Are We A Movement?

The Collins Essential English Dictionary defines a movement as a group of people with a common ideology. I’m thinking in particular of an artistic movement, the closest parallel to the writers on the Thailandstories site being the Decadent movement of the late 19th century.

The Decadent movement was a group of writers and painters based in Paris who rebelled against the stultifying bourgeois culture of the time. Some of the great names of the movement, and their favourite vices, are mentioned in this poem by Robert Service:

Oh, Wilde, Verlaine and Baudelaire, their lips were wet with wine;
Oh poseur, pimp and libertine! Oh cynic, sot and swine!
Oh votaries of velvet vice! . . . Oh gods of light divine!
Oh Baudelaire, Verlaine and Wilde, they knew the sinks of shame;
Their sun-aspiring wings they scorched at passion's altar flame;
Yet lo! enthroned, enskied they stand, Immortal Sons of Fame.

The ethos of the movement is best described by the phrase fin de siecle – a feeling that European civilisation, along with the century itself, was coming to an end (and perhaps, bearing in mind the far-reaching effects of WWI, it was). This led to a number of common characteristics in the writers and artists in the movement:

1. An artistic and literary protest against a spiritually bankrupt civilization
2. A self-destructive hedonism – live for the day since there’s no tomorrow
3. Experimentation in life and art – a Blakean belief that "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom"
4. Sex, alcohol and drugs as catalysts – the symbolic drink of the moment, absinthe, containing both alcohol (up to 75%) and leaves of the herb Artemisia absinthium which contains a psychoactive drug.*

The spiritual home of the movement was Paris. Paris in the 19th century was in some respects similar to Bangkok today in that it was a place of greater freedom in sexual matters. Two quick examples will suffice:

1. Emile Zola’s short story, Nana, tells how a French prostitute exploits her customers to get rich. Any reader who is familiar with the gogo girls of Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza will note numerous similarities.
2. Edouard Manet’s Olympia (see article image) shows a high-class prostitute staring at us with the arrogant ‘I’m a top girl and will cost you top dollar’ stare of the Rainbow 4 dancer.

So what are the comparisons with the Thailandstories writers’ movement?

1. An artistic and literary protest against a spiritually bankrupt civilization.

The west is spiritually bankrupt in many respects (plus, at the moment, it is bankrupt in the literal sense of the term). I could write reams on this one, but here’s my starter for ten:

The west is proud of its ‘freedom’, and many of those freedoms were hard won ranging from Magna Carta to the sexual freedoms won in the 1960’s. However, since then the pendulum is swinging backwards. For example, feminism, which was once about equal opportunities for women, seems to be increasingly about ‘thou shalt not’ for men. This has been comprehensively catalogued in the Farangland section of pattayagogos.com, for example, this recent article: http://www.pattayagogos.com/in08d.htm#Labour_Man_Haters_4965.

The sixties saw great leaps forward in the acceptance of gay and lesbian sexuality, but what about other sexualities? For example, polygamy, or relationships where there are large age gaps. And why is it considered acceptable to have a series of affairs, often undermining marriage, but unacceptable to visit prostitutes?

Whatever the complexities of the debate, it is clear that the sexual mores of modern western society are simply not working – the majority of marriages end in divorce, and the birth-rate is plummeting. We are literally dying out.

Thailandstories writers protest against these, and many other, problems in our society both implicitly and explicitly. The only problem is that, because the audience is so limited, we are usually preaching to the converted.

2. A self-destructive hedonism – live for the day since there’s no tomorrow

The pleasures of Bangkok, like those of 19th century Paris, are highly addictive, and the men who participate in them are not those who are going to worry about the British government’s guidelines on the number of alcohol units per day (which are scarcely enough to make a little girl tipsy, let alone an adult male). At best, they might pop on a condom (since AIDs propaganda is much more strident than anything the incompetent British government can manage). So they indulge themselves with birds and booze, sometimes to the point of self-destruction – but hey, it’s a free country (well, that’s what we used to say when we were kids).

3. Experimentation in life and art – a Blakean belief that "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom"

That’s the other side of the coin – if the lifestyle doesn’t kill you, it will make you wiser. I think there are many men who have found themselves in Thailand. They have rediscovered what it means to be a man; and some important values like being polite, controlling your temper, making the best of your appearance, valuing family, etc., some have even learned how to be spiritual; and of course, some have been inspired to express their experiences in writing.

4. Sex, alcohol and drugs were important catalysts – the symbolic drink of the moment, absinthe, containing both alcohol (up to 75%, and leaves of the herb Artemisia absinthium which contains a psychoactive drug).

Sex is certainly the main catalyst in Bangkok – and the importance of that should not be underestimated, considering that it is in short supply in the western world. For most men it is just sex to begin with, but very quickly, they start to learn about Thai culture from the girls, and some even end up marrying into it. There is no symbolic drink, though the drink of choice seems to be Thai-produced Heineken. My Teerak prefers Singha – but I suspect she’s just being patriotic. My preference is Beerlao. As for drugs, I would dearly love to end the day with an opium pipe (like Fowler in The Quiet American – a novel set in Vietnam), but I’ve read too many books about the facilities in the Bangkok Hilton to risk that.

So are we the new Decadents? Yes and no (my favourite answer to most existential questions). Yes, because we have much in common with the original Decadents, and would probably enjoy sharing a night out with them, and they with us. Maybe a night in Manet’s ‘Bar at the Folies Bergere’ ogling the ‘grisettes’ (freelancers), drinking Absinthe and talking about literature, or in Baccara, gazing through the glass ceiling, drinking Singha and - talking about literature.

No, because we are a vilified minority with no public voice. In an age of political correctness, we are the most politically incorrect. There is only one thing that can break down that barrier and that is great art. When someone produces great art, the public have to take notice, they may hate it (Manet’s work was banned from exhibitions) but they can’t ignore it – and then the message has a chance to get across. I think some very fine work has appeared on this site, but nothing as yet that is great (see Dana’s ‘Where is that Book’ http://www.thailandstories.com/article/non-fiction/essays/where-is-that-book.html).

Also, we need a name. An interesting article at http://www.thaioasis.com/literature/bkkbangkokfiction.php suggests ‘The Bangkok School of Fiction’ (who wrote this? I can’t find an attribution – was it Dean Barret?) But that is too narrow, and too academic sounding. Maybe ‘The New Decadents’ would do the trick. Any other suggestions?

So keep at it folks! The first thing is to build up that sense of ‘movement’ – that there is something here that is bigger than the sum of the parts. This site is certainly a valuable focus – and maybe more get-togethers like those arranged by Stickman would help. The next thing is for someone to write ‘that Book’; a book that is good enough and mainstream enough to break out of the ghetto but is recognisably part of the movement.

I am not a novelist, so it won’t be me, but over the next few weeks I will be posting a series of poems ‘cloned’ from some of the main decadent writers. Hopefully, they will give a fuller sense of what the original Decadent movement was about, and thus contribute to our own ‘New Decadent’ movement.

© Bangkok Byron, 2008. All rights reserved by the author.

*this list is adapted from the article on this site:
http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/Decadence.htm