings. Some had piles of Thai newspapers and magazines in one corner of the living room, and the television in another, covered with beautiful traditional handmade silk, often from Isarn (Northeast Thailand), and topped with some Thai wooden dolls in classical dance costumes. This remaking of the domestic environment—the coding with souvenirs, handicrafts and objects from the homeland—enhances the collective diasporic experience (Nacify, 1993: 106). The reconstitution of the television set encourages the viewer’s glance to switch between the monitor and the objects as part of the process of cultural (re)identification.
Before considering Thai video use in detail, the next section will analyse the expatriate use of Thai-language radio and print media, as well as the mainstream Australian media.
Thai Community Use of Broadcast TV, Radio and the Press
Mainstream Media
The Thai media presence in Australia is small, reflecting the size of the expatriate community. There is a Sydney Thai-language fortnightly paper, Thai-Oz, that acts mainly as a social and community channel for Thais in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The paper also provides summaries of leading domestic Australian political issues that may impact on the Thai community. For example, in December 1996, one article carefully listed the wide range of English-language (and Chinese-language, as Sino-Thais play a central cultural and business role in Thai society) coverage of the controversial rise to national influence of Pauline Hanson (Thai-Oz, 28 November–11 December 1996: 28). Otherwise, SBS radio broadcasts two hour-long programs per week in Thai (Tuesday 9–10.00 p.m. and Saturday 8–9.00 a.m.), which do not appear to be widely listened to. One attempt by a Sydney FM station to establish a volunteer Thai service from a North Sydney location in 1996 failed through lack of support.
There were a wide range of television programs regularly watched by our respondents in Sydney and Canberra. For example, popular entertainment programs among the Canberra residents were game shows, such as Sale of the Century and Wheel of Fortune. They prefer watching these to soaps because, according to one Canberra resident: “I’ve been here seventeen years, the plots [of the soaps] are all the same, Neighbours is still Neighbours.” Matters of taste may be the source of dislike here. Although in both Australian and Thai family dramas, family conflict is part of the essential plot, Australian television families are perceived to be far more permissive than Thais. Furthermore, Australian TV dramas rarely reflect the cultural diversity and aspects of multiculturalism of the society in which these Thai migrants are living. Most of the dramas are full of blue-eyed, white-Anglo casts, with the exception of some that have recently added a few ethnic characters. Australian television, in general, is nationalist and populist, due to its assumption of a majority ideological perspective (Jakubowicz, 1994). This assumption is, generally speaking, shared by pay TV providers.
Similarly, the Australian cinema has little interest in catering for the needs of an extremely marginal Thai audience. There has been only one Thai movie screened publicly in Australian cinemas so far. Khon-Lieng-Chang (The Elephant Keeper, 1990) was shown in Sydney (Potts Point) and in Canberra (Electric Shadows) in 1991. Not surprisingly, all of the respondents in this study wanted to see more Thai movies screened in Australia. One Thai who was a regular Chinese filmgoer even said: “I watch Chinese movies just for fun. It’s quick, Chinese style, but it’s not Thai.” Respondents also stated their disappointment that Thai movies had been less frequently screened on SBS in comparison to Chinese or European movies. When asked if they had seen Thai programs or films on SBS, each respondent could name only one or two films.
There have been no more than four Thai movies broadcast on SBS over the last five years. Most of them are considered old, though they were award-winning films. These included Butterfly and Flower (Pee-Suar-Lae-Dok Mai) (1983) and The Path of the Brave Man (Wi-Thee-Klon-Kla) (1987). Critical comments were made by several respondents regarding the intentions of SBS in screening The Path of the Brave Man, as its story revolves around the lives of a primitive mountain tribe. They felt that this kind of movie would create a wrong image of Thais among Australians. All of the respondents wanted to see more Thai movies on SBS, but they desired new, good quality ones. They also wished to see news from Thailand broadcast in the morning on SBS in a similar way to the programming of other Asian news at that time.
Australian ethnic radio programs seemed to play an insignificant role in helping Thai migrants either in settlement or in cultural identification. There was low awareness among the respondents about the availability of Thai radio programs in Australia. The Thai-language radio programs on SBS are broadcast twice a week in Sydney on FM 97.7 and once a week in Canberra on FM 105.5. A Sydney volunteer-based radio program, Thai Smile Radio, used to broadcast every Sunday afternoon on FM 98.5. However, the program was cancelled in January 1997 because it failed to attract sponsors.
Seven Thai respondents living in Sydney sometimes listened to SBS radio. Only one respondent in Canberra listened to SBS Thai radio programs every week. Some respondents suggested that the SBS radio programs could be improved by including information concerning the welfare of new arrivals and changes in government policies which might affect Thais living here. However, all of the respondents expressed the same concerns about the language used by the DJ. One, for example, said that the program was “too boring. The DJ can’t speak Thai properly. Not much is talked about how the Thais living here are doing.” This requirement for the correct use of the Thai language on radio not only indicates their patriotism, but also their desire to affirm their diasporic identity. They consider that more attention to the proper use of their native language on radio would give such programs greater credibility with the local Thai audiences.
Our study showed that watching news on Australian commercial TV channels, particularly Channels 7 and 9, was more popular among the respondents than either the ABC News or World News on SBS. Although they all agreed that news stories on commercial channels covered few important events in Thailand, or about Thais living here, they still preferred to watch the news on the commercial channels because of its local content. One respondent, for example, said: “I just want to know if anything has happened in the neighbourhood.” Several complaints about the content of news programs on ABC and SBS were also voiced—for example: “World News on SBS rarely covers Thailand; it tends to focus on Eastern and Southern Europe” and: “I watch the late night news on ABC. There is little news from Thailand. They focus more on Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.”
