Department of History, National University of Singapore

Men, Masculinities and Symbolic Violence in Recent Indonesian Cinema

Author(s): Marshall Clark
Source: Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Feb., 2004), pp. 113-131
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Department of History, National University
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 113

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 35 (1), pp 113-131 February 2004. Printed in the United Kingdom.
? 2004 The National University of Singapore DOI: S0022463404000062

Men, Masculinities and Symbolic Violence inRecent

Indonesian Cinema
Marshall Clark

This article investigates images of men and masculinities inpost-New Order Indonesian
popular culture, focusing on a recent and path-breaking Indonesian film, Kuldesak. The
theoretical sociology of Pierre Bourdieu is utilised to suggest that if Indonesian women
are to be assisted in their efforts to resist the gender
inequality of Indonesia's patriarchal
gender regime, then the social gendering of men and masculinity must also be understood.

According to Krishna Sen, the majority of the genres of Indonesian films are, by
definition, 'about men and what the films define as men's sphere of action', and while
every film has some female characters, they are in roles so that women's
'only subsidiary
images and actions have a small and/or unimportant function in the narrative'.1 As might
be expected, feminist analysis of Indonesian cinema has focused on women. Meanwhile,
the dominance of men has been treated as the 'norm', and portrayals of men in the media
and popular culture have been seen as unproblematic, but masculinity as such has not
been discussed or analysed. Commenting on Western cinema, Steve Neale observed
twenty years ago that 'the images and functions of heterosexual masculinity within main
stream cinema have been left undiscussed'.2 This is no longer the case, especially with
the boom in 'men's studies' over the last fifteen years. An ever-increasing body of work
has been produced regarding men and masculinities, various feminist and
utilising
pro-feminist perspectives. In this respect, critical study of men and men's practices in
Indonesia is long overdue, and the scholarship on Indonesian gender issues has arguably
suffered from the lack of amasculine perspective.
Why use film as a launching pad into an examination of conceptions of Indonesian
masculinities? As Robert Connell has argued, in a society of mass communication, one
of the best ways to study images of dominant forms of masculinity is through media

Marshall Clark is a lecturer in the School of Asian and Studies at the University of Tasmania,
Languages
Australia. He may be contacted at Marshall.Clark@utas.edu.au.
I am very to Lauren Bain, Laine Berman, Keith Foulcher and the two anonymous ISEAS reviewers
grateful
in particular for their helpful comments in the writing of this article; any or errors remain
shortcomings
my responsibility.
1 Krishna Sen, and resistance: of the feminine in New Order cinema', in
'Repression Interpretations
Culture and society inNew Order Indonesia, ed. Virginia Hooker (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford Press,
University
1995), pp. 116-33.
2 Steve Neale, as spectacle: Reflections on men and mainstream cinema', Screen, 24, 6
'Masculinity
(1983): 2-16.

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 114 MARSHALL CLARK

representations in advertisements, television shows and films.3 This is because in mass

communication, representations of gender are more simplified, stylised and exaggerated
than in face-to-face interactions. In Indonesia, there is no doubt that a commercialised
'society of mass communication' has already emerged: with the rise of a larger, more
affluent middle class in the mid-1980s, huge, profitable press empires emerged, and
several privately-owned television stations appeared in the last years of that decade.4
In the Indonesian context, however, it is almost impossible to find any analyses that seek
to examine in detail the ways in which masculinities are inscribed in genres of mass
communication such as film. The sociocultural contexts underpinning such inscriptions
are also equally unexplored.
On rare occasions, this gap in feminist analyses of Indonesian cinema becomes
apparent, is left undiscussed.
but For example, Karl Heider has taken Sen to task for
concluding that in the vast majority of Indonesian films women are passive rather than
active.5 Heider utilises ethnographic research from cultures as diverse as Java, Aceh and
Minangkabau to present some modifications to Sen's argument; most importantly, he
contends that in the domestic arena women are at least equal to men and indeed often
dominant. As Sen herself
suggests later in reference to the teenage romance and drama
genres, it is inwhat Heider terms the 'sentimental' genre of Indonesian film, which plays
out in the domestic arena, that we witness the central women characters playing very
strong and independent roles.6 More importantly, according to Heider these strong
women play opposite males who are usually weak: 'The men are passive, or, if active,
create the disorder which must be salvaged in the end by the women.'7 Heider observes
- -
that there are exceptions weak or foolish women but they are far outnumbered by
weak and foolish men.
Sen responds in turn to Heider's 'cultural' analysis of gender issues in Indonesia by
posing the following question: 'We need to ask, then, when the woman is represented as

powerful or vocal, to what effect and in whose interest is this strength mobilised in the
text?'8 Sen argues elsewhere that any movement of women beyond the domestic sphere
becomes an issue of contention within the film's narrative which can only be resolved
with the restoration of the 'proper' social role of the heroine, that is, in her function as a
mother within a family.9 From a masculinist perspective, the problem with Heider's
analysis is not so much his comments on women in Indonesian films, but rather the lack
of an attempt to analyse in detail the ways inwhich Indonesian men are inscribed in such
a negative fashion.
This article will attempt to redress this relative silence and instigate a discussion on
men in Indonesian film and gender studies. An examination such as this is particularly

3 Robert Connell, Gender and power: Society, the person and sexual politics (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1987).
4 Michael Bodden, 'Satuan-satuan kecil and uncomfortable improvisations in the late night of the New
Order: Democratization, and postcoloniality', in Clearing a space: Postcolonial
postmodernism readings of
modern Indonesian literature, ed. Keith Foulcher and Tony Day (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), pp. 293-324.
5 Karl G. Heider, Indonesian cinema: National culture on screen (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1991.
6 Krishna Sen, Indonesian cinema: Framing the New Order (London: Zed Books Ltd, 1994).
7 Heider, Indonesian cinema, p. 121.
8 Sen, Indonesian cinema, p. 135.
9 Sen, 'Repression and resistance'.

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MASCULINITIES IN RECENT INDONESIAN CINEMA 115

important ifwe wish to see what sort of impact, if any, recent sociopolitical developments
have made on representations of men in post-New Order transitional popular culture.
Not wanting to mistake a synchronie variety of male images for diachronic
change, my
a
argument is modest one, suggesting that changing images of men and masculinities in
recent Indonesian popular culture do not constitute a new phenomenon. After all, from
a historical perspective, there have always been images of men that challenge and subvert
dominant hegemonic patterns of manliness. However, Iwill reiterate that recent social
and political developments have ensured that for the sake of both women and men in
Indonesia, the question of men in Indonesian gender studies needs to be addressed.

