The ideology of Miss Thailand in national, consumerist, and transnational space

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Volumn 23, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 29-61

  Callahan, William A ^a  

^a DURHAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 21944452661     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437549802300102     Document Type: Article

References (131)

1. Flags and national symbols in Thailand are very much a twentieth-century phenomenon. In the early 1910s, King Vajiravudh changed the flag from a white elephant on a red field to the present tricolor because once, on a tour of the northern provinces, local officials flew the elephant upside down. Respect for the flag was part of the hypernationalism of the Rathaniyom State Conventions scripted by Wichit Wathakan in 1939. See Scot Barmé, Luang Wichit Wathakan and the Creation of a Thai Identity (Singapore: ISEAS, 1993), pp. 151-152.
2. Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 3, 53.
3. Hamilton writes of the strict regulations of film and television censorship: the police and the military, who have a very broad view of national security, are overrepresented on the censorship board Annette Hamilton, "Cinema and Nation: Dilemmas of Representation in Thailand," East-West Film Journal 7, no. 1 (1993): 81-105.
4. Shapiro notes that "most sporting events had their origin in military engagement or at least military training activities," and furthermore that sports are a ritual of national unity. Michael J. Shapiro, "Representing World Politics: The Sport/War Intertext," in James Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro, eds., International/Intertexual Relations (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 77, 79. Thailand is typical in that the main venue for team sports is called the National Stadium, and that national symbols are invoked in preliminary and ending ceremonies.
5. Enloe, note 2, p. 3.
6. This was comically verified in the first (and perhaps last) Mister Thailand Contest, in October 1994. This "beauty pageant" in many ways problematized Thai masculine identity. The question asked of finalists high-lighted this anxiety: "If possible, would you rather have been born a man or a woman?" "All of them gave similar answers emphasizing male strength and their duty to protect women and their country (by being soldiers)." Saneepong Prombunpong, "A Farce in Three Acts," Nation (November 2, 1994): C3.
7. This analogy was made quite directly in Singapore in 1983: "Cabinet Ministers began to exhort [university] graduate women to marry and bear children as a patriotic duty. Obediently taking their cue from the government, two (nonfeminist) women's organizations accordingly proposed, in a disturbing collusion with state patriarchy, that women be required to bear children as a form of National Service - the equivalent, in feminine, biological terms, of the two-and-a-half year military service compulsorily performed by men for the maintenance of national defense." Geraldine Heng and Janadas Devan, "State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality, and Race in Singapore," in Andrew Parker et al., Nationalisms & Sexualities (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 348. Emphasis in the original.
8. This was also played out in US popular culture during World War II when Miss America 1944 was painted on a bomber: "Miss America and the 301st Bomb Group" Barney Oldfield, "Miss America and the 301st Bomb Group," Air Power History 37: no. 2 (1990): 41-44.
9. Beauty pageants are a very common occurrence in Thailand. Parallel to Miss Thailand, who travels to the Miss Universe pageant, is Miss Thailand World, who goes to the Miss World contest. Some pageants are organized to promote certain products - Miss Mango - while others are held as part of sundry festivals.
10. Other than the queen and crown princess, there are no female generals. Until recently women were allowed to rise only to the level of assistant district officer in the civilian bureaucracy. There was great fanfare in 1993 when the first female governor was appointed by the Interior Ministry. Some commentators felt that this was too little too late, and that women were allowed to take jobs only once men no longer want them: There is a growing movement to popularly elect provincial governors.
11. Interview with Chin Ampornratana, secretary to the managing director of BBTV Color Channel 7 (October 27, 1994).
12. "Few Americans Think Miss America Pageant Degrading," Gallup Poll Monthly 1990: 300 (September 1, 1990): 53.
13. Laurie Peterson, "Sizing Up Miss America," Adweek's Marketing Week 32: 39 (September 23, 1991): 9;
14. A. R. Riverol, Live from Atlantic City: The History of the Miss America Pageant Before, After and in Spite of Television (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press, 1992).
15. Yodpatoo '37 [Top Woman '94], Miss Thailand 1994 (Bangkok: Yodpatoo Entertainment Co., 1994), p. 74.
16. NJ Survey, "Do You Agree with Beauty Pageants?" Nation Junior 2: 42 (May 1994): 22;
17. Kawalpreet Kaur, "It takes brains to be beautiful," Nation Junior 2: 26 (September 1993): 26.
18. Robert C Allen, "Talking About Television," in Robert C. Allen, ed., Channels of Discourse: Television and Contemporary Criticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), p. 14.
