Reflection: Urban World — Week 3 — Home and Community
Lalita Panyopas and her different TV series that shows us the impact of Family, Home, and Community
49-year-old Lalita, Mew, Panyopas (Sasiprapa) is a Thai artist in the Thai entertainment industry since 1981. Even she achieved a diploma and master degree in interior design but what I recall of her when thinking about home and community is her series สู่ฝันนิรันดร (Su Fan Nirundorn; To an Eternal Dream) (2008) and ล่า (Lar; Hunt) (2018).
In To an Eternal Dream (2008), she portrayed Fêuuang, a woman from 2008 sent into 1770. She later was with Luang Phiphit Ratchasena, her husband. In the end, she (with her conceived daughter) was summoned to the present time; however, we would recognize her self-identification and define her “home” to belong to the 18th century, where her family, husband, and son lived. She was a wife, mother, and mistress of the house. The impact of social support was reflected through her friends, subordinates, and her loved ones. When she went back into the 2000s era, she was more comfortable being the great-great-grandmother of the Ratchasena family rather than who she was before. She spent days and nights thinking about her life in the 18th century with the things she has left, inherited through generations in Ratchasenas, such as living in the same house, reading a diary written by herself and her husband.
Ten years later, Lalita returned to the entertainment industry after divorcing her husband. She played Matusorn in Hunt (2018). In the movie, she played a divorcing mother who tried to recover her psychiatric daughter by taking revenge, hunting all who did wrong to her and her daughter. She switched her identification by pretending to be a different person each time when she murdered her ex-husband and seven gangsters who raped her and her daughter. The series demonstrated the impact of domestic violence, a sense of insecurity in the slum, the roles of neighbors, and negative influences toward young adults and parents.
“Everything starts with family,” and I believe it. In the first series, we recognize the positive impact of a supportive and empathetic husband and family members who build trust and respect in relationship with his wife and new family member; so she lives happily even when ending up in the wrong era in life. On the other hand, the misery in Hunt (2018) would not have happened if they had a good family (or Matusorn chose other villages to move in after divorce). In the end, the viewers would see that everyone thinks they are responsible for the crime: the policemen, the doctor, the lawyer, neighbors, and friends.
