Many Thai soap operas employ rape as a storyline and, rather than depicting it as a horrible crime from which the victims often never recover from, it’s instead used as a way for a character to get revenge on another character or as an indicator of a blooming romance, as the rape victims on these shows often fall in love with their attackers.
Glorified rape on Thai TV has been an ongoing issue for activists in Thailand — and now the issue is attracting attention on a global scale.
The Huffington Post published a long and in-depth feature story on the issue yesterday.
In it, they describe several Thai soap operas that have used glorified rape as a plotline. Storylines such as: “woman is raped by the son of her father’s enemy for revenge, falls in love with him and lives happily ever after” may seem normal to Thais, but the rest of the world sees this as deplorable and encouraging of rape and rape culture.
Six months ago, under pressure from activists, Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) released guidelines for those creating TV shows and asked them to be careful about showing violence against women.
Just four months ago, NBTC fined the creators of a soap opera called “Club Friday” due to a scene where a girl is revenge raped as two others watch and one films the act. The commission fined the channel THB50,000 Thai baht and was forced to edit those scenes out of any future broadcasts of that episode.
However, these sexually violent plotlines, often called “slap and kiss,” often get very high ratings, which says something about the culture in the country.
Read Coconuts Bangkok’s report on the rape culture in Thailand
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