Thai television soaps under fire for plotlines depicting rape as romantic

In a famous scene from Thailand’s award-winning soap opera The Power of Shadows, the handsome protagonist gets drunk and rapes the leading lady. He later begs her forgiveness, and the producers say they will live happily ever after in the sequel.

Boy Meets Girl, Boy Rapes Girl, Boy Marries Girl. The premise is so common in Thailand’s popular primetime melodramas that it could be called a national twist on the universal romantic plotline. But calls for change are growing.

The recent rape and murder of a girl on an overnight train in Thailand has focused national outrage on messages in popular culture that trivialise — and some say even encourage — rape.

Even the powerful general who took over the country in a coup this year had to apologise after suggesting that women who wear bikinis on the beach are vulnerable to sexual assault.

Many in the soap opera industry continue to defend sexual violence, in part, as a key to high ratings in a fiercely competitive industry that draws more than 18 million viewers a night to network television, nearly a quarter of Thailand’s population. Award-winning director Sitthiwat Tappan even describes some rape scenes as a sort of public service.

"There might be a scene where a woman is dressed sexy, and she walks past a man who has been drinking, and it shows on his face that he’s aroused and wants her," Sitthiwat said. "In the end, she succumbs to the physical power of the man.