Bourdieu
and symbolic violence
As with Indonesian film criticism, in Indonesian gender studies as awhole much has
been written about women and their attempts to liberate themselves in the midst of the
country's patriarchal gender regime.10 However, very little consideration has been given
to any efforts to free Indonesian men from the same dominant patriarchal structures
-
which they, of course, imposed in the first place. In Masculine domination, French
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argues that in order to highlight the effects of masculine
domination on men, the ongoing efforts to liberate women from domination 'must be
accompanied by an effort to free men from the same structures which lead them to help
to impose [domination]'.11
The theoretical approach of this article is underpinned by Bourdieu's exhortation: if
we are to use the term and concept in the Indonesian context, it must mean
'gender'
much more than a code for 'women's studies'. As observed by Dede Oetomo, the increas
ing work on gender among Indonesian academics and activists has been focused dis
proportionately on women: 'the term "gender" is often used as a synonym for "women"
or a euphemism for "feminism" or "feminist", with men not even discussed ... ; rarely if
ever is the construction of masculinity discussed, let alone questioned'.12
This paper will attempt to break this trend and make men and masculinity in
Indonesia a questioned construct, Bourdieu's notion of
primarily through 'symbolic
violence', which he defines as a 'gentle violence, imperceptible and invisible even to its
victims', a violence often exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity. In
other words, symbolic violence occurs when normal human male or female, are
beings,
-
subjected to various forms of violence being denied resources, denied a voice, treated
as inferior or even
feeling inferior - but because 'the dominated apply categories
from the point of view of the dominant', the symbolic violence of domination is thus

10 See, for example, Tineke Hellwig, In the shadow of change: Of women in Indonesian literature (Berkeley:
University of California Centers for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1994); the feminine in
Fantasizing
Indonesia, ed. Laurie J. Sears (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 1996); and Women in Indonesia:
Gender, equity and development, ed. Kathryn Robinson and Sharon Bessell Institute of
(Singapore:
Southeast Asian Studies, 2002).
11 Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine domination, tr. Richard Nice (Stanford: Stanford Press,
University 2001),
p. 114.
12 Dede Oetomo, in Indonesia: Genders, sexualities, and identities in a changing in
'Masculinity society',
Framing the sexual subject: The politics of gender, sexuality, and power, ed. Richard Parker et al
(Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), p. 46.

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 116 MARSHALL CLARK

'misrecognised' as 'natural'.13 In Indonesia, for example, gender relations have been con
structed in terms of symbolic violence, whereby for centuries women have been denied
similar rights and opportunities to -
men, yet for much of this time due to various social,
- women
religious and political pressures could do little to protest against their so-called
inferiority.
Bourdieu explains that patriarchy, then, cannot be understood simply in terms of
coercion by men over women. Rather, patriarchal domination was
engendered precisely
because women misrecognised the symbolic violence to which they were subjected
as something that was natural. Consequently women's acceptance, or misrecognition,
of symbolic violence ensured that they were responsible for reinscribing their own domi
nation. Men too can be caught up in the imprisonment of symbolic violence. In Indone
sia, even as patriarchal constructions of femininity are becoming increasingly challenged,
the disregard of Indonesian gender studies for the question of men - let alone trans
-
gender categories such as band or waria exemplifies the indiscriminate nature of
symbolic violence.14
The fact that much of this form of gentle and invisible violence is treated as entirely
natural is not unique to Indonesia. T have always been astonished', Bourdieu writes in
the opening lines o?Masculine domination,
- the fact that the order of theworld aswe find
by what might be called the paradox ofdoxa
it, with its one-way streets and its no entry signs, whether literal or
figurative, its obligations

and its penalties, is broadly respected; that there are not more transgressions and subver

sions ... or, still more that the established order, with its relations of domina
surprisingly,
tion ... itself so and that the most intolerable conditions of
ultimately perpetuates easily...
existence can so often be perceived as and even natural.15
acceptable

For Bourdieu, 'doxa is a term referring to a set of orthodox values and discourses widely
regarded by the status quo as inherently true and necessary, and 'doxic acceptance'
means total submission to these entirely arbitrary conditions. The seminal film Kuldesak
[Cul-de-sac] (1998) can be usefully read in terms of Bourdieu's paradox of doxa. Accord
ing to numerous media reports, Kuldesak is Indonesia's first-ever film independen [inde
pendent film] ;and given that the New Order allowed little space for experimentation, its
fresh production, focus on the underside of urban youth culture and implicit critique of
the Suharto period ensured that the film was considered as cutting-edge, with some
modest box-office success and popular acclaim within Indonesia.16

13 Bourdieu, Masculine domination, 1-2

(gentle violence)
pp. and 35 (misrecognised).
14 Band or waria have been defined
Boellstorff as persons who themselves as to
by regard belonging
a cmale-to-female, transvestite Tom
subject-position'; Boellstorff, 'Gay and lesbi subjectivities, national

belonging and the new Indonesia', in Robinson and Bessell ed, Women in Indonesia, pp. 92-9.
15 Bourdieu, Masculine domination, p. 1.
16 For a discussion of the broader context for the film, see Krishna Sen and David Hill, Media, culture and

politics in Indonesia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2000). Despite passing references to its under

ground production and the lack of state authorisation, it is not entirely clear on what grounds the Indone
sian press and discussion groups labelled Kuldesak as
Nevertheless, the fact that it broke
'independent'.
all the rules for film production under the New Order ensured that, in the words of Katinka van Heeren,
'there was special about the film'; see Katinka van Heeren, 'The case of Beth: Monopolies
something
and alternative networks for the screening of films in Indonesia in transition', paper presented at HAS

Workshop on Media and Local in Indonesia, Leiden, 2002.

Globalizing Society

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MASCULINITIES IN RECENT INDONESIAN CINEMA 117

However, Bourdieu has suggested elsewhere that art fulfils social functions, and as
such it is deeply embedded in relations of power.17 Creative works, then, no matter how
'independent' or 'cutting-edge' they may appear, do not just represent the imaginings
of a group of artists; they also provide a site in which social and political relations can
be represented, negotiated and manipulated, either deliberately or subconsciously. By
detouring through a discussion of the images of men and masculinities inscribed in
a film such as Kuldesak, we can see the deceptive familiarity of the paradox of doxa, in the
form of symbolic violence and masculine domination. Nevertheless, we will also see that
there are, as always, efforts to resist the 'doxic acceptance' of this symbolic domination.

Marking an 'unmarked' category

Before analysing in detail the portrayal of men in films such as Kuldesak, it is relevant
to note that this article is inspired by what appears to be a sense of ambivalence, border
ing on contempt, towards issues of maleness or masculinity in Indonesia. As was hinted
to say that Indonesian women - and Western
earlier, I do not think it is controversial
feminist scholars - seem unconcerned by issues related to Indonesian men and mascu
linities. This should be no great surprise; after all, for feminists the world over, no matter
what school of feminism, the primary concern is for the needs and problems of women.18
It is also worth observing that Indonesian men have even less to say on the matter of
masculinity, and it is certainly not viewed as a problem. Searching for possible reasons,
Oetomo provides us with a clue when he observes that while is amarked cate
femininity
gory in contemporary Indonesia, 'masculinity is unmarked'. Indonesian men may have
little call for interrogating the status of men and the social construction of masculinity,
as, on paper at least, they have little to complain about. According to Oetomo:

One can make inferences, at best, about Indonesian from the criti
inadequate masculinity
cisms voiced of between women and men. The that is of men
inequalities portrait emerges
as heads of families and as breadwinners, in the public and
always acting operating sphere,
not being responsible for the upbringing of children or the sharing of household work.
In the area of sexuality, one would infer a heterosexual
thinly disguised 'legendary' promis

cuity of men and a consistent role of men as initiators and dominators in heterosexual

intercourse.19

Itmay not be surprising, therefore, that ambivalence on the question of Indonesian

male identity prevails even as issues and practices of gender representation have been
opened up for public debate in contemporary Indonesia. This is especially so in the after
math of the New Order, when the state's homogenising conceptions of gender, and
gendered roles, are undergoing a process of renegotiation. An integral part of this process
is the need to redress, politically and legally, the many insidious consequences of the New
Order's policies of containment and suppression of Indonesian women. It should also
be noted, however, that the laws proposed and ratified as part of this aim - such as Law

17 Pierre Distinctions: A social tr. Richard

Bourdieu, critique of the judgement oftaste, Nice (London:
Routledge, 2002), p. 7.
18 Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, Spreading misandry: The teaching of contempt for men in

popular culture (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2001).

