Nat reflects on the lack of teenage rebellion in Thailand and how this impacted his relationship with his father.
James Dean died too young. But by dying young, he remains enshrined in our memories as an angry, rebellious young man — his two most acclaimed roles being that of Jet Rink in Giant and Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause. Because of these roles, Dean remains a romantic hero in the West, symbolising disaffected youth and the alienation that is typical of teenagers everywhere.
Well, maybe not everywhere; certainly not in Thailand.
In Thailand, if James Dean is to be remembered for anything, it is his good looks and reputed sexual history. This is not because we think of Dean as merely a Hollywood actor. It is because the roles he is known for don’t resonate they way they do in the West.
Teenagers in Thailand don’t rebel. We have no contempt for the adults in our lives nor do we become polarised into small cliques within our schools. Don’t get me wrong. There are, indeed, cool kids and slackers, popular girls and nerds, but the nature of Thai society is to assimilate and nowhere is this more prevalent than in high school where students are given a sense of identity from their schools and their peers. There is practically no bullying in schools here because of the push to include everyone.
The problem instead is one of competition between schools. Students conform to each other and any conflict is played out either through athletic competition or, in the case of vocational schools, the occasional gang fight. By the time people graduate, such differences are forgotten and the focus of integration becomes the work place. Thailand is the only place I know where people celebrate New Year’s Eve with their work colleagues.
Such values may create a well-integrated society but what they do not encourage is teenage rebellion. We listen to our elders here. We pressure our friends to accept everyone and in doing so, we push ourselves to conform. We follow our leaders without question and that includes our parents. In my entire life, I never raised my voice to my father.
This is not to say that I never disagreed with my father nor does it mean that I never resented some heavy-handed decisions that he made. My relationship with my father was not one of teenage rebellion and then adult reconciliation. It was one of respectful — and sometimes resentful — deference and constant acceptance. There were no angry confrontations because Thais don’t do confrontation. There were no recriminations because that would mean there was disappointment. My father and I had none of the issues that mark a Western relationship between father and son because the nature of Thai families is reflected in the relationships we build in high school: we conform, assimilate and follow.
Now that my father has passed away, I find myself at a loss for what to do in life. No, I still have the same job I had working for father and I have practically the same responsibilities that I did when he was alive. It’s just that, with him gone, I’m the boss and my father is no longer a reference point for the actions I take.
Would it have been different had I been a rebellious teenager? Most definitely. Would the conflict and reconciliation have made us closer? Probably not. What it would have encouraged, perhaps, is a less profound sense of loss.