Thailand Floating Market, Poverty in Joker and The Hunger Games

cite this article: Arunrangsiwed, P. (2020). Thailand Floating Market, Poverty in Joker and The Hunger Games. Retrieved from https://sw-eden.net/2020/01/01/thailand-poverty-joker-hunger-games/

Thailand Floating Market, Poverty in Joker and The Hunger Games

I could see a big different between the image of poverty in two famous movies, Joker (2019) and The Hunger Games (film series) (The Hunger Games (2012), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013),The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014), and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015)). The Hunger Games portrayed people with poverty as nice guys or hero, while Joker (2019) portrayed them as villain, drugsters, violent activists, and crimes. These movies tried to stereotype the rich and the poor, but in different ways.

The case of Red-Shirt protestors in Thailand could be the important examples interplayed with these stereotypes. If I wrote this as I am a scholar, I would explain this with social identity theory, that people view in-group and out-group differently. Middle class people in Thailand would view themselves as the middle-class and upper-class in Joker movie (2019). while working-class people view themselves as the poor in The Hunger Games. In other words, middle-class people view Red-Shirt protestors as the poor in Joker movie, while Red-Shirt protestors see the middle-class as the rich in The Hunger Games.

Both films are extremely in stereotypes, and there is nothing in the middle. Like, The Hunger Games should have portrayed both positive side and negative side of either rich or poor people. In Joker movie as well, it should not be all poor people prefer the violent actions against the hegemony. Without high education, it does not mean that all people would love to engage violent actions. In real-world context, there are so many peaceful working-class or lower-class people, and similarly, there are so many prosocial and responsible middle-class people.

I am afraid that media audiences would both learn the stereotypes and learn to stereotype others as the movies teach them. In social sciences and media studies, they found that if ones like the media, have parasocial interaction with the environment in fictional media, and identify with media characters, they would easily be influenced from media in many aspects, their traits, attitudes, and behaviors.

Traveling to Thailand floating market might be able to help solve these stereotype problems. In a period of time, Red-Shirt protestors hate middle-class people a lot, and in the current days, there are also the fights in social network. Floating market is where people from many social classes and many economic statuses come together and move a small economic system for local people. Middle-class and working-class could be both hawkers and tourists. Because it is the floating market(s), it is easy for all kinds of people to get into, unlike the luxurious shopping mall that poor people do not want to show up or adapt their routine to fit into.

It is important to note that I posted this article in this webpage before I put everything together and submitted to the university. In other words, I owned the copyrights of this article or blog post, and later, I reused this copyrighted material in the research report. Similarly, I wrote an article for a conference in Phayao, and later, I used the article for the research report. That also means, I owned the copyrighted material before reusing it again in the research report.