19 Oetomo, in Indonesia', pp. 46 ('unmarked') and 57 (quotation).
'Masculinity

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 118 MARSHALL CLARK

No. 25/2000 concerning the National Planning Program (Propenas) for 2000-04, which
aims to promote gender equality and equity for women both nationally and locally,
and to improve the quality and independence of women's - are
organisations intended
to serve the needs
of women, not those of men.20 Can these new laws, then, benefit
Indonesian society as a whole?
Veiled questions such as these are frequently raised in various contexts by the writers
of Spreading misandry: The teaching of contempt for men in popular culture, who argue
that a culture of misogyny should not be replaced by a culture of misandry, as has

emerged in theWest.21 Although the existence of such a culture in Indonesia can be illus
trated with anecdotal evidence, it is hard to measure the pervasiveness of misandry
through either face-to-face interactions or media representations. More importantly,
muttered jokes aside, a contemptuous or misandric attitude towards Indonesian men
does not appear to have captured the hearts and minds of Indonesia's long-suffering
women. Nevertheless, as internal social and political developments coupled with the
process of globalisation present challenges to the existing gender order in Indonesia, it
can be argued that it is increasingly important to respond to an unspoken aspect of
the post-New Order process of gender renegotiation, namely the question of men and
masculinities.
The term 'masculinities' is used here deliberately as a recognition of the shifting of
the conceptual focus of 'masculinity' to 'masculinities' in international men's studies a
decade ago, led by Robert Connell, 'to encapsulate both the diversity and potential fluid
ity of the processes involved in men being men'.22 Although there are suggestions that
during the New Order the upper-class Javanese priyayi model of emotional self-restraint
was widely deployed as an 'ideal' pattern of masculine behaviour, the ways in which
men and boys in Indonesia perceive and experience manhood are far more diverse and
fluid than this 'ideal', even within Java itself.23 The particular historical context of post
Suharto Indonesia is no exception. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly evident that the
'ideal' model of masculine behaviour is exactly that, just a model. This is especially
so with the growing influence of Western feminism, the increase in grassroots women's
activism, the outdated nature of the New Order's dominant patriarchal gender order,
the rising numbers of Indonesian women with tertiary qualifications and a desire for
careers, and the large numbers of unemployed and underemployed men since the Asian
economic crisis and the Bali bombings. In non-Western countries such as Brazil, the
debate on men and masculinities was instigated by similar socio-economic factors,
spearheaded by feminist activism.24 In Indonesia, no 'debate' as such has occurred,
but Indonesian-language men's magazines such asMen sHealth are a new phenomenon,

20 Soedarti Surbakti, 'Gender mainstreaming and sex-disaggregated data', in Robinson and Bessell ed,
Women in Indonesia, pp. 209-18.
21 Nathanson and Young, Spreading misandry.
22 Bob Pease and Keith Pringle, 'Introduction: and gender in a global
Studying men's practices relations
context', in A man s world?
Changing men's practices in a globalised world, ed. Bob Pease and Keith Pringle

(London: Zed Books, 2001), p. 2.

23 Harry Aveling, Secrets need words: Indonesian poetry, 1966-1998 (Athens: Ohio University Center for
International Studies, 2001), p. 162.
24 Benedito Medrado et al, 'Masculinities in Brazil: The case of Brazilian television advertisements', in
Pease and Pringle ed, A man s world?, pp. 163-76.

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MASCULINITIES IN RECENT INDONESIAN CINEMA 119

and semi-pornographic misogynist websites have appeared which explicitly promote

men's interests whilst vociferously denigrating women, feminism and cowokpussy ('girly'
men).25

Importantly, the present processes of masculinity formation appear to be no less

fluid and hybrid than in the past. For example, it could be argued that constructions
of hegemonic or archetypal images of Indonesian manhood as portrayed in Javanese
mythology or pre-colonial history have, for centuries, been ruptured by seemingly 'alter
native' visions. Examples include the bandit usurper to the throne of the thirteenth
century Javanese kingdom Singosari, Ken Arok (Angrok); the androgenous clown-god
Semar; the ogre-king Cakil, and so on. Disruptions to dominant models of the masculine
have continued to the present day, especially outside the 'traditional' sphere. One only
needs to look at recent cigarette advertisements in magazines such as Tempo, which
depict distinctly virile images of unshaven adventurers, 'macho' business executives or
rural buffalo-riders. Yet below these glamorous images of 'men's men', paradoxically, is
the dire warning that smoking causes impotency.
Considering how many Indonesian men smoke, it is not surprising that impotency
has become such an issue, and a lucrative marketing opportunity. Spousal dissatisfaction
is routinely used to promote 'energy' pills and drinks. A recent television advertisement
for Pilkita, a herbal energy supplement, portrays a wife contrasting her disappointing
- a man - with the
husband sickly, slightly overweight lacking in strength power and
might of a mythological paragon of manhood, the flying-warrior Gatotkaca of wayang
shadow puppet theatre. Elsewhere, advertisements celebrating men doing typical men's
things are disrupted by characteristics normally associated with the feminine. One popu
lar advertisement for cigarettes is a Gudang Garam commercial featuring an affluent
Jakarta-based man releasing a caged butcher-bird outside his holiday shack in the moun
tain resort of Puncak, under the approving eyes of his sophisticated girlfriend. The
whitish skin, skinny build, shaved head, and golden necklace reflect a shift away from
the rural muscle of rival cigarette commercials;
and brawn sensitivity, vulnerability and
seductiveness appear to be highlighted here. Are we witnessing the f?minisation of the
Indonesian man, though? Clearly the portrayal of gender in contemporary Indonesian
-
popular culture is problematic the gender not only of women but of men as well.
Elsewhere, in the field of Indonesian
literature, several key novels have appeared that
openly interrogate and rupture 'traditional' or archetypal Indonesian male images. For
instance, in contrast to the permanent and popular male archetypes of the wayang, recent
literary appropriations of the genre's mythology inscribe ambiguous and contradictory
images of masculinity. Seno Gumira Ajidarma's Wisanggeni sang buronan Wisanggeni
[
-
the outlaw] symbolically - and literally rejects the archetypal male hero of the wayang,
the halus [refined] womaniser and warrior, Arjuna. Instead, Seno favours awell-rounded
humanised version of Arjuna's son: Wisanggeni, a sensitive, intuitive renegade warrior.
Yet in Seno's novel Wisanggeni's heroism is understated: despite his invincibility, he
remains amarginal figure of opposition, with human limitations, and desires.26
feelings
It is no coincidence that a similar male figure, also with the name Wisanggeni,
emerges in Ayu Utami's highly acclaimed Saman.27 In this novel the main male character,

25 See, for example, URL: http://www.indodating.com/sbasbi_pornografil.html.

26 Seno Gumira Ajidarma, Wisanggeni sang buronan (Yogyakarta: Yayasan Bentang Budaya, 2000).
27 Ayu Utami, Saman (Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, 1998).

