In one of the most memorable scenes of Gie (2005), Riri Riza’s high budget film about the life of a Chinese-born Indonesian student activist Soe Hok Gie in the 1960s, students are marching in the city streets to protest against President Sukarno. This demonstration is accompanied by non diegetic music: Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone sung by an Indonesian band. Dylan’s anti-establishment lyrics fits very well with the youthful, rebellious spirit of the students, yet the use of an American song to challenge the authority of a left-authoritarian president demands attention to the intersection between the local and the global as well as nationalism and popular culture.

Riri Riza’s entrance to the Indonesian film industry was marked by Kuldesak (Cul de Sac, 1998), a groundbreaking youth film made by 4 directors at the end of Suharto regime with a conscious reference to American popular culture such as Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver, American grunge music, and icons from director Quentin Tarantino to alternative musician Kurt Cobain. Breaking away from the older generation of filmmakers, Kuldesak directors are aware that many people despise the film because “it was too American”[1]. While for older filmmakers and film critics America is equal to low quality and mass culture (Said 1991: 7), Riri Riza’s generation asserts their identity by embracing American-ness. This paper intends to explore why the idea of America, particularly Hollywood, is inseparable from the cultural and national imagination in Indonesia; it also attempts to see how America is reappropriated by contemporary Indonesian filmmakers to challenge the dominant power.

Tracing the Freedom
The foreign relation between Indonesia and the United States only began in 1960s, especially after Suharto came to power and shifted gear from communist-nationalist politics to pro U.S. militarism. The United States was not interested in Indonesia at least until Sukarno claimed himself as a resistant enemy with anti-U.S. rhetoric and alignment with Soviet Union and China. During and shortly after World War II, United States only looked at one-dimensional Indonesia as a model of ‘good assimilation politics’ in which the natives accepted Dutch colonialism for its reform projects (Bradley 2000: 66). On the other hand, Indonesians imagined the United States as unfamiliar – due to the limited contact between the two countries – yet idealized its values of liberty and democracy (Weinstein 1976: 68). During Japanese occupation, Indonesian nationalists were hoping for the United States to ‘save’ them; similarly during Soekarno’s authoritarian regime, America became a part of the opposition between the liberal and the communists. The image that links student demonstration and Bon Dylan’s song as a part of American popular culture in Gie resonates the 1960s’ situation.

Indonesia’s relation with U.S. since World War II has taken different shapes. From limited contact and ignorance in the World War, the anti-American movement during Sukarno, Suharto’s association with U.S. imperial power, and today’s tension after the 9/11, the nature of foreign relations between the two countries has been fluctuating. Today, Indonesia under U.S. imagination is “the largest Muslim country in the world.” Despite the existence of diverse beliefs and religions in Indonesia, the Muslim label seems inseparable from Indonesia. Indonesian names and bodies, especially male, suddenly become racialized and subjected to scrutiny in the United States. On the other hand, anti-American movements become more rampant in Indonesia. After 9/11 Muslim organizations become a more legible spectacle on television for rallying demonstrations against the U.S. in addition to secular organizations, which have long criticized American imperialism as well as intervention in the conflicts in Aceh and East Timor. At the same time, Indonesian middle class female professionals, feeling oppressed by Indonesian strong patriarchal tradition, can relate to the Sex and the City serials and perceive the successful, single, white heterosexual female characters as their heroines. The serials’ ignorance toward the world outside the protagonists’ race and class is not more salient to Indonesian female audience than the theme of female empowerment. The diverse reception of America indicates that while the United States has been linked with negative associations such as predatory empire and commercialism, the idea of “America” remains powerful and influential in Indonesian popular culture.

The similarity between 1960s students portrayed in Gie and Sex and the City aficionados lies in the imagination of America as a symbol of transgression of the social norms and authority figures. America is equal to the freedom to choose. Indonesian women remain unmarried in their 30s are considered as ‘unmarketable’ women who cannot find potential husbands, yet when Carrie Bradshaw and her friends remain single, it is viewed as an attractive choice. Similarly, Carrie might make decisions that are not politically correct in the feminist framework, such as being involved in a romantic yet unequal relationship or spending all her money for shoes. It is nevertheless seen as freedom to choose instead of victimization.

