The Thai media is something. Everything is something, but the Thai media is really something, if you know what I mean, and you probably don’t. I don’t know much about the media in terms of reporting, but in terms of images I have never seen such visceral, bloody photos appear in newspapers or on TV elsewhere like I have in Thailand. Let’s say the headline is Local Official Shot Dead. In other countries you might get a picture of the bereaved wife, the scene of the crime, or possibly the official when he was alive. In Thailand you get the prone corpse in a pool of blood with two bullet holes in what used to be the local official’s face. Not a lot left to the imagination.
Thai TV is quite fun too. The acting may actually be worse than that off Japanese TV, but we would really be splitting hairs here, so I leave it as equally loathsome to Japanese acting. The acting isn’t that fun, but the dramas are. Usually no language skill is necessary. The plots revolve around super-rich people who are evil using their power to ruin others lives. Now where is the escapism in that? Seems to me like everyday reality. The best, though, is the ghosts that appear in the dramas. The Thai all believe in ghosts and from time to time some terrible actor with white powder on his face will show up in someone’s home… it is supposed to be scary. I won’t go into too much detail, but imagine a group of Junior High School students given professional AV equipment and then casting some of their friends and asking some other friends to write the script – that is Thai TV for you.