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 120 MARSHALL CLARK

Wis/Saman, is a young and passionate Catholic priest, aman enthusiastically engaged in

social and political issues. However, later in the novel he struggles with his repressed
sexuality, and he seriously questions his faith. Ultimately he gives up his virginity to
one of several predatory female friends, and due to his over-enthusiastic social activism
he is forced to flee Indonesia in disgrace. Utami's Wis/Saman is a fascinating character,
though for one highly regarded critic at least, his psychological characterisation is uncon
vincing, and he appears to be particularly flighty towards the end of the novel. These
flaws could perhaps be traced to what many Indonesian male critics consider as Utami's
infamous obsession with the question of female sexuality, seemingly at the expense of
men.28

Meanwhile, although not known for being anti-male, Pramoedya Ananta Toer also

displays Indonesian men in an ambiguous light. Pramoedya's Arok dedes portrays the
thirteenth-century bandit Ken Arok in carefully tempered shades of grey. He is depicted
as awell-educated and spiritually enlightened leader of'the people', with a cunning sense
of political instinct, yet he is also a ruthless strategist, thug and murderer. Furthermore,
despite this rich characterisation, ultimately Pramoedya suggests that Arok's rebellion
was carefully orchestrated by the ascendant political-religious elite at the time, the
Hindu-Buddhist brahmans of East Java.29
Like Seno's Wisanggeni and Ayu Utami's
Saman, Pramoedya's Ken Arok does not
appear to be a heroic male character in the traditional mould, but rather a male 'anti
hero' commonly found in the pages of Indonesia's more avant-garde fiction. In fact,
in terms of Indonesian literary history, on the whole these male figures share much in
common with Pramoedya's ambivalent Minke of the Buru tetralogy, or Seno Gumira
Ajidarma's self-indulgent male journalist o? Jazz parfum dan insiden [Jazz, perfume and
the incident], or even Iwan Simatupang's embattled male tramps in his absurdist fiction
of the 1960s and 1970s.30 In other words, they are portrayed as lukewarm, wimpy, alien
ated men, lacking in passion and vigour and living their lives like leaves blown in the
wind. They are, on the whole, either at the mercy of the women in their lives, or subject to
the dominant social and political developments of the time. In short, in contrast to 'tradi
tional' images of Indonesian male heroes, contemporary literary representations of
are as much and ambiguous as they are subversive. As we shall
masculinity contradictory
see in the remainder of this paper, a similar pattern has emerged in recent Indonesian
cinema, suggesting that the negative portrayals of men in New Order cinema, as observed
by Heider, have continued to the present day.

Kuldesak: A cinematic 'cul-de-sac'

Kuldesak
began production in 1996, when the New Order regime was still going
strong. However, money soon ran out after the onset of the Asian economic crisis in
1997, and, like several other films in production at the time - including Garin Nugroho's

28 Y. B. Mangunwijaya, 'Menyambut
roman Saman, Kompas, 5 April 1998; see also, for instance, the
comments in Barbara 'New directions in Indonesian women's The novel
by male critics Hatley, writing?
Saman, Asian Studies Review, 23, 4 (1999): 449-60.
29 Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Ken Arok (Jakarta: Hasta Mitra, 1999).
30 See, among others, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Bumi manusia (Jakarta: Hasta Mitra, 1980); Seno Gumira
Ajidarma, lazz, parfum dan insiden (Yogyakarta: Yayasan Bentang Budaya, 1996); and Iwan Simatupang,
Ziarah (Jakarta: Djembatan, 1969).

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MASCULINITIES IN RECENT INDONESIAN CINEMA 121

Daun [Leaf on a pillow], Marselli

di atas bantal Soemarno's Sri and Slamet Rahardjo
Djarot's Telegram -production came to a halt.31 The production of Kuldesak was already
under a cloud long before this: none of the directors were members of the Indonesian
film union, nor did they have the required permit from the now-defunct Ministry of
Information. Nevertheless, eventually a permit was issued mid-shoot, and financial help
came in the form of a grant from the Hubert Bals Fund of the Rotterdam Film Festival.
Even then, the cast and crew donated their services, and film equipment was supplied for
free by PT Samuelson Nusantara and PT Elang Perkasa.32 In November 1998, six months
after the resignation of President Suharto, Kuldesak was screened for over three months
in the high-class cinemas of the 21 Group. This in itself was an important development,
due to the fact that for over ten years this leading movie theatre chain had had a strong
preference for screening American films. Combined with the strict rules and regulations
for film production and the popularity of sinetron (sinema elektronik, referring to soap
operas), this preference for Western films had all but extinguished the Indonesian film
industry. According to Sen and Hill, the number of companies making film features
for cinemas fell from 95 in 1991 to just 13 in 1994; the situation was even worse
by
1998.33
Kuldesak was
eventually viewed by 140,000 people, and in addition to up-beat
reviews from major
newspapers and magazines such as Kompas and Tempo, anecdotal
evidence suggests that the film was very positively received. In fact, one viewer com
plained that the young audience was so excited and so expectant after a long wait in a
queue that when the film was finally shown, the movie theatre was too raucous for any
one to hear anything! Not all responses were to one of the
positive, however; according
film-makers involved, Mira Lesmana, '[m]any of the older film-makers hated Kuldesak.
They said itwas too American.'34
The film itself is actually divided into four separate strands, with a different director
responsible for the production of each strand. The directors include Mira Lesmana, Nan
T. Achnas, Rizal Mantovani and Riri Riza, with Sentot Sahid responsible for the film's
overall editing. The film begins with the story of Dina, who works in a cinema in Jakarta,
and her friendship with a gay couple, Budi and Yanto. Dina has a problematic relation
ship with a television celebrity, Max Mollo, and later Budi copes with abandoned
being
by Yanto, who decides to head back to his village after a number of homophobic attacks.
The second strand of the film portrays Aksan and his friend Aladin (Din), who decide
that the only way they can make a film is to rob the safe of Aksan's father's VCD store.
Their plan is eventually foiled by the appearance of a gang of three drunken youths, who
want to steal aVCD. In the ensuing mayhem Aksan is shot. The third strand of the movie
depicts the rape and kidnapping of Lina, a secretary for a psychotic crime boss, Yakob

31 These films were eventually completed and released in Indonesia in 1998 and 1999, after the resignation
of President Suharto inMay 1998.
32 'Kuldesak: Keterserpihan anak muda', 5 Dec. 1998; on the earlier problems see 'Current trends
Kompas,
in the Indonesian cinema', URL: http://www.piff.org/eng/news_details.asp?idx=223&goto
33 Sen and Hill, Media, culture and politics, p. 137; the industry's are mentioned in van Heeren,
problems
'The case of Beth', p. 4.
34 The observation is from Amelia communication, Oct. 2002). The
movie-goer's Fyfield (personal
quotation and 140,000 figure are found in Amir Muhammad, Lesson from Indonesia',
'Smorgasboard:
URL:
http://www.kakiseni.com/articles/columns/MDEyMQ.html.