Not only did most of the respondents feel that they got inadequate information about Thailand and about Thais living here from Australian television; they also believed that the image of Thailand portrayed in the Australia media was often negative. One respondent claimed news reports on commercial stations about Thailand were bad and exaggerated. Programs such as Witness, 60 Minutes and A Current Affair often sensationalised Thai stories, emphasising traffic problems, drugs, AIDS and prostitution as major problems in Thailand. Here commercial ratings factors are likely a major influence on the selection of stories by those programs. As Loo argues (1994: 36), journalists tend to stereotype by assimilating their descriptions of events into terms familiar to the dominant audience.
The treatment of Thailand in Australian-made media such as Bangkok Hilton, a 1989 mini-series about the imprisonment of Australians for drug-running in Thailand starring Nicole Kidman, reinforced media stereotypes that our subjects disliked. Some even said that they felt too humiliated and bashful to walk on the street or go to work the next day after the screening of such programs because they were afraid to answer any questions from their colleagues. They wanted to see more unbiased reports about their country, as well as more nature programs and personal success stories.
Newspapers and the Internet: More News Channels
There was only one respondent who did not read a newspaper of any kind. When asked about Thai-Oz, a fortnightly paper published in Cabramatta with a circulation of some 6800 and distributed mainly in New South Wales and the ACT, eleven of the twelve respondents in Sydney confirmed reading it. All the Canberra respondents, with the exception of the two Laotians, read Thai-Oz. The main content of Thai-Oz includes headline news from Sydney’s major papers, such as the Sydney Morning Herald, and news from leading Thai papers, such as Thai-Rath, Daily News and Matichon. Most respondents said that they read Thai-Oz to get information and news about Thailand and news that concerned Thais living here, such as changes in immigration policy. One respondent, for example, clarified his motives in reading Thai-Oz: “Most of us like to keep up to date with the main issues, to see movements in Thai politics and change in Thailand.”
Limited English was cited as another reason that the Thais turned to the ethnic press, as it helped them in terms of their settlement and facilitated the adaptation process to Australian ways. One Sydney respondent admitted: “The new articles in the Australian newspapers are too long and my English is not good.” Other comments regarding Thai-Oz were: “It helped me understand the Australian news better, such as issues regarding Mrs Pauline Hanson” and “I also read the news about Pauline Hanson in Thai-Oz, which made me understand the issue better.” However, Thai-Oz was often criticised by the respondents for using the Thai language incorrectly, and they suggested a need for improvement. One Thai language university lecturer said: “This newspaper is also read by Australians who are learning Thai. They even make references from it. We’ve to get it right.”
All respondents wanted to see more Thai-language newspapers. Other than Thai-Oz, 50 per cent of respondents (ten out of twenty) regularly read imported newspapers, such as Thai-Rath, Daily News and Matichon, which arrived only two days after their publication date. These were read to find out about changes in Thai politics and the economy. Some papers also have a gossip column about the Thais in Australia. Bangkok’s large-circulation Daily News runs a column every Wednesday (Duang stamp kham kob fa/Stamp from across the sky), written by a Thai expatriate in Australia under the pen-name of “Jarupan Praisaeng”. Moreover, imported women’s magazines such as Koo Sang Koo Som (Destined Couples), Di-Chan (female pronoun for I), Sakulthai (Thai Heritage) and Matichon Sudsapda (Public Opinion Weekly/ Politics) were widely read. A respondent commented that the purpose of reading Thai magazines was to read the entertainment news, to see if there were new drama series on air in Thailand. She would then calculate the time it would take the tape of the first episode to arrive in Australia, and sometimes ring the store to book the tape in advance.
Use of newer media to stay in touch with Thailand was quite limited. Sixty per cent of households in this survey had computers, yet only 25 per cent had access to the Internet. Computers were mainly used for professional work and for study purposes. Two of the respondents in Sydney had computers at home, but never touched them. Only three respondents used the Internet to keep in touch with their friends or relatives at home by email. This was because: “Not many people in Thailand have access to email or the Internet.” In fact, commercial Net services in Thailand only began recently, in March 1995 (Thaweesak, 1998). There were only two respondents who regularly read Thai English-language newspapers available on the Net, such as The Nation and Bangkok Post. Another respondent said that she often caught up with upcoming episodes of her favourite drama series on the TV station’s Website.
