The Ledger Group (Charlie Silapee) | Katoey pen het (It’s All Because of a Katoey) / 1954

winning the wig

by Douglas Messerli

 

The Ledger Group (Charlie Silapee) (director) Katoey pen het (It’s All Because of a Katoey) / 1954

 

This silent film with Thai subtitles was directed by Charlie Silapee, an employee of Monthon Bank; the Ledger Group, to which its direction was attributed, are probably a group of amateur filmmakers who worked at the same bank. The Silapees were a wealthy family with roots back to the court of King Rama VI.

 

    What is important about this work is that it may be the earliest example of a transwoman or effeminate gay man appearing in Thai cinema, long before the LGBTQ rainbow even existed. A “katoey” is a title generally designating male-to-female transgender figures, but it also applies to the what the Thai culture describes as “she-males” and to effeminate men.

      In this case, however, the transgender beauty is convincing enough as a woman that when she appears at the gentlemen’s club to pick up her boyfriend, nearly all the of the pool-playing gents drool over her, and when the member of their group, a guitar player, heads off to the country for a little outdoor sexual enjoyment, several of them join him in the car as others follow soon after, one of their member going so far as to engage the boyfriend in battle involving fisticuffs and wrestling—although at moments the fight seems so comical that one wonders whether the two men are just engaging in battle to get their hands on the other’s body. Another, highly discoordinated local also joins in on the attempt to take her away from her lover, while she angrily protests.

 

    The three of them now argue for procession of the beauty, with the boyfriend finally pulling her away and reclaiming his prize the other two men continue to struggle, the local finally handcuffing the would-be suitor to a post and pulling several papers from his pocket before letting him go.

      Meanwhile he manages to also get rid of the original boyfriend, while his attentions are met with increasing pushes of rejection by the katoey. She finally pulls violently away, but he wins the struggle symbolically by retaining her wig, evidently revealing to those who didn’t know that the boyfriend loved a woman with a cock.

      The “katoey” was long a comic character in Thai literature, but the fact that in this case she is the lover or fiancée of one of the men of the gentleman’s club suggests a far more progressive attitude than was common in this period.

       Moreover, this film is believed to be the oldest Thai film with an LGBTQ figure.

 

Los Angeles, October 11, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2022).