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โครงการรวบรวมและจัดทําวารสารอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์

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

producers secure their position by producing the second and the third Sabaidee
Films with the same plot, casts and locations. The audiences however do not
appreciate the repetition of the plot. In the future the co-producers of Thai and
Lao film will find the way to compromise their creativities with the Lao authority.

For Pleasure Factory, the film uses its Art Cinema genre to challenge
its audiences and Singaporean authority. Producing film in Singapore, the
country is rich of diverse cultures, languages and ethnic backgrounds; it
becomes a transnational film. Bravely, the film represents sexual subjects that
are tabooed in Southeast Asian society such as prostitution, female sexual
desires and same sex relationships in an explicit art form. Although the rigid
censorship of Singapore seems to be less meticulous, the media there are not

totally free.

Looking at That Sounds Good, the film uses road movie genre to gain
the position of transnational cinema. Unlike Sabaidee Luang Prabang nor
Pleasure Factory, That Sounds Good interacts with the locals to the minimum
and mostly in views of economic exchange. The film does not feature the
cultural and historical backgrounds of the film locales. One of the local female
characters is exploited by the male gazes that is not found in the Sabaidee film.

The different representations of females from these films signify that the film
texts could be different when they are made in different countries. What make
the film interesting are the disabled characters in the film. The disabled
characters are not represented as a moral metaphor nor extraordinary heroic,
but a comedian. The romantic comedy genre is also represented the difficulty of

their everyday lives in a light approach.

In sum, with an economically optimistic and culturally vibrant scenario,
the future of the transnational Southeast Asian film industry is something to look

forward to. Firstly, the mixture of backgrounds and experiences among filmmakers