Ethnic Videos and Thai Urban Culture
Recent studies which apply ethnographic approaches to ethnic video audiences, such as Gillespie’s (1995) and Kolar-Panov’s (1997) studies, have noted the significance of this medium in maintaining cultural identification among diasporic groups. These videos, they argue, create a cultural space in which the present of the viewer is interrupted while their past is renewed. In this way, their cultural identities are reinvented and renegotiated (Kolar-Panov, 1997: 209). The diasporic audiences allow their past to talk to them through watching the visual images of their shared cultural symbols, and by listening to the shared stories and myths of their homeland culture, as presented in the videos. As Stuart Hall states:
The past continues to speak to us but it no longer addresses us as a simple factual past, since our relation to it, like the child’s relation to the mother, is always already after the break. It is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth. (1990: 226)
Memories of the past, which are constructed through symbols, stories and myth, act as a catalyst fuelling the need for belonging or, in Kolar-Panov’s terms, the need for continuity (1997: 210). Diasporas have a desire to catch up on what they have missed by leaving their homelands. This need for continuity is a necessity, not nostalgia, for it helps them understand themselves—who they are, where they came from, their sense of their everyday lives—and at the same time negotiate the host culture. These needs of the expatriate Thais in Australia can at least partially be met by the ready availability of Thai videos: “I watch the news from Channel 7 every week. It’s about three hours long. Sometimes after I finish watching, I thought I was sitting and watching in my home in Thailand.” (Sydney respondent, April 1997)
This respondent, a woman who had migrated to Australia three years previously, seeks to re-liminalise her experience of an in-between space, in which her present and her past are connected. For Thai migrants, their homeland is a country in the middle of an economic transformation, riddled with constant political and social changes. Many people left the country at a time when the economic boom was giving rise to a new urban culture, replacing the older notion that Thai culture was distinctively royal and rural (Pasuk and Baker, 1996: 115). The backbone of the nation was changing from the rural farmers to urban businessmen and white-collar workers in the early 1980s. Since then, a new urban culture has been developed by this new middle class, including those who enjoy their new wealth and also enjoy letting others know about it. Part of Thai psychology, as Mulder (1992) explains, is the display and sharing of wealth, not only as an act of personal pride, but as a way of collectively sharing the wealth around, or making merit (tambun).
This new urban culture of conspicuous consumption is directly represented in many Thai TV programs. At least until the mid-1997 crash, they were filled with locally made popular dramas telling stories of being rich, or becoming rich with good spirits (jai dee). Pasuk and Baker (1996: 123) identify three main types of these popular TV dramas: historical series; family melodramas; and dramas about the changing role of women. Some dealt with the increasing role of women at work, which contrasted with the traditional role of Thai women as home-carers. Television game shows provided a chance for ordinary people to get rich quickly. Popular talk and variety shows had well-known businessmen as their quests, telling their stories of success. Music videos and programs were also flooded with images of luk-krueng (half-Thai, half-foreign) singers, who were once social outcasts, but more recently have been successful through their distinctive looks, as well as by developing new styles of pop songs about growing up in a modem, commercialised Bangkok. They see themselves as guiding the older generations to understand the new world (Jiraporn, 1996). These luk-krueng increasingly appear in films, TV dramas and advertisements, and are the media emblems of a new, urban youth culture in a globalised Thailand (Lewis, 1998b).
Moving from a country with a deeply rooted traditional culture undergoing rapid change to one which is more politically secure, but with a less-established cultural identity, can pose a major challenge for Thai immigrants. On the one hand, they need to adapt and adjust to an Anglo-dominated Australian society, which is still debating the meaning of multiculturalism (e.g. Birch, 1997). On the other, they retain their desire for cultural continuity by catching up with the rapid changes and the new developments in their original homeland. Studies of Thai immigrants to the United States, where national cultural identity is more clearly defined than in Australia, also show that Thai expatriates there still retain strong religious and moral ties with their homeland’s culture (Pressman, 1993).
Thai Video Stores: A Product or a Community Service?
The practice of Thai ethnic video distribution in Australia has developed from informally watching videos at home socially to the commercial provision of tapes since the early 1980s. Families and friends of Thai expatriates recorded Thai popular programs for their loved ones overseas to keep them up to date with home news and entertainment. The first wave of Thai video rental stores in Australia started around the same time as a revival of popular local dramas based on traditional stories was taking place in Thailand. These replaced the American films and TV dramas that had become popular program content during the Vietnam War years. Several expatriates who were running grocery stores saw renting Thai TV programs as a potentially profitable sideline, so they asked their relatives to record popular programs and send them over for renting out to their customers. This practice continues today, although now several dubbing studios have been hired to do the job instead.
The Thai video stores studied in New South Wales and the ACT began business around 1990. Of five stores in Sydney, three are owned by Thais, one by a Laotian and another by a Chinese-Vietnamese. The two Canberra stores are owned by Laotians. Laotians and Thais have a number of strong similarities in their languages and culture and, in Laos itself, Thai television is widely watched. In Sydney, all five shops in the survey were completely devoted to the video rental business, with small corners selling sideline products, including Thai magazines, newspapers, popular music cassettes, CDs and homemade snacks. The Canberra shops, on the other hand, were originally grocery stores and started renting videos only to “draw customers into the shop. Profits from selling groceries and food ingredients are much higher than renting videos.” (Southlands, 24 December 1996). The most frequent borrowers are Thai women, yet borrowers cover a wide social range, from housewives to labourers and business people temporarily working in Australia, students and Laotians, Cambodians and Chinese-Vietnamese (with a higher proportion of these in Sydney). A small number of Australians are also regular customers. Some rent Thai boxing videos. Others are interested to learn the language by watching Thai news and documentaries.
All stores have a wide range of programs. About 50 per cent are drama series, while 30 per cent are game and variety shows. The remainder are comedies, news, sports, beauty contests, music videos, Hong Kong-Chinese drama series dubbed in Thai (notably the Taiwanese TVB program, Paw Boon Jeen (Judge Pao), which is a special Thai favorite), and popular American films dubbed in Thai. The most popular shows are historical drama series from Channels 3 and 7, such as Rattanakosin (Bangkok Dynasty) from Channel 7, which tells the story of the early nineteenth-century life of the royal court, and family dramas such as Koe-Sawad Had-Sawan (Paradise Island), which deals with the theme of love and romance and about being rich without losing your soul. There are also dramas dealing with the changing role of women in Thai society, such as Jintapatee, as well as game shows such as Ching Roi Ching Larn (Take a Hundred or a Million) and variety shows such as Si Tum Square (10 O’clock Square) from Channel 7 and Channel 3’s Twilight Show.