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 122 MARSHALL CLARK

Gamarhada. Lina eventually escapes, and kills Gamarhada and his henchmen. The fourth
strand of the movie details the last few hours of a teenage rebel, Andre, who commits
suicide after hearing of the death of Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of the American grunge
band Nirvana. Although each strand of the film is set in Jakarta in 1994, there appears to
be only one point at which all four strands meet: halfway through the film, a scene is set in
a cinema, and the movie showing in the background is, paradoxically, Kuldesak.
In terms of content, Kuldesak is amovie distinguished by its focus on the alienation
of Jakarta's bourgeois urban youth and the vulnerability of the Indonesian male subject.
In fact, inmany ways Kuldesak represents Indonesian men negatively. Unlike the women,
most of the men are not real people at all; they are, on the whole, simply wooden carica
tures who represent various models of masculinity. Each strand of the movie portrays at
least two or three male characters in lead roles, but in every case the viewer is confronted
with a collage of'deviant masculinities' in contrast to 'realmen', or at least men trying to
be 'real men'. Significantly, it is the 'realmen' who are constantly under attack, and they
are often their own worst enemy.
This notion is depicted
quite dramatically in one of the most surreal scenes in the
movie, the dream of the 'wannabe filmmaker', Aksan. In this dream he is chased and
attacked by a movie camera, which is accompanied by a few marauding rolls of film.
When he wakes up, we soon learn that this is not the first time he has had this dream. In
fact, his friend Aladin reiterates his belief that this recurring dream is a 'sign' that Aksan
must follow his ambition to make amovie - not just any movie either, but one that will
be truly Indonesian, with international acclaim.
Looking at the gender components that constitute the protagonists' looks and
behaviour, it becomes quite clear at this point that Aksan is the masculine centre, under
attack not only from his subconscious self but also his side-kick, Aladin. In contrast to
Aksan's straightforward behaviour and placid exterior, Aladin's almost constant babble
is in every respect coded as prissy, nagging, and deviant. Later, when he grabs the gun off
a group of youths trying to break into the laser-disc store, his hands shake, he points the
gun wildly, and he stutters and shrieks, further exaggerating his hysterical, effeminate
personality. Like the campy character Ceki, who was actually holding the gun in the first
place, Aladin's sexual orientation is ambiguous, and one of the girls even suggests that the
two boys were 'up to something'. Ceki, meanwhile, is also amale, yet his catty and asexual
repartee with his two vampish female partners in crime, not to mention his timid
reaction to being disarmed, suggest that he too is hardly a representative of the movie's
masculine centre.

This particular strand of the film's perspective is focused on Aksan, not the effe
minate and possibly gay characters of Aladin and Ceki. Certainly Aladin dominates
the dialogue, yet even as he babbles on, on a number of occasions the camera's gaze is
fixed on Aksan, with Aladin out of focus. Nevertheless, the lifeless Aksan
sympathetically
has nothing much to say or do; perhaps, the filmmakers appear to be suggesting, this is
the with Indonesian men. Caught between archetypal yet unrealistic
precisely problem
ideals such as the Arjunas of the past and impossible Western postfeminist images of the
Sensitive New Age Guy, so-called 'men' such as Aksan are hesitant and unconvincing.
Nevertheless, the privileging of Aksan's perspective reflects a dominant motif of the
movie: the hi?rarchisation between heterosexual masculinity and its deviant 'Other'. The
-
latter consists of gays, madmen, freaks, villains and the sexually precocious dare I say it,

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MASCULINITIES IN RECENT INDONESIAN CINEMA 123

feminist- women accompanying Ceki in the hold-up. Some critics found the 'berlebihar?
(over-the-top) aspect of these characters acutely annoying. According to the writer of the
Kompas review, 'itwas these characters in particular that made the serious become trivial,
and the real become surreal'.35 However, unlike this reviewer's black-and-white descrip
tion of the film's key thematic turn, Kuldesak does not set up a clear dichotomisation
between these opposites; in fact, at times the oppositional masculinities intertwine in
a potential conflation.
With masculinity the battleground on which this battle of
identity is fought, domi
nant male heterosexuality is depicted as a victim as much as it is an aggressor. Aksan's
desire to make a 'great' movie, in a class above the work of Indonesia's great cinemato
graphers (including Teguh Karya, Eros Jarot and Garin Nugroho), sets up an intriguing
and very self-reflexive dialectic. Rejected by his wealthy father, Aksan has no option but
to steal money from his father's safe in order to finance his film. Outside the diegetic
levels of Kuldesak, for several years the filmmakers involved in the production of
the movie also struggled to gain permission and to raise sufficient funds. Of course,
with the fall of Suharto the permissive political climate fostered boldness, creativity and
experimentation. According to Katinka van Heeren,

The unexpected fall of Suharto enabled this film [Kuldesak] to reach movie theatres
Indonesia in November 1998. was its peak, and many
throughout Reformasi reaching
restrictions on film production and exhibition were not being applied. Its rebellious
production and fresh contents and techniques set Kuldesak apart from both the films
an earlier and from the on television. The
produced by generation everyday soap operas
... often its 'non-Indonesian' features.36
press highlighted

The 'non-Indonesianfeatures', although not exactly an uncommon feature of Indo

nesian cinema, were
almost certainly inspired by American Generation X filmmakers
such as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Indeed, Generation X icons such as
Tarantino's Pulp fiction (1994) and Nirvana's front-man Kurt Cobain are recurring
motifs throughout the movie. For example, the target of the hold-up in the laser-disc
store is a copy of Pulp fiction, one of the girls' favourite movies. Various snatches of
dialogue are pure Tarantino, and at one point the soundtrack to the robbery scene is,
appropriately enough, the American rockabilly country music ubiquitous to Pulp fiction.
In the background of the same scene is a giant poster advertising Tarantino's Reservoir
dogs, and we mustn't forget that, like Aksan and Aladin, Tarantino himself worked in a
video shop before he began making films.37 Elsewhere, we see placed books
conveniently
such as Douglas Rushkoff s The Gen X reader, or GenX filmmaker Robert
Rodriguez's
Rebel without a crew.3S
The self-parodic references mentioned above play an important aesthetic and
ideological role in Kuldesak, all the while confirming Fredric Jameson's theories

35 'Kuldesak: Keterserpihan anak muda'; the original is 'Tokoh-tokoh inilah yang membuat
phrase yang
serius menjadi tidak serius, yang riil menjadi .
maya
36 Katinka van Heeren, 'Revolution of hope: films are young, free and radical', Inside
Independent
Indonesia, 70 (2002), URL:
http:finsideindonesia.org/'edit70IKatinkal.htm.
37 Jami Bernard, Tarantino: The man and his movies
Quentin (London: HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 44-67.
38 Douglas Rushkoff, The Gen X reader (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994); Robert
Rodriguez, Rebel
without a crew (New York: Plume, 1996).

