Sons, husbands, brothers: The Gothic worlds of Thai men in the films of Kongkiat Khomsiri

Abstract

Gothic has long been theorized as the domain of the feminine, the queer or the ‘soft masculine’, and most discussions of Gothic masculinity propose to see it in terms of a split of the masculine subject at the level of rationality and sexuality. This article examines the construction of Gothic masculinities in the films of the Thai director Kongkiat Khomsiri in the context of the Thai gender system and Thai heroic masculine ideologies their protagonists embody. While Thai horror films abound in depictions of feminine evil, interestingly the Gothic cinescapes of Khomsiri are the domain of tough masculine men. The article discusses the director’s first three features: , , and The , bringing into focus the films’ portrayals of their working-class underdog heroes and their ‘hard’ masculinity. The discussion also highlights the visual aesthetics of Khomsiri’s films and their reliance on the Gothic conventions in the construction of the characters and the environments they inhabit.