Just Saw A Suicide On Channel 7 News

[Michael W]

They had all the TV cameras there filming a young Thai guy on a four or five story (residential?) roof top. The police were on the ground in front apparently waiting for one of those big inflatable airbags to break the guys fall. But it apparently didn't arrive in time and the guy just jumped, the whole thing caught on film up close, including the bounce off the cement pavement -- all of it replayed with seemingly casual aplomb on the TV news. I guess I'm still too much of newbie here to pass it all off and not be more than a little shocked. Certainly I know Thais think nothing of printing graphic pictures of auto accident victims but this seemed almost like suicide as a spectator sport.

[the swagman]

They had all the TV cameras there filming a young Thai guy on a four or five story (residential?) roof top. The police were on the ground in front apparently waiting for one of those big inflatable airbags to break the guys fall. But it apparently didn't arrive in time and the guy just jumped, the whole thing caught on film up close, including the bounce off the cement pavement -- all of it replayed with seemingly casual aplomb on the TV news. I guess I'm still too much of newbie here to pass it all off and not be more than a little shocked. Certainly I know Thais think nothing of printing graphic pictures of auto accident victims but this seemed almost like suicide as a spectator sport.

Welcome to the land of smiles.

[LoveDaBlues]

suicide or suicide attempt?

[the swagman]

suicide or suicide attempt?

The bounce off the cement pavement should have been a give away.

[GracelessFawn]

AArghhh.. Gruesome!

[chuchok]

AArghhh.. Gruesome!

You are so sensitive.bless your manly cotton picking socks!!

[womble]

This'll be replayed for days, remember when that bike blew up the police officer when he was told by his superior to reenact how he found the bomb to the cameras, that was played endlessly.

When ever I look at these videos of people getting hurt I always regret it after, a part of me want to see out of interest, but after looking it makes me feel ill.

Same with those beheading videos, the media hype makes you curious. But it's not pleasant to see.

[boppia]

Life is cheap in LOS. It's too bad. Will it ever change? They do have a some suicide hotlines now. Maybe there is hope.

[Jockstar]

They had all the TV cameras there filming a young Thai guy on a four or five story (residential?) roof top. The police were on the ground in front apparently waiting for one of those big inflatable airbags to break the guys fall. But it apparently didn't arrive in time and the guy just jumped, the whole thing caught on film up close, including the bounce off the cement pavement -- all of it replayed with seemingly casual aplomb on the TV news. I guess I'm still too much of newbie here to pass it all off and not be more than a little shocked. Certainly I know Thais think nothing of printing graphic pictures of auto accident victims but this seemed almost like suicide as a spectator sport.

This is a country thats shows shit like that all the time. Then pixels out someone smoking a cigarette or holding a gun. Even in a Thai or Hollywood movie. Go figure. TIT

[The Dan Sai Kid]

They had all the TV cameras there filming a young Thai guy on a four or five story (residential?) roof top. The police were on the ground in front apparently waiting for one of those big inflatable airbags to break the guys fall. But it apparently didn't arrive in time and the guy just jumped, the whole thing caught on film up close, including the bounce off the cement pavement -- all of it replayed with seemingly casual aplomb on the TV news. I guess I'm still too much of newbie here to pass it all off and not be more than a little shocked. Certainly I know Thais think nothing of printing graphic pictures of auto accident victims but this seemed almost like suicide as a spectator sport.

This is a country thats shows shit like that all the time. Then pixels out someone smoking a cigarette or holding a gun. Even in a Thai or Hollywood movie. Go figure. TIT

They even do that with The Simpsons.

I read that they are going to do something similar in the UK. This could make LOS the hub of pixellation.

Oh, I just forgot to mention. Guess who owns the company that does most of the pixelation work in LOS?

Mr T.

[LoveDaBlues]

suicide or suicide attempt?

The bounce off the cement pavement should have been a give away.

Really? Then why is he still alive at last report.

[Upcountry]

It may be in another thread, or I heard it somewhere else, but very probably some Thai person wants to know the man's room number, birth day, etc., to use that information for luck (or to avoid bad luck) in gambling.

Life (and death) has a different meaning in this culture.

Edited September 12, 2006 by Upcountry

[LoveDaBlues]

When it's someone else's family the Thai don't seem to care too much. At least from what I've seen. Hope I'm wrong; sad if it's true.

[changchang]

When it's someone else's family the Thai don't seem to care too much. At least from what I've seen. Hope I'm wrong; sad if it's true.

Sadly, I believe that is true.

