Soap
I'm not much of a soap fan. The closest I get to being devoted to any kind of long-running saga is listening to The Archers (a radio soap opera that's been running in Britain for just over 50 years and, no, I haven't been listening that long though sometimes when Neil and Susan Carter are wittering on it does feel like it). Even then I only really enjoy it when there's a good scandal... (yes yes I know there's one at the moment, and no, I don't want to know. It's on CD at home: don't spoil it for me!). Sorry, too many parentheses. However in my current hotel I have been deprived of my one creature comfort, BBC World which, after two weeks, has been so imprinted onto my brain that I can probably repeat the trailers verbatim. As a result I have been channel-surfing and one treat I have discovered is Thai soaps.
I speak about four words of Thai so far: kop khum kha (thank you when a female says it), sawa-di kha (hello, female), mai (no) and chai (yes). I don't think I will get much further since it is fiendishly difficult: the same word can mean several different things depending on the tones used. But, as I've discovered, you don't need language to watch rubbish television. When I arrived back in Bangkok yesterday, I switched on the TV, searched fruitlessly for the familiar spinning red ribbon (not quite sure how that represents the world; looks more like a carrot garnish from a dodgy Chinese restaurant to me) and realised that I only had CNN, HBO and all the Thai channels. Flicking through a few of the latter, I kept stumbling on the same one. It was showing something called USACA (that's my transliteration rather than theirs) and was, I soon determined, the Thai equivalent of Dallas.
There's the rich family (RF for short: their house looks like the inside of a Thai five-star hotel, all sweeping staircases, gold fittings and ballroom-sized lobbies) and their poor counterparts (PF for short: they live beside a temple, naturally, in a small wooden house). Each family consists of a mother and grown-up son and daughter. I've no idea where the PF's father figure is but when I tuned in last night, the head of the RF had just died/been killed or murdered. This was easy to work out since the whole RF, accompanied by some truly dire dramatic music, were pulling back the sheet in the morgue. Cue floods of tears from RF daughter, a steely look and curled lip from RF son (ominously dressed in black) and no emotion whatsoever from RF mother, bar a sidelong glance at both her children. RF mother is obviously a baddie: she wears heaps of make-up a la Sue-Ellen and lots of black and diamonds. She also looks very Western so perhaps she is the female Thai equivalent of Robert Carlyle/Dougray Scott/Jonny Lee Miller, playing archetypal British villains in US films. PF mother only wears very natural make-up, clear nail varnish and little green, peasanty tops. Similarly RF daughter screams and howls when she cries (very very un-Thai, they don't like PDAs of any sort) whereas PF daughter demurely lets tears roll down her cheeks but never makes a sound (she also wears peasant tops, white ones). Post the morgue, the RF family went into the corridor where the whole PF family were waiting: RF daughter attacked PF son (soft hair, warm colours, no black shirts or curled lips) and managed to bash his head against the wall. So he's obviously to blame in some way. Lots of camera focus on each family crying (or not in case of Bad RF mother). Cue more Capulet/Montague-esque music, without the subtlety and the credits.
On my return to the hotel this evening it was on again. Ooh it was all go. It began with the funeral of RF father at which RF son gave PF son a steely Paddington stare for a good few seconds. Confusingly both sons were sporting plasters on the right side of their foreheads (obviously RF son had a bad night between episodes). Then the police arrived, interrupting the service and RF son made it very clear that PF softy was to blame. After a bit of filler and more crying (of both types), the police arrived to arrest PF son, just as RF son drove up to the humble PF abode in his very big silver SUV. PF mother tried to stand between her offspring and the handcuffs but to no avail and off he went, for some reason, in the back of a pick-up truck (perhaps they have different vehicles for different classes of criminals?). RF son then chose a very bad moment to try and revive a romance with PF daughter (he's evidently not been watching the same programme since it is clear that a make-up-free character cannot allow him into her life).
Whilst PF son is being grilled by the police, RF family take the father's ashes to the temple. Son and daughter cry, light joss sticks, hang marigold garlands (given as offerings to Buddha) on his picture; but RF mother still shows not a scrap of emotion (she could give Hazel in the Archers a lesson or two; or even JR). When her unsuspecting offspring are out of the way, she has a little chat with the picture of her ex-spouse, probably telling him how lucky he is to be out of the show, then leaves. However the camera shots of her feet and the shadows behind her, combined with the closest I have ever heard to comedy horror film music, suggest she is not alone. Suddenly a new character appears to break up the sextet and his raised eyebrows and hers suggest they don't like each other much. Unfortunately, RF daughter overhears their conversation (which even I can tell suggests that RF mother had something to do with the death) and confronts her Mama. But she's not wearing black clothes and red glossy lipstick for nothing and sweeps off up the staircase, leaving her daughter in tears.
I wasn't sure I could take much more but of course character seven (he has no distinguishing features so is obviously going to die soon) arrives at the house, records his conversation with RF mother on his mobile phone as she throws brown envelopes at him. So he's the blackmailing assassin, she had hubby killed and poor orange-shirted PF son has been set up and is left in chains (literally), holding the ring-less hands of his quietly tearful mother. Of course at the end of the prison visit PF softy is being returned to his cell as RF hardy is talking to his lawyer outside the jail...somehow he managed to get his lips through the wire fence and curl them.
The show then cruelly ended and I was left with another, on a different channel which began with a heavily made-up woman standing on the steps of a very opulent house, surrouded by what sounded like several symphony orchestras, whilst a man, wearing a plaster!, begged her for understanding... Who needs language?! I'm positively bilingual!