The association between America and the value of liberty can be traced back to the Cold War period in which the United States began to see Asian region as an important site for the extension of U.S. political, military, and economic power. Christina Klein argues that in order to attain global power in the age of decolonialization, United States built its empire precisely by distancing itself from the image of oppression and colonialism (Klein 2003: 9). This empire operated through what Mary Louise Pratt calls “narratives of anti-conquest” to promote American ideas of equality, tolerance, and universal humanitarianism (13). Klein further states that these narratives are packaged in the sentimental rhetoric in popular culture such as novels, travel writing, and musicals. The appeal of American sentimentalism in Indonesia could be seen in the musical genre such as Terimalah Laguku (Accept My Song, 1953), directed by D. Djajakusuma and written by Asrul Sani, who studied film at UCLA. This film disturbed some nationalist Indonesian directors for simply offering dreams, yet it was very successful that a series of light musicals were produced afterwards (Said 1991: 55). Asrul Sani, with his American education background, later directed Pagar Kawat Berduri (The Barbed Wire Fence, 1963), a film about an Indonesian military officer who works for the Dutch colonial government, embodying “the principle of ‘Universal Humanism’ and a ‘hero of humanity’.” The film was criticized by LEKRA, a communist cultural organization, for defending colonialism and imperialism (67). The antagonism between Asrul Sani and LEKRA mirrors the cold war polarities — imagined by the U.S. — between those who believed in individual liberty and “totalitarian regimes” (Klein 2003, 22).

Klein agrees with Bruce Cumming, who views the Cold War in terms of “international integration,” creating a global imaginary that binds U.S. and other countries in an interdependent relationship. He reflects on today’s globalized world as “the anticipated consequence, the unfolding of the liberal hegemony that American internationalists like Acheson envisioned in the peculiarly American moment of 1945” (267). Following this trail of thought, Inderpal Grewal’s Transnational America focuses on the post-cold war U.S. global power and suggests that we see the United States not merely as an imperialist nation-state but “a discourse of neoliberalism making possible struggles for rights through consumerist practices and imaginaries that came to be used both inside and outside the territorial boundaries of the United States” (2005: 2). The discourses of freedom and choice, with genealogies rooted in the rhetoric of American exceptionalism in the Cold War era, enable the United States to spread and preserve its influence in many parts of the world. The nation boundaries of America are expanding, producing “subjects outside its territorial boundaries in its ability to disseminate neoliberal technologies through multiple channels.” Grewal reveals that people in South Asia and South Asian diaspora in the United States are linked in these transnational connections with both South Asian and American identities converge in their new, hybrid identity.

Grewal uses the term “transnational connectivities” in which “subjects, technologies, and ethical practices were created through transnational networks and global connections of many different types and within which the ‘global’ and the ‘universal’ were created as linked and dominant concepts” (3). Although Indonesian diaspora in the United States is not plenty nor very influential, U.S. global power has contributed in the formation of cosmopolitan figures who are capable of moving across border with flexibility. The difference between Riri Riza’s generation and the older generation of Indonesian filmmakers is the greater involvement of new generation in these “transnational connectivities.” Although some of the older generation of Indonesian filmmakers received their education in either the United States or the Soviet Union, most of them started their career in local theatre groups and learned filmmaking through apprenticeship with more established directors. Today, Indonesian mainstream filmmaking is populated by middle-class Western graduates such as Riri Riza, Nan Achnas, Nia DiNata, and Rudy Soedjarwo, who entered the film industry with a conscious attempt to break the tie with the older generation of filmmakers. Within Grewal’s framework that links neoliberalism to consumer culture, this new generation consumes the global and in turns becomes the producer of the global for the local market. This process, furthermore, is reversible, as one can see in Nia diNata’s film production strategy. Studying filmmaking at NYU, diNata transfers her education and cultural knowledge by making Arisan (The Gathering), a film about the lives westernized, upper-class Indonesians in the urban Jakarta setting. Yet she also, more than any other directors, actively participates in American film festivals such as Tribeca in New York and Palm Spring in Los Angeles, aided by Indonesian students and immigrants who reside in the U.S[2].

Localizing America
Nia diNata’s strategy shows that transnational connectivities need to be understood not only as the dissemination of U.S. cultural hegemony by cosmopolitan subjects but also the process in which the local is circulated in the global arena. In addition, while Indonesian filmmakers are attracted to the idea of individual freedom characterizing neoliberalism, the conception of America is always appropriated within the local context, indicating that cinema does not only simply reflect the hierarchy between the hegemony and its passive receiver.

In a deleted scene in Gie, Riri Riza describes Gie’s meeting with Sumitro, former minister during Sukarno era who lost his job and had to live in the United States because of his controversial political vision. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts, Sumitro welcomes Gie in his luxurious house with expensive gifts from the United States. Sumitro is portrayed as a hedonistic man who comes to Indonesia from America to save Indonesian people from Sukarno’s left-wing authoritarianism. His American-ness is emphasized as he mixes Indonesian language with English, while Gie speaks only in Indonesian. When he asks whether Gie would continue giving him support, Gie, with a cynical expression framed in close up, replies in English, “It depends on where you stand, Sir.” Gie’s comment foreshadows the later part of the film, where Sumitro becomes a corrupt minister in Suharto’s New Order cabinet.

