mrentoul

February 23, 2009

I went to Suan Phlu immigration today to report my address, which foreigners are supposed to do every 90 days.

They told me that since the changes came into effect on Feb 15, I can report my address only at the immigration office which issued my visa (a non-immigrant , which is in Lad Phrao.

An hour earlier, I visited immigration at Klong Toey port, where I have reported my address before. I live close to both Suan Phlu and KT port...the port is usually much quieter, so in the past I have taken my business there rather than Suan Phlu.

Since Feb 15, staff told me, the port office is no longer processing 90-day reporting forms. And as I say, staff at Suan Phlu would not let me do it there, either, as my visa comes from somewhere else.

At both places, staff cited the one-stop-shop concept - which for immigration perhaps means that you can obtain services at one place only, not any services at any office you like, as the name suggests.

I exaggerate - a little. Suan Phlu still sold me a re-entry permit, after a three-hour wait. However, as I say, for 90-day reporting, I now have to visit Lad Prao, which is a long way from where I live. Next year, I might have to see if I can renew my visa at Suan Phlu instead.

November 29, 2007

The blog Bangkok of the Mind has heaps of stuff about Love of Siam, as well as the gay drama, Friends.

March 11, 2004

Actually, I did visit the website, Flummoxed, to check that it was actually posted there, as Bluecat said. Funnily enough, I almost deleted the post earlier. Normally I don't lower myself to read his site, still less comment on it.

Unfortunately I didn't open the section concerned. Bluecat forgot to mention that the piece was taken from a reader's letter.

I agree Stickman can post whatever he likes on his own site. I am not one of his fans (I disagree that ''we all love him'', as someone said above), but I am not going to criticise the guy because of what someone else says on his site. I have deleted the post.

I think Stick would take exception to being critisised for something he didn't even say.....and even more annoyed that he should be slammed for allowing people freedom of speech on his site.

You don't say.

As for you, Bluecat, thanks once again for pointing out to me the futility of posting on webboards.

Why should we have to check everything half a dozen times because some poster hasn't bothered attributing something correctly, or can't express himself coherently?

Yet we must, because more often than not people on these boards are using only half their brain when they post.

There is a simple solution: ignore the lot of you (and delete your objectionable posts).

March 11, 2004

Post withdrawn.

March 10, 2004

but it's rare that I meet a farang with equal ability to mine in Thai-

We all make our choices. Some chose to spend hours absorbing themselves in a new language and cuture, and others, as the poster says, prefer to rely on their girlfriends and their wives.

I have a European friend who has four or five languages already. She has not taken up Thai study with any great dedication, but then she does not know how much longer she will be here. Besides which, she might think she knows enough languages already!

March 9, 2004

the well practiced street creature ...gender confused

Where did you get this article?

It doesn't look like something a newspaper would run...though you never know.

This account is more entertaining, and with less emotive language. From memory, it's the fourth story down, and comes with pics:

http://www.pattaya.com/index_eng.htm

March 9, 2004

Face invader

Spectator, London

Jan 3

Sam Leith has a facial — and is troubled to find that he has to remove all his clothes.

I haven’t felt like this since I last went to visit the dental hygienist with my mum. I’m standing in a coolly antiseptic reception room, mooching and scuffing my feet and sighing theatrically, while my travelling companion discusses ‘treatments’ for me with the uniformed lady behind the desk.

‘Really? What a coincidence! I’m insane too.’

I have hitherto made it my practice not to have much truck with beauty treatments, on the grounds that they are time-consuming, bogus, expensive, and for girls — and that they offer a uniquely revolting and contradictory marriage of late capitalist excess and hippy rhetoric. Moreover, I am a firm believer in the ancient Scottish saying ‘You cannae polish a turd.’

But my travelling companion is a lady of some forcefulness — and I fear greatly her reaction to seeing my ‘free-treatment-of-your-choice’ voucher going to waste. A long menu of options designed to ‘soothe’, ‘invigorate’, ‘pamper’ or ‘restore essential B-Omega vitamins and oxygenate tired eyes’ is presented to me. I can be wrapped in seaweed, smeared in mud, or otherwise immersed in a range of things one normally tries to wash off in the bath. No thanks. I fear the humiliation of a pedicurist running screaming from my feet, and ever since an embarrassing misunderstanding at a massage parlour in Chinatown in New York, I have had issues with back-rubs. A ‘men’s facial’, then, sounds the most painless of the lot. No need to get my clothes off. I’ll just sit in a chair, let them bung some cream on my face, and then return to the bar having proved my open-mindedness.

So sure enough, five minutes later, here I am with another tranquil lady in a uniform saying, ‘Take off all your clothes.’ But it’s my face that’s at issue. Look. Here it is. Are you going to do a facial on my torso? No dice. She indicates a wooden locker filled with fluffy white towels, a soft white dressing-gown, a pair of flip-flops, and then shimmers out. No one, she says, will disturb me. Nevertheless, I put the gown on before I shed my shreddies. I wait for my personal therapist in an ominous white antechamber. On the low wooden coffee table is a form for me to fill out. It asks me whether I use an IUD. I tick the box for ‘no’. Somewhere a little way off, essential oils are being vapourised. There is a definite sense of whalesong. It is soothing. I am terrified.

Finally my personal therapist, dressed in a white uniform, arrives and leads me through a slatted wooden door, down a white corridor lined with slatted wooden doors, and into a white private room. Aromatherapy candles are burning. In the centre of the room is a white bed/chair, cantilevered into the shape of a supine zed, with a white blanket and white sheets on it. Beside it are a pair of nameless punishment machines with Anglepoise necks that belong in a Sylvia Plath poem, or a Terry Gilliam film, or at the dentist.

