I have previously blogged about the Ministry of Culture here and more specifically the Orwellian sounding Thailand's Cultural Surveillance Centre here. Chang Noi's latest column in The Nation highlights the Ministry's continued efforts:

The ministry has recently reissued a booklet entitled "Thai Social Etiquette". The booklet is written in English and offers visiting foreigners the usual tips about performing a proper wai, not pointing with the feet, and not patting the head. But it is much more wide-ranging than most such guides. It tells its readers how to sit, eat, lie down, walk, speak, dress, make a phone call, queue for the loo, drink, use a spoon, give a speech, pay a visit, and perform at a seminar.

It is not really a handbook on what foreigners should do in Thailand, but rather a manual on how Thais should behave in their own country.

It sums it all up like this: "In Thai society, where seniority is given much importance and politeness to everyone is stressed, in order to be a person with good manners, one must be aware and careful of almost every gesture or movement, and also of almost every word or sentence one utters."

Let's imagine a newly arrived foreigner toting this book along to some of the common everyday spaces in Thai society. At the open-air restaurant, she would find that most of the booklet's rules (not reaching across, always using a serving spoon, making sure to wipe lipstick off your glass) were being broken at almost every table. The lively atmosphere would make her doubt that all the people present were being careful with their every gesture and their every word.

In a business office or factory, the foreigner would find people interacting without any attention to the booklet's rules about social behaviour. In a village, all the booklet's procedures about how to pay a social call would make no sense at all. At the shopping mall, on the bus or Skytrain, the visitor would be forced to conclude that almost none of the people were Thai since they did not seem to walk, talk, sit or dress in the prescribed manner. The booklet warns, "Refrain from holding hands in public as it may have undesirable implication", and declares that "Men do not roll up their sleeves as if getting ready for a fight", but the visitor would find even such desperately stern injunctions being transgressed in full public view.

The highlight of the article is really the next paragraph which really sums up the situation:

By now the visitor might conclude that the booklet is a work of complete fantasy on the level of "Star Wars". But that would be wrong. The society described and idealised in the booklet does exist, but is not "Thai society", either past or present. Rather it is one rarefied segment of the society, occupied by senior bureaucrats of the sort that work in or with the Culture Ministry.
...
The results have been both hilarious and tragic. The ministry has tried to outlaw risqué songs on the grounds that they are "against Thai culture" when in fact these songs belong to a great tradition of boisterous counterpoint singing which is the historical culture of far more Thais than the courtly arts. The ministry rages against "un-Thai" forms of dress which are rather similar to the way most ordinary people dressed around a century ago. Much more tragically, the ministry has obstructed some highly creative contemporary work in theatre, cinema and the plastic arts.

COMMENT: It is really a generation gap problem as well with many parents unsuccessfully trying to control the behaviour of their children. Frankly, the Ministry of Culture should be banished to the stone age.

btw, I wonder what the Ministry of Culture thinks of Girly Berry's latest music video "Shake It" (is any explanation necessary?)

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