I taught in Hong Kong, where the leaping of kids is almost commonplace.

In HK, as in mainland China, students are told that "foreigners" care little about their families. (yet frequently seek their foreign teacher out as a confidante).

Local teachers will say the kid/student "was ungrateful" or unfilial.

Sorry you had to see that. It's really disturbing. If it continues to bother you, contact someone who

can help.

Take care.

Edited September 12, 2006 by changchang

[kat]

Yeah, it is disturbing, and yet so prevalent. Every day on the front page, on the broadcast media, and in movie posters everywhere: the thinly veiled Cambodian spectacle, the baby with the severed hand in the blender, and now posters of wild-eyed dead people staring out at you.

I mean, I feel tramautized by this constant barrage and I'm aware. Imagine the longterm effects on a society that isn't.

*spelling

Edited September 12, 2006 by kat

[GracelessFawn]

AArghhh.. Gruesome!

You are so sensitive.bless your manly cotton picking socks!!

Death in most Asian countries is considered as a mere fact of life. People in Asia talk more openly about dying and death than any other countries. Death is believed, embraced and accepted here in Asia as a natural part of life. Accepting the concept of dying makes it much less scary.

I remember hanging out with a shrink friend and her daughter at a park one afternoon. The little girl screamed, "Mommy look at the cat trying to eat the injured pigeon." The scene that confronted me was bloody, brutal and gruesome, so I said to my friend, "That's too violent for your 6-year old daughter to watch btw." She replied, "It is good to expose her to death at so young an age. She needs to understand that death is simply a part of life!"

I understand that Western Countries accept the concept of death as well, but doesn't embrace or talk about it openly or often. The thought of dying can be scary simply because it is human nature to fear the unknown. Besides, death isn't a very popular topic in Western Countries really.

I am a queer Asian, I guess. I get scared of the sight of blood, injury, violence and death. Watching violent films and bloody scenes give me nightmares, but that's just me really. I can't speak for other people!

[fxm88]

Besides, death isn't a very popular topic in Western Countries really.

Yes, it's a wonder that any of the websites listed at http://directory.google.com/Top/Adult/Death_and_Gore/ get any traffic at all. Must be all those Thai students in Internet shops visiting these sites after school.

[changchang]

Besides, death isn't a very popular topic in Western Countries really.

Yes, it's a wonder that any of the websites listed at http://directory.google.com/Top/Adult/Death_and_Gore/ get any traffic at all. Must be all those Thai students in Internet shops visiting these sites after school.

Graceless Fawn,

What would you have said to a Chinese teacher who'd taught a kid who "plunged" ...

Teacher said, "So ungrateful ! They had just bought her a new computer !"

[changchang]

Death in most Asian countries is considered as a mere fact of life. People in Asia talk more openly about dying and death than any other countries. Death is believed, embraced

See above ...

Total and utter drivel.

When the kids or the teachers leapt in Hk or mainland China it was completely taboo to speak of it, for almost ever after.

Edited September 12, 2006 by changchang

[kat]

Also, I don't know if this so-called greater "acceptance" is so much healthier. SEAs are deathly afraid of ghosts, to the point where grown people cannot even be left in a house alone.

[GracelessFawn]

Graceless Fawn,

What would you have said to a Chinese teacher who'd taught a kid who "plunged" ...

Teacher said, "So ungrateful ! They had just bought her a new computer !"

I'd tell the teacher to <deleted> Off!

Or better yet, address the teacher and say, "Why don't you go ahead and jump after her yourself?"

Edited September 12, 2006 by GracelessFawn

[changchang]

I'd tell the teacher to <deleted> Off!

Or better yet, address the teacher and say, "Why don't you go ahead and jump after her yourself?"

It was tempting but would have done no good. The teacher, school, parents, society were not going to pay any attention to what I thought. The Education Minister of the time declared such kids "cowards".

Anyway, point was that I see those Asian cultures as ones that deny, rather than "embrace", death. It is certainly not talked about openly.

[Scott]

Certainly I know Thais think nothing of printing graphic pictures of auto accident victims but this seemed almost like suicide as a spectator sport.

Yes, it's not a sport you want to actively participate in!

[terry57]

Graceless Fawn,

What would you have said to a Chinese teacher who'd taught a kid who "plunged" ...

Teacher said, "So ungrateful ! They had just bought her a new computer !"

I'd tell the teacher to <deleted> Off!

Or better yet, address the teacher and say, "Why don't you go ahead and jump after her yourself?"

jes--us miss fawn,

you are getting better by the day and im looking forward to you buying me a lager.

respect to you my learn'ed friend.