19. Kanjana Kaewthep, "'East' Meets 'West': The Confrontation of Different Cultures in Thai T.V. Dramas and Films," in Nitaya Masavisut, George Simson, and Larry E. Smith, eds., Gender and Culture in Literature and Film East and West: Issues of Perception and Interpretation: Selected Conference Papers (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), p. 182.
20. The government declared: "Miss Thailand is to make Thai women more interested in taking care of their body." According to the Office of the Miss Thailand Pageant, Thai women's "upper body is too long, lower body is too short." The legs are not curved in the proper way and have spots and scratches - probably due to unpatriotic mosquitoes. See Supatra Kopkijsuksakul, Miss Thailand Contest: 1934-1987 (Master's thesis, Bangkok: Thammasat University, 1988), p. 60.
21. The first two questions asked in the 1994 pageant concerned health and fitness.
22. Even the beer ads for the Miss Thailand 1995 Pageant were curiously nonmacho The ad for Singha beer revolved around a cooking competition between two men who were friends.
23. Chin, note 11.
24. Areeya Chumsai "The year that changed a life," Bangkok Post (March 14, 1995): 27.
25. Allen, note 16, p. 8.
26. Opas Boonlom, "High-stakes divorce case sparks women's rights debate," Nation (February 15, 1995): A8.
27. Riverol notes that Miss America had to get over the stigma of public display as well: "Whores and slaves could undergo such demeaning scrutiny, but not proper ladies." Riverol, note 13, p. 1.
28. See Supatra, note 18, p. 76.
29. Ibid., p. 54. When swimsuits were introduced in 1953, that year's Miss Thailand said: "Am I brave enough to wear this in public?" The Office of the Miss Thailand Pageant responded that it was not shameful, and showed how modern and proper Thai women were. They also said that it would make the contest more "fair" because contestants could not hide anything. Ibid., 94, 96. The Miss America pageant, on the other hand, grew directly out of bathing beauty contests, which began in the 1880s. Even so, the main reason the pageant was canceled in 1928 was "moral concerns." Riverol, note 13, pp. 9, 24.
30. In Thailand, marriage is not so much a legal status as a social relationship. Thus "having a husband" refers not so much to a formal legal arrangement but to living together.
31. Supatra, note 18, pp. 78-79, 81, 170, 221.
32. Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 3.
33. Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures Ibid., p. 15.
34. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York: Penguin Press, 1977), p. 24.
35. Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1985), p. 149.
36. Mulvey, note 30, p. 19.
37. Ibid.
38. Kanjana, note 17, p. 182.
39. The prize was the Golden Mermaid trophy. Mermaids, too, are always playing to a male audience. Riverol, note 13, pp. 13, 20.
40. Still, one should not underestimate the connection between prostitution and beauty pageants in Thailand. It is well known that mamasans enter "their girls" in the pageants to give them "added value" to upper-class customers.
41. Mulvey, note 30, p. 3. This was reconfirmed at the Miss Universe 1994 pageant, where one judge commented of the winner, Sushmita Sen: "She is a normal woman who is not a feminist. She can be a good model of the '90s woman for bringing up children and looking after them." Rakkit Rattachumpoth, "Miss India Rises from Obscurity," Nation (May 23, 1994): C1.
42. See Supatra, note 18, p. 246.
43. Unfortunately, I cannot provide a more sophisticated analysis of this segment which would be useful in seeing how sexuality is constructed; it is not complete on the official tape of Channel 7.
44. The tune here is John Lennon's "Woman," the lyrics of which carry quite a different message.
45. See Kasian Tejapira, "The Postmodernization of Thainess," presented at "Problematizing Culture: Media, Identity and the State in Southeast Asia" (Singapore: ISEAS, November 1994).
46. Barmé, note 1, p. 111.
47. The Miss America pageant, which started in 1921, is commonly taken to be the first modern beauty pageant. Neither sponsored by the government nor held in the capital, it was sponsored by the Hotelmen's Association of the small resort town of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Its purpose was not political, but commercial. Unlike a constitution festival, Miss America was part of the Fall Frolic that aimed to extend the summer holiday season for one more week. Riverol, note 13, p. 12.
48. Supatra, note 18, p. 49.
49. Ibid., pp. 83, 85.
50. Ibid., p. 117.
51. Ibid., p. 76.
52. See ibid., p. 77.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid., p. 118.
55. Barmé, note 1, p. 8.
56. Supatra, note 18, p. 59.
57. See ibid.
58. Ibid., p. 54.
59. Ibid., p. 63.
60. Ibid., p. 122. It is curious that this hypernationalist war that sought to "reclaim" territories in Cambodia and Laos itself sparked the first strong Lao nationalist movement. See Martin Stuart-Fox, Laos: Politics, Economics and Society (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986), p. 17.
