"Culture Shock Bangkok": Dan Waites on the Bangkok Noir movement writers and artists

Dan Waites' thoughts on the Bangkok Noir movement from "Culture Shock! Bangkok"....

"Much has been written about the Thai capital.  The large 'Thailand Interest' sections of the city's bookstores are proof of that.  Unfortunately exaggerated memoirs about stints in Thai prisons, tracts about the joys of sleeping with bargirls and horror stories about being ruined by Thai wives are not for everyone.

In terms of fiction, or at least serious fiction, Bangkok remains curiously undocumented, given its size and importance.  It has, of course, provided a lot of inspiration for a lot of crime fiction.  Some of the authors, like John Burdett and Christopher Moore, have produced well-crafted crime novels that demonstrate a level of insight into Thai society few other outsiders have reached.  Others haven't fared so well.

The city's crime writers have formed a scene of sorts, the so-called 'Bangkok Noir' which crystallized in 2011 in the form of the book 'Bangkok Noir', a collection of 12 short stories by Thai and Western writers edited by Moore himself.  Chris Coles, a painter specializing in Expressionist portraits of the denizens of the city's libidinous nightlife, is also involved, and has published a book of his work, 'Navigsting the Bangkok Noir'.

Bangkok Noir is unusual as a scene in that appears to have been driven by the artists themselves, rather than critics and journalists.  Local author and critic Tim Footman says he 'doesn't blame the writers for that at all'.  Bangkok lacks the kind of critical apparatus that exists in many parts of the world that might identify such a scene form the outside. 'I can understand why they're doing it.  No one else was going to do it for them,' he says.

Outside the crime fiction genre, relatively relatively little fiction of note has surfaced about Bangkok in the English language.  Why?  Is there something about the city and its inhabitants that defies the foreign writer?  At least part of the reason must lie with the difficulties foreigners have in penetrating and understanding Thai society itself.  As novelist Lawrence Osbourne says, 'Obviously, foreigners are not going to be writing delicate comedies of manners about Thais, because they don't really move easily in such a hermetic culture."

Perhaps the city's wilder side hypnotises foreign writers - the lights of this city are so bright that that's all they see.  Footman tells of writing a novel set during the 2010 Red protests.  Not setting out to write about the city's seedier elements, he eventually vcame to a plotting cul-de-sac.  'Suddenly, and I have no idea how ]it happened, there was a hooker in there.'  He later abandoned the book.

Naturally, more has been said about the city by Thais themselves, but few foreigners get good enough at Thai to be able to access it.  There's also the reality that Thailand doesn't have a particularly literary culture.  It's a shame: many visitors to the country would appreciate access to the kind of insight into ways of life and thinking that only fiction can really provide."

Link to Dan Waiters "Culture Shock Bangkok! A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette": http://goo.gl/MMTb7Z

CNNGo Tim Footman's piece on Chris Coles & the Bangkok Noir

Rainy Season Suzy Wong Bar - Chris Coles

“Bangkok Noir” has become something of a buzzword in recent months, although more cynical minds might deduce that it’s little more than an attempt to spin the work of local crime writers such as Christopher G. Moore and John Burdett into an authentic genre, bracketing their books with the likes of James Ellroy or even Raymond Chandler and hoping a little of the critical credibility rubs off.

Artist Chris Coles is happy to be seen as part of the movement, to the extent that his new book of his paintings is called “Navigating the Bangkok Noir.” (See the above gallery for a small sample.)

In his hands, the Bangkok night becomes “a Darwinistic and brutal stage on which humans from all over the planet, rich and poor, dark and white, tall and short, fat and slim, civilized and uncouth, intelligent and incredibly dumb, come together to mingle, interact, devour, be devoured, stalk prey and to be stalked by predators.”

Chris Coles' damaged denizens of Bangkok’s nightlife are highlighted in "Navigating the Bangkok Noir."

It’s rather different from the Land of Smiles mythology peddled by the government and the tourist authorities -- the mythology that holds topless Songkran dancers to be completely antithetical to Thai culture and morality – and indeed from the majority of Bangkok-based artists.

For a real exercise in contrasts, check out his exhibition at the Koi Gallery on Sukhumwit 31, which hangs his works alongside the pastoral confections of Anita Suputipong.

But Coles’s work is also distinct from that of Christopher Moore and his fellow writers, who are forced by their chosen genre to tie the atmosphere down to a plot, to add a little action and danger to their depictions of Krung Thep at night. The results sometimes feel as if they’ve been designed to flatter the white-knight fantasies of their male, farang readers, for whom real life can still be a bit mundane, even in this city.

Moore writes the foreword to Coles’s book, and compares the painter to Toulouse-Lautrec, but this misses the mark a little. Toulouse-Lautrec’s pictures of prostitutes were tender observations that focused on the women’s off-duty moments -- sleeping, bathing, dreaming.

Coles is an Expressionist, though; his bargirls are in the tradition of the underweight, glassy-eyed Viennese hookers immortalized by Egon Schiele. Moreover, his combination of garish colors and thick black lines suggests the styles of Georges Rouault and Marc Chagall, both of whom were influenced by stained-glass windows in places of worship.

In his hands the damaged denizens of Bangkok’s nightlife achieve a transcendent aura, the profane becoming sacred.

Behind the sad, garish smiles

That said, Coles doesn’t impose an explicit narrative or moral on his images of Bangkok nightlife. What he sets out to do is “to accept and understand that as humans, even in the year 2011, we still harbor some very primitive, reptile-like qualities that lie not too far beneath our modern and ‘civilized’ exterior surface.”

Each image stands alone, a single event in a single night, take it or leave it. His deadpan annotations put a few names to faces, a little context for those who might not be au fait with Nana or Cowboy, but stops short of fleshing out a full biography for these damaged creatures.

He doesn’t idealize or idolize the bargirls, but is always sympathetic to their situations, always keen to find out where they came from, what brought them here, to see behind the sad, garish smiles.

He is more ambivalent about their clients, who come over as endearingly naïve at best, monstrous and controlling at worst.

That said, Coles doesn’t impose an explicit narrative or moral on his images of Bangkok nightlife. Each image stands alone, a single event in a single night, take it or leave it.

Coles is a good painter, but more importantly (and more surprisingly), "Navigating the Bangkok Noir" works as a book in its own right, rather than just a glorified exhibition catalogue.

The closest comparison is with Philip Cornwel-Smith’s warm and wacky "Very Thai: Everyday Popular Culture," to which it acts as a sort of grim, evil twin. Coles illuminates images from the bleaker, seedier side of Bangkok life, but ultimately it’s up to you, the reader, to do the work and create a story.

"Navigating the Bangkok Noir" is published by Marshall Cavendish, Singapore and is also available on Amazon & Noqstore.

For more on Chris Coles, visit his website: www.chriscolesgallery.com