Mi Arai Mai Mai Mai? (Is There Anything New?)
This is the question most often put by customers when visiting the stores. To satisfy their desire for keeping up to date with news, fashion, dramas and other changes in Thailand, all programs are recent. They are only a week behind the date they are televised in Thailand. The master tapes are illegally dubbed in several studios in Thailand—which all stores refused to identify—then sent by air twice weekly to stores in Sydney, which also act as Australia-wide distributors. Each master tape is very expensive. Several shop owners in Cabramatta try to reduce this high cost by sharing the master tape. However, profits can still be made, owing to the low cost of video reproduction. When new tapes arrive, between ten and twenty copies are made of each program, depending on demand, while tapes are often reused many times. Despite complaints of poor-quality tapes from customers, store owners keep using old tapes due to low rental costs, low profit margins and delays in getting the tapes returned.
So the master tapes are stored for only two or three months, then reused, with the exception of one store in Sydney which keeps master tapes of every drama series since 1990. This business has about 100 000 tapes in storage. Rental fees are very low, ranging from A$1.50 to $3.00, with no specified borrowing period. Although the rule is intended for overnight rental, most of the tapes are passed between relatives and friends before being returned to the store, as no fine is imposed. In Sydney, the average number of tapes borrowed each week is about 1000–1500 tapes per shop, while about 500 are passed between relatives and friends before being returned. A frequent comment by the store owners was: “Video renting is not highly profitable. It’s more of a community service, but once I have committed, I have to continue.” Although Thai video renting is more of a community service than a profitable business, it seems certain to continue to provide an alternative TV diet for Thai expatriates.
The only likely obstacle to this is if TV program producers, the main channels and video rental companies in Thailand decide to actively prosecute the copying of their products for overseas distribution. Both the Thai television and video rental markets in Thailand are fiercely competitive, especially given recent declines in advertising revenues. So far, however, the only instance of the enforcement of bans of the use of Thai TV overseas has been in relation to Cambodia, where there was widespread pirating of Thai TV programs, especially those of Channel 3, by Cambodian television operators. Thailand itself still has a high rate of piracy of intellectual property, such as in computer software and also textbooks, despite increasing US pressure to enforce international copyright laws. Yet it is unlikely in the near future that any restriction on the outflow of Thai TV programs overseas will be undertaken. If this did happen, it would probably affect the larger North American Thai video market more than Australia’s.
Thai Community Video Use and Cultural Representation
Thai Videos as Alternative Community Television
The Anglocentric narrowness of mainstream Australian television, together with its reliance on certain stereotypes about Thailand, has probably been a factor in encouraging the Thai communities to rely on rented videos as their alternative television. The relatively low rental costs, the availability of programs and the absence of commercials are a combination of incentives for watching Thai videos. One Sydney respondent explained:
Every program is available here. I have more time to watch variety programs and drama series than when I was in Thailand. In Thailand, each channel always had its best shows on air on the same day and same time, so we had to choose what to watch. Here, we rent tapes, so we can watch everything we want to and there are no commercials.
Figure 5.1: English-language videos and Thai videos watched last month
Although the survey results showed that gender was an important factor in determining watching frequency, it was less significant when considering program preferences. Education and job status, on the other hand, were quite crucial in the selection of video programs watched, as well as the amount of videos hired. However, the purposes of watching videos among the respondents were strikingly similar—that is, to get information about any changes in Thailand, and to act as a source of entertainment. Overall, there were three distinctive aspects of the alternative television used by Thai diasporic audiences: to be a breaking-news channel; to provide escapism for expatriate Thai brides; and to act as a generational go-between between older and younger Thais.
Video as an Alternative News Channel
Expatriate communities normally have a strong desire to know the latest news from their own countries. In Nacify’s (1993) study of the Iranian diaspora in the United States, for example, he argues there was a constant drive, or an “epistephillic desire”, for information among the Iranians about recent changes in their homelands (1993: 107). This seems true also for Thais in present-day Australia. The rented Thai videos are used as a means of gratifying this desire for current information, and in this way they serve as an alternative news channel, supplementary to the little that can be gathered from the mainstream Australian media. In order to keep up with the most recent events in Thailand, the Thai-Australian audiences watch Thai TV news, especially from Channel 7, as well as current talk and variety shows, on a regular basis. One Sydney respondent said: “I watch because I try to keep up with what’s going on in Thailand.” Another similarly voiced the reason: “I need to know about the changes, otherwise I will be out of date (cheoy) when I return home to programs in Thailand.”
Some of the results of the textual analyses of the programs clarify the extent to which Thai rented videos serve as an alternative community news channel. Respondents were shown a short passage from Channel 7 news on 6 December 1996, about the then-recent Thai election in which Chavalit Yonchaiyudh had been successful. This bulletin is the top-rating news program in Thailand, and each evening, as it begins, there is a preview of the main items, spoken dramatically against a background soundtrack of rattling drums. The respondents were asked: “Do you always follow what’s going on in Thailand, particularly the election?” The majority said they did by watching news from Channel 7 on video and by reading Thai newspapers.
Two Sydney respondents noted correctly that, in this particular bulletin, one of the two women newsreaders (Sansanee Nakpong) had been an unsuccessful election candidate. One also knew that Sansanee had represented the Buddhist reform Palang Dhamma Party then headed by Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin is one of the better-known Thai politicians and had briefly been Foreign Minister under the first Chuan government. His Shinawatra company had launched the first THAICOM communication satellite in 1993 (Lewis, 1996). He was also the only politician independently and favourably mentioned by one of the respondents.
