Thai soap opera (Lakorn) is one of the most popular programs on television. It attracts huge audiences. Last long until nowadays; the prime time is committed to Thai soap operas on every channel. As we knew, most of Thai soap opera plots are similar in every series; for example, a hero must be extremely rich and a heroine must be extremely poor but beautiful which are so obviously different from usual but they will always happy in the end of series. Even though we knew it; but Thais are still addicted to Thai soap operas and learn to imitate some behavior from series as their culture. Like me, I also want to have beautiful face and shape like heroine, rich husband, perfect family, happy love life and etc….
It hard to escape that we were trained those belief and think from Thai soap opera, isn’t it? Who said that thin shape, white skin will make lady become beautiful? To success in love life, do we need to marry only with rich husband? In my point of view I do not want to say that Thais are losing touch with reality and find it difficult to think critically now, but it’s not immoral to dream to have a wonderful life but on the other hand we should always keep in mind that we are stay in the real world.
The soaps clearly present an idealized vision of life in Thailand - one that is really black and white (good is good and bad is bad) where we do not have to think very much about why people are the way they are. The fact that characters are often very shallow - makes it easier for the production company to make the shows quickly.
ReplyDeleteIs this harmful to the culture - I'm not sure. Thai culture is many hundreds of years old - not sure that a few decades of soaps can change that.