‘Take off your robe and lie down here,’ she says, sliding a hand under the tightly tucked-in sheet. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’ She leaves the room. I slide in quickly and pull the covers as far up as I can. So now I am lying on my back, tightly tucked in, stark naked and completely defenceless. For a facial. When she returns, to my horror, she lifts up the edge of the sheet. ‘Put your arms under here.’ All that is now sticking out of my Z-shaped cocoon are my head and shoulders. I realise suddenly why they make you strip; make you — in defiance of Victorian convention — keep your arms under the covers; make you remove all forms of jewellery or clothing that could serve as a prop to your identity or individual will. It’s so that you can’t defend yourself or run away.

I close my eyes, and she starts slathering my face with a sort of cool gunk and pushing it up my nose. Then, just as I am adjusting to that, she changes pace and starts to attack me with a pair of scouring pads. I am starting to feel disoriented. Now she’s laying — what? — what feel like slices of warm Edam on my eyes ...there is a painfully hot sensation on my left cheek and the sound of a machine ...doing ...something. Hot. Hard to breathe. Like when you sit too close to the fire in a sauna. At some point in all this, I become aware that she is trying to sell me things. ‘It says on your questionnaire that you wash your face with soap,’ she says. ‘Yup,’ I say, feeling pleased with myself. ‘Almost every day.’ ‘That’s very bad,’ she says. She offered a ‘very good-value’ cleanser suitable for my skin type that she’d be happy to charge to my room. And another potion that, she said, would help to lighten the ‘discolouration’ under my eyes (I like that discolouration. I’ve had bruised eyes since I was born.) I mumble apologetically that I’ll wait till I am vertical to go shopping for cosmetics.

She mutters something and I sense her wandering off. Has she gone for a fag? How long am I to be left here with this dragon breathing on my cheek and this cheese on my eyes? If I take the cheese off, in order to find out what’s going on, will I see her standing there, waiting to catch me out, and preparing further punishments? I daren’t take the risk. I wait. And wait.

I’m starting to drift, when comes a sudden, bright light, an adjustment, and the hot breath of steam subsides. Sweat cools on my cheeks. The slices are lifted from my eyes. Then suddenly, jeepers, she’s at me with the scouring pads again. And no sooner does that stop than she is spritzing me with Windolene. She pats my face dry. And then, with ferocious vigour, she starts squeezing my spots. This wasn’t in the manifesto.

‘Ouch!’ says my nose. ‘Ssssh,’ I say. ‘We’re all in this together.’ ‘Dough we’re dot,’ says my nose, and then, again, ‘ouch!’ as my personal therapist goes after blocked pores that I hesitate to tackle myself. My eyes start to water. My personal therapist is making approving noises about what is ‘coming out’. I honestly, honestly don’t want to know.

Then she massages a layer of butter or possibly marge into my forehead and cheeks before announcing, ‘This is your facial.’ (What was all that so far? Foreplay?) Another layer of goo is applied in some detail and then she lays a fresh pair of cheese slices over my eyes, as you might throw a blanket over the parrot’s cage or hood a hawk. I hear her voice, murmuring, whether to herself or to a collaborator somewhere in the corner of the room. Then a soft click, and she is gone.

I try to compose my thoughts, but this bed contraption is oddly comfortable, and my mind is starting to drift. Mmm. Focus, I try to tell myself, but an endless loop of infernal smooth jazz is being piped out of speakers somewhere. It saps the will and scrambles my ability to think sequentially. Nakedness, depersonalisation, submission, passivity, mental distraction, disorientation — these are the classic tools of the brainwasher, the CIA interrogator, proprietors of jazz clubs everywhere, I think. But it’s comfy. Are there drugs in the candles? My will to escape is dwindling. I wonder whether I will find myself, three weeks from now, in another white room somewhere far away, drinking a farewell toast to the world with a cup of grape-flavour Kool-Aid. Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. It’s warm here. Mmm. Aaah. Comfy. Horrible, horrible music. Comfy.

Minutes pass, possibly hours. And suddenly I feel cool air around my eyes, my facial is being towelled off me, and I am encouraged to get up and get dressed. I feel very, very peculiar. First chance I get, I sneak a look in a mirror. Do you know what? I look suspiciously like me.

March 9, 2004

New fuel for the culture wars

Feb 26th 2004 | WASHINGTON, DC

From The Economist print edition

The proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage adds thorny legal and political questions to a troublesome moral debate

AT A speech to the Republican Governors' Association on February 23rd, George Bush argued that voters face a stark choice between “two visions of government”: one (his) that encourages individual freedom, the other (the Democrats') that “takes your money and makes your choices”. Twelve hours later, he presented Americans with an equally stark question: do you want a constitutional ban on gay marriage? By any measure, this would take away gay Americans' choice. By supporting the proposed ban, President Bush has re-ignited the culture wars, given a new, possibly nastier character to the presidential race and committed America to a long, maybe unresolvable, debate about fundamental mores.

America's culture wars have the virtue of ventilating profound questions of personal behaviour and responsibility. Their drawback is that they are sometimes poisoned by majoritarian actions. So it may be this time. The underlying issue of gay marriage turns on basic attitudes towards sexuality, on the extent to which marriage should be buttressed by law, and on whether gay marriage would undermine the institution itself. But the particular form in which the issue is now being presented—as a proposed amendment to the federal constitution—raises questions about who should make decisions like this and what is the proper role of the state and federal governments.

