Many readers will be familiar with the long-running Adventures of the Blob on certain Thai TV channels in the war against cigarettes. When movies are shown, the blob races around the screen in pursuit of rogue cigarettes and attempts to blob them out to protect defenceless viewers. Unsurprisingly, the ridiculous blob only succeeds in irritating the TV audience. The absurdity of it all was highlighted recently during a gangster movie in which nearly everyone in the room was smoking. This prompted a squadron of blobs to go whizzing across the screen, fighting a losing battle and reducing a supposedly serious scene into a foggy farce.
It seems the Chinese authorities might have become inspired by the Thai Blob for their own style of censorship, but rather than cigarettes, the target is ears, or to use the correct technical term, "lugholes". The move is apparently directed at discouraging young men from wearing earrings. Images from some Chinese TV and video series show young male actors with blobs covering their bejewelled ears. The pixelation looks rather odd and the performers are none too happy about their blobby earlobes.
The authorities reportedly want "men to look like men" and Chinese pop stars have come under fire in a recent official publication that referred to the singers creating a generation of "sissy boys". However, what the authorities will soon learn is that censoring anything will only make it more popular.
Hello sailor
In these times of people covering themselves in tattoos, by comparison men wearing earrings seems rather tame. I admit to being brought up in an era when life was much more straightforward, when women wore earrings and men didn't. It was as simple as that. And the only chance of spotting a tattoo was visiting a fairground to gawk at the Tattooed Lady. I remember as a teenager paying sixpence for the privilege of seeing a plump woman with bright red lipstick, covered from head to foot in tattoos. I had nightmares for a week.
Sailors have always been an exception to the rule, however. Apart from being the only people who wore tattoos in those days, they were also occasionally spotted sporting earrings. Apparently in ancient times seamen, particularly pirates, wore earrings so that if their bodies were washed up, or if they died in a distant land, the earrings would raise enough money to pay for a coffin.
Although men wearing earrings goes way back in history, in modern times it only began to surface in the 1960s and was mainly associated with musicians, hippies or the gay community. Punk rock bands went a step further, some of them sticking safety pins though their ear lobes. It became more glamorous with singers like Elton John and George Michael sporting diamond-studded earrings and now many male celebrities find it hard to resist decorating their lugs.
Easy on the ear
Most people are probably not particularly bothered if men wear earrings or not -- each to his own and all that. However, when you get old and wrinkly you appreciate ears more for the important gift of hearing, rather than being appendages from which to dangle bangles. Like tattoos, it's a matter of individual taste.
However, if I had shown up at home during my youth sporting an earring my mum would have fainted on the spot. I also suspect that if I appeared at the Bangkok Post tomorrow morning wearing earrings they might just send for the men in white coats to escort me to the funny farm.
Dangling distraction
About a decade ago earrings briefly dominated Thai television news in somewhat unorthodox fashion. Two female news anchors on one of the Thai channels began donning increasingly dangly earrings which were quite eye-catching, if a bit distracting.
Soon there was far more interest in what earrings the ladies were wearing than the news itself, although that was quite understandable as the news was not exactly entertaining. However, it all became too much of a distraction and the ladies had to compromise with "sensible" earrings which I am sure they hated. At least the "danglers" livened up the TV news for a while.
Heroes of Berlin
In last week's column concerning walls, I omitted mention of perhaps the most infamous structure of all time, the Berlin Wall which divided the German city into East and West from 1961-89. We are all aware of the horrors of that awful edifice, so let's look on the bright side and recall the role of music in contributing to the fall of the Wall.
I remember getting a real buzz when seeing images of David Bowie holding a concert right next to the Wall in 1987 as part of his Glass Spider Tour. Thousands of East Berliners gathered on the other side of the Wall to listen to the concert and they erupted with enthusiasm when Bowie launched into his anthem, Heroes, which he wrote in Berlin.
Later they began chanting "the Wall must fall" and hundreds were arrested. When Bowie died in 2016, the German government praised the musician for "helping to bring down the Wall".
In 1988, Bruce Springsteen held a concert in East Berlin itself and received such a rapturous reception that you just knew it wouldn't be long before the Wall came tumbling down.
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