[changchang]

The following is from a poster on eslcafe's China off-topic forum. You need to log in to read that section, so I cannot link it.

Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:18 am Post subject: Precious lives cheaply thrown away...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have brushed the scenes where someone put an end to their own perceived or real misery a number of times since my childhood. Just recently, I was confronted with the imperious demands of an emergency: a young man threatening to kill himself (luckily he renounced on his project when he realised he couldn't influence the decision of a young woman to be someone else's partner).

That man was a good man but he had a bad temper and he earned no respect for his attempt at blackmailing someone else; I on the other hand took his professed intention of committing suicide quite seriously. I know why. I once watched helplessly as a young woman became a heavy boozer virtually over night - because her boyfriend had abandoned her. She then started stealing liquors and wines from various fridges in a student boarding-house (I lived there as a student); she was later transferred by her parents to a psychiatric clinic, then released. When I asked her brother a year later what had become of her I was informed she had "gone away for good" - meaning she had committed suicide.

The man and the woman above had lost their interest in living because they couldn't imagine living without their significant other; tragic romances that show how individual people are: apparently you cannot replace one person with another.

That seems to be one of the main reaons for westerners to end their lives (although the man above is a Chinese and lives in China); in China and other northeast Asian countries, people resort to such drastic action more often than almost anywhere else.

Recently I read Hong Kong's suicide rate has gone down noticeably since the end of the economic doldrums begun by the 1997 monetary crisis. And Japan has also seen a flattening out of its awfully high suicide rate since the economy is booming again.

But there is a hard bottom line of suicides that will apparently not go away: at least 30'000 Japanese put an end to their lives annually.

While a lot of Chinese students see no point in continuing their struggling when they fail exams, adults too are often silent sufferers of some undefinable ill that eventually becomes so unbearable they kill themselves.

Suicides have been taboo as a topic in most societies; Catholics don't allow suicides to be buried with the usual blessings the church has for its believers; in some Catholic countries they have to be buried outside of Catholic cemetaries.

And in China it's a very sensitive topic too, so sensitive the Party doesn't want it to be discussed publicly.

But we may accidentally become aware of such gruesome incidents - as for example when a desk in one of our classrooms remains unoccupied for weeks or when a familiar face no longer shows up. I once arrived at school and was told that all classes had been cancelled and students were attending a meeting. Reason? A girl - who happened to be one of my students - from a wealthy expat family had thrown herself out of a window of a high-rise.

So, why is it that certain cultural elites try to stop suicides by ruling that killing oneself is "a sin" or by banning manuals that describe how to end one's life painlessly?

In Japan author Wataru Tsurumi published The'Complete Manula of Suicide" and was immediately castigated upon its publication in 1993; it's remained a bestseller until now, though, and clearly some people use it for the sinister end it purports to have been written. Is the author guilty of killing others?

He has made good money selling this book but he could hardly have been seduced to write this book by the prospect of earning a fortune. In the process he also became a person of some notoriety - not necessarily what he coveted. People either hate him or they are so desperate as to buy his book...

In my opinion he is doing society a favour! He helps those among members of the public who simply don't cut it, who feel useless, unloved, with no hope of ever leading a normal, joyful life. It's society's duty to assist its weaker members - but socieities scorn weaklings and marginalise them even more than their perceived weaknesses do.

In an interview, Mr Tsurumi sayd that what kills people is not their ability to kill themselves but the lack of a perspective that makes them value their own existence. He says modern people's lives are dictated by a robotic character, a monotony. "The biggest challenge in life is how to make it day by day without being trapped by the empty feeling."

Japanese are known to work hellishly long work days, adding overtime to an already long office job that is not exactly glamorous. There are frequent reports of salarymen that collapse while doing their job.

"The people of this country still think negatively about belonging to a lower social class or not working hard enough," he says. Sounds familiar to me, and I can also see its Chinese equivalent - elitism, snobbishness, class consciousness.

He doesn't encourage people to finish their lives artificially - he wants them to choose to live it, or not wanting to live it, to know how to end it. In fact, he hopes to give people nothing other than the right to choose between an early end to a miserable life or a long life lived in full consciousness.

_________________

"A word is a sign with an arbitrary meaning..."

Ferdinand de Saussure, Geneva

[Plus]

What about all post tsunami videos with all the gore? Why were they so popular? I saw people really enjoying watching it and making fun of decaying bodies.

I don't think it's the enlightment that drives them to observe death, it's rather lack of it.