“Hard” news about Thai politics and business, however, was not the only or primary type of news that the expatriate Thais surveyed wanted. They were just as interested in getting the latest “soft” news about fashions, personalities, scandals and show-biz gossip. For instance, the respondents were also shown an excerpt from Jan Kra Prib (The Blinking Moon), a Channel 7 variety show that was celebrating its seventh anniversary in December 1996. They were simply asked: “Did you watch this in Thailand?” The majority acknowledged that they did, then most of their discussion centred around the preferences of the viewers for individual singers in the program. They discussed whether they remembered each one and which of the seven singers and the two MCs they liked best.
Two comments were notable here. First, two of the ten respondents noted approvingly that it was unusual to see a pregnant Thai MC (Poosacha Tonawanick). Second, one of the same two noted disapprovingly that Sukanya Migail, the least traditional looking women singer among the performers and a luk-krueng (half-Thai, half-Filipina), was rumoured to have “dark past” (adeet tee-mued), meaning that she may once have been a prostitute—something not uncommon among professional women entertainers in Thailand. It was notable that the Thai respondents were very well informed about the personal lives of popular Thai TV stars. Especially in Bangkok, there is an extensive subculture centred around television soaps and luk-thoong (Thai rural music) video clips that links up with a suburban and provincial café, bar and restaurant entertainment circuit, where the same stars can be seen performing live.
It was evident in the survey, too, that Thai sensationalised current affairs programs such as Cheod (Close Call), and Tam-La-Ha-Kwam-Jing (Search for the Truth) were seen as popular sources for information concerning the increase in crime which has grown in parallel with the booming Thai economy. These shows, modelled on American “reality docu-dramas” are exactly the opposite to the rural, historical romances that were also popular with the respondents. Reports about violent crime, fraud and briberies in these programs, however, did not discourage the expatriate Thais from visiting their homelands. One respondent stated the necessity of knowing what was happening in Thailand, even though she expressed no desire to return to live there.
Finally, a bracket of five Thai commercials was shown. The respondents were asked what they thought of current Thai TV ads and how they compared with Australian commercials. There was a consensus here that the standard of recent Thai ads had greatly improved, although a few respondents saw no significant difference. In making a comparison with Australian ads, two commented on the stronger Thai preference for indirect sales appeals, while one also correctly pointed out that direct product comparisons were not permitted on Thai TV (Chalinee, 1994). One positive comment on a patent medicine ad (Tamjai) was that it was qualifying its pitch by the use of a warning that medical advice should be sought if the medicine did not work. Consumption of various substances in the guise of medicine, especially vitamin drinks, remains relatively common in Thailand. Lastly, another respondent stated that Australian ads paid more attention to health and environmental issues.
Video as a Site of Escapism for Thai Brides
As has been discussed, Thai brides make up a large proportion of Thai-Australian families in the wider population. The salience of female marriage as a factor in the Thai presence in Australia, and the media preferences of Thai women married to Australian men, touches on one of the more widely debated issues in feminist media studies—the extent to which the viewing of soap operas and light entertainment TV shows should be seen as a culturally inferior activity, or whether it should be reinterpreted more positively as an example of the way that women use media to negotiate personal identity issues (Ang, 1996). It seems more likely that the average Thai bride married to an Australian man uses the media, and especially rented Thai videos, as a site for re-liminalising, dramatising and personalising their often significantly constrained social space.
Eight out of twelve Sydney respondents and six out of eight Canberra respondents regularly watched Thai drama series. Most importantly, all of these were women. One respondent regularly watched 75–80 Thai videos per month. For Thai expatriates whose language skills are not good, Thai videos were identified as a reliable and undemanding source of entertainment. Most popular Thai dramas are straightforwardly melodramatic, often using the ingredients of love, goodness and riches. One respondent explained why she preferred watching Thai dramas to Australian: “The plots of Australian soaps are hard to relate to. They often revolve around country life and complicated relationships. Thai plots are easy. The good ones defeat the bad ones and they all have happy endings.”
A primary focus of Australian drama was perceived often to deal with family conflicts, in which right or wrong is not easily determined. Plots of Thai teledramas, on the contrary, centre on romance and personal success. Most of them are predictable and indefinitely iterable. The difference between Thai serial dramas is more about setting and the performers rather than the plot. Popular Thai dramas during the years of the economic boom (from about 1988 to 1996) competed for ratings by featuring many grandiose houses, luxurious cars and romantic, foreign settings. One 1994 series was shot in Sydney, with the dialogue taking place entirely in Thai between the all-Thai cast.
Yet this common fictional model of romance between Thais overseas, or sometimes Thais and farangs (Westerners), in exotic, faraway places rarely fits the more prosaic realities. The majority of Thai women who were married to Australian citizens arrived here with minimum English proficiency (Sansanee, 1997). Their expectations of fulfilling their dreams of living a better life were often hampered by language problems and sometimes by a dramatic clash of cultures. For example, Thai brides who have language difficulties and difficult migration experiences tend to seek to establish a social network with other Thai women through meetings at temple or household visits.
