The Rangoon experience

I really ought to have written something by now about what's going on in Burma; it's next door, after all. But somehow it seems to fall outside the scope of this blog, or maybe it just forces me to consider what the scope of this blog should or shouldn't be. So, instead, a few thoughts on how the media is dealing with the events unfolding in that benighted land.

First, a note about the terminology. The BBC, and most Anglophone media, refers to the country as 'Burma', and its largest city as 'Rangoon', as distinct from the junta-approved 'Myanmar' and 'Yangon'. The implication is that the junta is in the wrong, and Aung San Suu Kyi and the various pro-democracy organisations are in the right. It's a view that probably ties in with the target audiences of these media organisations, but it remains a view, an opinion, a bias. It's exactly the same problem that arises when dealing with Northern Ireland or the Middle East; any term for a particular geographical entity is going to rile somebody, somewhere, and be perceived as an example of bias. The next time some right-wing wonk demands that the Beeb should be impartial in all things, can we agree that 'impartiality' is a myth; the best we can hope for is some kind of consensus.

Then there's the attention being devoted to Kenji Nagai, the Japanese journalist apparently shot by a goon of the Burmese junta. A horrible event, it's true, but why are we concentrating on him, rather than on the other people who've died so far? Because his death was filmed, possibly. Because he was a foreigner, maybe. Because he was a journalist? Hmmm... This is especially significant because of the unprecedented role being played by brave Burmese citizens, without whom most foreign journalists wouldn't be able to do their jobs. (See RLP's Asia Exile for examples.)

That said, I was ghoulish enough to follow the link in The Guardian to footage of Nagai's death. But when I did so, I got the following message:

"This player requires a faster connection to enable smooth playback of video. The connection speed detected will cause a potentially unviewable experience."

I don't know whether those last three words are a more heinous crime against good taste, or against the English language.

Bangkok to rights

I just discovered the following on my hard drive. I wrote it at the end of 2005 for the column I had in Metro, a Bangkok lifestyle magazine, but it "kind of got lost in the system" according to the editor. Re-reading it, and bearing in mind the political sensitivities one needs to run any kind of business in Thailand, not to mention the irony gap, I can understand why he lost it. The column fizzled out; the editor only lasted another few months, and Metro a couple more after that.

This is the piece as I wrote it at the time. Some of the references are out of date; the airport's up and sort of running now. I've provided links for the really parochial stuff. I think I must have been in a pretty sour mood at the time, but much still rings true.

Title: Truly, Madly, But Not Terribly Deeply

Byline: Tim Footman

The jazz singer Carmen Bradford, we are told, is performing for our louche, retro delectation at Bangkok’s answer to the Village Vanguard, the Sheraton Grande. It would be criminal not to check out her scatty doo-wop, daddio, because, according to the ads, Ms Bradford is “the world’s greatest artist”.

Yup, you heard it right. We’re not just talking about the world’s greatest singer here, with Pavarotti and Callas and Ella and Aretha and, by all means, Tata and Bird all coming to pay tribute on bended knee. She’s The World’s Greatest Artist, in any field of endeavour. Picasso can kiss Ms. Bradford’s arias. Shakespeare can hurl himself into her high C. That lame charlatan Dickens can stick her microphone up his Barnaby Rudge.

You see, in Bangkok, there seems to be a cultural understanding that, if you say something, it becomes true, no matter how demanding the leap between rhetoric and reality might appear.

So it is that a government minister can come up with a comment like “Suvarnabhumi province will be as big as Singapore but it will be more modern with a special administration team to run the new city and the airport.” Responses such as, “Er… no it won’t, actually,” are decried as being un-Thai. When some influential person agreed to pay a perfectly fair and sensible price for security equipment at the new airport, he clearly forgot to ask for a spare bullshit detector.

There are all sorts of culturally sensitive explanations for this Thai reticence to question untruths, delusions, hyperbole and what we used to call when I was kneehigh to a legless beggar, bollocks. Chief among these is the social taboo that means unpleasant confrontations should be avoided wherever possible. Don’t say nasty things about anyone or anything, because that upsets social harmony, increases bad karma, and just to be on the unsafe side, you might get your ass sued.

In a way, this is healthy. If you tell yourself often enough that the traffic’s a breeze, the air’s breathable and the politicians are just in the game to fulfil their patriotic duty, you’ll end up believing it, and you’ll be happy, which is surely what life is about. There’s no bird flu, the war on drugs only took out the bad guys and Kathaleeya McIntosh is a virgin. Focus too much on that traffic cop who pocketed a couple of hundred to overlook a u-turn that never actually happened, and you’ll just get an ulcer. It’s not that Thais prefer lies – they just tend to select the most attractive and convenient option from a wide selection of alternative truths.