Helping to remove the body is the sign of enlightment, enjoying the scene is not.

[GracelessFawn]

Graceless Fawn,

What would you have said to a Chinese teacher who'd taught a kid who "plunged" ...

Teacher said, "So ungrateful ! They had just bought her a new computer !"

I'd tell the teacher to <deleted> Off!

Or better yet, address the teacher and say, "Why don't you go ahead and jump after her yourself?"

jes--us miss fawn,

you are getting better by the day and im looking forward to you buying me a lager.

respect to you my learn'ed friend.

Hahaha. Thanks Terry.

How are you doin' dude?

Sure, I'll buy you some lager when you get here!

Cheers, Terry.

[terry57]

Graceless Fawn,

What would you have said to a Chinese teacher who'd taught a kid who "plunged" ...

Teacher said, "So ungrateful ! They had just bought her a new computer !"

I'd tell the teacher to <deleted> Off!

Or better yet, address the teacher and say, "Why don't you go ahead and jump after her yourself?"

jes--us miss fawn,

you are getting better by the day and im looking forward to you buying me a lager.

respect to you my learn'ed friend.

Hahaha. Thanks Terry.

How are you doin' dude?

Sure, I'll buy you some lager when you get here!

Cheers, Terry.

miss fawn,

this dude is doing that good that im wearing my undies on the outside of my daks.

and when i see your lovely picture and read your top informative, missile blasting posts i put another pair on top just for chock dee cup.

your a top bleeding, cracking, upfront shiela and were on in november.

bye miss lovely fawn.

[changchang]

Please take your idiotic self-promotion elsewhere.

This is about suicide, if I am not wrong.

[t.s]

The following is from a poster on eslcafe's China off-topic forum. You need to log in to read that section, so I cannot link it.

Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:18 am Post subject: Precious lives cheaply thrown away...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have brushed the scenes where someone put an end to their own perceived or real misery a number of times since my childhood...........In fact, he hopes to give people nothing other than the right to choose between an early end to a miserable life or a long life lived in full consciousness.

edited becuase it was too bloody long to requote entirely

_________________

"A word is a sign with an arbitrary meaning..."

Ferdinand de Saussure, Geneva

certainly is verbose that. my turn.

suicide has always had a sort of cache in Thailand. i remember when, about 7 or 8 years ago it was all the rage amongst late teens/university aged girls who were leaping off buildings at a rate of 1 a week.

it had literally become trendy, a fashionable thing to do and the worst of the fashion victims seemed to be the ones that perished as a result of their commitment.

there are many things in thai society that validate this type of behaviour.

television and video portray the thai woman as a mewling emotional mess. Rock videos always show the near suicidal girl after she has been dumped or cheated on by some thai cat who looks more like a woman than she does. these scenes and the way they are repeated ad nauseum only serve to constantly reinforce these behaviours and patterns.

suddenly a young girl or boys life takes on a shade of the melancholy drama they have grown up on watching channel 7 dramas ands it plays out to its natural conclusion.

I am sure many here have seen or heard of incidences of self inflicted wounds especially in women, and while this is more common amongst a less educated and possibly emotionally damaged demographic frequently involved in the sex trade, it is certainly not limited to this group, nor do I believe that this behaviour originates from these women, it is a learned method of coping with emotional turmoil, but from where I could not say.

I really do believe these youths lives take on a shades of the melodrama they been socialized to by channel 7 dramas and then play it out to its natural conclusion, never realizing they have become caught up in their own fiction.

If you have ever had a thai lover proclaim their love for you after a week or often even after a few days, you will understand what I mean by their being caught up in the drama. I have been “loved” in Thailand by far too many people who have had absolutely no idea who I even am. After the briefest of contacts they become inured to the idea that they have a lover, and react rashly when you attempt to limit the pace or correct the situation. As a sceptic, any time someone says they love me, I conclude they must be mentally imbalanced.

This is not marginalize any suicide or to downplay the desperation that must lead to such an act. It is always tragedy and perhaps that same personal melodrama plays out everywhere, it just seems more pronounced and romanticised in thailand at times.

I personally believe the cultural values reinforced in thai videos movies and dramas are far more frightening and damaging than the violence seen in international movies. These thai media productions are local and far more relevant that any American shoot-em -up could ever be. They help perpetuate stereotypes and behaviours that we see here and question daily -- much the same way as starwars and steven segal and Disney cartoons movies give us a rather frightening window into the American psyche and values.

Edited September 13, 2006 by t.s