Pranpriya Manobal or Lisa Blackpink is one of the biggest K-Pop stars in the world. She\u2019s also Thai.
On 10 September, she released her much anticipated solo single \u201cLalisa.\u201d It already has some 117 million views.
And, of course, controversies ensued.
The single features the chorus line, \u201cProtect it like a barrier.\u201d In the music video, Lisa dances with baton-wielding crowd control police. We Thais link it to the pro-democracy protests and the string of clashes between youths on motorbikes and the police.
Another controversy is Lisa wearing the traditional \u201cChada\u201d headdress. Conservatives slam her for degrading Thailand\u2019s culture. In a surprising move, however, the Ministry of Culture applauds the usage of the \u201cChada,\u201d commending Lisa for \u201cpromoting Thai culture\u201d worldwide.
It\u2019s interesting to analyze what Thai culture is? For example, what ownership do we have of a headdress, a shirt, or anything else?
What does Thailand own culturally?
Is it the \u201cChada\u201d headdress that we borrowed from the Khmer culture?
Is it the Indian \u201cRaja\u201d pattern shirt, Khmer \u201cJong Kraben\u201d loincloth, and
European long white socks that General Prayut Chan-o-cha and conservative politicians love to cosplay to?
Is it the Sanskrit alphabet we adapted from the Indian subcontinent?
Is it the Hindu-Buddhist religious tradition we borrowed from Sri Lanka through the Khmer Empire?
If we take the linear history and assume the Sukhotai Kingdom is the origin of the Thai civilization. Sukhothai\u2019s founding date is 1238, which makes the Thai civilization very young.
All we are and all we have is a mixture of many different cultures, mostly Khmer, Indian, and Sri Lankan. This includes the tradition of the Thai Kingship.
So what is it that we own culturally?
Why do we get so angry when someone appropriates something that we did not create or originate?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pranpriya Manobal or Lisa Blackpink is one of the biggest K-Pop stars in the world. She\u2019s also Thai. On 10 September, she released her much anticipated solo single \u201cLalisa.\u201d It already has some 117 million views. And, of course, controversies ensued. The single features the chorus line, \u201cProtect it like a barrier.\u201d In the music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,31,32,30,29,23,12,14,13],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thisurpt","tag-chada","tag-k-pop","tag-lalisa","tag-lisa-blackpink","tag-pranpriya-manobal","tag-thai-culture","tag-thailand","tag-thisrupt","tag-whatshappeninginthailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}