However, the notion of friendship visits in Thailand and Australia is different. While unannounced visits are common in Thai society, the respondents felt that social visits in Australia had to be prearranged, and the purpose of the visit properly explained. Frequent disruption of household activities by visiting Thai friends of the Thai wives was perceived unacceptable by their Australian husbands. Lacking an alternative support network, Thai wives have few to communicate their emotional problems to (Sansanee, 1997). The use of video drama series is captured in comments such as: “A video is a perfect escape, and it helps me get through the day.” The speaker came from a deprived background with grade four education, and met her Australian husband and moved to Australia when she was seventeen. Now she has been here for three years, yet has barely improved her English language ability. While watching a Thai drama series together, she told the researcher that she dreamt of having romantic love, and a successful and luxurious life like those women in the dramas. She knew she could not have it, yet she hoped that one day when her son—who is a luk-krueng—grows up and returns to Thailand he would become famous. Then she could have a better life. For this Thai bride, videos offered her space to move beyond the constraints of everyday life and explore other situations and identities, proferring her some means to constitute herself in acts of becoming.
Most of the women respondents also agreed when asked if they liked watching historical dramas. In the first survey meeting, as well as showing Thai news and ads, an excerpt from an historical drama series, Bangkok Dynasty, was also viewed. The only exception was one young mother who said she preferred teenage programs. Reasons given for liking the Thai historical dramas were mostly nostalgic—for example, “They reminded me of my country home.” Another viewer said that she wanted her children to know about Thai history. Several of the respondents also commented that they recognised particular actors, while some also commented on the good looks and popularity of the luk-krueng stars. Several more popular 1996 Thai TV rural drama series were mentioned, such as Mon Rak Luk Thoong (The Magic of the Country) and Rak Kham Khlong (Love Over the Canal).
As most of the respondents were from Bangkok, this raises the question as to why these rural dramas appeared to be so popular. In comparative terms, there are some Australian parallels, such as the international popularity in the 1980s of A Country Practice, still showing on ATV in Thailand. This is perhaps due to the style of narrative discourse used in these rural dramas, where the country is constructed as a place where there is a cooperative community, where notions of individuality are absent, and life is more tranquil. This is contrasted with fast-paced urban lives, where people are too individualistic and there is too much crime. Thailand is actually less urbanised than Vietnam, yet the primate city role of Bangkok, with its eight million people, dominates Thai media culture (Lewis, 1998b). The daily problems of living in Bangkok—rot-tit (traffic jams), mollapit (pollution) and crime (especially violent crime directed against Thai women)—make rural TV romances appealing.
Thai–Australian Media Use and Cultural Identification
Video and Cultural Identification
However, the most popular programs among the Thai diasporic audiences were variety shows, such as Si-Tum Square (10 O’clock Square) from Channel 7 and The Twilight Show from Channel 3. Both programs are broadcast weekly and have had high ratings for many years. The content of the two shows is quite similar in that they feature interviews with famous people, live music and comedy acts (talok). However, the characters of the MC in each program are very different. Witawat Soontornwinatre of Si-Tum Square is very outspoken, abrasive and straightforward, whereas Traipop of the Twilight Show is more quietly spoken, subtle and tactful. The different image and characters of these two hosts had a great impact on our respondents program preferences. While watching an excerpt from Si-Tum Square, one commented: “The program is getting worse. It has no quality at all, especially the host. He has gone absurd”, whereas the same person said: “The Twilight Show is very informative. Traipop has a good character and is very polite.”
This preference underlines a long-standing Thai cultural value that a successful person has to be competent and have substance, yet most important of all, they should have a soft and polite appearance, and style of presentation (Suntaree, 1991: 146). The Thais in Australia still maintain their preference for a polite and subtle TV show host over an aggressive and blunt one—a manner which, by contrast, is usually more acceptable to Australian viewers. This expectation by the audience of a certain style of media presentation familiar to them is described by Nacify (1993: 111) as “ritual courtesy”. The expectation of a familiar type of ritual courtesy among the Thai ethnic audiences reflects their collective subjectivity, which they share with the audience in their homelands. Partly because of criticism of the confrontational personality of the Si-Tum Square host, Witawat, the program was ordered off the air in Thailand in March 1997, despite its high ratings. Witawat’s mistake, however, may have been more one of substance than style. It was reported that his comments had been critical of a senior government member at a time when the besieged Chavalit ministry was growing impatient with media attacks (Matichon Sudsupda, 14 March 1997: 14).
Videos of drama series—historical drama series in particular—also stirred the patriotic feelings of the Thai respondents. The story of these series is often based on the moral leading role of the “great ladies” of the royal court (chao wang) in the old days. Although these series have been remade many times, they still gain high ratings due to the use of well-known traditional and mythological stories and their popular stars. Many comments made by respondents while watching an excerpt from Rattanakosin (Bangkok Dynasty) reflected a strong sense of Thai patriotism. One Canberra lady, for example, said: “I feel proud of our traditions, and our ancestors. I also want my children to see the way of life in the old days of Thailand.” Another respondent said: “I like historical drama more than contemporary ones, because the latter are exaggerating. It makes me wonder if the Thai society now is really like that.” Not surprisingly, this comment was made by a female respondent who had left the country prior to the rapid changes in the Thai society in the last two decades.
Her particular views on modernity as a possible threat to tradition were strikingly similar to those of the elderly Southall Indians in television research conducted by Gillespie (1995) in London. They viewed modern Hindi movies as challenging traditional values—thus they were regarded by their descendants as having retreated into a cultural conservatism and traditionalism: “they are more Indian than Indians” (Gillespie, 1995: 80). In a similar vein, these Thai migrants still retain their perceptions of Thai society as it was at the time when they left the country, and some are now unwilling to accept subsequent changes. They, too, can be considered “more Thai than the Thais themselves”, where to be seen as “un-Thai” is to risk being socially undesirable (Kasian, 1995).
