by Brett Dakin
Once you changed the station, you’d encounter something quite different. Thai TV offered a steady stream of crass commercialism. One game show I saw from time to time was nothing more than a tacky, hour-long advertisement. Standing in front of large billboards advertising soap, perfume, and yogurt, contestants competed to take home the very products that supported the show. Thailand’s soap operas weren’t any better, depicting a world inhabited by bitchy girlfriends, scheming stepmothers, and oafish hunks, and permeated by graphic gun violence. This stuff put even the least subtle of America’s daytime TV to shame—but the Lao ate it up.
If they ever listened to the radio, most of my Lao friends tuned into the FM station based in Nong Khai just over the border. Accessing Thai radio hadn’t always been so easy. Until the mid-1980s, radio entertainment had been limited to patriotic songs about the glory of the revolution. These songs, written and produced by the Ministry of Information and Culture, had been designed to encourage a non-existent Lao “proletariat” to keep on working even when times were tough. But by the late-1990s, anyone with a radio could receive Thai programming, and contemporary Lao songwriting had been rendered a dying art. Whenever I asked a friend if he could name a famous Lao singer who was still alive, I drew little more than a blank stare and a nervous laugh in response.
Teenagers in Vientiane, like teenagers everywhere, were searching for models to imitate as they came of age, and they took their cues from across the river. They followed Thai fashions slavishly, careening through the streets on their motorbikes and shouting Bangkok slang to one another. In the Master barber shop on Dongpalan Street, where I’d get a pretty good haircut for less than a dollar every few weeks, the wall was plastered with posters of Thai teenage models sporting the latest hairstyles. No matter what the masterful barbers did to my hair, I felt distinctly unhip.
I knew how much my identity as a young American had been shaped and molded by a uniquely American popular culture. But what if the popular culture in my own country had been entirely foreign? What if, on the TV, all the commercials had been in another language? And on the shelves in the local supermarket, all the products had been imported? What if my favorite stars had all been foreigners? Soon enough, I figured, this foreign culture would replace mine.
And I would make it my own.
Despite their love affair with Thai products, TV, and music, my Lao friends rarely had a kind word to say about their neighbors. “You know, Mr. Brett,” Chanh told me one day, “in Thailand, if you give someone 500 baht [about 13 dollars] and tell them to kill someone, they’ll do it. Just like that. But not here in Laos. It’s not possible.”
“How about in twenty years, when the Lao economy has developed?” I asked. “Might people change?”
“No, the Lao are just different.”
I had heard this story about the notorious 500-baht contracts countless times before. In fact, it came up whenever I raised the subject of Thailand in conversation with a Lao. Perhaps it was based on an actual incident, but I had my doubts. Regardless of its truth, the story fulfilled a basic need for those who told it. The endless comparison between the innocent Lao and their sinful, sullied neighbors struck me as a thinly veiled attempt by the Lao to differentiate themselves from Thailand. Their languages were similar, their ethnicity in some regions almost identical. But even as they lapped up Thai culture, the Lao took pains to draw distinctions.
In English class one day, I asked what my students thought about the problem of school shootings in America. The tragic Columbine massacre had appeared in the Vientiane papers just that week, and all of them had heard about it. Would this ever happen in Vientiane?
“Never. We cannot buy guns,” Kham, the Paradise nightclub’s star performer and my connection to Amarillo, answered with a smirk.
“But what if you could? Would Lao people kill each other then?”
“No,” Kham answered quickly. “We are not like the Thais. Different character. Thais talk sweetly, but underneath they will trick you.”
Under pressure, my students conceded that young Lao men might be susceptible to gun violence—but only because of the negative influence of Thai popular culture. Just look at what they watch on TV every night! When they looked at Thailand, the Lao did see a land of opportunity. The furious pace at which Thailand’s economy had grown since the end of the Vietnam War had long put them to shame. But now, they also saw a land of many a lost opportunity. Overrun with tourists, blighted by pollution, violence, prostitution, environmental devastation, and AIDS, Thailand was everything the Lao people abhorred. Most Lao I knew had an acute sense of what they did not want for the future of their country. The real problem was figuring out just what they did want—and how they could get it.
If the Lao perceived Thailand as a modern day Sodom, a pit of sex and sin, for the Thais, Laos was a kind of Eden. It was the last frontier. Having ravaged their own environment, rendered their capital morally bankrupt and its roads hopelessly congested, Thai day-trippers flocked to Laos for a glimpse of what might have been. They came to experience what life in Thailand had once been like, before the post-war program of rapid and unplanned economic development had begun. In Laos, Thais discovered Thailand before the fall.
But if the Thais idealized Laos, they had no real respect for their smaller neighbor. Most Thai visitors regarded Vientiane as little more than a frontier town, a dusty backwater capital of the Wild East. Thai men and women traipsed through the country with abandon wearing tight blue jeans, leather cowboy boots, and—clipped to their belts, where in a different time and place you might have found a revolver—mobile phones. They raced through the open rice fields and down the dusty roads in their four-wheel-drives as if the entire country was their own backyard. Already, Thailand used at least three-quarters of the hydro-electric power produced in Laos, and would consume most of the water generated by all of the dams and power stations that were in the works. At the end of the day, the Thais viewed Laos as just another province of Thailand.
