Rainbow Buzzzz

Lady Amanda Warentroupe

There was that face. Smiling at me from advertisements on the Bangkok Skytrain for the Wall Street Institute. The advertisements promised a new future for all young Thai people through English language lessons. It was the same sweet innocent face. The same designer glasses. The same smooth skin. The innocent, immature look of Harry Potter, but thankfully without the ominous scar.

He had smiled at me the night before. Young, fragile, defensive, hopeful, loving. The smiles came from the screen at the House art theatre on up-scale, hi-so Royal City Avenue in Bangkok. All part of the first run of the movie “Rainbow Boys.”

Yes he was the hero, now revealed in the advertisements as having another life - as a brilliant English-language student, excelling on Wall Street, or at Wall Street, or in Wall Street.

But who was he and what was his story?

Rainbow Boys is a novel about high school students in the United States written by Alex Sanchez, a Cuban born American. Because it is the United States, there is, of course, violence. And it is homophobic violence. This is the first film version in the world of the award-winning US novel.

Because of cultural and social differences, the story, moved over to Thailand, is re-set at university. Kids don’t dome out as early in Thailand as they do now in the United States. It all has to do with Will and Grace, of course.

Regularly throughout the Thai movie the hero, a college-student, and his ladyboy best friend get beaten up, just like fags do in the Benighted States. Unfortunately, Thai’s just cannot do violence like Americans. So none of the getting-beaten-up scenes are even passably credible. Even the bleeding and the bruises are make-up failures.

Our hero is adored by his ladyboy best friend who constantly suggests that they have sex, or hold hands or kiss or do something. Life will pass them by if they don’t try out these practices. This is a story about young gay men who do not have sex. Try that on for credibility! And since when are you supposed to have sex with your best friend? In the West that was always equivalent to incest. Oh well, I get five invitations a day to buy incest videos on email spam, so perhaps it is less taboo than it used to be.

Instead of lusting after his best friend, our hero ogles Ek, the school’s top basketball player. Ek is supposed to be a hunk, but his body would never get him hired at Tawan. But he is the real star in the movie, in terms of a credible actor. He is a wonderfully inarticulate, fucked up, sexually frustrated, identity confused, socially dumb, inhibited, stud. He has “done it” with his girlfriend, he says, trying to banish his own knowledge that he really goes for guys.

To top it off, Ek is the victim of Thailand’s class society. Instead of the plush middle class homes of hero and ladyboy, Ek lives in some kind of slum with a wimpy mother and an abusive alcoholic father. The father caught him playing around with another boy at age ten and has called him a fag ever since. Yet, somehow, it is a big dramatic revelation when Ek actually “comes out” to father and mother. This leads father to abandon the home and mother to flee to grandmothers.

This leaves the house conveniently empty for the hot climax scene, when traumatized Ek finally casts inhibition to the wind and beds our hero. But will inarticulate, inhibited, dense, dumb Ek follow through – or flee again from the desire that he has been fleeing from for years? Well, see the movie, unless you prefer real life to reel life.