[Irony is in plentiful supply in Thailand today: A billionaire
tycoon is praised as the champion of the poor. A scandal-tainted politician
leads a mass movement against corruption. Protesters declare that they need to
block elections to save democracy.]
By
Thomas Fuller
 |
Winyu
Wongsurawat, left, working on his low-budget political satire show
with his
sister, Janya Wongsurawat, and Nattapong Tiendee, in their studio
in Bangkok on
Thursday.Agnes
Dherbeys for The New York Times
|
BANGKOK
— For their newscast last week, the hosts of “Shallow News in
Depth” invited three dancers dressed in the style of the ancient Thai royal
court to offer a musical tribute to the head of Thailand’s army: a gesture of
appreciation for his apparent refusal to launch a coup.
Gyrating to an incongruous Thai country song, the cast blew
kisses to the camera and shouted in unison: “We love you, army chief! Kiss
kiss!”
Founded by two Thai-Americans, “Shallow News in Depth” is a
low-budget weekly program posted to YouTube that employs a type of Western
humor not common in Thailand — acid-laced sarcasm — and draws on the deep well
of paradoxes, absurdities and mangled logic of Thailand’s otherwise deadly
serious political crisis.
The show has been running for five years but has seen its
viewership soar into the hundreds of thousands in recent months as the crisis
has escalated.
“If you take seriously everything happening in Thai society, you
will go mad,” said Winyu Wongsurawat, the co-host of the show.
Irony is in plentiful supply in Thailand today: A billionaire
tycoon is praised as the champion of the poor. A scandal-tainted politician
leads a mass movement against corruption. Protesters declare that they need to
block elections to save democracy.
The show has drawn inevitable comparisons to “The Daily Show,”
the satirical American news show anchored by Jon Stewart.
“Shallow News in Depth” follows
a similar format of celebrity interviews, commentary on news and humorous
dispatches by reporters on the streets of Bangkok.
But with its ultrafast, chaotic pacing and its silly antics,
“Shallow News in Depth” is “Jon Stewart on crack,” in the words of The Bangkok
Post, an English-language newspaper.
Mr. Winyu, whose nickname is John, founded the show with his
sister, Janya Wongsurawat, the lead writer. Both say doing the show is a type
of comedic therapy for a crisis that is wrecking friendships, splitting apart
families and raising blood pressure in a land once known for gentle smiles and
a knack for compromise.
Mr. Winyu spends hours flipping through Thai news broadcasts to
glean material for the show. He says he is rarely disappointed.
“I was watching television two nights ago, and someone was
saying that an election was the equivalent of overthrowing democracy,” Mr.
Winyu said in an interview in the small, threadbare office that serves as the
show’s recording studio. “I was thinking, ‘What? How have we reached this
stage?’ “
Thai politics have become such a circus that reality can be hard
to trump.
Protesters in Bangkok are vowing to overthrow the government and
banish from Thai politics the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, and her
billionaire brother, the still-influential former prime minister Thaksin
Shinawatra, whose populist policies have made him a hero to many of Thailand’s
poor. They are indeed opposing the current election and doing all they can to
thwart it.
They have taken over major intersections in Bangkok and blocked
people from voting in a number of districts in the city and southern Thailand,
enough disruption to delay the election process for weeks, if not months.
In the meantime, Thailand is deadlocked and lacks a fully
functioning government.
The cast of “Shallow News in Depth,” which is also hosted by
Nattapong Tiendee, an electrical engineer by training, say they are
equal-opportunity insulters. The show has ridiculed protesters for calling
themselves the “great mass of the people” while blocking elections they knew
they would lose. It mocks the protesters’ ceaseless habit of taking “selfies”
while protesting.
It portrays Mr. Thaksin, who is in self-exile after being
overthrown in a 2006 military coup that helped kick off the present cycle of
turmoil, as a satellite orbiting the country.
And it constantly pokes fun at the country’s color wars. Mr.
Thaksin’s supporters are known as red shirts, while the movement to oust him
was led by so-called yellow shirts. (The crisis has also spawned groups known
as black shirts, white shirts and multicolored shirts.) Mr. Winyu once
conducted an interview bare-chested to drive home the point that he was not
taking sides.
“We are not to be taken seriously,” he said. “We are just
clowns.”
Yet underlying the show’s relentless satire and sarcasm are
strong doses of social criticism and civics lessons.
Mr. Winyu and Ms. Janya’s father is an American-trained
political scientist who met his American wife, also a university professor,
while studying in Illinois.
They are not afraid to pursue potentially bone-dry topics, like
recent decisions by the country’s Constitutional Court that have left many
legal scholars flummoxed.
In November, the court ruled that a constitutional amendment to
transform the Senate from a partly appointed body into a fully elected one was
an attempt to “overthrow” democracy. That week, the show delved into a lecture
about the separation of powers among the judicial, legislative and executive
branches. Mr. Winyu pointed out that three of the judges were on the panel that
revised the relevant sections of the Constitution in 2007, and thus would have
been expected to recuse themselves.
“There’s a conflict of interest? No way!” Mr. Winyu said, with
mock horror and disbelief.
Mr. Nattapong, the co-host, says the show has a message. “But it
must be a sugarcoated pill.”
The show turned profitable three years ago, said Mr. Nattapong,
who manages the business side. Other Internet endeavors the trio have begun
make more money, including their most lucrative show, “Beauty Guru,” which
offers tips on how to apply makeup.
Running the show on YouTube gives them freedom from the
corporate pressures and self-censorship of Thai television networks, Ms. Janya
said.
“We would have to tone it down a lot to make it acceptable for
TV,” she said. But there are still taboos. Ms. Janya says the show does not touch
the subject of the monarchy; laws protecting the royal family have been broadly
interpreted by courts in recent years, and penalties can be severe.
The political crisis has been comedic gold, she says, but some
Thais are so weary of the crisis that they are eager to disengage from politics
altogether.
“How many times can you feature people saying these ridiculous
things?” she said.
“Nobody is shocked anymore.”
