Muai Thai Cinema and the Burden of Thai Men

Abstract

The competing cultures among Thai man have not yet been fully explored in the studies of Thai films released after the economic crisis in 1997. In this article, I purposefully choose to work on a selection of four muai Thai cinemas, entitled, Muai Thai, Nai Khanom Tom [Mr Khanom Tom: A Muai Thai Legend] (2003), Ong Bak (2003), Tom Yum Goong [The Protector] (2005), and Beautiful Boxer (2004) in order to examine gendered tensions and changing cultures of Thai men in the post-1997 economic crisis. I argue that Thai men are consciously and emotionally eager to shoulder the nation’s economic development failures and cultural chaos, which the globalization of economy and the transnationalization of culture have brought about since 1960s. Messages from the movies convince their audiences that it is, and should be, men’s historical burden to defend the country. Muai Thai cinemas illuminate Thai men’s desire and imagination to reclaim their patriotic heroism, which is needed to restore the country’s troubling image and its struggling venture on the global stage. They speak strictly about what it means to be Thai men in the cultural and economic globalizing situation.

I further argue that muai Thai as a once-exclusive male cultural domain has found itself under some emerging challenges in the names of feminization, commercialization and internationalization of this national pastime. Feminized and internationalized muai Thai could also be employed as a coherent vehicle to express aspects of contemporary Thai masculine selfhood beyond its convention. In other words, muai Thai cinema is as nuanced as other cinematic narratives despite accusations from the critics of its poor and unsophisticated plots.