Supporters of a constitutional ban want to stop gay marriages everywhere, of course. But in practice they focus on a slightly different issue: how to stop gay marriage spreading from state to state through a clause in the constitution that says “full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other state.” The fear is that, as the president put it, “some activist judges and local officials” will permit gay marriage in one place. Gays from all over the country will then rush to marry, return home and sue in their home state's courts to have their marriage contract recognised. In support of this view, proponents of the ban point out that, in practice, states always recognise each other's marriage laws. Gay marriage would be no exception.

They point out that the federal government has twice stepped in to strike down marriage laws deemed acceptable in one state but not elsewhere. In both cases, this involved polygamy among Mormons, first when Lincoln banned bigamy in 1862 (the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act) and again in 1890 when the federal government insisted Utah outlaw polygamy as a condition of becoming a state. If the feds can ban polygamy, why not gay marriage too?

Lastly, they argue, a constitutional ban would stop only marriage among homosexuals, not civil unions. States could still, they claim, write their own laws granting gays some legal rights short of marriage, as Vermont has done.

Opponents of the ban reject these arguments one by one. Most important, they say, proponents are factually and legally wrong about the constitution's “full faith and credit” clause. It has long been established in law that if an issue comes within the purview of states, and if states have their own public policy on that issue, then they do not have to recognise another state's law. This exception is essential to the operation of the federal system itself, which would otherwise be rendered meaningless.

There is no doubt that marriage is a matter for the states, not the federal government. It has been so for centuries. There is no doubt that many states have their own policy, since 38 have passed “defence of marriage acts” defining marriage as the union of a man and woman. It is true, opponents concede, that states have always recognised each other's marriage laws. But that was because there was consensus. Now that the consensus is fraying, Texas (say) will not be required to recognise a gay marriage made in Massachusetts. The result will be messy, but that is the price of federalism.

Moreover, opponents of a ban point out, the “full faith and credit” clause gives Congress a role in deciding “the manner in which such acts, records and proceedings shall be provided”. Congress made clear its view by passing, in 1996, its own Defence of Marriage Act. In sum, opponents say, the constitutional defences against extending gay marriage by judicial activism are strong.

Lastly, they claim, proponents of a constitutional ban are plain wrong—or lying—when they say their amendment would permit civil unions. As it stands, the proposal before Congress would prevent “marital status or the legal incidents thereof [being] conferred upon unmarried couples or groups”. If the phrase “legal incidents thereof” means anything, it must refer to civil unions. These would be banned.

Could such an amendment pass? Since the Bill of Rights, there have been only 16 amendments in 200 years. Most guarantee or extend the operation of democracy (such as women's suffrage), rather than defend social norms (such as Prohibition). Any amendment requires the approval of three-quarters of the states, plus a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress.

This looks hard, but is not out of the question. Three-quarters of the states have passed laws banning gay marriage, though some might vote against an amendment on states'-rights grounds. The decisive factor, though, will be public opinion.

It is often said that Americans disapprove of gay marriage but support civil unions. Not so. Gay marriage is more unpopular than unions (about 60% dislike the former), but, depending on how the question is asked, a small majority disapproves of civil unions too. That suggests that public pressure on legislators could be strong.

But opinion is fluid. It is sensitive to news. Support for an amendment rose when the Supreme Court struck down Texas's sodomy law last year. It shifts depending on how the debate is framed: the more you talk about equal rights under the law, the greater the support for civil unions. And there is a yawning generation gap: 55% of 18-29-year-olds support gay marriage, but only 21% of those over 65.

Mr Bush may therefore be taking a bigger political gamble than is apparent on the surface. Democrats complain that by supporting a constitutional ban he is seeking a “wedge issue” for the election (something that splits Democrats but unites Republicans). And it is true that Republican-voting evangelicals strongly support a ban, and may well turn out in even greater numbers as a result. But Republicans too are split on the ban. Libertarians dislike legislating on sexual behaviour. Federalists deplore the proposed overriding of a core competence of states. Around 1m gays voted Republican in 2000.

So there are costs as well as benefits for the president. And those costs may spread to the country as a whole. In Roe v Wade in 1973, the Supreme Court imposed a uniform law on a country divided and in flux on abortion. The issue still splits the nation. A constitutional amendment would stop state experimentation and impose a national norm on a country divided and in flux about gay marriage. Debate could fester for years.

March 9, 2004

The case for gay marriage

It rests on equality, liberty and even society

The Economist Feb 26

SO AT last it is official: George Bush is in favour of unequal rights, big-government intrusiveness and federal power rather than devolution to the states. That is the implication of his announcement this week that he will support efforts to pass a constitutional amendment in America banning gay marriage. Some have sought to explain this action away simply as cynical politics, an effort to motivate his core conservative supporters to turn out to vote for him in November or to put his likely “Massachusetts liberal” opponent, John Kerry, in an awkward spot. Yet to call for a constitutional amendment is such a difficult, drastic and draconian move that cynicism is too weak an explanation. No, it must be worse than that: Mr Bush must actually believe in what he is doing.

