"Uneducated."

This is what a government official thinks of moviegoers in Thailand.

"They're not intellectuals — that's why we need ratings," Ladda Tangsupachai, 58, head of the Cultural Surveillance Department at the Ministry of Culture, is quoted as saying in a recent article in Time magazine.

The US-based news mag has a recap of the fight over Thailand's proposed new motion picture ratings system.

The battle over the proposed ratings system intensified in April, after the Board of Censors told Apichatpong Weerasethakul to cut four scenes from his critically acclaimed film, Syndromes and a Century, before he could release the film for limited screenings at two Bangkok cinemas.

Apichatpong refused, saying he'd rather cancel the screenings. However, the Board of Censors still confiscated his film, fearing that the offending images of doctors drinking whisky, a doctor getting an erection in his trousers whilst kissing his girlfriend, a monk playing a guitar and a pair of monks playing with a flying saucer, might somehow be viewed by "uneducated" moviegoers.

"Nobody goes to see films by Apichatpong," Ladda tells Time. "Thai people want to see comedy. We like a laugh."

So, then what would have been the harm in releasing Syndromes uncut, then, if nobody was going to see it?

The proposed ratings law, which is actually even more restrictive than the 1930 Censorship Code still in effect, is coming up for debate in the National Legislative Assembly.

An even bigger debate might be the view of cinema in Thailand - whether it can ever be considered art, or is purely entertainment.

But I don't suppose that's anything the "uneducated" masses could ever consider.