The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

RIWIEWS 395
certainly seems a service worth performing.
To polarise the two
possibilities as pornography or propaganda, smut or socialism, rubbish
or rhetoric would be as simplistic as some of the literature considered at
both ends of the political spectrum. There is no reason why either
extreme should be held; valid works of literature can be and sometimes
are produced by both systems under existing conditions. But these same
conditions tend to force the polarisations, and the unedifying gutter press
of at least one country in the region only exists because people want. to
read something and think they know what they do not want to read.
Lastly the juxtaposition of town versus country throughout the
region needs to be considered. Malaysia is here, up to very recently, an
exception, for writers using the national language have come from the
country. But the authors of most other countries, at least the noncommunist
regimes, are very largely the products of the cities which do
not represent the main elements of Southeast Asian life. This allows
Salazar to claim primacy for Tagalog because Manila is the centre of the
area using the language.
Bonneff notes that Indonesian comic strips
demand that 'le lecteur est cense adherer a !'image d'un univers materiel
qui lui est genera\ement etranger ... La Mercedes y est le symbole du
statut, pour une elite en apparence oisive qui partage son temps entre la
plage a la mode, la station de montagne proche de Jakarta et, le soir, les
night-clubs'. Village life remains pure, but hopeless-'la perspective d'un
depart est riche de promesses'. These are not realised however: 'on ne
voit pas de heros gravir les echelons de la societe. A chacun son destin'.
The same is noted by Labrousse in the popular Indonesian novel: the
permanent framework of the metropolis, its smart districts, and at the
other end of the scale the village representing an ideal to which to return,
dead or rich, but usually neither; in literature the men become tramps,
women whores and morality is black-'il semblerait qu'on ne sorte pas
impunement de son rang et que la decbeance soit infiniment plus frequent
que le bonheur ou Ia reconciliation'. Bunlua and most of the Thai
authors named are products of, or have been assimilated by Bangkok (it
is significant that Kbamsingh Srinawk is not mentioned). Bolan's succes
de scandale was achieved precisely because she attempted an examination
of the mostly urban society by an outsider having only his native Chinese
village as a point of comparison.
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