Mr Bush says that he is acting to protect “the most fundamental institution of civilisation” from what he sees as “activist judges” who in Massachusetts early this month confirmed an earlier ruling that banning gay marriage is contrary to their state constitution. The city of San Francisco, gay capital of America, has been issuing thousands of marriage licences to homosexual couples, in apparent contradiction to state and even federal laws. It can only be a matter of time before this issue arrives at the federal Supreme Court. And those “activist judges”, who, by the way, gave Mr Bush his job in 2000, might well take the same view of the federal constitution as their Massachusetts equivalents did of their state code: that the constitution demands equality of treatment. Last June, in Lawrence v Texas, they ruled that state anti-sodomy laws violated the constitutional right of adults to choose how to conduct their private lives with regard to sex, saying further that “the Court's obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate its own moral code”. That obligation could well lead the justices to uphold the right of gays to marry.

That idea remains shocking to many people. So far, only two countries—Belgium and the Netherlands—have given full legal status to same-sex unions, though Canada has backed the idea in principle and others have conferred almost-equal rights on such partnerships. The sight of homosexual men and women having wedding days just like those enjoyed for thousands of years by heterosexuals is unsettling, just as, for some people, is the sight of them holding hands or kissing. When The Economist first argued in favour of legalising gay marriage eight years ago (“Let them wed”, January 6th 1996) it shocked many of our readers, though fewer than it would have shocked eight years earlier and more than it will shock today. That is why we argued that such a radical change should not be pushed along precipitously. But nor should it be blocked precipitously.

The case for allowing gays to marry begins with equality, pure and simple. Why should one set of loving, consenting adults be denied a right that other such adults have and which, if exercised, will do no damage to anyone else? Not just because they have always lacked that right in the past, for sure: until the late 1960s, in some American states it was illegal for black adults to marry white ones, but precious few would defend that ban now on grounds that it was “traditional”. Another argument is rooted in semantics: marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and so cannot be extended to same-sex couples. They may live together and love one another, but cannot, on this argument, be “married”. But that is to dodge the real question—why not?—and to obscure the real nature of marriage, which is a binding commitment, at once legal, social and personal, between two people to take on special obligations to one another. If homosexuals want to make such marital commitments to one another, and to society, then why should they be prevented from doing so while other adults, equivalent in all other ways, are allowed to do so?

Civil unions are not enough

The reason, according to Mr Bush, is that this would damage an important social institution. Yet the reverse is surely true. Gays want to marry precisely because they see marriage as important: they want the symbolism that marriage brings, the extra sense of obligation and commitment, as well as the social recognition. Allowing gays to marry would, if anything, add to social stability, for it would increase the number of couples that take on real, rather than simply passing, commitments. The weakening of marriage has been heterosexuals' doing, not gays', for it is their infidelity, divorce rates and single-parent families that have wrought social damage.

But marriage is about children, say some: to which the answer is, it often is, but not always, and permitting gay marriage would not alter that. Or it is a religious act, say others: to which the answer is, yes, you may believe that, but if so it is no business of the state to impose a religious choice. Indeed, in America the constitution expressly bans the involvement of the state in religious matters, so it would be especially outrageous if the constitution were now to be used for religious ends.

The importance of marriage for society's general health and stability also explains why the commonly mooted alternative to gay marriage—a so-called civil union—is not enough. Vermont has created this notion, of a legally registered contract between a couple that cannot, however, be called a “marriage”. Some European countries, by legislating for equal legal rights for gay partnerships, have moved in the same direction (Britain is contemplating just such a move, and even the opposition Conservative leader, Michael Howard, says he would support it). Some gays think it would be better to limit their ambitions to that, rather than seeking full social equality, for fear of provoking a backlash—of the sort perhaps epitomised by Mr Bush this week.

Yet that would be both wrong in principle and damaging for society. Marriage, as it is commonly viewed in society, is more than just a legal contract. Moreover, to establish something short of real marriage for some adults would tend to undermine the notion for all. Why shouldn't everyone, in time, downgrade to civil unions? Now that really would threaten a fundamental institution of civilisation.

March 8, 2004

Review, from the New Yorker

DAVID DENBY

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

Posted 2004-02-23

In “The Passion of the Christ,” Mel Gibson shows little interest in celebrating the electric charge of hope and redemption that Jesus Christ brought into the world. He largely ignores Jesus’ heart-stopping eloquence, his startling ethical radicalism and personal radiance—Christ as a “paragon of vitality and poetic assertion,” as John Updike described Jesus’ character in his essay “The Gospel According to Saint Matthew.” Cecil B. De Mille had his version of Jesus’ life, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Martin Scorsese had theirs, and Gibson, of course, is free to skip over the incomparable glories of Jesus’ temperament and to devote himself, as he does, to Jesus’ pain and martyrdom in the last twelve hours of his life. As a viewer, I am equally free to say that the movie Gibson has made from his personal obsessions is a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of treachery, beatings, blood, and agony—and to say so without indulging in “anti-Christian sentiment” (Gibson’s term for what his critics are spreading). For two hours, with only an occasional pause or gentle flashback, we watch, stupefied, as a handsome, strapping, at times half-naked young man (James Caviezel) is slowly tortured to death. Gibson is so thoroughly fixated on the scourging and crushing of Christ, and so meagrely involved in the spiritual meanings of the final hours, that he falls in danger of altering Jesus’ message of love into one of hate.

And against whom will the audience direct its hate? As Gibson was completing the film, some historians, theologians, and clergymen accused him of emphasizing the discredited charge that it was the ancient Jews who were primarily responsible for killing Jesus, a claim that has served as the traditional justification for the persecution of the Jews in Europe for nearly two millennia. The critics turn out to have been right. Gibson is guilty of some serious mischief in his handling of these issues. But he may have also committed an aggression against Christian believers. The movie has been hailed as a religious experience by various Catholic and Protestant groups, some of whom, with an ungodly eye to the commercial realities of film distribution, have prepurchased blocks of tickets or rented theatres to insure “The Passion” a healthy opening weekend’s business. But how, I wonder, will people become better Christians if they are filled with the guilt, anguish, or loathing that this movie may create in their souls?

