The Unconscious is Structured like an Archive: “Epic” Politics and Postmodernity in Indonesian Cinema
Article
Looking beyond an understanding of the modern world as mainly determined by the development of European and American capitalism, this article closely reads the popular 1970 Indonesian film Bernafas dalam Lumpur (Breathing in Mud, Tourino Djunaidy). The film is taken as an archival document of the absorption of global, and especially local stylistic and narrative modes into Indonesian cinema at a key historical moment: the period following the mass violence of 1965-66 during the rise of dictator Suharto. I argue that Bernafas and other contemporary Indonesian films anticipate the “postmodern” engagement with past events and dramatic forms that Fredric Jameson and other critics see inflecting American and European cinema, particularly after the mid 1970s. In the context of its production and reception post-1965, Bernafas’s “epic” sense of time and form has an uncanny, archival function, confronting audiences with spectres of the disturbing, senselessly violent events that had been sealed from public discussion or memorialization by the censorious policies of the emergent Suharto state.
Exploiting Indonesia: From Primitives to Outraged Fugitives
Article
Indonesian exploitation films emerged from a particular political economy of the New Order and its film industry. From Primitif (1979) to Without Mercy (Outraged Fugitive) (1995), about 50 of these exploitation films were produced. Seen within the dominant paradigm of the time, these films were exploitative and contributed nothing to national development or national culture. However, the producers and filmmakers behind these films pioneered new transnational connections as they tried to tap into global film markets and networks. This article explores the historical and structural background to the Indonesian exploitation films, and the aspirations behind their production. By tapping into global film markets, and following genre trends, Indonesian producers hoped to emulate the success of exploitation films globally. By the mid-1990, just as the domestic film market collapsed and the arrival of television, Indonesian film producers had put Indonesia on the map of global cinema. Today Indonesian films of the period have begun to take on cult status as fans and others rediscover this colorful cinematic past.
The Earth is Getting Hotter: Urban Inferno and Outsider Women’s Collectives in Bumi Makin Panas
Article
Ali Shahab’s controversial 1973 film Bumi Makin Panas (The Earth is Getting Hotter) paints a scalding portrait of rapid urbanization and capitalization during Indonesia’s early New Order years. Jakarta, the capital city, if not quite hell, is closer to a Marxian state of truth in which ideology – for Marx a pervasive, camera obscura-like “inversion” of the actual state of affairs under capitalism – appears to have suddenly capsized; set in a seething urban reality of open hypocrisy, exploitation, and violence, the film functions as material nightmare to the vapid moralist-humanist dreams produced and sold by the state and its agents. Yet while Marx sought to ground his critique in “real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process” (1947: 47), Shahab, who also wrote Bumi Makin Panas, perceived a different locus of truth: the brothel and its female laborers. As a magnet for those perhaps most thoroughly (and quickly) dispossessed by Indonesia’s rapid shift to the right following the rise of Suharto seven years earlier – poor, formally uneducated women – Shahab sees in the brothel a central node of the morally bankrupt urban economy. Yet therein lies its ostensibly utopian potential as a collective space in which women simultaneously cater to, and learn to understand, exploit and shield themselves from, the unbridled “male” desire (pervading both men and women in positions of power) that is burning through city and nation.
Decoding “The New Order”: Audience Interpretations of the 20th Philippine Advertising Congress Television Commercials
Article
This study looks at a series of television commercials that featured the Aetas, a Philippine indigenous group, which promoted the 20th Philippine Advertising Congress (PAC) and its theme “The New Order.” Employing Hall’s encoding/decoding model and Croteau and Hoynes’ model of media and the social world, this study sought to answer the question: Does cultural background play a role in shaping audience interpretations of mediated representations of indigenous peoples and other “othered” racial groups? Focus group discussions with “indigenous” and ‘non-indigenous’ audiences suggest that along with cultural background, political affiliations and personal experiences with indigenous peoples are influential in decoding the representations of Aetas found in the PAC commercials. However, the finding that both audience groups decoded the commercials in a negotiated manner raises significant questions about the systems of knowledge upon which racial discrimination is founded.