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When a foreign power had such a strong hold on Laos’ economy and its popular culture, what became of Lao national identity? The notion of a strong and independent Lao identity had always been precarious. Laos had not even been a unified country when the French had arrived in Indochina. Even after independence, the king, essentially appointed by France, had represented only a certain segment of the population; ethnic minorities existed largely outside the realm of government control. It was only since the revolution that the government had insisted on a certain degree of linguistic and cultural continuity throughout the country, with limited success. But the influx of Thai music, images, and ideas in the wake of Laos’ recent liberalization had led to renewed concerns about just what it meant to be “Lao.” It was similar to the dilemma facing citizens in countries like Austria and Canada, who struggled with the inescapable influence of their own powerful neighbors, Germany and the US.
The Party sensed this collective national identity crisis, and every once in a while, it attempted to crack down on Thai influence. In a state-sponsored children’s singing competition in Vientiane, for example, no Thai songs were allowed. The organizers only permitted performances in Lao, English, Chinese, or Vietnamese—“My Heart Will Go On” was acceptable, but the latest Thai hits were not. But it wasn’t only the government that was bothered by the predominance of Thai music in Vientiane. Paul, among the most disaffected of Laos’ Lost Generation, was struggling with the issue as well. In the Lao Hotel Plaza sauna one evening, as we discussed Thai pop songs, he became so worked up I thought he’d lose his breath. As the temperature increased, he began to let off some serious steam.
Paul told me of his experience as a visiting university student in Bangkok a few years back. One night, all the international students at the school had gathered for a welcoming celebration in the dining hall. Each student had been asked to sing a song from his or her homeland. As the others had taken turns proudly belting out folk songs, national anthems, and
pop hits from their home countries, Paul had only squirmed in his seat. He’d been stumped. “I could not think of one Lao song,” he told me. “Only Thai songs. I felt so shy.”
Paul’s discomfort was indicative of the wildly contradictory feelings many Lao had for their neighbors. “I hate it. Every night, at the pubs in Vientiane, only Thai songs,” he complained. “No Western songs. In Bangkok, you can hear Western songs every night. But here, only Thai songs!” What had begun as an expression of nationalist outrage at Thai cultural imperialism had ended up a pathetic lament about the absence of Western songs at Vientiane’s nightclubs. Although he was unable even to recall his own national anthem, Paul seemed unfazed by his ignorance of Lao music.
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Sometimes, Laos’ struggle with national identity spilled over into international politics. A few months before I left for good, an enormous controversy erupted over the alleged comments made by a young Thai pop singer, Nicole Theriault. Nicole—no one could pronounce her last name—enjoyed tremendous popularity in Laos, and rarely a day went by when I didn’t hear one of her catchy tunes around town. Although Nicole was from Bangkok, she sold thousands of tapes in Laos and in Northeastern Thailand, where the population is predominantly ethnic Lao. Nicole’s youthful good looks had a lot to do with her popularity. Physically, she was the best of both worlds: a luk kheung, literally “half child,” the daughter of a Thai woman and a white American man. Almost all models, singers, and TV stars in Thailand were luk kheung; having a white parent had become a prerequisite for success in the Thai entertainment business. When I asked friends in Vientiane why they liked Nicole so much, they would inevitably refer to her “beautiful white skin,” unconsciously revealing the insecurity that lay beneath the surface of the ensuing controversy.
One evening in early March, Nicole appeared on the popular Thai TV variety show, “At Ten.” The star talked with the host about the usual topics, but at one point, according to some viewers in Laos, the conversation took an abrupt turn for the worse when Nicole was asked which foreign countries she might like to visit. Allegedly, she responded that Laos was among the places she would never want to visit—it was undeveloped, crowded, dusty, and, above all, Lao women were dark-skinned and dirty. During the next week, news of the interview spread through the streets of Vientiane, and the capital’s rumor mill began to turn. Not only had Nicole called Laos dirty, people said, she had called Lao women “dogs.”
The reaction of the Lao government to the incident was uncharacteristically swift. Even though they could provide no evidence that Nicole had ever said anything negative about Laos, the Lao Women’s Union lodged an official complaint with the Thai government. The Union stopped short of demanding an apology, but the idea was clear: Nicole’s statement was an affront to all the people of Laos, who would not stand for such derogatory comments from any of Thailand’s public figures. The Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs was keen to nip this controversy in the bud, and it tried to clear up matters by requesting that the producers of the show release a videotape of the episode in question. The relationship between Thailand and Laos was perpetually troubled—recall the border dispute in Sainyabuli province that had exploded into war only a few years before—and another dispute was the last thing the Thais needed.