“The Passion” opens at night in the Garden of Gethsemane—a hushed, misty grotto bathed in a purplish disco light. Softly chanting female voices float on the soundtrack, accompanied by electronic shrieks and thuds. At first, the movie looks like a graveyard horror flick, and then, as Jewish temple guards show up bearing torches, like a faintly tedious art film. The Jews speak in Aramaic, and the Romans speak in Latin; the movie is subtitled in English. Gibson distances the dialogue from us, as if Jesus’ famous words were only incidental and the visual spectacle—Gibson’s work as a director—were the real point. Then the beatings begin: Jesus is punched and slapped, struck with chains, trussed, and dangled over a wall. In the middle of the night, a hasty trial gets under way before Caiaphas (Mattia Sbragia) and other Jewish priests. Caiaphas, a cynical, devious, petty dictator, interrogates Jesus, and then turns him over to the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate (Hristo Naumov Shopov), who tries again and again to spare Jesus from the crucifixion that the priests demand. From the movie, we get the impression that the priests are either merely envious of Jesus’ spiritual power or inherently and inexplicably vicious. And Pilate is not the bloody governor of history (even Tiberius paused at his crimes against the Jews) but a civilized and humane leader tormented by the burdens of power—he holds a soulful discussion with his wife on the nature of truth.

Gibson and his screenwriter, Benedict Fitzgerald, selected and enhanced incidents from the four Gospels and collated them into a single, surpassingly violent narrative—the scourging, for instance, which is mentioned only in a few phrases in Matthew, Mark, and John, is drawn out to the point of excruciation and beyond. History is also treated selectively. The writer Jon Meacham, in a patient and thorough article in Newsweek, has detailed the many small ways that Gibson disregarded what historians know of the period, with the effect of assigning greater responsibility to the Jews, and less to the Romans, for Jesus’ death. Meacham’s central thesis, which is shared by others, is that the priests may have been willing to sacrifice Jesus—whose mass following may have posed a threat to Roman governance—in order to deter Pilate from crushing the Jewish community altogether. It’s also possible that the temple élite may have wanted to get rid of the leader of a new sect, but only Pilate had the authority to order a crucifixion—a very public event that was designed to be a warning to potential rebels. Gibson ignores most of the dismaying political context, as well as the likelihood that the Gospel writers, still under Roman rule, had very practical reasons to downplay the Romans’ role in the Crucifixion. It’s true that when the Roman soldiers, their faces twisted in glee, go to work on Jesus, they seem even more depraved than the Jews. But, as Gibson knows, history rescued the pagans from eternal blame—eventually, they came to their senses and saw the light. The Emperor Constantine converted in the early fourth century, and Christianized the empire, and the medieval period saw the rise of the Roman Catholic Church. So the Romans’ descendants triumphed, while the Jews were cast into darkness and, one might conclude from this movie, deserved what they got. “The Passion,” in its confused way, confirms the old justifications for persecuting the Jews, and one somehow doubts that Gibson will make a sequel in which he reminds the audience that in later centuries the Church itself used torture and execution to punish not only Jews but heretics, non-believers, and dissidents.

I realize that the mere mention of historical research could exacerbate the awkward breach between medieval and modern minds, between literalist belief and the weighing of empirical evidence. “John was an eyewitness,” Gibson has said. “Matthew was there.” Well, they may have been there, but for decades it’s been a commonplace of Biblical scholarship that the Gospels were written forty to seventy years after the death of Jesus, and not by the disciples but by nameless Christians using both written and oral sources. Gibson can brush aside the work of scholars and historians because he has a powerful weapon at hand—the cinema—with which he can create something greater than argument; he can create faith. As a moviemaker, Gibson is not without skill. The sets, which were built in Italy, where the movie was filmed, are far from perfect, but they convey the beauty of Jerusalem’s courtyards and archways. Gibson, working with the cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, gives us the ravaged stone face of Calvary, the gray light at the time of the Crucifixion, the leaden pace of the movie’s spectacular agonies. Felliniesque tormenters gambol and jeer on the sidelines, and, at times, the whirl of figures around Jesus, both hostile and friendly, seems held in place by a kind of magnetic force. The hounding and suicide of the betrayer Judas is accomplished in a few brusque strokes. Here and there, the movie has a dismal, heavy-souled power.

By contrast with the dispatching of Judas, the lashing and flaying of Jesus goes on forever, prolonged by Gibson’s punishing use of slow motion, sometimes with Jesus’ face in the foreground, so that we can see him writhe and howl. In the climb up to Calvary, Caviezel, one eye swollen shut, his mouth open in agony, collapses repeatedly in slow motion under the weight of the Cross. Then comes the Crucifixion itself, dramatized with a curious fixation on the technical details—an arm pulled out of its socket, huge nails hammered into hands, with Caviezel jumping after each whack. At that point, I said to myself, “Mel Gibson has lost it,” and I was reminded of what other writers have pointed out—that Gibson, as an actor, has been beaten, mashed, and disembowelled in many of his movies. His obsession with pain, disguised by religious feelings, has now reached a frightening apotheosis.