This is also why books and movies and restaurants don’t really get reviewed in Thailand. If you’re lucky, a journalist will correct the typos and Thainglish in the official press release before sticking it straight into a publication’s ‘What’s On’ slot. The idea of critical discrimination – of someone sitting down and deciding what’s good, what’s bad and what’s hovering somewhere in the region of mediocre – is anathema to how Thailand works. It’s not surprising then, that so many people honestly believe that the airport will be open on time, despite the fact that the original deadline was fixed in the days of biplanes and airships. This is also why someone, somewhere really thinks that Carmen Bradford is the greatest artist in the world, ever, no questions asked, and Rembrandt and Rubens and Brahms and Liszt and Keats and Yeats aren’t. Although they can be the greatest as well, if they place an ad saying so. Flawed logic is no barrier to reality, Siam style.

Anyway, for your aesthetic edification, here’s the unlacquered truth about what’s been making the cultural running in the last few months:

*Movie reviews: Bangkok World Film Festival. You didn’t miss much. All the decent films were 40 years old and shown in the afternoon, and you can get bootleg DVDs of them in Silom anyway.

*Music reviews: Samui Music Festival. Of course nobody was going to hike down there to see UB40. They’re shit.

*Book reviews: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. You shouldn’t be reading this book if you have more than three pubic hairs.

*Dance reviews: That unfeasibly enhanced one at Cowboy. Don’t be stupid. She doesn’t love you. She just wants your money. And she’s doing a policeman on the side, the one who shook you down for the non-existent u-turn this morning. Grow up, you priapic sap.

Any of the above opinions can be revised if a) the relevant people wish to advertise in Metro or b) someone slips me a few thousand and a new iPod. But this is OK. Thailand is the best country in the world and there is no corruption here. That’s the truth, because I say so, and so does that traffic cop, the one who’s not doing your girlfriend.

We don't do God

In which I am encouraged to burn in hell, described as "toe-curlingly unfunny as always" and, oh dear, informed that I have "written a half-way good article".

Bloggone

The refrain that "social networks are the new blog" has become so tiresome and pervasive that we ought to be looking elsewhere for our clichés. Maybe something like "double viral loops are the new social network".

Still, when Radio 4's comedy warhorse Just a Minute acknowledges the existence of blogging (about nine minutes in on Listen Again; available until next Monday), maybe it's time we bloggers made a dignified withdrawal, or at least resigned ourselves to the status of nostalgic obsessives, like someone who still uses a ZX81 or drives a Trabant. On the other hand, could it not be that "clapped-out parlour games for which we still retain a grudging fondness, because Clement Freud remains a supremely cool dude and Merton's usually good value, are the new double viral loop" is the new "social networks are the new blog"?

A last walk into the wind

Marcel Marceau died yesterday. I was lucky enough to see him at Sadler's Wells when I was about 12, and I'll never forget his 'maskmaker' routine. He played a craftsman who put on a smiling mask of his own design, and then couldn't take it off; his despair was communicated by his body alone, as his face maintained a serene grin.

He served in the French Resistance during World War II, as did Samuel Beckett. I like to imagine the two of them being sent to blow up a railway line together.

The future's not orange any more

In the olden days, I used to work for an organisation called PUSH, that published an alternative guide to British universities. It was a fun time, because ours was the only such guide that refused to recycle the platitudes offered by the institutions or the student unions. University PR people hated us: but the A-level students, the ones at whom the book was targeted, loved it. One of the proudest moments in my professional life came at a party after a Gene concert (I did say it was a long time ago), when a 17-year-old shook me by the hand and said: "You're Tim Footman? Every sixth-former in Dorset thinks you're God."

I left PUSH in 1997, but I've retained an interest in the various attempts being made to ensure informed choice in an increasingly crowded and complex marketplace. And I can't say I was impressed with the online advertising for one of PUSH's erstwhile rivals, the Times Good University Guide, which appears to be alluding to the Trainspotting movie poster in its online advertising. I know nostalgia comes round in cycles, but isn't that as incomprehensible a cultural indicator to today's nu-ravey teens as, say, Gene? It was released over a decade ago, fer flip's sake! It's as if I'd strolled into the PUSH office in the early 1990s and insisted that we do a marketing campaign based on, I dunno, Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu.

Which is just a long-winded excuse to offer you this:

Capitalism

IN WHICH I PREDICT THAT SHOUTING WILL SHORTLY BECOME FASHIONABLE AGAIN.

Back after these messages

If you see an advertisement featuring a woman in a black shirt and white trousers, is your immediate assumption that the advert is for: a) anti-dandruff shampoo; or b) some form of feminine hygiene product? Or maybe some new-fangled piece of jiggery-pokery that does both?

Also, can anybody explain to me what's so offensive about the word 'cookie'? I've got a hunch it's something to do with ladies' bits, but I'm not sure.