I speak about four words of Thai so far: kop khum kha (thank you when a female says it), sawa-di kha (hello, female), mai (no) and chai (yes). I don't think I will get much further since it is fiendishly difficult: the same word can mean several different things depending on the tones used. But, as I've discovered, you don't need language to watch rubbish television. When I arrived back in Bangkok yesterday, I switched on the TV, searched fruitlessly for the familiar spinning red ribbon (not quite sure how that represents the world; looks more like a carrot garnish from a dodgy Chinese restaurant to me) and realised that I only had CNN, HBO and all the Thai channels. Flicking through a few of the latter, I kept stumbling on the same one. It was showing something called USACA (that's my transliteration rather than theirs) and was, I soon determined, the Thai equivalent of Dallas.
There's the rich family (RF for short: their house looks like the inside of a Thai five-star hotel, all sweeping staircases, gold fittings and ballroom-sized lobbies) and their poor counterparts (PF for short: they live beside a temple, naturally, in a small wooden house). Each family consists of a mother and grown-up son and daughter. I've no idea where the PF's father figure is but when I tuned in last night, the head of the RF had just died/been killed or murdered. This was easy to work out since the whole RF, accompanied by some truly dire dramatic music, were pulling back the sheet in the morgue. Cue floods of tears from RF daughter, a steely look and curled lip from RF son (ominously dressed in black) and no emotion whatsoever from RF mother, bar a sidelong glance at both her children. RF mother is obviously a baddie: she wears heaps of make-up a la Sue-Ellen and lots of black and diamonds. She also looks very Western so perhaps she is the female Thai equivalent of Robert Carlyle/Dougray Scott/Jonny Lee Miller, playing archetypal British villains in US films. PF mother only wears very natural make-up, clear nail varnish and little green, peasanty tops. Similarly RF daughter screams and howls when she cries (very very un-Thai, they don't like PDAs of any sort) whereas PF daughter demurely lets tears roll down her cheeks but never makes a sound (she also wears peasant tops, white ones). Post the morgue, the RF family went into the corridor where the whole PF family were waiting: RF daughter attacked PF son (soft hair, warm colours, no black shirts or curled lips) and managed to bash his head against the wall. So he's obviously to blame in some way. Lots of camera focus on each family crying (or not in case of Bad RF mother). Cue more Capulet/Montague-esque music, without the subtlety and the credits.
On my return to the hotel this evening it was on again. Ooh it was all go. It began with the funeral of RF father at which RF son gave PF son a steely Paddington stare for a good few seconds. Confusingly both sons were sporting plasters on the right side of their foreheads (obviously RF son had a bad night between episodes). Then the police arrived, interrupting the service and RF son made it very clear that PF softy was to blame. After a bit of filler and more crying (of both types), the police arrived to arrest PF son, just as RF son drove up to the humble PF abode in his very big silver SUV. PF mother tried to stand between her offspring and the handcuffs but to no avail and off he went, for some reason, in the back of a pick-up truck (perhaps they have different vehicles for different classes of criminals?). RF son then chose a very bad moment to try and revive a romance with PF daughter (he's evidently not been watching the same programme since it is clear that a make-up-free character cannot allow him into her life).
Whilst PF son is being grilled by the police, RF family take the father's ashes to the temple. Son and daughter cry, light joss sticks, hang marigold garlands (given as offerings to Buddha) on his picture; but RF mother still shows not a scrap of emotion (she could give Hazel in the Archers a lesson or two; or even JR). When her unsuspecting offspring are out of the way, she has a little chat with the picture of her ex-spouse, probably telling him how lucky he is to be out of the show, then leaves. However the camera shots of her feet and the shadows behind her, combined with the closest I have ever heard to comedy horror film music, suggest she is not alone. Suddenly a new character appears to break up the sextet and his raised eyebrows and hers suggest they don't like each other much. Unfortunately, RF daughter overhears their conversation (which even I can tell suggests that RF mother had something to do with the death) and confronts her Mama. But she's not wearing black clothes and red glossy lipstick for nothing and sweeps off up the staircase, leaving her daughter in tears.
I wasn't sure I could take much more but of course character seven (he has no distinguishing features so is obviously going to die soon) arrives at the house, records his conversation with RF mother on his mobile phone as she throws brown envelopes at him. So he's the blackmailing assassin, she had hubby killed and poor orange-shirted PF son has been set up and is left in chains (literally), holding the ring-less hands of his quietly tearful mother. Of course at the end of the prison visit PF softy is being returned to his cell as RF hardy is talking to his lawyer outside the jail...somehow he managed to get his lips through the wire fence and curl them.
The show then cruelly ended and I was left with another, on a different channel which began with a heavily made-up woman standing on the steps of a very opulent house, surrouded by what sounded like several symphony orchestras, whilst a man, wearing a plaster!, begged her for understanding... Who needs language?! I'm positively bilingual!
posted by Louise at 8:08 AM
2 Comments:
OMG - This sounds great, you should have taped it! Oh, on the subject of the Archers, which I know we weren't - you have no idea of the scandal...
Let's just say the Brian - Siobhan farrago now has a close 2nd place runner. More on this story this weekend.
P
If you want drama, Louise, AND a sense of what else is out there in the Blogosphere (all the way back in cold, grey Aberdeen), look no further than
www.myneighboursarehoors.blogspot.com
Topical too, perhaps, after Pattaya...
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