Mel Gibson is an extremely conservative Catholic who rejects the reforms of the Second Vatican council. He’s against complacent, feel-good Christianity, and, judging from his movie, he must despise the grandiose old Hollywood kitsch of “The Robe,” “The King of Kings,” “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” and “Ben-Hur,” with their Hallmark twinkling skies, their big stars treading across sacred California sands, and their lamblike Jesus, whose simple presence overwhelms Charlton Heston. But saying that Gibson is sincere doesn’t mean he isn’t foolish, or worse. He can rightly claim that there’s a strain of morbidity running through Christian iconography—one thinks of the reliquaries in Roman churches and the bloody and ravaged Christ in Northern Renaissance and German art, culminating in such works as Matthias Grünewald’s 1515 “Isenheim Altarpiece,” with its thorned Christ in full torment on the Cross. But the central tradition of Italian Renaissance painting left Christ relatively unscathed; the artists emphasized not the physical suffering of the man but the sacrificial nature of his death and the astonishing mystery of his transformation into godhood—the Resurrection and the triumph over carnality. Gibson instructed Deschanel to make the movie look like the paintings of Caravaggio, but in Caravaggio’s own “Flagellation of Christ” the body of Jesus is only slightly marked. Even Goya, who hardly shrank from dismemberment and pain in his work, created a “Crucifixion” with a nearly unblemished Jesus. Crucifixion, as the Romans used it, was meant to make a spectacle out of degradation and suffering—to humiliate the victim through the apparatus of torture. By embracing the Roman pageant so openly, using all the emotional resources of cinema, Gibson has cancelled out the redemptive and transfiguring power of art. And by casting James Caviezel, an actor without charisma here, and then feasting on his physical destruction, he has turned Jesus back into a mere body. The depictions in “The Passion,” one of the cruellest movies in the history of the cinema, are akin to the bloody Pop representation of Jesus found in, say, a roadside shrine in Mexico, where the addition of an Aztec sacrificial flourish makes the passion a little more passionate. Such are the traps of literal-mindedness. The great modernist artists, aware of the danger of kitsch and the fascination of sado-masochism, have largely withdrawn into austerity and awed abstraction or into fervent humanism, as in Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), which features an existential Jesus sorely tried by the difficulty of the task before him. There are many ways of putting Jesus at risk and making us feel his suffering.

What is most depressing about “The Passion” is the thought that people will take their children to see it. Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” not “Let the little children watch me suffer.” How will parents deal with the pain, terror, and anger that children will doubtless feel as they watch a man flayed and pierced until dead? The despair of the movie is hard to shrug off, and Gibson’s timing couldn’t be more unfortunate: another dose of death-haunted religious fanaticism is the last thing we need.

March 8, 2004

Schlock, Yes; Awe, No; Fascism, Probably

The flogging Mel Gibson demands.

By Christopher Hitchens

Slate. com

The gay movement in the United States—and the demand for civil unions and even for actual marriage—has had at least one good effect with which nobody can quarrel. The closeted homosexual is a sad figure from the past, and so is the homosexual who tries desperately to "marry" a heterosexual, thus increasing misery and psychic repression all round.

This may seem like an oblique way in which to approach Mel Gibson's ghastly movie The Passion. But it came back to me this week that an associate of his had once told me, in lacerating detail, that an evening with Mel was one long fiesta of boring but graphic jokes about anal sex. I've since had that confirmed by other sources. And, long before he emerged as the spear-carrier for the sort of Catholicism once preached by Gen. Franco and the persecutors of Dreyfus, Mel Gibson attained a brief notoriety for his loud and crude attacks on gays. Now he's become the proud producer of a movie that relies for its effect almost entirely on sadomasochistic male narcissism. The culture of blackshirt and brownshirt pseudomasculinity, as has often been pointed out, depended on some keen shared interests. Among them were massively repressed homoerotic fantasies, a camp interest in military uniforms, an obsession with flogging and a hatred of silky and effeminate Jews. Well, I mean to say, have you seen Mel's movie?

I think that it's a healthy sign for our society that so many Jews have decided to be calm and unoffended by the film, and that so many Christians say they don't feel any worse about Jews after having seen it. We have a social consensus where Jews feel more secure and Christians less insecure. Good. But this does not alter the fact that The Passion is anti-Semitic in intention and its director anti-Semitic by nature. Some people including myself think that Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League are too easily prone to charge the sin of anti-Semitism. But if someone denies the Holocaust one day and makes a film accusing Jews of Christ-killing the next day, I have to say that if he's not anti-Jewish then he's certainly getting there.

It's important to scan the Reader's Digest interview with Mel Gibson. He was questioned by Peggy Noonan, who was almost as simperingly lenient in print as Diane Sawyer was on the small screen. Noonan asked him a question that he must have known was coming, and which he must have prepared for, and she asked him in effect to "make nice" and agree that the Holocaust actually had occurred. His answer was, to all effects and purposes, a cold and flat "no." A lot of people, he agreed, had died in the last war. No doubt many Jews were among the casualties. It's one of the most frigid and shrugging things I have ever read. You would not know from this response that the war was begun by a fascist ruling party that believed in a Jewish world conspiracy, and thus that all of those killed were in part victims of anti-Semitism. (Some of the more tribal ADL advocates might also bear this in mind.)

But then, you were not brought up by Mel Gibson's father, who has repeatedly and recently stated that there was a population explosion among European Jews in the years 1933-1945 and that the Holocaust story is mainly "fiction." Young Gibson, when asked about this by Diane Sawyer, told her not to press him (which she obediently did not). But when asked by Noonan, he replied by saying that "My father has never told me a lie." It's not fair to expect Mel to trash his father. But he could have said that the old man was a fine daddy, albeit with a few odd ideas of his own. It was his very decided choice, however, to say that his male parent was an unvarying truth-teller. Why pick on that formulation? It's unlikely that Gibson Sr. has made a secret of his viciously anti-Jewish views when talking to his son, who shares with him a fanatical attachment to the Latin Mass and a deep hostility to the "liberalism" of the present pope.

