Shadow the Series Review
Did you know a play titled Hamlet existed before Shakespeare's? We only have its title as a remnant, but its a fact scholar Emma Smith uses to close her analysis of Shakespeare's play, so concerned as it is with identity, inheritance, and the lingering shadows of the past. If you don't know it well, Hamlet's plotting uncle Claudius delivers one of the thematic treatises of the drama as he tries to speed Hamlet on from his grief over the death of his own father, also named Hamlet, "But you must know your father lost a father; that father lost, lost his." Ark Saroj (My Golden Blood), his team of co-writers, and codirector Tung Panich (Taste) understand the gothic depths of that sentiment on impermanence.
Shadow, like its Shakespearean predecessor, is powerful and hypnotically melancholic. And though, it's hard to argue against others that the series is one of the best adaptations or interpolations of Hamlet--you're competing with Star Wars, The Lion King, and Avatar the Last Airbender, there, among others--as is the case with the writing of other Thai BL series (Romeo and Juliet in Bad Buddy, Taming of the Shrew in The Heart Killers, and tbd on Only Friends: Dream On), Shadow seems to understand better the full political context Shakespeare wrote the play to evoke. The grief of a lost father is not the purely existential crisis of being or not being for Shakespeare or for Saroj. England had just undergone multiple regime and religious changes. Who are you meant to be and how can you bear it when those in power before you and the beliefs you're told by them to trust (or else) reveal their faults?
Shadow by my count introduces four different belief systems: modern psychiatric-medical models, Christianity, Buddhism, and folk religion. Throw in some psychedelic beliefs, too. I was well-prepared for a critique of Christianity after the series skillfully prepared the audience for that sequence of events in the first half; the basic premise is a boy from a broken family gets shepherded into a rural Catholic school where submerged secrets and a strange fog-like entity start to seek him out. That assumption changes with a slight-of-hand in the second half, which was released separately a few weeks afterwards to the disappointment of many. The BL plotting people hoped for and the single-minded focus on the evils of Christianity become muddled into something darker and more depressive. It's a queerer work than viewers expected. No belief comes out clean from the dread of Shadow in the end, especially once you watch the eerie question-raising after-credits scene in the last episode. Life hands us from one flawed authority to the next.
The show also points its bloody finger toward Thailand's political upheavals. For example, the 1976 October Massacre--relevant to the upcoming BOC series Shine--finds a large role in the Shadow plot, and the series is set in 1998 (a year referenced by Ark's Trasher Bangkok accomplice, Jojo Tichakorn and his writing team in a politically-minded scene from Only Friends). 1998's the year after Thailand set off the Asian financial crisis and accepted the "People's Constitution" deriving from protests against and subsequent crackdowns in 1992, referred to as "Black May" or "Bloody May."
The Thai Rak Thai party was also established in 1998 by Thaksin Shinawatra, who road a populist wave to Prime Minister before being ousted for corruption by a military coup in 2006 that also rescinded the Constitution. Thaksin's influence, however, still lingered over the country during his exile. He continued to influence ruling parties and his daughter was just suspended from the PM position by court order this month. A few months before Shadow aired, Thaksin was allowed to return to Thailand.
I mention all this not because the series is some direct allegory. The show like the titular shadow is so much harder to define than that. I bring the history up because it's easy to forget or stay ignorant about Thailand's politics while watching so many BLs. Thailand's had 3 coup d'etats during Ark Saroj's lifetime and 8 different constitutions. Needless to say, there's a reason the Shadow's writers are able to incorporate the sense of institutional instability at the core of Hamlet and appreciate its psychological impact.
The actors in the series--other than one female teacher character whose under-written and shallowly performed--more than deliver on the complexity and weight required. You can see why GMMTV snagged Poon after this. He tones down his comedic dopiness to something naturalistic, with a compelling edge of resentment and actual dope. Fluke Natouch, as the out and spiritually-sighted bully-target, shows off why he's the best eternal twink actor in the business (sorry Gun and Cooheart). Fiat and Utt Uttsada ignite the screen--literally for one of them--with their slowly unhinging characters. And no series has made better use of Singto's gravitas, sensuality, and air of mystery. It's Singto's best performance, and I've seen three of his series in full and at least one episode of all his other series at this point. He holds the center as a character for whom the center will not hold.
Horror, especially psychological horror, depends on mood-setting, and Shadow is all lusciously rendered foreboding until it breaks into rare and purposeful moments of cathartic violence. Violence is all too human in the series while the paranormal elements terrify but rarely aggress. The shadow's smoky special effect reads especially disquieting--dangerous, sad, erotic, unknowable. As the central figure, it must and does evoke the tone of the series overall. Many seemed to feel discouraged when that unknowability seems to take over the series. Why can't gay love win??? Even as the plot starts to clarify the past events, even as the source of the shadow reveals itself, our allegiances, trust, and understandings unravel. So did the characters'. I found the mounting ambiguity sublime.
Many discuss discomposure and open endings as a feature of Asian and especially South Asian horror, but it's also why I adore The Blair Witch Project. The desire to see clearly into the darkness, to grasp the answer to the Great Mystery, or to understand the purpose of all this suffering passed down through generations is thwarted. No one really knows the answer entirely. Not science or sociology. Not Christians or Buddhists or Shamans. No kings or voting blocks. Not your father, nor your father's father. You, too, for all your striving and for all the light your movements might provide, will cast shadows that haunt the future just like the shadows that haunt you. There's no end or closure to that fact. No perfect response to resolve it.
