Contesting Racial Discourses in Thai Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello: A Case Study of King Vajiravudh’s Phraya Ratchawangsan (1925)

Abstract

By paying attention to racism as one of Phraya Ratchawangsan ’s themes via the theoretical lens of postcolonialism, the paper examines the ways in which King Vajiravudh (King Rama VI) adapted the plot of Othello in Phraya Ratchawangsan to reveal and challenge the ignored racial discourses in Siam (Thailand) in the twentieth century. As a result, I argue that Phraya Ratchawangsan highlights racial discourses in the same way as the colonial legacies in Shakespeare's Othello that have often been overlooked in the Siamese society at the time. Such discourses animalize humans of different skin colors and have been maintained by white supremacy. To contest such racial discourses, King Rama VI subverted the concepts of Siamese beauty and “Otherness” via the acts of Somdet Phra Wigromratchsri, the King of Sriwichai Kingdom. Consequently, by analyzing the Siamese dance drama Phraya Ratchawangsan with insights of postcolonial studies, one can see that the conception of class hierarchy and the haves and the have-nots in Siam are not the only crucial issues that need to be reexamined. The problematic, yet often ignored racial discrimination in Siam, now Thailand, should be discussed and investigated, especially when it intensifies power of the class hierarchy, widening social gaps in Thailand. By doing so, the unity of Thailand is perhaps strengthened.