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"Waiting Gradually Eats The Soul"

This is good information to know.

While this scene makes it extremely clear that the people in power don't feel threatened by Dan's art, I don't think this is a statement of his murals' failings. For me, it is to be interpreted more broadly as being about the limits of art as a tool for protest.

It might be a little of a moot point to make because obviously in this scene Dan isn't being punished for his art but precisely for not sticking to it, and censorship was never in question here, but like. To me this scene is a sort of didactic course into le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, in which modern societies have the ability to absorb their own criticism because they have a hand on the flow of information and as long as art flows through those channels, it does not have a disruptive capacity no matter the message or the effectiveness of its execution.

I want to preface this by saying that I do read the show as essentially saying political art is toothless in terms of direct action, though not useless overall. For me the two scenes that cement these ideas about its toothlessness are the one you presented with Dan and the elitist in the white shirt, and Yok asking Namo if art can truly awaken people after, well, everything with Dan. The constant tension between Dan's place in the political system and his activist art comes to a head for me here - even though Dan does change his heart by the end, the show answers Yok's inquiry more in the personal, with Namo responding that it helped her through heartbreak. In fact Not Me shows Namo, Sean, and (to an extent) Yok using art to get over personal heartbreak in a successful manner more so than as a political act.

For all the art we see in the show (Eugene's dancing, Namo's graffiti, Dan's murals, Yok's portraits), the show never shows art itself as a consciousness-raising effort (even though that's what I believe art can be a useful tool for); all of our artists are already political minded, even UNAR/Dan. The only person we see on screen undergo consciousness raising is White, and he does this through a combination of direct action and his discussions with Gram; even Dan, I would argue, changes at the end not because of any of his art but because of the (many) things he'd done. Now, the show does believe in the power of social media as a tool for political power, and Dan (to complete his mirror of White) is a known political artist via his social media, and it seems his reputation comes from a combination of the art and the art's social media presence than just what the art says, even if Yok - who is already a politically minded artist - gets excited by it. I won't harp on the BLM mention in Not Me for too long, but one of the big failures of that movement that black activists talk about even now is that the lesson many white Americans took away was to read the right books or watch more diverse shows, rather than get involved directly in anti-racist, anti-police, anti-carceral, etc. work. Art can be useful for knowledge, but eventually the actual work needs to happen.

I agree with everything riotbrrrd said about capitalism absorbing dissent and I think it's relevant to the university aspect of the show. Somewhat of a sidebar, but the most direct art we see (to my memory) is the spoken word poem/rap that accompanies Eugene's first art performance (I believe it's when we first see her in the show). Yet it's not lost on me that a lot of the art (Eugene & Yok's specifically) is tied to the university system, which itself is another system that once upon a time could directly challenge political power and has since been completely absorbed into a toothless branch of dissent (caveat that I am speaking from a history w Western colleges). Student protest at universities is a common way for students to get politically minded, but to an extent - something like Eugene's dance or Yok's portraits can be accepted, but we see that direct protest against the head of the school by Black & Sean is much more harshly treated. The fact that Tawi gets invited to the university as an honored alumni guest speaker is one of the ways that universities buy into these capitalist systems and, as said above, controls the flow of information for its students.

I went chasing through some of the conversations that @hurlumerlu mentioned with @peanutbutterangelic but don't know if this aspect has been brought up yet explicitly (although please direct me to any conversations that have!). In their initial post, hurlumerlu mentions the spector of the lèse majesté laws and the obvious lack of monarchy call outs in the show. For those who are not up on Thai censorship laws, the lèse majesté laws or Section 112 of the Thai Criminal Code, prohibit an act that defames, insults or threatens the Thai royalty. It is the section that has been used to imprison a man in 2024 for 50 years for social media posts, sentenced a retired service woman to 43 years in 2021 (who has since been released), and in 2026 sentenced free speech activists to 32 months for statements made at a democracy rally- and what a man in 2024 was arrested for referencing, charged under vandalism laws (Cleanlines Act etc). But that is not the only force of censorship in Thailand.

Censorship pervades the show, in what it can and cannot say. The nature of a GMMTV show means that it is reliant on sponsorships (see the distinct lack of product placement in the show (edit: I have been reminded there was product placement, I'm thinking more of the lack of company title cards for the time), the network guidelines, the use of BL as soft power for Thailand (with the implicit censorship that follows), the lack of reference to the military lottery despite the references to the military (A Dog and A Plane is perhaps the first and only reference I have seen to this - 2026! 5 years after this show!) I'm sure someone who is more in the know about network regulations could speak on this (I think @clairedaring had a lot to say about politics re Mandate?) but I think it's an important backdrop to what Nuchy could say in the first place, and what she is trying to say about political art, in a piece of political art, embroiled in censorship.

