The Interpretation of Culture & Tradition in Horror Literature
Author: Chutema Seng | Posted on February 23, 2022
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Talking about horror, it is a genre of literature film that is implied to evoke a sense of frightening and scary apprehension through characters, illustrations, themes, and different situations. In horror film making, what makes Southeast Asian stands out among the others is the way we present our culture, social beliefs, and religions. It is the way that we inject these important components into the literature that makes it so interesting, intriguing, and popular.
In contrast to this, Cambodia holds very religious and superstitious beliefs in terms of culture and tradition. Likewise, Thailand shares and replicates a lot in terms of these values. As we can see in many Southeast Asian horror films, the director used ghosts to represent a spirit of the dead people that only some people see within our eyes glance and some come to haunt the livings. These spirits are known to be invisible, lonely, and rebellious due to their experience before death, which leads them to not go to the afterlife. According to our culture, where we value highly on traditions and superstitions, we would conduct a ceremony or call a shaman to release or vanish this spirit so that they can let go of all their grudges and go to the afterlife.
Here is the definition of the two main themes we're going to discuss today:
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Religion is usually defined as a cultural complex of behaviors, moral practices, and ethics that are often related to the belief and worship of gods or supernatural beings. It encompasses a range of practices including holy places, rituals, prayer, symbols, meditations, and many more.
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Multiculturalism is the view of cultures, races, and ethnicities that encourages acknowledgment of cultural differences, to help extend a more open-minded view amongst different groups of people, and it’s also a concept of dispelling the negative stereotypes as well.
One of our fellow classmates, Viriya Sarun, has done an excellent job in explaining the Southeast Asian Horror Film. She stated that, "There is a lot more than what meets the eye when it comes to SE Asian horror films, we get to actually dive deep into the reasons behind where these myths came to be and answer questions as to why there are the hauntings of ghosts in a certain place and time, what actually happens, and most importantly, how social and cultural themes of people are involved at the time. Over 90% of the Thai population are Theravada Buddhists, and the same goes for Cambodia".
We shared a similar opinion regarding this topic and she also pointed out a scene in Mae Nak's film and compared the similarities between the Khmer and Thai culture in this context as well. Viriya added that, "As an example, from Mae Nak, when Nak was discovered by her husband as she extended her abnormally long arm to reach the lime on the ground, the husband fled to the Buddhist temple to seek refuge. A similar concept can be seen in Cambodian religion, people regard temples to be protected, the population reveres monks with the religious beliefs to hold ceremonies for the purpose to fend off bad spirits and bring back happiness to the family. In small villages, temples offer as a place for people to stay for a night or two had any emergency arise, some even go to the temples to receive medical aid or treatment".
In the film "Mae Nak", the scene that has caught my attention is a love potion that turns into a ghost possession. As we can see in the movie, Nak was a very beautiful girl in town, and Mak was not the only guy who fell in love with Nak. There’s also another man who is also attracted to Nak’s beauty as well. He even claimed that he would do anything he could to get the girl he wanted. That night, he went to a witch man and asked for a love potion, he said he cannot eat or sleep and just cannot stop thinking about her. However, instead of the love potion, the witch man gave a dark matter ghost potion instead. The potion was supposed to be on Nak, but instead, it was thrown to another wrong girl. After that, the girl who received the potion began acting weird and showing very unusual and psychotic behavior. She dressed very messily and starts to talk and dance to everyone in the town. That’s when everyone realized she was being possessed by a ghost. Because no one in their right mind would do anything like that. One night, she had a nightmare about her being a ghost. She suddenly woke up, screaming and crazing very weirdly, and disappeared. When her relatives found her, she committed suicide by hanging her neck to the roof.
The concept of spirit possession exists in many different cultures and religions; this also includes Buddhism. There are a wide variety of deities and spirits that has been incorporated into the Buddhist world. As we can see in the film scene I mentioned earlier, it is clear evidence that the girl that wrongly received the love potion in the medium was absolutely possessed by a spirit of evil or what we called “Ghost”. She was completely under the direct control of external supernatural power and shows unusual symptoms, weird movements, uttering disconnect, and strange speech.
Furthermore, it also shows that there was also a practice of black magic or dark spell was also implemented during that society era, which was the old witch man who gave the dark matter ghost potion instead of love potion to them. It is believed that black magic is forbidden in the Theravada traditions. However, these types of people who practiced this type of magic are considered in the dark world, where they have the ability to communicate to another world of death, make spell potions, and spirits practices.
As I am a Cambodian and a person who believes in Buddhism myself, also think there are also these types of practices and adherents in Cambodia as well. In this context, I can appreciate the Thailand culture and traditions practices, because we do share the same religions and very similar practices in terms of these matters.