#teacher waree

[respectthepetty]

I know we are supposed to dislike Teacher Waree, mostly after she humiliated Akk in front of the entire class this past episode, but..

LOOK AT HER!

I'd let her yell at me. I'd gladly sit in that front row every day so she could yell at me.

The show couldn't put activist Sine Inthira in this role and expect me to hate her.

You want me to be mad at Thun's mom from He's Coming to Me?!

Not going to happen. I can't do it.

[pigeonriot]

when you got a picnic at 10 but you gotta be an authorative teacher scolding an entire class and then a single student in front of the whole class at 9 first

[gillianthecat]

[thefreeblog]

While we are on topic of suits the best suits we got till now in BLs

All of Tang Yi suits tbh

All her suit skirts but she especially slayed in this hot pink.

[nongnaos]

So @grapejuicegay asked about the colour theory of Teacher Sani and Waree wearing blue and red repectively during the scene where the protestors fake/doll body is burned. I theorised that red stood for progress and change (and generally Ayan), while blue is clearly for Suppalo, tradition and opression. So why would Sani wear blue and Waree red in this fairly pivotal scene? Honestly, I don't think its hugely clear but I'm giving it a guess.

(I go through about 4 hours of research into Thai clothing and colour theory and this post gets long so I'm warning you now.)

In terms of Teacher Waree, the colour of her clothes doesn't seem to matter hugely, its constantly changing and always very vivid colours, but the style stays almost exactly the same. The fabric and cut of her clothes are always almost identical, and are a take on traditional clothing.

Wait, hold up, I started doing a little research to find out more about this style of traditional clothing and it's fascinating. (Before we get into this, for age reference, the actress that plays Waree was born in 1980) So, in 1932, Field Marshal Plaek (yes, that Field Marshall Plaek, who Waree gave us a class on, more on this later) was one of the leaders in part of the People's Party who stage a coup and overthrew the absolute monarchy to create a "constitutional monarchy" where a government and the monarchy work together. In 1938 he becomes the Prime Minister and, as The Eclipse points out, this guy was a military dictator and the monarchy's power was pretty much wiped out. During this term in office, from 1938-1944, he set up some cultural mandates known as the Thai Cultural Revolution, one of which was about Thai dress, in an attempt to modernize and westernize them. From wiki:

"Appropriate dress for Thai people consists of:

"Uniforms, as position and opportunity permits;

"Polite international-style attire;

"Polite traditional attire."

He becomes Prime Minister again for 1948-1957, during which a new King and Queen are sworn in. In the 1960's they feel the need to also try to reform Thai dress. The Queen creates a national Thai costume with 8 separate outfits for women in an attempt to create unity in the Thai identity. One of which is the Thai Chitlada:

One article I read talked about this style being somewhat similar to a men's traditional outfit. Described as "A mandarin-collared, five-button jacket, the Rajpattern was inspired by colonial British dignitaries' style (the biggest of yikes) and brought to Thailand through India". Similar to a Nehru jacket.

Which is wild, on one hand you have a dictator who is all for Thai nationalism trying to modernize clothing by Westernizing it who gets kicked out of his position. On the other a Queen using the help of a French designer to create traditional-inspired modern Thai clothes based on fabrics of extant garments from the Royal Treasury, but with some of the style influenced by uhh.. the british military? If anyone knows more please feel free to tell me, my ask box is always open and my mind is always empty. This is literally a 1am rabbithole of wikipedia and fashion blogs.

Back to Teacher Waree! When she's talking about Plaek and uniforms to the students, Ayan asks her if she thinks students should still wear uniforms to which she says yes, to maintain orderliness. Which is funny to me because she is someone who is wearing probably overly formal clothing in a school which seemingly has some sort of black uniform that she.. doesn't wear. Literally just "I like uniforms" "so does dictator Plaek" "well, I don't wear them!".

So, I feel like generally her outfits are made in a style that represents traditional views, and perhaps the colours are more in line with "traditional femininity". Except that one flashback where they're interviewing Sani for the job and Waree is wearing a Suppalo Suit and honestly maybe they just knew seeing her in actual suits would be too much for my gay brain to handle bc she's just so hot.

(them mad ms paint skillz)

(Took a break, painted some walls, lost power due to a storm, came back probably loopy from paint fumes and tiredness.. bon appetit)

So, for Teacher Sani, she tends to wear fairly neutral colours: white, light pink, black, and green but she does have a pale blue suit and a dark blue/navy one which she wears when Wat starts talking to her about being unhappy and wanting to make films. As she walks away after talking to Wat you can see she's wearing heels that are black but with a red sole. like a Louboutin (bottom right, if you squint).

So I think her wearing a fair amount of red and blue is probably to show her inner conflict between following Suppalo's rules and wanting change/desire to help the students. She's sometimes show physically on the side of the students, standing with them and often against Chadok.

Which is also the case during the doll burning where she's standing with the protestors and against Chadok and Waree. Interestingly, Thua and Namo are both standing beside Chadok, so a point towards the theory of either or both of them being the second Suppalo curse executer.

Also she's always shown wearing a star necklace. I don't know that that has any specific relevance to the plot but it carries on the planet aesthetic and it's very cute.

One last thing I looked up was the use of colour in Thai culture, and there's a specific difference between blue, light blue, and dark blue and also a difference between red and orange-red. (Decide for yourself if Waree's one red outfit veers more towards the orange-red spectrum. Pls ignore my insane editing of these images though.) These also correspond to specific days with some colours being lucky or unlucky on certain days and different on others. For example, on Sunday, red is lucky and blue is unlucky. Blue is never lucky, but light blue is. The same article says that "Color symbolism in Thailand is heavily influenced by political parties. Red is connected to the People’s Alliance for Democracy. The party is against monarchy and promotes democracy. This party’s followers wear red color clothing during demonstrations and public gatherings to show their support. " So they really were not being subtle at all with these choices.

Some final thoughts, Sani usually pairs her blue suit with a dark red lipstick, which I love.

Also when she first joins the school she seems to be wearing more neutral colours and gets pulled more towards blue and red as she goes. One of the first times she joins the other teachers she's wearing white while everyone else is wearing black except Waree in her bright pink. Also, and its very hard to get a picture of, the female teachers all have pink or light purple rectangle lunchboxes, while the male teachers all have blue or green rectangle lunchboxes. Except Sani who has one of those stackable round ones in plain metal AND Waree who has a similar round one but with a blue floral design.

So there's the similar lunchboxes and both of them wearing multiple of the same outfits in block colours, with Waree's being vibrant and Sani's typically being more muted. If Chadok is who Akk could become if he stays in this system, I'd wager that Waree is who Sani could become if she also bends to this school's will.

Finally, let's just have a moment for the prettiest of all the outfits so far:

[loverofthewrongkind]

teacher waree is such a baddie, hope my queen gets a redemption arc

[gillianthecat]

Deep Fuchsia Satin

I'm so fascinated by the costuming choice to have Teacher Waree be the only character at the school in bright colors. The Eclipse seems to be very deliberate about its political allegory, so I suspect there's a reason for it, but as of yet, I'm not sure what.

Someone (maybe @respectthepetty?) pointed out that her expensive clothes show her as wealthy in contrast to Teacher Sani's precarious class position. But they could have done that with authoritarian black or navy blue. Why the vibrant colors? There is quite likely some symbolism I'm missing here because I'm not Thai.

[gillianthecat]

Pure White Satin

There wasn't much about her this week. In the glimpse we got she remains her authoritarian self.