61. Supatra, note 18, p. 52.
62. Ibid., p. 136. After Sarit's death in 1963, an inheritance scandal erupted revealing that he had supported between eighty and a hundred minor wives and families. See Thak Chaloemtiarana, Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism (Bangkok: Thammasat University Press, 1979), p. 337. One of the places Sarit recruited his minor wives was at local beauty pageants.
63. Anek Laothamatas, Business Associations and the Political Economy of Thailand: From Bureaucratic Polity to Liberal Corporatism (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), p. 22.
64. Directory of Non-Government Development Organizations in Thailand 1987, unabridged ed. (Bangkok: Thai Volunteer Service, 1987), p. 7.
65. Saneh Chamarik, Democracy and Development: A Cultural Perspective (Bangkok: Local Development Institute, 1993), p. 14.
66. Hamilton, note 3, p. 83.
67. Chin, note 11.
68. Allen, note 16; Sarah Ruth Kozloff, "Narrative Theory and Television," in Robert C. Allen, ed., Channels of Discourse: Television and Contemporary Criticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987): 42-73.
69. Mulvey, note 30, p. 63.
70. Ibid.
71. See Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, "Psychoanalysis, Film, and Television," in Allen, Channels of Discourse, note 66, p. 188.
72. Paradee Kiatpinyochai, The Thai Television Broadcasting Industry: Its Economics & Politics (Master's thesis, Thammasat University, 1990), p. 14.
73. Paradee Kiatpinyochai, The Thai Television Broadcasting Industry: Its Economics & Politics Ibid., p. 71.
74. Paradee Kiatpinyochai, The Thai Television Broadcasting Industry: Its Economics & Politics Ibid., p. 12.
75. Interview with Chermsak Pintong, February 1, 1993. Also reported in William A. Callahan, "Media and Society: Chermsak," Nation (Feb. 12, 1993): A6.
76. Supatra, note 18, p. 141.
77. Ibid., p. 158.
78. See ibid., p. 147.
79. Ibid., p. 170.
80. Ibid., p. 165.
81. Ibid., p. 198.
82. Ibid., p. 200.
83. Ibid., p. 163.
84. See ibid., p. 158.
85. Surachart Bamrungsuk, United States Foreign Policy and Thai Military Rule 1947-1977 (Bangkok: Editions Duang Kamol, 1988), pp. 118, 119.
86. Supatra, note 18, p. 148.
87. Ibid., p. 151.
88. Anek, note 61, p. xi.
89. Paradee, note 70, p. 25.
90. Chermsak, note 73.
91. Supatra, note 18, p. 155.
92. Britain was going in the opposite direction; the BBC stopped airing beauty pageants in 1985. See "BBC Bans Beauties," Nation (January 14, 1985).
93. Supatra, note 18, p. 246.
94. Ibid., p. 3.
95. Ibid., p. 207.
96. Yuthana Priwan, Ekarin Petsiri, and Busarin Treerapongpichit, "Ugly Economic Realities Mar Pageant: Sponsors Shy Away from Miss Thailand During Tough Times," Bangkok Post (April 1, 1997).
97. Khunying Pankrua Yongchaiyudh was a judge before her husband, Gen. Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, became interior minister in 1992. She continued to be the head judge in 1995 after her husband was sacked from the cabinet in 1994; likewise, she continued to be head judge in the 1997 pageant after Chavalit was chosen in 1996, to be prime minister.
98. Mimi White, "Ideological Analysis and Television," in Allen, note 66, Channels of Discourse, p. 153.
99. The first major treatment of narrative forms was done by Vladimir Propp in Morphology of a Folktale. Propp analyzes Russian fairy tales to see how they all end with the hero crowned and going to a new kingdom. The Miss Thailand Pageant produces a beauty queen according to Propp's function #12, in which the hero is tested, interrogated, and attacked before winning the throne; see Kozloff, note 66, pp. 47, 48. Riverol also points out that the Cinderella myth is very active in beauty pageants. Riverol, note 13, p. 2.
100. This order is very fragile. Each pageant produces its own controversies. The most famous happened at the Miss Thailand World 1986 Pageant. There was a struggle over the crown: it was snatched from the beauty queen's head by one of the other contestants and - on camera - firmly placed on the head of the first runner-up. See Nation (September 22, 1986).