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 124 MARSHALL CLARK

regarding the lack of depth and pastiche of popular culture in the postmodern era.39
The self-parodic and self-referential aspects of the film will be discussed in more detail
shortly. The main point to make here is that, unlike Tarantino, Aksan does not succeed in
his aims. Why not? Because, according to the way he is portrayed, he deserves to fail. As
a symbol of heterosexual Indonesian masculinity, Aksan is quite forgettable; indeed, he
is little more than a cardboard cut-out, or an actor on the stage. Meek and anonymous,
he is depicted as an unrealistic dreamer. He pays the ultimate price for these character
flaws: in the hold-up, he is shot, accidentally, without a single word of anger. His
dying
words are cGue cuma mau bikinfilm... gue 'kan cumapengen bikinfilm...' (I just wanted
to make a film ... I just wanted to make a film, you know...).
In stark contrastto Aksan, triumphant film critics proclaim that the four young
filmmakers involvedKuldesak did not fail.40 After all, these days the four have
with
become leading film-makers, producing one box-office success after another, including
Petualangan sherina [The adventures of Sherina] (2000) by Mira Lesmana and Riri Riza,
Jelangkung (an effigy used for exorcistic rituals) (2001 ) by Rizal Mantovani, Pasir berbisik
[Whispering sands] (2001) by Nan T Achnas, Ada apa dengan cinta7. [What's up with
love?] (2002) by Mira Lesmana and Riri Riza (with Rudy Soedjarwo), and Eliana Eliana
(2002) by Riri Riza. On the whole, the images of men and masculinities encoded in these
films are both understated and revealing. Masculine themes include the absent father
(Pasir berbisik), the ups-and-downs of contemporary father-son relationships {Eliana
Eliana and Ada apa dengan cinta?), domestic violence (Ada apa dengan cinta?) and the
sense of aimlessness and alienation of the emerging post-New Order generation of
Indonesian men the negative portrayals of men
(Jelangkung). Nonetheless, considering
-
in several other films appearing in the period after the demise of the New Order regime
-
such as Daun di atas bantal, Telegram and Aria Kusumadewa's Beth (2001) questions
well be asked about the presence of a misandric worldview in post-New Order
might
cinema.41

Interestinglyenough, Riri Riza, when discussing his film Eliana Eliana at an Indone
sian film festival in Melbourne, observed that 'some critics have said that all the male
characters in my films are weak. To some extent this is true. But aren't we all weak?'42
To test the veracity of this statement, for the moment we need not look too far beyond
Kuldesak, literally the film that launched the film-making career of Riri Riza and each
of the other young directors involved. An analysis of the film's other strands will provide

39 Fredric Jameson, 'Postmodernism and consumer society', in Postmodern culture, ed. Hal Foster

(London/Sydney: Pluto Press, 1985), pp. 111-25.

40 See, for example, 'Kuldesak. Keterserpihan anak muda'.
41 Daun di atas bantal the bleak lives of male in Yogyakarta,
street-kids who are both victims and
depicts
of violence. Their fear and mistrust of each
other, and their for a mother's love,
perpetrators yearning
their lack of confidence in the male domain, not to mention their failure to develop an adult sense
highlight
of masculinity. a who is haunted his wife's death yet in
Telegram depicts rough-and-ready journalist by
the midst of his sorrow is reinvigorated by the innocent presence of his adopted daughter. This does not,
however, transform him from a 'bad man' to a 'good man'; despite his sense of responsibility, he is pro
miscuous, moody and prone to acts of irrationality. Beth, a love story set in a mental institution, is overrun
insane or male characters; the women, on the other hand, to be merely innocent
by evil, psychotic appear
victims. This is a somewhat polarised description, however, and there are notable exceptions.
42 Comments made during audience questions after the screening of his film Eliana, Eliana, Melbourne,
Oct. 2002.

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MASCULINITIES IN RECENT INDONESIAN CINEMA 125

more to show that in terms of many of its gendered

evidence representations, Kuldesak
really does live up to the dictionary definition (glimpsed late in the movie) of a
'cul-de-sac, a dead-end street. Iwill argue that Aksan is not the only male heterosexual
'hero' to hit a 'dead-end' (pun intended) in the struggle to fulfill his potential. Likewise,
Aladin and Ceki are not the only 'deviant' masculinities that rupture the dominant
gender discourse.

Grunge and madness: Resisting symbolic violence

The strand depicting Andre, a long-haired hard-rocking 'metal' fan, also presents a
view of dominant masculinity under attack. Paradoxically, Andre can be considered as an
embodiment both of a subversive discourse of masculinity and of Indonesia's dominant
elite. Heis, after all, a spoilt rich kid with too much time and money on his hands. On his
birthday we learn via a telephone answering machine that Andre's mother is flying off
to Tokyo for a business meeting, and Andre is told to use his credit card for anything
he needs. In the background, we see cable TV, complete with video player and remote
control. However, despite his wealthy background, we soon learn that Andre is no
goody-two-shoes. For example, his cluttered room is decorated with huge posters of Kurt
Cobain and James Dean. Furthermore, when he does wear a shirt, it is a Cobain T-shirt,
underneath a Cobainesque cardigan. The grungy hard rock of Indonesia's Nirvana
tribute band is blaring out of the stereo; the nose-rings, heroin shoot-up scars and long,

unkempt hair complete the picture. Later, after Andre drunkenly celebrates his birthday
at a bar for heavy-metal fans, we witness his reaction to a cable broadcast (in English)
announcing the suicide of Kurt Cobain. This particular moment in history- 5 April 1994
- is one a
arguably of the defining moments of Generation X. It is also defining moment
for Andre; he commits suicide not long after.43
It could be argued that the close association between Andre and Kurt Cobain is per
haps the point at which Kuldesak most successfully resists symbolic violence, in particular
the violence of New Order patriarchy. To some extent Andre's flight into the world
of grunge and heavy metal - inspired no doubt by a sense of anxiety about his own
behaviour and societal expectations of what he is meant to be both as a man and an
-
Indonesian citizen subverts the very constructions of categories such as gender and sex.
By escaping dominant masculinity, and also the potentially threatening demands of
feminism, Andre presents a rebellious Cobain-like model of alternative masculinity.
The grunge rock of the early 1990s, spearheaded by Nirvana, is characterised by a specifi
cally male adolescent narcissism, and it was very much concerned with finding a way
to define one's masculinity. According to Frank Lay,

Even if Grunge rockers like Nirvana's Kurt Cobain were not as a new
explicitly presented
kind of male rock persona, they have nonetheless come to the new
impersonate type
of man, torn between and the 'new men' of the 1970s,
angrily hegemonic masculinity

43 Berman
Laine (personal communication, 2002) observes that Andre's suicide foreshadowed the
Aug.
suicide of the actor who played him, Ryan Hidayat, also known as Dayat. to Berman,
According 'Dayat was
also a heavy intravenous user who, just like Kurt Cobain and just like his character in the film, really
drug
did blow his own brains out, although the rave reviews the film has gotten never mention these uncomfort
able, real-life facts.'

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 126 MARSHALL CLARK

and, most of all, the unreachable ideal man of the 'post-feminist' era, incorporating all

extremes, the macho and the softie.44

Lay is speaking of the American context here, but the parallels with contemporary
Indonesia are self-evident. More importantly, does Andre's alternative masculinity ? la
Cobain really subvert symbolic violence? Or does he, along the lines of Bourdieu's thesis,
fall into the same trap as some feminists whose subversions against the masculine status
quo are produced and restrained through the very structures of power through which
emancipation is fought, and are therefore just as likely to perpetuate the social relations
of domination between the sexes?45 The fact that Andre is written out of the script
without any rational explanation suggests that the latter thesis holds sway here. However,
as with the portrayal of Aksan, the self-reflexivity of Andre's strand of the film implies
that the makers of Kuldesak are indeed searching furiously for a way to undermine the
performative constructions and patterns that produce and reproduce domination.
In what way isAndre's strand self-reflexive? To answer this, we must return again to
the film's key motif, the hi?rarchisation between dominant heterosexual masculinity and
its deviant Other. Shadowing Andre's straight characterisation and his unchallenged
position as the narrative centre, we find the mad soothsayer, Hariolus. Andre has known
the hunch-backed Hariolus for many years, and each time they meet on the streets,
Andre's fortune is told. Andre is not totally convinced, and he even believes that each
time he meets Hariolus, bad luck is sure to follow. When Hariolus predicts that Andre
a package after his night out which will
will find irrevocably change his life, Andre is
intrigued but ultimately dismissive of his jovial, happy-go-lucky friend. With an owl
perched on Hariolus' shoulder, the keen insight inspired by his synthesis of madness and
animalism is in stark contrast to Andre's 'rebel without a cause' urban angst.

