Normally I would have skimmed over this story as only having relevance to a wider international community (that this site doesn’t necessarily attract), but numerous people have sent me links so let’s talk about Thailand banning ‘Shakespeare Must Die’, a film adaptation of Macbeth.
The movie does hit close to home, as it features actual images from the October 1976 student uprising in Bangkok and the May 2010 violent dispersal of pro-Thaksin red shirt protesters in the capital. (Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted in a coup in 2006 but he remains hugely popular. His sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is now Thailand’s prime minister).
That seems to hit right at the center of the problem, doesn’t it? This isn’t a case of banning Shakespeare, as I see it. This is a director who had something to say about the current state of his (her?) government, and used Shakespeare as a backdrop.
Discuss?