Laughing at oblivion: parody and the critique of historical amnesia in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s ANG48 and Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s a Useful Ghost

Abstract

This special research examines how two recent works of Thai cinema and media art, Chulayarnnon Siriphol's ANG48 (2022) and Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's A Useful Ghost (2025), appropriate hegemonic, widely-circulated popular cultural narratives as parody to deliver politically inconvenient content. Drawing on the notion of parody alongside concepts of collective amnesia, mnemonic hegemony, and chosen trauma, the analysis examines how each work addresses a different field of contested historical memory. ANG48 repoliticises the public imagination of WWII memory and the Thai–Japanese alliance, shaped by Thommayanti's novel Khu Kam—to reveal the depoliticised romanticisation of the Thai-Japanese bond that has been absorbed culturally, and the contemporary mutation of this template. A Useful Ghost parodically appropriates the “Mae Nak” heritage cinema lineage established by Nang Nak (1999) and Pee Mak (2013) to surface the productivity mechanism that transforms victims into enforcers of protest memory erasure, against the backdrop of unresolved state violence during the Cold War and contemporary political conflict. This special research positions parodic appropriation as a distinct strategy within Thai counter-cinema's oblique address, in which political critique enters through canonical hegemonic cultural templates.