Challenge: Explaining a Thai Music Video

Remember the fabled days long ago when MTV played actual videos? Yeah, I don’t, either, because it was so long ago.

This is when I grab all my cats and shake my fist at the kids in the yard. You dang kids! Get off my yard!

I'm pretty sure this was how old I was when MTV stopped playing videos.*

 

*Me on the left, Sister on the right. NO SNARKS ABOUT AGE!

But I’m not here today to rant about the demise of MTV or teenagers–and I was a middle school teacher for three years, so believe me, I have a lot to say on the subject of teenagers. I’m here today to tell you the story of my favorite Thai music video.

I only get 8 channels or so and I don’t see a lot of different Thai videos, but a lot of people attempt to commit suicide in the Thai videos I do see. A LOT. Men, women, children, dogs, water buffalos…they all try to off themselves by taking pills or jumping off roofs.

Based on the videos, I’m surprised there are any Thai people actually left in Thailand. Seems like it should just be a bunch of farang walking around avoiding each other’s gazes at all costs and complaining about how hot it is.

My favorite video is an attempted-suicide one (that sounds terrible! I swear I’m normal! Ish!), and I have no idea the actual name of the singer or the song because I don’t read Thai. Being illiterate kind of sucks.

The music in this song is kind of melancholic. It starts out with a guy neighbor checking out his lady neighbor across their balconies and him falling in love at first sight.

Neighbor wants to take a picture of Lady, but at that point, creepy Boyfriend comes out onto the balcony and gets all possessive.  Neighbor is sad. He loves Lady because she is beautiful. Also, nobody has serious emotional problems, as we will discover later in the video!

Cut to Lady and Boyfriend in bed. Lady gets a phone call in the middle of the night, which turns out to be the wife of Boyfriend. To prove this, Wife sends a picture of their family to Lady. Lady is pissed! She starts screaming and yelling, and Neighbor can hear what’s going on, so he gets worried, but doesn’t do anything, because, well, that would be interfering? Unclear. Boyfriend finally leaves, the creep.

Of course, at this point, Lady decides that she needs to take copious amounts of pills to end her life. Every time I see this, I get annoyed. I’m like, Really, he’s not worth it, girl! I can introduce you to plenty of foreign men who would hit that in a second.

Neighbor discovers Lady laying on the floor surrounded by pills.

He takes her to the hospital, brings her a basket of nicely wrapped dragon fruit, and sits beside her bed to keep her company as she’s recovering. He’s clearly demonstrating that he is a super sweet guy–with NO stalking issues!–and she should totally pick him, as Boyfriend only sends her text messages that upset her. Plus, Boyfriend is married and has a kid, and all.

Neighbor thoughtfully brings Lady back to her apartment, and of course Boyfriend is sitting on the bed waiting for her. She tells him to leave, but he won’t–because he’s crazy. Instead, he tries to rape her. Rational turn to the video! Neighbor hears the commotion and this time knocks on the door to interrupt, so Boyfriend leaves with a sneer, like, Hey bro, way to go for interrupting my attempted rape.

Later, Boyfriend comes back, but Lady is hiding in Neighbor’s closet and Neighbor refuses to let Boyfriend in. Boyfriend leaves, but Crazy Pants Wife is waiting there for him, for some unknown reason. She gives him hell and slaps him on the face, which frankly is a lot less than I would do if I found my cheating husband leaving his girlfriend’s apartment after trying to rape her, so I feel he got off pretty easy.

I kind of admire Wife’s restraint, while at the same time thinking she’s a total sucker.

The video ends as Lady is in the closet and sees that Neighbor has secretly taken tons of photos of her, printed them out, and put them up in his closet. Of course she is flattered because, as I mentioned before, neither one of these two people has serious emotional issues! The video is a cliffhanger, but it’s clearly implied that Lady will fall in love with Neighbor since he so obviously loves her and is not at all crazy and obsessed with her!

Final Score:

Explaining a Thai Music Video: 0  Megan: 1

I suppose I could make some kind of social commentary on the fact that so many women in videos I see try to commit suicide because of their boyfriends/husbands, but I don’t really have an explanation for that. Anybody out there have any insight?

I kind of want to shake my fist at this video, though. It’s so emotionally draining. You dang video! Get off my yard!