Organizer: Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand
Description:
Throughout their long and colourful history, Thai comics have played an active role in the nation’s political life. Pioneer cartoonist Prayoon Chanyawongse noted that most cartoons published in the late 1920s were satirical in nature, lampooning government officials and critiquing their conduct.
Satirical cartooning, first promoted by King Rama VI in the Royal Gazette in the late 1910s, became a potent force of political criticism until the Siamese Revolution in 1932. Unexpectedly, press censorship was more strongly enforced under constitutional rule. Newspapers came under pressure and artists abandoned editorial cartooning for a new format: serialised long-form narratives.
Key examples are Sawas Jutharop’s “Nak Suep Khao” (“Investigative Journalist”), published in 1932 over six instalments in the Sayam Num newspaper. The narrative offers biting commentary on media censorship at the time. Chanyawongse’s hit creation katun likay was another important step in the genre’s history. It merged likay popular theatre with the comics art form and, published in the Suphapburut newspaper, considered similar topics to Jutharop’s work.
Initially aimed at adult readers in newspapers from the 1930s through the ‘60s, Thai comics were later relegated to a more lowbrow status as the emerging middle-classes of the 1970s discarded what they saw as folk or popular expressions. The alternative comics movement, initiated by Suttichart Sarapaiwanich’s “Joe the Sea-Cret Agent” in 1998, emerged to tackle the local identity crisis in a globalizing world.
On this evening, we bring together prominent comics creators and critics with comics scholar and author Nicolas Verstappen to discuss the past, present, and future of a well-loved art form which was and remains deeply intertwined with Thai social movements, information and politics.
Speakers:
Nicolas Verstappen, lecturer and comics scholar at Chulalongkorn University, author of "The Art of Thai Comics: A Century of Strips and Stripes".
Suttichart Sarapaiwanich, head of computer art department, Faculty of Digital Art, Rangsit University and author of the "Joe the Sea-Cret Agent" comic series.
Namsai K., illustrator and independent cartoonist.
Claudio Sopranzetti, cultural critic and author, most recently co-author of the graphic novel "King of Bangkok".
Moderator:
Gwen Robinson, past president, FCCT.
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