Because while @riotbrrd asks whether censorship is here to erase any sort of dissident message, I think that is a simplification of the relationship between political art and censorship in the Thai context.

Censorship is not the thing that stifles the bite of political art, but is something that feeds the creation of political art in the first place, and it's the threat of censorship that pushes political artists to creation and propagation of their art and beliefs.

Which is where I want to bring in the thread of the university. @fadelgender brings up the seemingly toothless reality of student protest in universities, but with the important caveat of Western university context, and I want to push back on that here.

University graffiti is something that I am very interested in, as a tool of communication and protest within an institution, one of my favourite papers that explores this is Sirach Lapyai's paper, 'Scratching protest: A study of graffiti as communication in universities in Thailand' (2003). Even if it's over 20 years old now, I think it provides some important considerations in the difference between western university protest and Thai universities, which speak to the role of political art in Thailand. (A lot of below is drawing from this paper, including the quotations).

In the 1920's, the Thai government began funding universities as as a cultural educational institution where education was a tool to re-make the country as comparable with the Western world, but on Thai terms. Students were to be shaped and moulded by the university, to be the future leaders and bearers of Thai cultural identity, with a strict hierarchy between administration and the students. Made explicit is the fact that "students should not intervene with what adults and the government are doing, staying silent is the good character of a respectable Thai student". In the same way, the nature of Buddhism-Brahminism as a political tool by the ruling class, functioning as the national ideology, is embedded in the institution, where even "democracy's emphasis on equality is unacceptable to Thais who have been acculturated into this hierarchical system." (There is an entire other rabbit hole to go down here, with the effect of the Law of Karma and the unequal social hierarchy that builds Thai national ideology legitimating the authoritarian power of the ruling class... something something The Edge of Horizon).

The Thai university system then seeks to encourage the Thai major attitudes that hold political passivity, submission without resistance or challenge, and view opposition as destructive and negative; shaping the Thai youth with an obligation to the state and the traditional Thai view of life.

But just as in the universities in the West have been a hotbed of political activism, the very place of citizen making was a site of consciousness raising; but as a reaction of a stifled student group. Fearing student interest in politics, from the 60s-80s, student political involvement was banned, which, among other actions, resulted in 'underground' student publications because students viewed official student media as censored (first fruits in raising and spreading political ideas, through a self published media, in the face of censorship). In the face of increasing military presence on campus, who would arrest and murder student under the change of being 'communists', students began to oppose the educational system and its hierarchy, and the government, growing until the 1970s student uprisings.

I assume the reader has a passing knowledge of the 1970s student uprisings, but the interesting factor of these is the lack of official documentation and obscuring of these uprisings after the fact. Suppression of the information of these protests is a reflection of the societal censors, sealing off 'undesirable' social phenomenon, with this suppression leading to Thai students becoming politically inactive at a later date. (Here is an interesting paper that further investigates the relative lack of later student protests in comparison to the 1970s uprisings.) Contemporary student activism is suppressed quickly and violently (Lipyai's paper references a student demonstration that resulted in police action and expulsions, which I can't find reference to elsewhere), as well as the 2020/21 student protests that were suppressed on multiple levels by authorities, with arrests under charges of sedition and intimidation of protest sympathisers; where restriction of free speech (including online) was an arm of this.

In the face of suppression of protests and physical activism, and the censorship of said political action, graffiti in universities functions as an alternative means of communication under pressure. Students use graffiti to "express their overt feelings of anger towards... those they perceive to be oppressive and tyrannical." The Thai university system (at least as it stood 20 years ago) was structured such that students are kept silent and obedient, without the rights to make complaints and evaluate teachers. Student graffiti was then a major mechanism of resistance and reaction to the control imposed by authorities and absence of freedom of speech. It resists the mainstream culture by disrupting and contesting authoritarian power in a subtle manner, and arises out of the suppression of the right to communicate.

Graffiti can be interpreted as the reaction of the powerless to the powerful through attempts to discuss or show things the society deems forbidden, physically resisting the authorities through disrupting the well-managed social order and social aesthetic of universities. Graffiti breaks Thai social taboos by expressing forbidden topics and neglecting ideal behaviours and discourses. I believe that political art more broadly uses the same tools and ethos. To this point - the artist Baphoboy, whose art is used for UNAR in Not Me, talks about the social limitations or boundaries as a thrust for his own political art, as someone who started as a student activist himself - “In reality, if we look at it from the perspective of boundaries in Thai society, there are always limitations. For example, the terms ‘sensitive’ or ‘superior’ indicate limitations."

