Farang Tv Actors Playing Brutal Women Beaters

[Master Chief]

Just looking at a TV serie on ch 7, really pissing me off to se an blonde male farang actor playing the brutal part in a Thai soap opera.

Do western TV star wannabees have nothing else to do than playing part in this kind of portaiting?

Thinking all TV series at the hour here are brutal krap.

MC

[girlx]

Do western TV star wannabees have nothing else to do than playing part in this kind of portaiting?

probably not!

[Birdman]

Don't blame the actor. It's rather a sad sign of the times...that representation of us.

[TheWalkingMan]

Just looking at a TV serie on ch 7, really pissing me off to se an blonde male farang actor playing the brutal part in a Thai soap opera.

Do western TV star wannabees have nothing else to do than playing part in this kind of portaiting?

Thinking all TV series at the hour here are brutal krap.

MC

Anything for a buck.

TheWalkingMan

[Cobalt60]

I have been shocked by the violence shown on soaps over the last couple of years. Usually men hitting and beating women or stabbings, shootings etc., or two women holding another women while another women beats her up.

[BygonKeaw]

actors and famous people are generally attention seekers so im sure most of them would do anything to get attention

[Kaks]

I saw one a couple of months ago which had a group of farang gangster guys murdering a whole village, pouring petrol on the kids and trashing the buddhist shrine. My girlfriends family were glued to it and its no wonder a lot of Thais are wary of farangs if thats the stuff they are showing. My girlfriends 10 year old nephew was scared of farangs until he met me and realised we weren't all bad guys.

[Birdman]

The actor is completely irrelevant. Essential is the idea of the screenplay in which a Farang is the bad guy. There was another TV series with a bad Farang as well. Years ago Farangs on TV were exclusively the nice, understandable, good guys. An alarming development indeed...

[kurnell]

Perfect! This means that the Thais will stay outa my way fearful that I'll kill and burn em.

[Dakhar]

Just looking at a TV serie on ch 7, really pissing me off to se an blonde male farang actor playing the brutal part in a Thai soap opera.

Do western TV star wannabees have nothing else to do than playing part in this kind of portaiting?

Thinking all TV series at the hour here are brutal krap.

MC

So let me get this straight....

They hired a white guy, to play the role of a Thai guy? Wouldn't it had been easeir, and more believable, just to hire a Thai guy, for role in the first place?

Sounds like Yul Brynner all over again.

(by the way this was sarcasim)

[scottyd]

I'd be a brutal, racist, wife beating loud mouth womanizing westerner if they were paying me.

It's only a TV show.

[LadyHeather]

So, I guess it boggles the mind that there are abusive western guys then? Or that a western guy can be a bad guy?

I realize that Thai television is not an accurate (or at least I hope not) representation of life in Thailand but find it quite ironic that western guys would be so concerned that they are being represented poorly in a soap on tv.

Look around you, there are plenty of real life poor representatives of western male-dom walking around and visible in the news that I don't think the Thai people will get their sole view of foreigners from one western guy playing a bad guy on tv.

[Jingthing]

I saw one a couple of months ago which had a group of farang gangster guys murdering a whole village, pouring petrol on the kids and trashing the buddhist shrine. My girlfriends family were glued to it and its no wonder a lot of Thais are wary of farangs if thats the stuff they are showing. My girlfriends 10 year old nephew was scared of farangs until he met me and realised we weren't all bad guys.

You mean the move Hanuman. Indeed!

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Thai-Movie-h...-R-t206659.html

[Mali1964]

Live here in issarn & you see how much B**L S**t there is on thai soap TV.

[Tedhead]

It's always The Other (i.e. the foreigners) who tend to play the bad guys in any nation's dramas. Hollywood has had a habit of casting British actors to play the baddies (for instance, Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter) or rather incongruously American actors putting on English accents to play the bad guys (I seem to remember John Lithgow doing this in a Sylvester Stallone movie).

