Fairy Tales & Thai Schools

[garyh]

Well, sure they haven't seen " The King and I ". It was banned in Thailand years ago.

Yes I know that but is made out to be a fairy tale like story.

[PeaceBlondie]

bina asked a question; she didn't flame the OP. The answer is recently.

[DP25]

After reading lot of posts, I am beginning to doubt my perception of Thais.

Are we really that bad?

No, not at all. You have to realize some people on this board have little interaction with Thais beyond bars in Pattaya and speak barely a word of Thai.

[DP25]

Well, sure they haven't seen " The King and I ". It was banned in Thailand years ago.

Plenty have seen that movie. I know of one school that had its students watch it and write letters to the publisher detailing the historical inaccuracies. Not approved for distribution is not the same thing as illegal, you don't get thrown in the clink for owning it.

[IanForbes]

Considering the number of fairies in Thailand the schools must be teaching them something.

[bina]

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Jataka-Stori...l&hl=jataka

chadok stories are the more/less equivalents;

and the previous link i posted gives a good comparison in short form...

the movie is not a fairy tale . its set up like what we perceive as a traditonal fairy tale : boy meets girl, trials and tribulations, help from other quarters, and then resolution. however, many non european fairy tales dont follow this format. that is a specific format. the greek plays follow a 'hero is born, wonders performs dies and is recognized 'format. the jataka are quite the same. sometimes the moral of the story is wierd to us or seems illogical or unresolved in some way; u are left sort of ahnging and wanting the good ending. but many dont have what we consider good endings. the character dies. the old lady gives away everything and becomes a budhist nun type figure... whatever.

my husband has an intense dislike for european style movies and tales. he finds them over simplified and 'sweet' (happy endings) without any connectin to real life. and a major factor: he cant identifiy with any of the main characters/protagonists in the tales. he is fairly illiterate but knows the chadok from when he was a monk. and of course the ramakien he knows from the various versions from morlum.

too bad thai schools dont use the rich oral story telling tradition they once had, and just do rote teaching. its amazing if u ask a country thai about some of these stories, they can recite and even do sing/song to tell the tales, without forgetting anything.

bina

pb- i studied the greek plays in uni, but now in israel have had to relearn all the old testament as semi historic metaphor and real time event text book complete with modern day place names and peoples' names, tribes, clans, languages etc.

any of u remember when i tried to find a thai version of moses crossing the red sea /passover story? it was really difficult because my husband had no cultural references in which to understand anything that ws happening int he story (w/o the religoius stuff), but he did like to see the dead sea, qumrun caves etc...

[garyh]

Here is a brief but funny insight into Thai fairy tales in a TV commercial.

[longtom]

Just for your information, 'The Wizard of Oz' for example is not known in most parts of Europe either, unless somebody happened to see the movie. Please don't always use american (+ maybe english) culture as synonym for western culture, because there is a lot more out there! The same applies to 'western democracy' or 'western judicial systems', where many western countries differ considerably from the american/british systems.

[PeaceBlondie]

Indeed, fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm_Brothers are famous.

Jacob is recognized for enunciating Grimm's law, the Germanic Sound Shift, that was first observed by the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask. Grimm's law was the first non-trivial systematic sound change to be discovered.,

[Hawk]

Thai kids learn about the "Ramayana" story, with its silly monkeys. I suppose they believe it as well.

And I suppose they think of it as a Thai story because I very much doubt if they know where or what India is.

[zzaa09]

Probably the same as Western kids learn about Thai fairy tales.

Exactly. Some just don't get it.....

[MikeyIdea]

Just for your information, 'The Wizard of Oz' for example is not known in most parts of Europe either, unless somebody happened to see the movie. Please don't always use american (+ maybe english) culture as synonym for western culture, because there is a lot more out there! The same applies to 'western democracy' or 'western judicial systems', where many western countries differ considerably from the american/british systems.

Excellent post. As a sample of a Thai system that works better than the European and American equivalents is the Thai Juvenile court system. A system that is not biased against fathers or foreigners and does what it should do, caring about the childs best interest first and about fathers and mothers rights second.

Now I am of course going to get blamed by people who have no specific knowledge in the area, go ahead, tell me your own experience

Thai fairy tales are very interesting to listen to and they fit very well into Thai culture and tradition.