“America” in this scene serves as foreshadowing signs of Sumitro’s greed and corruption; it represents wealth, snobbish attitude, and foreignness. Most of all, the gifts Sumitro brought from the U.S. resonate today’s bleak image of America as an insincere helper of unfortunate nations. With this scene removed, Sumitro’s presence is substituted by his gift delivered by an assistant to Gie. The elimination of Sumitro and his American-ness obscures the context of the gift and deletes the film’s criticism toward America. The lack of critique posed by contemporary Indonesian films toward America might be seen as the difficulty to deconstruct deep-seated influence of the U.S. in the national imaginings. This is partly true, yet looking at it in another way, this phenomenon also shows that criticizing United States is not so much an important agenda as criticizing the government.

A couple of months before Gie was launched, in a casual conversation, Riza mentioned Mike Nichols’ Closer and refered to Jude Law’s character in the film as a contemporary face of manhood: sensitive, fragile, and often indecisive. He does not explicitly say how much American fictionalized character has affected his Chinese-Indonesian hero, Soe Hok Gie; however, reading Gie in relation to Riza’s earlier film, Kuldesak, will show that he challenges Indonesian model of masculinity, a combination of Suharto’s masculine militarism and the Javanese priyayi model of emotional restraint. In order to do this, he creates new male characters closer to Kurt Cobain and Jude Law, with lack of cultural reference to Indonesian archetypal male. Produced at the dawn of Suharto’s power, Kuldesak presents male protagonists who are ‘unproductive’ when perceived under the New Order masculine norms. Having no real jobs and money, all they do is dreaming to be an artist, either as musician or filmmaker. One male character who wants to make a movie, Aksan, declares that his heroes are Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez instead of established filmmakers of the New Order era such as Syumanjaya – his real father outside the film — and Teguh Karya. These young generations are contrasted to the typical New Order Bapak (Father), a man associated with power, hierarchy, and bureaucracy. Yosef Gamarhada, a successful businessman who rapes his own female employees represents this type of manhood and is visualized as an aging dinosaur. Riza counters New Order patriarchal norms with his Cobain-like heroes: withdrawn, angry, vulnerable, reluctant to be fit into the established system, threatening for their unregulated bodies.

Kuldesak is obviously an Americanized youth film, especially when it is compared to mainstream Indonesian cinema during New Order that promotes Indonesian-ness as an umbrella unifying more than 300 ethnic groups from Aceh to Timor. Yet “America” here is not simply a celebration of American dream; it is used within the Indonesian context to reinvent the concept of resistance.

A Real Indonesian Face?
Salim Said in his study on the political and social forces that have shaped Indonesian film until 1980s begins his book by questioning why there are so many Indonesian films with poor qualities, selling only sex, violence, and luxurious lifestyles that do not show “the real Indonesian face” (1991: 3). The main reason to this, according to Said, is based on the history of commercialism in Indonesian film history. Early films are produced by Shanghai or Indonesian-born Chinese merchants who were “foreign” and had “separate status;” thus they failed to show the actual representation of Indonesia (5). These Chinese producers, furthermore, used Hollywood genre as a standard since Hollywood produces films that fits with the public taste (9). Said’s premise, however, draws a question: how would we define– if there is any — ”a real Indonesian face”?

By creating a binary between Indonesia and ‘foreign’ (Chinese/ American) influences, Said fails to see how foreignness takes part in the process of reimagining Indonesia. Likewise, his dichotomy between idealistic Indonesian filmmakers (Usmar Ismail, Syumanjaya, Teguh Karya) and Hollywood genre as “a commodity for mass consumption” cannot explain how new Indonesian filmmakers negotiate between redefinition of nationhood and the need to compromise with the market’s taste. America has extended its nation boundaries, and the imagined America in Indonesian cinema is a part of this global process. However, America is not a singular hegemonic power since it is only an element meshed and reconstituted into the larger idea of Indonesian-ness. Gie and Kuldesak demonstrates that the discourse of freedom is localized to redefine nationalism in Indonesian cinema. America is a part, but not the driving force, in Riri Riza’s question of both national and gender identity. As we understand his hero as a hybrid between the Chinese Indonesian Soe Hok Gie and the American vulnerable male model of Kurt Cobain, we can see how new generation of Indonesian filmmakers imagine a more fluid national identity that transcend gender, ethnic, and nation boundaries.

Endnote
[1] Amir Muhammad, “Lesson From Indonesia”(www.kakiseni.com: January 29, 2002).
[2] Each Indonesian director has his/ her own imagined market. Garin Nugroho, the most prominent Indonesian filmmaker, targets his films mostly for European market, especially Cannes Film Festival.

Intan Paramaditha
LTCS 210 “Transnationalism & American Century in Asia”
Final Paper/ Prof. Lisa Yoneyama

Bibliography
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Klein, Christina. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003.

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