Looking @ Bangkok Through A Noir Lens

For non-Thai farang attempting to follow the political goings on in Thailand without going completely insane, the limits of rationale thought and analysis are quickly discovered.

Our Thai friends often counter our inability to understand with the advice that only Thai people can understand Thailand, that non-Thai farang, by virtue of their ethnicity and place of birth, are incapable of understanding Thai politics.

No matter how much they might read, study, analyze or discuss.

By Chris Coles

But rather than throw up our hands and crawl, dazed and confused, back into our farang ghettos and holes, perhaps there is another way to look at Bangkok and Thailand … that is, through the lens of Noir.

In order to do this we need to pretend that the present events unfolding in Thailand are not actually “real” but rather a series of chapters in an ongoing Noir novel populated by fictional characters who are all caught up in a vast and complex Noir plot.

Dangerous characters, struggling to escape their Fate but doomed to meet it head-on. Badly intentioned beneath their various masquerades. Slaves to their desire and greed. Malevolent towards each other. Gripped by insecurity, grinding fears, underlying desperation and haunting despair, all mixed together into a series of complex, multi-layered, contradictory plots and schemes that will lead them all to destruction.

Whether in a Raymond Chandler story set in 1930’s Los Angeles or a Christopher G. Moore Calvino novel set in Bangkok 2008, no matter how nihilistically Noir the setting and story, there is an immense and guilty pleasure to be found in the world of Noir, a world in which we are free to surrender our ideals, hopes and dreams and come to grips with the “true” nature of life and the world as a gigantic and colorful sewer, populated by charismatic bugs, rats, reptiles and serpents, who ceaselessly try to do each other in as they float along on the infinite river of fecal waste matter created by humanity.

The Noir lens is not only constructed with words, but can also be contained in images, or for that matter, words and images, whether in delicious Noir films such as L.A. CONFIDENTIAL or Denzel Washington’s TRAINING DAY or in the series of paintings and commentaries on my blog, BANGKOK NOIR.

For instance, my painting of a Thai Police Colonel:

Accompanied by the following words:

“When the rubber meets the road in the dark of the Bangkok Night, when you work your way past all the smiling and bowing, the laughter and fun, the fantastic colors, spicy food, throbbing music, beautiful women, svelte men and ingenious ladyboys, the swarms of tourists from every country on earth, underneath the veneer, the show, the playful toying with modernity and the democratic West, whose invisible hand lies hidden beneath and who is really in control?

A tough Thai Colonel, or that pasty, white-skinned hi-so guy over in the corner?

It is impossible to know …”

Or my painting of a Bangkok Soi Dog:

“Every morning he wakes up on the street, surrounded by his pack … he’s got no clothing, no bank account, no credit cards, no car, motorcycle, no nothing … but he wakes up happy, wagging his tail, wanders over for some scraps from the garbage bin at the back of a Gay Karaoke Bar, drinks a little water from a mud puddle, then looks for sex … if all the bitches are still asleep, he humps a hole in the street and settles down for a daytime nap in the midst of the traffic, happy to be a Bangkok Soi Dog.”

Or this painting of a Thai Rent Boy working in the Silom Gay District known as Boys Town:

“At the same time kind-hearted and mercenary, he works the gay farangs who wander through Bangkok Boys Town, night after night, week after week, month after month, year after year, hoping to get lucky before he dies from Aids … there are so many of them, not hundreds or thousands but hundreds of thousands, passing by for some fun on their way to oblivion … luckily he is Buddhist and knows that if he treats the farangs well, gives alms to the monks and sends money to his family, his next life will be better.”

Or this painting of Poseidon Club, one of Bangkok’s largest “Entertainment Complexes” surrounded by the sprawling nightlife district, Bangkok’s largest, called Ratchada:

“Towering over Ratchada, the mighty 500 room Poseidon Club, where wealthy Asian guys from Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, KL, Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul spend their dough on beautiful ladies from Europe, Asia, Brazil and Thailand itself, for fun, to show off and to seal their deals.”

Or the following painting of one of Thailand’s most colorful and outspoken “Godfathers”, now a member of the Thai Parliament and recently a candidate for Bangkok’s mayor, a man who was once Ratchada’s dominate player:

With distorted lines and clashing colors, these five paintings along with their commentaries, portray a Noir world of vibrancy, toughness and survival, contradictory, brutal and not for the faint of heart or mind, but authentic and “real”.

Terrible to actually live but full of a delicious and fascinating Schadenfreude for those watching from the sidelines.

More of Chris Coles @ his Bangkok Noir Blog