Video Program Preferences and Generational Change
In contrast to the Thai migrants who arrived in Australia earlier, those who came more recently are more used to transitions and more willing to accept changes back home. However, they still try to make sense of those changes, give them new meanings and connect them with their own personal experience. Generational as well as cultural change is a factor here. The media preferences of younger Thais in Australia may be quite different from those of their parents. Media use—especially Thai rental video use, which is more favoured by older Thais, housebound Thai wives or Thai student sojourners than the younger generation of Thai-Australians—is an important part of inter-generational communication. Young Thais and their parents may share core values, yet also may have different leisure tastes and living standards. An analysis of comments by focus group participants in both Sydney and Canberra after viewing excerpts from two drama series, Jintapatee and Por-Krua-Hua-Pah (The Chef), reflects some of these differences. The Sydney group was older and less well educated, while the Canberra group was younger and better educated.
The first excerpt shown was from Jintapatee, the name of the leading female character, a young woman in her mid- to late twenties. This drama examined women’s changing roles in the 1990s in a contemporary Thailand caught between the rise of a technocratic class and powerful, but corrupt, politicians. The show suggested that education, not just beauty or a rich husband, had become a necessity for modern, urban Thai women. A related theme was the extensive use of technology by the leading character, Jintapatee, a journalist who, with the help of technology of the postmodern world, could expose a corrupt politician and his underworld. PCs, laptops and digital cameras became just as important features of this melodrama as its love scenes.
Although Jintapatee broke the generic conventions of Thai melodrama, which rely on predictable black and white characterisations, traditional sex roles and happy endings, it received a generally warm welcome from the respondents. Comments were: “It is a very modern story. It used a lot of technologies, very stimulating”; “It’s quite a change in Thai modern drama”; “Good. I hate the story that only talks about love, hate and money”; “I prefer dramas like Jintapatee. It reflects what is going on in our country.” And from a 45-year-old mother: “I think it’s unusual but it makes me want to be able to use a computer. When I went back to Thailand, my nieces and nephews asked me if I could use the Internet. I felt embarrassed because I don’t know even how to use a computer. I feel like taking a computer course here.”
Jintapatee not only introduced technology into the television world of Thai women; it also defied tradition by the heroine becoming the family breadwinner and choosing her own career. Responses from the youth group after viewing the excerpt show how these second-generation Thai migrants deal differently with conventional ideas about women. They are constructing identities that are perhaps more complex, transnational and cosmopolitan than those of their parents. For example, a 15-year-old girl who participated in the Canberra focus group commented that Jintapatee could be an appropriate young woman’s role model, as she represented a new generation with high levels of education and a secure and respectable job, and she was socially independent. However, when asked whether she had any particular character in Australian television that she could take as her role model, she answered that she could not identify any, but definitely did not see herself as someone like Allison in Melrose Place—“too bitchy”, she said.
In contrast to Jintapatee, Por-Krua-Hua-Pah, or The Chef, has a more traditionally melodramatic theme. The story is based on a famous novel about a rich man searching for true love by disguising himself as a poor but skilful chef. Since the story has been frequently remade as a TV drama, extra features are added to the main theme each time. In this episode, the vulgarity of the new rich becomes the new comic ingredient. The narrative reflects certain behavioural patterns of typical urban rich Thais, where their money, power, connections, and lack of morality and refinement are used to satirise the worst features of the new society. Some observations among the Thai viewers were that, in present-day Thai society, there are too many “new rich or setthee mai”—which refers to the commoners who become rich as a result of the economic boom—while there were too few “old aristocrats” (phoo-dee kao)—those noble families who had traditional virtues and competence. The new rich are too vulgar.
All of the participants in the first group—the new settlers—shared the view that the division of classes in Thai society had changed from the royal and the rural to the rich and the poor in the city since the economic boom. One said: “If you have money you can be or can do anything in Thailand.” He also referred to a recent scandal revolving around a previous Thai prime minister, Banharn Silpa-archa, who had been accused of buying his Masters degree. The younger group of second-generation migrants, on the contrary, had no interest in class division. Rather, their comments centred around the urban “Bangkok” culture shown in the drama corresponding to their individual experience in their own youth culture.
While girls in the teenage focus groups preferred Jintapatee’s social values, the Thai-Australian boys like The Chef better. They preferred the simpler—even slapstick—comic style of the actors in that show. The Chef was also more traditional, as it featured katoey (lady-boys) in a variety of comic parts as well as more conventional women’s roles. This suggests that the very different images of women on Thai TV are indicative of social change of contemporary Thai life, although Western-style feminism has gained little ground. An increasing number of self-assertive women are now widely seen in game shows and news, where—especially on ITV—they have been chosen to be newscasters because of their journalism training as well as their looks. So far, however, the independence of Thai women has found only a limited place in Thai TV dramas. A drama like Jintapatee has defied earlier conventions by providing new female role models. However, most popular Thai teledramas are still produced by veteran male directors from famous novels written decades ago.
Conclusion
Unlike many of the other Asian communities which have migrated to Australia through the 1980s and 1990s, the Thais have come from a relatively successful and peaceful society. Perhaps this is why there are so few of them. The exception here is some of the Thai-Laotians who were previously refugees in Thailand. Nevertheless, Thai society has changed at a breakneck pace in those two decades. The economy was transformed while Thai politics continued to endure military coups and endemic corruption as well as moving towards political democratisation. Thailand at the end of the 1990s is radically different from what it was in 1980. It is vastly more wealthy, yet the gaps have grown larger between the rich and the poor (Mydans, 1997).