Down the ages, and depending on the political circumstances or prejudices of the times, black people, Irish, Jews, Germans, Russians, Arabs and many other groups have been the stock-in-trade baddies for different national dramas. As far as farangs being portrayed in a less-than-flattering light on Thai TV, that may well be a by-product of the types of farang that Thais are exposed to. If it's a common experience to see bare-chested farang getting drunk, shagging anything that moves, getting into fights or pissing into the potted plants in the hotel lobby, it's perhaps not too surprising that this negative experience feeds back into the nation's soaps and melodramas.

And yes, I realize that these rougher elements of Western society don't represent all farang, but they're hardly a near-invisible minor sect either.

Edited January 20, 2009 by Tedhead

[ClaytonSeymour]

Look around you, there are plenty of real life poor representatives of western male-dom walking around and visible in the news that I don't think the Thai people will get their sole view of foreigners from one western guy playing a bad guy on tv.

If you head down to Soi 5 you'll see plenty of real life, poor representatives of African men - when will we see a Nigerian drug pusher/scam artist feature as part of the storyline of a Thai soap opera?

Edited January 20, 2009 by ClaytonSeymour

[Sabum]

For crying out loud, the soaps are usually portraying Thai men as evil and abusive... so if they throw in ONE falang so what? Unbelievable. Oh and ya, lets blame the actor, he's obviously a horrible guy for ACTING out the character of one...... bloody he11. The stuff I read here never ceases to amaze me.

[onnut]

I wouldnt take any notice of it. just look at American TV not so long ago and every Asian was a goofy idiot, or British TV with all Blacks acting as the bad guys. America and the UK has grown up now, But Thailand still has a few years to go.

[mittheimp]

Look around you, there are plenty of real life poor representatives of western male-dom walking around and visible in the news that I don't think the Thai people will get their sole view of foreigners from one western guy playing a bad guy on tv.

If you head down to Soi 5 you'll see plenty of real life, poor representatives of African men - when will we see a Nigerian drug pusher/scam artist feature as part of the storyline of a Thai soap opera?

I bet your great fun to have a beer with! What with your super sleuthing exploits at airports and your ability to change all topics back to your myopic rants about Nigerian scammers. The evenings must just fly by!

[jcon]

For crying out loud, the soaps are usually portraying Thai men as evil and abusive... so if they throw in ONE falang so what? Unbelievable. Oh and ya, lets blame the actor, he's obviously a horrible guy for ACTING out the character of one...... bloody he11. The stuff I read here never ceases to amaze me.

My sentiments exactly.

[ClaytonSeymour]

I bet your great fun to have a beer with! What with your super sleuthing exploits at airports and your ability to change all topics back to your myopic rants about Nigerian scammers. The evenings must just fly by!

Much more fun than the PC brigade.

[girlx]

well, actors could have standards in what roles they choose to accept, rather than taking roles in crappy shows which promote gratuitous violence against women, it's true. but i don't see why farang actors should have any higher standards than thais do? why does nationality come into it?

[mittheimp]

I bet your great fun to have a beer with! What with your super sleuthing exploits at airports and your ability to change all topics back to your myopic rants about Nigerian scammers. The evenings must just fly by!

Much more fun than the PC brigade.

alternative opinions and challenging debate is fine - although i find people who continually use the blanket term 'pc brigade' as their sole criticism of anything other than Daily Mail rhetoric - to be just a bit limited.

and someone who pastes the entire Enoch Powell speech on 'rivers of blood' in response to a half baked rant about Africans in an Asian city presumably lost the plot a long time ago (especially if they are an immigrant into Thailand themselves??)

[Master Chief]

well, actors could have standards in what roles they choose to accept, rather than taking roles in crappy shows which promote gratuitous violence against women, it's true. but i don't see why farang actors should have any higher standards than thais do? why does nationality come into it?

Maybe that's why I will never be an actor, would not go for acting rolls that hurts women and kids, or be a cross dresser. that is also very common in LOS TV.

MC

[ClaytonSeymour]

I bet your great fun to have a beer with! What with your super sleuthing exploits at airports and your ability to change all topics back to your myopic rants about Nigerian scammers. The evenings must just fly by!