I know I went on about student graffiti a lot there, but the main thrust is that the Thai university, where the majority of the characters are politically active within, has from its foundation been not just a space where student learn, but are indoctrinated into statehood; an institution where questioning authority is disavowed, with the suppression on and restrictions of political expression ranging from expulsion to death by military. Graffiti is often see as the response to physical suppression and censorship, erupting in waves after incidents as the anonymous expression of dissent.

I spent so long talking about the landscape of the university, because just as it situates the students in the show within their political context, it also provides a framework for Dan as a cop and Dan as UNAR, and his art as political action. Dan as a cop can't express his views or frustrations within the system, with the threat of overt action being brutally suppressed, and thus turns to the anonymous outlet to vent that political frustration. He is at risk for his views in the show, but also in the contemporary political climate of Thailand, he was at the risk of prosecution if discovered (both for vandalism and the themes, which could be deemed 'politically nationally destabilising', 'disrespectful towards leaders', 'defamation and libel', 'immoral' and 'religiously prohibited' as recorded by the Artistic Freedom Report Thailand). This is not to vindicate Dan, but to offer an understanding of his political expression through art, which I do think is a valid response to suppression and censorship, even as he is himself an arm of that suppression.

Because, to bring us back to what @hurlumerlu asks in their first post, if political art could never be a threat to power, what would the use of censorship be? If it has no bite, why would, according to the artistic freedom report Thailand, there be 64 cases of banned or censored art between 2010 and 2022? Or arrests of artists under Section 112 and vandalism laws, or police surveilled exhibitions by 'Unmuted Project' (of which Baphoboy is a part), and the thread of political art that suffused and encouraged the 2020/21 protests?

Not Me itself exists within a censored media landscape, by both cultural and political structures, and yet it is a piece of political art. It exists within a continuum of political art that seeks to critique the political and cultural institutions, and portrays how that very art is a voice of a suppressed and censored people. Whether it is a legitimate form of political activism by itself, I would say that it claims a role in the political ecosystem, and reveals the threat of the populous to a vulnerable government; if the Thai majority were filled with a political consciousness as opposed to its current apathy, if opposition to authority is not seen as distasteful, then how would they defend their authority, their right to rule, and to maintain the status quo?

Simultaneously, I’m an adult who, in my spare time, enjoys engaging in adult fiction spaces. As a result of that, I have, unfortunately, been shouted at a decent number of times by young adults (18-25 seems to be the common range) about children, and their well being, and how what happens in adult fiction spaces causes harm to children, and themselves by proxy. (I’ve also been yelled at by actual children, but I’m happy to ignore them, given many of them have been influenced by the previously mentioned young adults to behave that way.)

“Grooming” isn’t truly a technical term, though my industry uses it as one often. It doesn’t have a precise definition or pattern of behavior beyond “inappropriate conduct with a child.” It’s had other uses, of course, like saying someone was “groomed to inherit a title” or similar. But generally what we mean online is “this has to do with child abuse.”

Children are, no joke, one of the most uniquely oppressed classes of human being in the world. Most of the time, they simply have no recourse, no legal right to self-advocate, no ability to retain counsel, choose their own living environment, what they do, how they dress, what they eat. To even report their own abuse — which I assure you, most children are perfectly aware is abuse — they must first be believed by an adult, who may then choose to do something on the child’s behalf, or not. Any option a child has for safety or freedom of choice is entirely dependent on an adult deigning to humor them in the first place.

When you turn the age of majority in your country, you are automatically given a new set of legal and social rights. Even a severely disabled adult, in most places, may advocate for their rights on the basis of their legal adulthood. (There are constant failures here by the legal system, of course, but the point is that you are allowed to advocate in the first place.) You become a different class of person, who can do and ask for things that children are simply not allowed to.

When you try to say that “adults can be groomed,” by bringing up all kinds of random possibilities like “well what about cults” “what about age gaps and different levels of life experience” “what about this or that,” you’re still ignoring the idea that the exploited adult has recourse, in those situations (again, leaving out that there are many failings with the system that allows that recourse does not eliminate the fact that recourse is an option.) Restraining orders. Moving away. Going no contact, with no parent to force you to continue to see that person on holidays. Even if you are young, you are not helpless. You have an agency allowed to you that children simply are not given.

Of course, an 18 year old can be abused and exploited. And I absolutely am wary of a 19 year old dating a 40 year old — personally, I question the shit out of that. I’d even suspect that that 19 year old was previously groomed in some way. But the distinction is important to me, here, not to diminish the abuse that young adults can face, but to ensure that the plight of children is properly understood.