The TV producers maintained that Nicole had never made any derogatory comments about Laos, and gladly provided the videotape to the news media. According to the producer, Laos hadn’t even come up during the interview, and the videotape backed up their assertion. But the Lao Women’s Union rejected the evidence, arguing that the tape could have been doctored. For her part, Nicole argued that she had never made any negative statements about Laos or its people. In fact, she had been to visit the country the year before, and had had a great time.
“I was dismayed and dumbstruck,” Nicole told the Thai media. “I was very shaken.”
Despite the fact that all evidence pointed to Nicole’s innocence, the controversy would not go away. It even came up at high-level meetings between Thai and Lao government representatives. A month after the interview, the state-run Vientiane Times carried a photo displaying one of Nicole’s CDs—on the cover of which her face figured prominently—lying in pile of garbage as a man crushed the CD with his foot. Such an image was a great insult, as in Thai and Lao culture alike the head and feet were to be kept as far away from one another as possible. The Lao government continued to insist that Nicole had publicly insulted the Lao people. According to the Vientiane Times, “Ms. Manivone Luangsombath, a senior official of the Lao Women’s Union, told the Thai newspaper The Nation that it was very unfortunate that an educated and talented woman like Nicole would say such a thing. ‘I saw and heard it with my own eyes and ears.’”
Such propaganda seemed to be having its intended effect. A few days after the story broke, I was waiting in line after work to pick up some photographs I’d dropped off for development the day before. Despite this impressive next-day service, the shop’s major attraction was its photocopy machine, around which was huddled a group of jittery high school boys, chattering excitedly as they awaited their printing request: hundreds of copies of a drawing one of them had produced in class that morning. By the next day, the posters had been pasted in public places all over town. In the crude image, Nicole was depicted in a compromising position, dressed only in her underwear, smoking a cigarette and injecting a needle into her arm. A dog sniffed at her crotch as two conservatively dressed Lao women pointed at her and snickered in the distance. “Nicole is a dog,” the poster read, in English. The debate had turned nasty, and the singer was quickly being demonized. No one in Vientiane would dare be seen with one of her CDs, let alone buy one. Playing Nicole’s songs in public was unpatriotic; in bars, whenever one of her hits came on the radio, someone would quickly change the station. Overnight, Nicole had become a symbol of all that the Lao hated about Thailand.
The truth of the allegation was largely immaterial. The controversy served only to demonstrate the fragile state of Thai-Lao relations, and the extraordinary sensitivity of the Lao to expressions of Thai superiority. Of course, the Lao had reason to be bitter: ethnic Lao were almost always portrayed on Thai TV as less civilized than their Thai brethren, usually appearing in the background as maids, gardeners, or other service workers. And this wasn’t the first time a popular Thai singer had been accused of insulting Lao women. The last time, when a male star had publicly derided Laos and its people, there had been a nationwide campaign to burn the singer’s tapes. The Lao had come to expect racism from the Thais, so it was easy for them to believe that Nicole actually had made the comments.
If the Lao were predisposed to accepting Nicole’s guilt, their leaders only encouraged them. In fact, as the controversy unfolded, I suspected that the Lao government was using the issue to distract its citizens from the intractable economic and political troubles facing the nation. In a country where there was no free press and little reliable information, it was easy enough to convince people of one conclusion despite evidence that pointed to quite another. People were used to relying on hearsay and rumor, rather than concrete proof. The government seemed to have no problem with these teenage boys’ expression of free speech, and their posters were left untouched.
Thong, a Thai friend who worked in the marketing department at the Lao Hotel Plaza, was unimpressed by the entire affair. When Nicole had been to visit Laos, she had stayed at the hotel, and Thong had been assigned to take care of her throughout her time in Vientiane. One night, they had gone out to a nightclub with a group of Thais and Lao, and Thong recalled that Nicole had in fact made a point of emphasizing how much she liked Laos and its people. Thong suspected foul play on the part of the Lao government. “You see this brainwashing?” he asked me. “Just look at this thing with Nicole! I met her, and I know she couldn’t have said it. She liked Laos, told me about the shyness of Lao women.”
“So you think the government just made it up?” I asked.
“Hey, you didn’t
hear it from me,” said Thong.
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For the Lao, molding an independent identity in the shadow of one of Southeast Asia’s most successful economies was a great challenge. With more ethnic Lao living in Northeastern Thailand than in Laos itself, the task was more a matter of defining who they were not as it was of defining who they were. For while my friends remained intensely proud of their own heritage, they had little to offer as an alternative to Thai popular culture. There simply was no Lao equivalent to a sensation like Nicole.
In fact, some of what was distinct about the landlocked country had already been absorbed into the Thai kingdom. The process had begun with the first invasion of Vientiane in 1778, when the sacred Emerald Buddha was taken by the Siamese to Bangkok, where it remains. But it continued even today. Before I left Vientiane, a domestic Thai airline had already begun offering direct flights from Bangkok to Luang Prabang, bypassing Vientiane completely. Package tours in Northeastern Thailand now included a short day-trip across the border. And the Tourism Authority of Thailand had even begun to advertise Luang Prabang as one of Thailand’s own tourist attractions.
Laos had become just another part of Amazing Thailand.