Much more fun than the PC brigade.

alternative opinions and challenging debate is fine - although i find people who continually use the blanket term 'pc brigade' as their sole criticism of anything other than Daily Mail rhetoric - to be just a bit limited.

and someone who pastes the entire Enoch Powell speech on 'rivers of blood' in response to a half baked rant about Africans in an Asian city presumably lost the plot a long time ago (especially if they are an immigrant into Thailand themselves??)

Seems I've touched a raw nerve. I guess it really hurts to be politically correct.

It depends on your point of view as to who's lost the plot, from my perspective, those who would defend drug smugglers never even had a plot to lose.

If you wish to discuss the late Brigadier John Enoch Powell MBE &/or his 'Rivers of Blood' speech, I'd be delighted to do so. Unfortunately, I don't think this thread is the place - even in Bedlam, I'm not sure it would go down well on Thai Visa.

Of course, this is all totally off topic.

Edited January 20, 2009 by ClaytonSeymour

[serpentine]

It's dam_n hilarious.

The censorship of farang shows-Family Guy, American Dad etc. Some thai films are very graphic with violence and it does not get censored, whilst slap stick cartoons are judged y the censors as "unheathy". Cracks me up everytime I see Mr. Giffen with his flab out-blurred because it is unsavory. And then a rape scene in a thai show is left un blurred.

Check thai films from the 80's. No names come to mind but they are very graphic and often passionate. (and surprisingly good, even the era where the actors are dubbed because the thai sound engineers couldn't make the voice of the actor sound right.

And then farang portrayed as wife beaters often in prime time soaps, or criminals or whatever! Sure there are prob heaps of fat pissed expat wife beaters, but we all know how domestic violence here is a hushed subject. Any farang who tried to break up a thai man beating his partner will know. Decent thais will tell you it is not your place to step in (even if it means stopping death). Popular Thai soaps often portray an american style life soap, big cars and houses etc. Very alien to most thais.

Unfortunately thais like most cultures love their soaps. It is sad that many poor families in places like Isaan may possibly have never met a farang, but possibly think it is an accurate portrail of farang values.

What to do?

Pop culture is such a decent marker for the state of any culture. When we saw all the industrial rock become mainstream in the US (gore and hatred etc) I think many westerners understood it as a sign of the times (and the bands were making a parody of the violence of the world). I am not sure in thai society things are seen like this.

It's one of my pet passions here.

[serpentine]

Good point. But one post mentions farang (I just assume they mean white anglo) burning a village. Now entertainment is great, but even in bad soaps or B grade films there is a reference to reality (sometimes, the better quality the show, the closer it is to some kind of reality). Villages are burnt by security forces ans rebels all over S. E, Asia. I don't think heaps of thais would realise how close to their border town for example, that this really happens. Look at Burma, the Karen, The Shan, the junta and of coarse the current Rohingha issue.

Is it not a worry that thais are possibly going to believe that this is the reality of a situation, and perhaps not realise that very often the truth is so much closer to home, and even sanctioned by the thai authorities.

Thais are pretty bad when it comes to judging a man by his facial features. It is still common here amongst even the well educated to decide that a man has a bad face. And for thais, like for farang, we can make the distinction that "they are all alike".

I personally find these portrails amusing.

I do know, after living here for a decade, that it does effect how locals look at farang.

I'm not saying farang shouldn't be portrayed either way

It comes down to the quality the producers of a show aim for. And such generalisations definately effect how thai who do not mix with farang see them.

If you are confused by this ask a thai who has relocated to the west. Their insights are interesting.

[Jimjim]

[Master Chief]

Assshh jimjim

Don't be so lame now, join the tread with something more than two smileys!

MC

[Birdman]

Bad Asians in Farang TV series do not stand out of the colourful multiculti picture in Farang country. But many Thais had never contact with other nationalities and many simple Thais are very much TV trusting.

Some 20 years ago Farangs were warmly welcomed to Thailand. In the last years, the trend is contrary. Why? Don't know. Maybe Farangs before respected Thai culture more? Maybe Thais are bored with our more and more arrogant and rebuke behaviour and rude manners, seen from a Thai perceptive...? Maybe Farangs are becoming some kind of a scapegoat to deflect from major problems?

It seems, that some posters here do not care about that. But this is a superficial opinion.