Thai state film incentives and soft power: overseas productions and ‘positivity’

Designed to encourage and attract overseas filmmakers and studios to film their products in Thailand, Thai state film incentives (SFIs) are a significant means to generate revenue for the Thai creative industries and are part of positioning the nation as a digital content hub and an ‘upper-income nation’. In contrast to the dominant global understanding of this phenomenon, however, Thai SFIs also seek to generate revenue through not only incentivizing filmmakers to set their films on location in Thailand but also to construct a ‘positive’ depiction of this nation, one that relies upon the ‘flourishing’ of Thainess through emphasis upon specified objective content. These ‘positive’ depictions are designed to boost tourism and operate as a significant form of Thai soft power, particularly at a time of rapid social change and political instability, when notions of Thailand and Thainess are unclear and problematic. Privileging emphasis upon objective positivity, however, means that Thai soft power and the SFIs accommodate a familiar Orientalist-inflected construction of Thailand as a ‘work-in-progress’, so potentially undermining the favoured image of Thailand as a sophisticated digital hub and an ‘upper-income nation’.