Significantly, the self-reflexivity embedded in this strand of the movie lies in the
pivotal figure of Hariolus. Played superbly by Indonesia's leading hip-hop rapper, Iwa K,
Hariolus presents some of his predictions rap-style, and we see that his haunt is outside a
shopping centre named 'K'. At one point we see a close-up of Hariolus laughing mania
- as - a neon 'K' is
cally madmen do underneath giant sign; the in-joke that the 'K' sign
refers to the fact that he is played by none other than Iwa K. It is significant to consider
that in analysing Iwa K's influential cameo, one is reminded of Foucault's argument that
madness, 'insofar as it partook of animal ferocity, preserved man from the dangers of
disease; it afforded him an invulnerability, similar to that which nature, in its foresight,
had provided for animals'.46 IfAndre's ambivalence (and suicide) can be used as amirror
for the uncertainty surrounding the status of the Indonesian male, then Iwa K's fluid
identity (half actor/half rapper, half mad/half genius) can be used as an alternative trope
of masculinity. Even if his character does not totally subvert the underlying structures
and mechanisms of masculine domination, at the very least Iwa K is at the symbolic

-
44 Frank Lay, '"Sometimes we wonder who the real men are" Masculinity and contemporary popular
music', in Subverting masculinity: Hegemonic and alternative versions of masculinity in contemporary culture,
ed. Russell West and Frank Lay (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), pp. 227-46. See also Greg Wahl, Narrating
punk: Masculinity, genealogy, patriarchy, URL: http:/otal.nmd.edu/~jpaolett/grad/punk.html.
45 Bourdieu, Masculine domination, p. 116.
46 Michel Foucault, Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Vintage
Books, 1988), tr. Richard Howard, p. 75.

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MASCULINITIES IN RECENT INDONESIAN CINEMA 127

a self-conscious
avant-garde, and he provides us with symbolic rupture. This has been, of
course, the social and performative role of madmen, buffoons and clowns throughout
the history of humankind. Indonesia is no exception; such is the prestige of wayang
clowns such as Semar and his sons that they are often considered as the guardians of truth
and justice.
In the other strands of the movie, madmen also play an important role. In the next
narrative to be discussed, the rape and kidnapping of Lina, we are confronted with the
antithesis of Hariolus' good-natured madness: the insanity of the New Order business
man and gangster boss, Yakob Gamarhada. The following discussion will argue that
unlike the other strands of Kuldesak, in this strand the hegemonic masculine centre
is threatened by a very traditional adversary: femininity. It is also contended that if
Yakob Gamarhada can be compared to the dominant patriarchal figure of the New Order
era - Suharto himself- then in the post-New Order era, traditional models of hegemonic
masculinity appear to be monolithic dinosaurs.

Violence and masculinity

InMasculine domination Bourdieu insists that men are also prisoners, and insidious
victims, of the dominant gender regime:

Male is also a trap, and it has its negative side in the permanent tension and con
privilege
tention, sometimes on the absurd, on every man the duty to assert his
verging imposed by
manliness in all circumstances ... Manliness, understood as sexual or social reproductive
but also as the to and to exercise violence ... is first and foremost a
capacity, capacity fight

duty.

Bourdieu goes on
to say that the problem with exalting manliness, besides its tacit
encouragement of violence, lies in its dark side, what he calls 'the fears and anxiety
aroused by femininity'.47 This in turn engenders symbolic violence, especially in men
searching for a sense of masculine identity. In Kuldesak the dominant males always have
a point of vulnerability, such as Aksan's need to prove himself by making a movie or
Andre's obsession with Kurt Cobain. Both of these points of vulnerability can be linked
with the search for a sense of manliness or male identity. In Lina's strand of the movie,
it becomes apparent that Yakob Gamarhada's point of vulnerability is his thirst for domi
nation, especially over young women. Paradoxically, it is this vulnerability that leads
him into a world of violence - against women in particular - where he can utilise visible
signs of masculinity, such as subservient henchmen and high-powered handguns.
The climax of Kuldesak is a smorgasbord of gun shooting and bloodshed. In an
analysis of the various images of masculinity in Pulp fiction, Brandt observes that,

The constant gun shooting that characterises male behaviour in [the film] points simulta
neously to the defense of masculinity through the hard-boiled heroes and to the 'homo
erotic associations of the of bodily that are so common in the action
images penetration

genre'.48

47 Bourdieu, Masculine domination, pp. 50-1 ; emphasis in the original.

48 Stefan Brandt, 'American culture X: Identity, and the search for a new American hero',
homosexuality,
inWest and Lay ed, Subverting pp. 67-93.
masculinity,

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 128 MARSHALL CLARK

This is an interesting observation, but in the case o? Kuldesak several important modifica
tions need to be made. First of all, in each case where a dominant male (i.e. Aksan, Andre,
Gamarhada) finds himself on the wrong side of a bullet, his model of masculinity is
apparently not worth defending. Secondly, in Kuldesak it is (mostly) women shooting
-
men, and vice versa not, as in Pulp fiction, men shooting men. In this sense the gun
shooting can be more closely associated with feminist incursions into the male body.
When Lina is kidnapped, she breaks free, and after arming herself with a handgun she has
little hesitation in shooting several gangsters, culminating in the death of Gamarhada
himself. For Gamarhada, death comes as a punishment for his sexual perversion, and his
death is also in one important sense a site of liberation for Indonesian women as awhole.
His blood-splattered body falls down on top of an Indonesian-English dictionary, con

veniently opened to the page listing 'kuldesak'. At this point, it is overwhelmingly clear
that Gamarhada's 'dead-end' model of hegemonic masculinity is no longer acceptable,
especially in these more enlightened times.
Despite Lina's heroics, Bourdieu's theory of symbolic violence would suggest that
her victory does little to successfully challenge male domination, as she is forced to
fight Gamarhada on his terms. By using a handgun, Lina misrecognises the tool of her
own physical and symbolic violence, thus reinscribing her domination. It is no coinci
dence that feminists seldom refer to violence as a justifiable means of creating a new
gender order, yet Iwould argue that Lina's character does indeed fulfil Bourdieu's call
to attack the underlying constructions of domination. As Bourdieu himself observes, in
order to challenge the very effects of domination, 'one has to take the risk of seeming to

justify the established order by bringing to light the properties through which the domi
nated (women, manual workers, etc.), as domination has made them, may contribute to
their own domination'.49
Through the use of parody, Lina brings to light the New Order's key mechanism for
perpetuating the domination of Indonesian women and the Indonesian people as a
whole: physical aggression. In other words, by wielding a handgun so skillfully and effec
- - Lina caricatures
tively and magically surviving a hail of bullets unscathed the chief
legacy of New Order patriarchy, that is, violence as a legitimate mechanism of domina
tion. As if to emphasise this point, one of Gamarhada's gangsters goes cross-eyed staring
at Lina's oncoming bullet, just before it hits him between the eyes. The sense of parody is
heightened by the fact that this image is in slow motion, followed by what sounds like
splattered brains falling on the ground. However, does parody truly expose the flawed
notion of masculinity that lies at the basis of male identity politics, especially in the case
of the New Order patriarchy, propped up as it was through the power of the shotgun?
Parody, as John Fried points out, 'is a double-edged sword. It also protects and reinforces
the very "norm" it seeks to disclose.'50 Thus while Lina's segment of the movie might
exaggerate and parody male violence, this self-awareness is almost
indistinguishable
from plain old-fashioned heterosexual paranoia, where trying to prove one's manliness
in response to the feminine threat ismerely a reflection of an insecure sense of masculine
identity.