So let us not be euphemistic about what is staring us in the face. Last Wednesday, the Lovingway United Pentecostal Church in Denver posted a sign on its roadside marquee. It read "Jews Killed the Lord Jesus." This pigsty of a church has, I think you will agree, an unimprovable name. But its elders, or whatever they call themselves, can't have had time to see the movie, which only opened that same Ash Wednesday. Nor, I think it safe to say, had they chosen the slogan only on the spur of the moment. No: They had been thinking this for quite a long time and were emboldened to "come out" and say so under the cover of a piece of devotional cinematic pornography. Some of us saw this coming. In America, I hope and believe, the sinister effect will be blunted by generations of civilized co-existence. But think for a moment what will happen when Gibson reaps the residual and overseas profits from screenings of the film in Egypt and Syria, or in Eastern Europe, where things are a bit more raw. Who can believe that he did not anticipate, and intend, this result?

Apparently seeking to curry favor, Gibson announced a few weeks ago that he had cut the scene where a Jewish mob yells for the blood of Jesus to descend on the heads of its children (a scene that occurs in only one of the four contradictory Gospels). Gibson lied. The scene is still there, spoken in Aramaic. Only the English subtitle has been removed. Propagandists in other countries will be able to subtitle it any way they like. This is all of a piece with the general moral squalor of his project. Gibson's producer lied when he said that a pope Gibson despises had endorsed the film. He would not show the movie to anyone who might object in advance. He will not debate any of his critics, and he relies on star-stricken pulp interviewers to feed him soft questions. Now, as the dollars begin to flow from this front-loaded fruit-machine of cynical publicity, he is sobbing about the risks and sacrifices he has made for the Lord. A coward, a bully, a bigmouth, and a queer-basher. Yes, we have been here before. The word is fascism, in case you are wondering, and we don't have to sit through that movie again.

March 6, 2004

From the New Republic Online.

JEDDAH DISPATCH

Queer Sheik

by John R. Bradley

The glass and marble shopping malls of this cosmopolitan and comparatively laid-back Saudi city on the Red Sea have long served as a meeting place for Saudi boys and girls, who slip each other bits of paper with their names and mobile-phone numbers scribbled on them. After chatting by phone, some boys and girls meet up again in the family sections of the malls' many Western-style restaurants, where mingling of the sexes is allowed.

In recent months, however, Jeddah's malls have become meeting places for another group: homosexuals. Gay Saudi men now cruise certain malls and supermarkets, openly making passes at each other, and one street in Jeddah is said to have the most traffic accidents in the city because it is the most popular place for Saudi drivers to pick up gay Filipinos, who strut their stuff on the sidewalk in tight jeans and cut-off t-shirts. (Filipinos are one of the larger groups of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia.) Meanwhile, gay and lesbian discos, gay-friendly coffee shops, and even gayoriented Internet chat rooms are now flourishing in some Saudi cities; in the chat rooms, gay and lesbian Saudis discuss the best places to meet people for one-night stands. "We talk about places that aren't gay cruising areas, because they're now in the minority," says one young gay Saudi, only half-jokingly.

Traditionally, self-identified gays and lesbians who openly displayed their sexual preferences lived in mortal fear in Saudi Arabia. Homosexuality has long been illegal here, and, in theory, the official punishment for sodomy is death. In the 1990s, several gay Filipino foreign workers were deported from the kingdom for committing homosexual acts, and, in January 2002, the Saudi Interior Ministry reported that three men in the southern city of Abha had been "beheaded for homosexuality," although one Saudi diplomat said the men were executed for raping boys. Periodically, gay Westerners in the kingdom were fired from Saudi companies where they were working. One long-term expatriate says employers have told friends of his, "You have twenty-four hours to leave the kingdom, or we'll inform the authorities of your behavior."

But, in some Saudi cities, the authorities have started to look the other way. In part, the government has realized that the thousands of Saudis who have recently returned from the United States because of stricter visa policies, and who are relatively liberal-minded, are unwilling to countenance such harsh anti-gay policies. "I don't feel oppressed at all," said one gay man, a 23-year-old returnee from the United States meeting in one of the coffee shops with a group of gay Saudi friends dressed in Western clothes and speaking fluent English.

Saudi Arabia's domestic reform initiative and the government's eagerness to shed its international reputation for intolerance also have contributed to acceptance of gays and lesbians. In recent months, Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto ruler, has called for greater intrasocietal debate and more freedom of expression in the press. Consequently, previously taboo subjects are discussed more openly in Saudi society, and some Saudis have begun to question the harsh tactics of the fearsome religious police, who enforce public morals. Slightly freer to cover gay and lesbian issues, the Jeddah-based daily newspaper Okaz recently reported that lesbianism was "endemic" among schoolgirls, in an article that revealed salacious details of lesbian sex in school bathrooms. Despite the Okaz report, Ibrahim bin Abdullah bin Ghaith, head of the religious police, told reporters he would not send enforcers to investigate schools for lesbians--perhaps because of pressure from higher officials. Riyadh even seems to have informed some of its officials to show tolerance when they comment on homosexuality. Ibrahim bin Abdullah bin Ghaith recently acknowledged, in unusually tempered language, that there are gay Saudis. What's more, the kingdom's Internet Services Unit, which is responsible for blocking sites deemed "un-Islamic" or politically sensitive, recently unblocked access to one website's homepage for gay Saudi surfers after being bombarded with critical e-mails from the United States. Saudi Arabia seemed concerned about the bad publicity blocking the site would bring, said A. S. Getenio, manager of GayMiddleEast.com, a website devoted to homosexual issues in the Arab world.

