Paper short abstract:

In this paper I draw on research with Thai video production workers to offer an ethnographically grounded viewpoint on the way that global colourist and racialist aesthetics seek out, and interact with, local aesthetic value judgements.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I draw on research with Thai video production workers to offer an ethnographically grounded viewpoint on the way that global colourist and racialist aesthetics seek out, and interact with, local aesthetic value judgements. In Bangkok, Thailand, local value judgements appealing to international marketing clients frequently draw on a range of gestures, speech acts and other performances of socially appropriate, morally acceptable and aesthetically pleasing behaviour. Meanwhile, the often politically conservative power of these value judgements is felt in Thailand in terms of the strength of authoritarian politics and in the everyday demands for polite and submissive performances in everyday life.

I then consider Thailand’s recent youthful protest movements not only in terms of their direct political claims, but also their radical attempts to shift social expectations around aesthetic and moral value judgements. Thailand’s youthful protesters are reconstructing the digitized tail end of Thailand’s first democratic century with creative aesthetics, the subversiveness of which matches and propels their dramatic political demands. Drawing on Strassler’s (2020) “image-events” as a frame through which to interpret subversive political images shaping community and action, I examine the ways in which Thai protest aesthetics become politically and socially active.