Political Science and Public Administration Journal Ubon Ratchathani University

This issue brings together a collection of scholarly articles that share a common analytical concern: the use of cinema and cultural spaces as lenses through which to examine power relations, human rights, and politics in contemporary societies. Rather than treating films merely as forms of entertainment, the contributions in this issue approach cinema as a political text—one that reflects, interrogates, and challenges structures of power, inequality, and dominant normative orders.

At the theoretical level, the articles demonstrate that cinema can function as a “cultural public sphere” in which issues of human rights, women’s rights, citizenship, justice, and power are articulated and contested in ways that are often more accessible and experientially grounded than the abstract language of law or public policy. Film analysis, therefore, is not limited to interpreting narrative content alone, but extends to reading social structures, power relations, and discourses reproduced through images, sound, characters, and modes of storytelling.

The articles examining Hidden Figures and Selma illuminate dynamics of oppression, discrimination, and struggles for rights within Western democratic contexts. In particular, they foreground the roles of women, African Americans, and ordinary citizens in challenging power structures that formally espouse equality while perpetuating inequality in practice. Meanwhile, the analysis of Gangubai Kathiawadi highlights the politics of gender and class in Indian society, portraying the struggle of marginalized women who transform from victims into agents capable of negotiating power within deeply oppressive social structures.

From another perspective, the articles analyzing Maharaja and The Undertaker broaden the study of politics by examining the interconnections between power, faith, religion, and ritual. These contributions reveal that justice, legitimacy, and the governance of life and death are not confined to modern state institutions or legal systems, but are embedded in beliefs, rituals, and everyday practices in subtle yet powerful ways. At the same time, the article on beauty pageants in Thai society reflects on symbolic power, soft power, and the constraints placed on women’s political expression within public arenas that are often perceived as “apolitical.”

Taken together, the articles in this issue advance a central argument: politics is not limited to state institutions, political parties, or electoral processes. Rather, it is dispersed across cultural spaces—films, rituals, narratives, and symbolic performances. Studying politics through cultural media thus opens new perspectives for understanding power, human rights, and social conflict, particularly in an era in which politics is increasingly intertwined with emotions, identities, and lived experiences.

The Editorial Board hopes that this issue will contribute to expanding the horizons of political science and public administration beyond institutional analysis, toward a deeper engagement with politics in everyday life. It is our aspiration that these articles will stimulate further scholarly debate on the roles of culture, media, and the arts in reproducing, negotiating, or challenging structures of power and inequality in contemporary societies.