To be sure, Saudi Arabia is still a closed society, but times seem to have changed a bit. According to several gay Saudis, the number of gay-themed Saudi websites has exploded in recent months. Some of these sites are still blocked, but software to avoid the blocks is easily purchased in local markets. Most sites exist for one reason only: to facilitate meet-ups. One night, I sat with a 32-year-old gay Saudi, who spent the evening chatting online with other men. Half an hour after interacting online with a younger man he liked, the older man sped off in his car for a meet-up in person. The following day, he told me the younger man had spent the night in his apartment. Younger gays pair off at school. Ahmed, a university student in Jeddah, says that no one made fun of him for having a boyfriend at his private high school. He adds that he now has a "special friend" in college, too. "We introduce our boys to our friends as 'al walid hagi' [the boy who belongs to me]," he says. "At the beginning of term, we always check out the new boys to see which are the most 'helu' [sweet] and think of ways to get to know them."

The Jeddah gay community also frequents malls, supermarkets, restaurants, and a disco catering to gay men, whose existence is an open secret. One Jeddah restaurant now features young Filipinos plastered in makeup and obviously taking hormones, possibly in preparation for a sex-change operation. At a disco north of Jeddah city, gay men gather each week to drink beer (which is also officially prohibited), dance together to Western music, and introduce their partners to friends. Many of the disco-goers are young returnees from the United States, but there are also older Saudi businessmen who have lived in the kingdom for years. One evening, the disco even featured two Saudi drag queens, who made a dramatic entrance onto the floor. Without an official complaint from the government or from Saudi citizens, the religious police will not raid the disco.

The upper crust of Saudi society is becoming more open as well. Carmen bin Laden, the sister-in-law of Osama bin Laden, recently published a book, in French, titled Inside the Kingdom, which is a look at the life of the idle Saudi rich. In the book, The New York Times reported this month, bin Laden tells stories of homosexual affairs among the kingdom's wealthy and idle women. And Saudi anthropologist Mai Yamani has shown that all-female discos catering to rich Saudi women are often covers for lesbian get-togethers. Saudi princes, meanwhile, have frequented the Jeddah disco, where they openly interact with club-goers.

Even the cutting edge of foreign gay culture is hitting Saudi shores and showing the limits of Saudi gays' freedoms. Last week, U.S.-based Saudi dissidents reported, the Saudi authorities raided a house in the city of Medina and arrested dozens of gay men. Apparently, the men had gathered to witness the wedding of a Saudi man and his Sudanese partner.

John R. Bradley is the author of the forthcoming Saudi Arabia Exposed: Princes, Paupers and Puritans in the Wahhabi Kingdom

March 6, 2004

Candy, who is not in Bangkok, wants to get back, and Mrentoul, who is in Bangkok, wants to get out (I still working on my escape strategy).

Yes, I am sure we'll make a good team!

March 5, 2004

Traditionally, it is supposed to be a day during which journalists are allowed the luxury of taking time out to reflect on the state of their profession

The luxury of time out?

The reporters I know are always taking ''time out''.

They never do any work.

March 5, 2004

The knowledge that sending the oldest son to the Wat on a motorcycle, with a request for assistance, will result in the Phra arriving and taking control in a time of grief at the loss of a loved one,

I didn't know you could do this, and I think it's great that you can. I read about the role that kamnan play in the life of a local community, but I seldom hear about how monks interact with people except at morning alms.

Most of my city friends do not visit temples much, but I like it when they do. A visit to a wat can take them out of themselves, and invite them to think about someone else for a change!

March 3, 2004

The topic may have been so boring that it withered on the board as soon as it was posted, and fell away like an old leaf.

March 2, 2004

The bridal price debate has brought out some moving posts (there are now more than 120). Several women have spoken of how their mother's demands for a high price have upset them and caused rifts within the family.

The woman who posted the original message, and who has received a scathing response, said her mother originally asked for B3 million (!), which her daughter evidently managed to negotiate downwards.

On top of that, her farang groom was going to have to meet all expenses related to the wedding. The woman, who is getting married next month, said that over time she was able to make her mother understand that demanding so much money was not going to make her happy. In fact, it led to misery. She had shed four kilogrammes of weight in one week.

She understood that her mother wanted the family to look good in other people's eyes. But she explained that the people who came to the wedding would be able to see that a Thai family and a farang family do not have the same economic status. Nothing more would have to be said. She asked her mother simply to be happy and to love her husband-to-be.

Another poster said she had also married a man from overseas, a pilot. She had tried to make him understand the Thai tradition of demanding a bridal price, but he still thought it was odd. Her father did not demand anything, but her mother wanted one million baht. She managed to persuade her to lower it a bit.

She (the daughter) felt dreadful. It wasn't going to hurt her husband, who could evidently afford it, but she didn't want him to end up feeling resentful towards her family.

Finally, another poster said she was in the process of marrying a man from overseas. Her family had not demanded anything like one million baht, but the groom was still meeting all expenses, which including wedding costs came to less than B300,000.

He didn't mind, but she helped him save the money. They decided to take the money that they could have used to show off (a high bridal price) and put it into buying a house and car, and ignore any gossip.

March 2, 2004