101. Kanjana, note 17, p. 180.
102. Ibid., p. 181.
103. Kanjana notes how magazines play with this irony by having an ultramodern woman on the cover and on the inside having serials that praise loving mother and loyal housewife. Kanjana, note 17, p. 184.
104. Ibid., p. 189.
105. Ibid., p. 183.
106. Ibid., p. 194.
107. Ibid., p. 193.
108. Ibid., p. 187-188.
109. This "mother" strategy was unsuccessful for Miss Thailand 1994 at the Miss Universe Pageant. According to Areeya, the judge was looking for Princess Diana as a role model. See Areeya, note 22, p. 27.
110. And Thai men, too, since there are other identities that differ from the upper-class Central Thai heterosexual males presented as the dream bachelors that the dream girl is supposed to satisfy.
111. Chin, note 11.
112. Miss Thailand 1988 went to the United States at age two and did not return to Thailand until she entered the Miss Thailand Pageant in 1988. Her second language was not Thai, but Spanish. See Nation (April 4, 1988).
113. Miss Thailand 1994 went to the United States at age four and lived there for seventeen years. Unlike the other transnational winners, she did not come from the substantial Thai community in southern California, but from Michigan.
114. This actually made her citizenship an issue. According to Thai law, before it was changed in 1992, Thai women who married foreign men did not automatically pass Thai citizenship to their children. Each application had to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by the minister of the interior.
115. Supatra, note 18, p. 232.
116. Luk krueng is short for Luk kreung Thai krueng xx, meaning that the child is half Thai and half xx nationality. This term usually refers to white Amerasian children, but technically can also include any other nationality.
117. Chin, note 11.
118. See Supatra, note 18, p. 246.
119. "Several entries were rejected, most of them Thai-Americans, turned down because they could not speak Thai." See "US Graduate Takes Miss Thailand Crown Again," Nation (April 3, 1995): A6;
120. Seneepong Prombunpong, "Another American crowned, carries on Miss Thailand torch," Nation (April 5, 1995): C1, 2.
121. These images go beyond Thailand to its bordering countries. Laos, with its similar language and culture, is another potentially large market.
122. Kanjana talks of a character who "could not find a husband and in the end feels that she cannot stand to live in Thailand any longer but must return to the foreign country where she had been molded into [a] strong character woman." Kanjana, note 17, p. 195. Women's education is actually Western education. Formerly, instruction was given exclusively to boys by monks in Buddhist temples. Somporn concludes that one of the characters "could not gain peace of mind until she moved away from Thailand with its stifling society." Somporn Varnado, "Social and Cultural Constraints on Modern Thai Women," in Nitaya Masavisut, George Simson, and Larry E. Smith, eds., Gender and Culture in Literature and Film East and West: Issues of Perception and Interpretation: Selected Conference Papers (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), p. 82.
123. Kanjana, note 17, p. 195.
124. Ibid.
125. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 46-51.
126. Kasian's glosses on these terms are worth quoting at length: "Whereas 'Thai' implies a singular, pure, genuine, authentic, original, definite, narrow and monolithic version of Thainess, 'Thai-Thai' connotes a pluralistic, mixed, mutant, altered, simulated, indefinite, broad and differentiated version of the same. . . . While 'Thai' suggests a clear-cut division, disparity and even opposition between 'Thainess' and 'un-Thainess' both in their material existence and ideal essence, 'Thai-Thai' indicates internal differentiation, blurring of external borderlines and shades of Thai-Thainess. Suffice it to say that 'Thai-Thai' seems to admit a far greater and wider membership of people and things into its club than the rather exclusive 'Thai' counterpart." Kasian, note 43, p. 3, fn. 1. It is actually more complicated than this: with the proper enunciation "Thai-Thai" can mean Thai-er than Thai.
127. This was a controversial decision since the first runner-up was a "Miss Import" from the United States, and three of the five finalists were Thai-American.
128. Riverol, note 13.
129. Miss Indonesia 1996 was severely chastized for posing in a swimsuit for photographers at the Miss Universe Pageant.
130. "And last month I was a representative speaker at an ASEAN meeting on behalf of Thailand" quoted in Areeya, note 22, p. 34.
131. The opportunism is clear in Kasian Tejapira's explanation of celebrities announcing their Thainess: "Their fragmented subjectivity seems to be a flexible artifice selectively and discreetly practised in response to the varying demand of the segmented cultural market in Thailand which include[s], among others, the government, the Buddhist faithful, teenagers, soft porn fans, etc." Kasian, note 43, p. 19.