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โครงการรวบรวมและจัดทําวารสารอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์

240 Humanities Journal Vol.22 No.2 (July-December 2015)

Since the film uses romantic comedy genre, the role of Vietnamese
female character could be explained by Andrew Horton’s study. Horton states
that the humiliation of the others with regard to their gender or ethnicity has long

been exploited in comedy (Horton,1991: 15). The comedy functions to challenge
customary social norms. The film’s exploitation of Elly’s image could be read as
exploitation of female sexuality even in with the comedy genre, the seriousness
of sexual exploitation is somewhat lessened.

Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik state that in comedy films, genders are
rehearsed, explored, endorsed or undermined (Neale and Krutnik, 2006: 224,
223-225). In the film, the other female characters are also characterized as
stereotypical female: nosy, bossy, emotional and irrational. Through their

journey, none of the female characters is seen driving or navigating the trip nor
having any knowledge about automobiles. At various points, the female
characters are projected as subordinates to the males.

Adding to that, the two Thai female protagonists are disabled in certain
ways. One has a severely short eye sight and the other is hearing-impaired. To
my knowledge, the space for disability characters in Asian films and other
entertainment media is limited. The representations of these two leading female

characters are then examined.

In relation to Nicole Markotic’s study, he explains that a number of
contemporary films represent disability in three ways: “a moral metaphor,
extraordinary heroic, or a punch line of a gag”. Generally, Thai media seem to
unapologetically represent disabled characters in a humourism way. Looking at
perception of disability in the media, Markotic adds that the satisfaction of the
representations make the audience feel “apprehensible and hilarity.” (Markotic,
2008: 2).