Thai migrants to Australia have come from a country in the middle of an economic transformation, with an unstable polity, to a society that is politically more secure, but struggling to maintain its living standards. This, at least, was true until the mid-1997 economic crash (Lewis, 1998a). These rapid changes must have presented Thais with potentially paradoxical life experiences. Their use of the media, especially rented videos, to stay in touch with their cultural heritage seems to have centred around an interest in how Thai television was representing the great changes that had taken place—for instance, the new position of younger women in Thai society and the rise of a technocratic class (the theme of Jintapatee), or the arrogance and vulgarity of the new rich (the setthee-mai in The Chef).
The recency of Thai immigration makes it difficult to be certain about the directions of likely generational change. The older Thais who came before the peak of the economic boom in 1996 may find the new wave of Thai media culture centred on young consumer audiences much less to their taste than do their children. Normal generational change is certainly taking place, with younger Thais as likely to watch The Footy Show or Melrose Place as they are Thai soaps. Yet there may be a real gap developing in the life experience of those Thais who remember a pre-1980s Thailand that was very different from the materialistic society of the 1990s. On the other hand, the savage reversal of fortune Thailand underwent after mid-1997 might reframe the portrayal of Thailand that the expatriate Thais watched in these videos as a baroque museum piece. Such opulent images may have helped to prolong the psychology of the bubble economy and unrealistically inflated Thai expectations about the future.
The two small Thai community networks in Canberra and Sydney evinced no major differences in media use. The Sydney video rental business is much larger and more commercialised, which is natural considering the larger Sydney market. Socially, the Canberra Thai community is much less representative of Thai society, given the presence in Canberra of the Embassy, the National Thai Studies Centre at the Australian National University, and the tendency for many Canberra Thais to work in public-sector jobs. This contrasted with more socially diverse and mostly private-sector backgrounds of the majority of our Sydney respondents. Their media use, however, was basically the same.
Moreover, the media preferences of the Thai-Australians largely reflected popular viewing tastes in Thailand. The most watched video news program, from Bangkok’s Channel 7, also rates first in Thailand. Similarly, the entertainment programs both groups watched on Bangkok Channels 7 and 3 were from the most popular domestic channels. What was not watched by our respondents also corresponds largely to domestic viewing behaviour. For example, neither programs from Bangkok Channel 11 (started in 1987 as an educational channel), nor from the new news channel ITV, were watched. Few respondents were aware of the availability especially of ITV programs. Since mid-1996, ITV has established a reputation for critical TV news reporting. This contrasts with the largely pro-government news Bangkok’s main four channels (3, 5, 7 and 9) usually present.
Perhaps the feature that most clearly distinguished the media use of Thai-Australians compared with their cousins at home, however, was their emphasis on the need for media programs to use the Thai language properly and correctly. This was a concern for both Sydney and Canberra groups. That comment was made in relation to the perceived shortcomings of SBS-radio’s Thai programs, as well as about the use of written Thai in the Sydney paper Thai-Oz. The point also figured recurrently in our subjects’ discussion about the Thai TV programs, whether it was a source of concern—as in negative responses to Witawat’s blunt speech style on Si-Tum Square—or of amusement—as in the speech differences between the satirised “setthee mai” characters of The Chef. In both of these, the need for careful attention to the Thai language was our respondents’ common theme.
This emphasis on the proper use of the Thai language is reflected at another level in domestic Thai society: namely, in the government’s broadcasting policy. This follows a well-established rule for national broadcasting to rely almost exclusively on the use of the standard Central Thai speech style, with the exception of programs concerning the Thai Hill Tribes (Hamilton, 1991: 1993). The Office of the National Culture Commission, which interprets cultural policy to include the preservation and propagation of Thai culture, emphasises correct language use as a sine qua non of Thai identity. However, in the far-away Australian setting, our subjects’ emphasis on the use of proper Thai in the media seems to be an attempt at a more personal identification with the geographically distant, yet emotionally still close, sources of Thai culture available in the various media in Australia.
This is different from the state-focused strategic and nationalist aims of Thai broadcasting policy. What seems more important to Thais in Australia is that the preservation of the good name of Thai society should not be impugned, either by stereotypical Western media reporting of Thailand as a sex tourists’ paradise, or by the incorrect or improper use of the Thai language in local ethnic media. Because of the excessive international media attention to Thailand’s sex trade and AIDS problems, Australians may not realise how strict conventional Thai moral codes are, or the degree of moral censorship in the Thai media. Currently, TV ads that are seen to have improper nuances are being put off air—a Mitsubishi ad for air-conditioners was banned for wordplay suggesting how airline pilots usually slept with their air hostesses (Krungthep Thurakij, 24 February 1999).
Thai cultural identity among Australian expatriates remains very strong. There is no marked difference between competing versions of what it means to be Thai, as there is for the overseas Chinese. The testimony about how the meaning of that identity is being renegotiated in Australia was a recurrent theme in our respondents’ stories. All expressed a strong sense of belonging towards Thailand. One who identified himself as a Thai and who had lived in Australia for nineteen years described his feeling towards Australia thus: “I’m just a part of the Australian nation. I happen to live here and I’m a taxpayer.” At one stage, the researcher was asked by another Thai lady who had been living here for nine years: “What does it mean to be an Australian? I live here because my husband is here. It is a necessity. I still feel that Australia is not my home, or my country. My country [Thailand], no matter how messy it is, is still my country.” Many Australians might say the same.