49 Bourdieu, Masculine domination, p. 114.

50 John Fried with Pat Dowell, Two shots at Quentin Tarantino's ,Cin?aste,
'Pulp friction: Pulp fiction 21,
3 (1995): 4-5.

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MASCULINITIES IN RECENT INDONESIAN CINEMA 129

Homosexuality and identity

The last strand of Kuldesak to be discussed concerns the relationship between Dina
and her homosexual neighbours, Budi and Yanto. The significance of this strand lies
in the status of 'homosexuality' in contemporary Indonesian culture. Dede Oetomo
observes that in the 1980s the Indonesian media began to highlight, and sensationalise,
homosexuality.51 According to Oetomo, this media focus, coupled with the drive against
HIV/AIDS in the 1990s, has created a new understanding of gender and sexuality in con
temporary Indonesia. However, since the fall of Suharto homophobic attacks are on the
increase, just as homosexual groups have become more visible. Bourdieu's observations
on gays and lesbians are quite helpful here. He asserts that homosexuals suffer from
a particular form of symbolic domination: social stigmatisation. 'As in some kinds of
racism', he writes,

this symbolic domination takes the form of a denial of public, visible existence. Oppression
in the form of'invisibilization' comes through a refusal of legitimate, public existence, i.e.
of an existence that is known and recognized, especially by law, and a
stigmatiza
through
tion which never appears more than when the movement claims It is then
clearly visibility.

explicitly invited to return to the 'discretion' or dissimulation that it is ordinarily required

to observe.52

Kuldesak presents a similar pattern. The fact that this film's depiction of homosexu
ality includes the first man-to-man kissing scene in the history of Indonesian cinema is
surely a reflection of the growing visibility of the Indonesian gay movement. Yet accom

panying this new openness towards homosexuality is the awareness that homophobia
runs deep. Twice Budi is attacked by homophobic as a direct consequence of his
youths
sexuality. After one of the attacks, obviously shaken, Yanto decides to leave both Budi
and Jakarta. In this way his return to the village is a literal embodiment of the process of
hegemonic exclusion labelled by some Western film scholars as 'symbolic annihilation',
and referred to by Bourdieu as 'invisibilisation'.53
It is clear that Yanto's fate fits Bourdieu's definition
of symbolic violence in that 'the
dominated tend to adopt the dominant point of view on themselves'.54 In this case, Yanto
appears to believe that perhaps his heterosexual persecutors are correct - that his sexual
ity is deviant and therefore he must escape the shame and humiliation that his sexual
experience and orientation must entail. His return to his family is also a rejection of
the urban gay lifestyle, where friendship has replaced the familial bonds underlying the
conservative morality of Indonesia's heterosexual society. According to Justin Wyatt, 'for
gay people, friendship becomes a fluid category that helps to create social networks and

community'.55 Therefore, where (as for many gay people) friendship is also kinship, for
Budi to lose Yanto is also to lose a sense of family.

51 Dede Oetomo, men in the reformasi era', Inside Indonesia, 66 (2001): 11-12.
'Gay
52 Bourdieu, Masculine domination, p. 119.
53 On 'symbolic annihilation' see Robert Hanke, men: in transi
'Redesigning Hegemonic masculinity
tion', inMen, masculinity and the media, ed. Steve Craig (London: Sage Publications, 1992), pp. 185-98.
54 Bourdieu, Masculine domination, p. 119.
55 Justin Wyatt, queerness, and homosocial The case of Swingers', in Masculinity:
'Identity, bonding:
Bodies, movies, culture, ed. Peter Lehman (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 51-65.

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 130 MARSHALL CLARK

The fact that the homosexual element of Kuldesak is ultimately subject to societal
'invisibilisation' suggests that the contrast between a traditional view of 'deviant' homo
sexuality versus 'dominant'
heterosexuality is posited and endorsed. Even when the gay
couple are on screen, expressions of sexuality other than their much-discussed kiss are
either rather chaste or kept off-screen, and both Budi and Yanto remain mute about their
feelings for each other and their gayness. Having said this, it could also be argued that
Budi's friendship with Dina is an act of symbolic subversion. One problem with defend
ing an argument such as this, however, is that the subversive
characteristic of Budi's
friendship with Dina is not immediately recognisable. is especially so after Yanto This
abandons Budi. When Dina attempts to comfort Budi, he angrily turns on her, telling her
that she is just living in a 'dunia khayalan, a 'dream world' of the Max Mollo TV show. As
with so many other characters in this film, Dina's 'normality' is challenged by her obses
sion with the bizarre antics of Max Mollo, a particularly deviant representation of mascu
linity. Mollo is a live-wire
TV personality and pantomime artist, although he uses an
to
form of Indonesian liven up his act somewhat. From time to time Mollo
exaggerated
appears in the cinema at which the besotted Dina works, and they conduct a silent but
touching romance. Budi, however, attacks Dina because she reminds him of Yanto - that
is, a person not willing to face reality. Yet not long afterward, the two embrace each other
emotionally but chastely.
It can be argued that Budi and Dina's blurring of the line between gay and straight
hints at the possibility for a larger assimilation of gay culture into dominant Indonesian

society. More importantly, the subversive nature of the scene lies in the fact that the
are no terms - are two
couple longer defined in of their sexuality they people who love
each other in their own way. They are also two broken people; their dreams are shattered.
However, this self-awareness they develop new understanding of their personal
through
realities. For example, Budi alludes to his traumatic childhood, and he voices his doubts

regarding Yanto. In the last scene of the movie Dina rejects her cinema job, and parodies
Max Mollo himself, which is as cathartic as it is subversive. In this sense, the warm recon
ciliation between Budi and Dina is not only an act of symbolic subversion, but also an
attempt to violence on an even deeper level. According to Bourdieu,
fight symbolic
For it is true that the action of symbolic subversion, if it wants to be realistic, cannot draw
- even are effective
the line at
symbolic breaks if, like some aesthetic provocations, they
in suspending self-evidences. To a durable in representations, itmust
accomplish change
and a durable transformation of the internalized categories (schemes
perform impose
of thought) which, through upbringing and education, confer the status of self-evident,
natural within the scope of their on the social
necessary, undisputed reality, validity,

categories that they produce.56

norm - like Lina, and also like the mad

By refusing to submit to the dominant
- Dina and Budi
Hariolus go beyond amere symbolic break. They challenge not only the
'schemes of thought' of the status quo, but also their own 'internalised categories'. Just as
Hariolus' madness is also a site of perception and insight, and Lina's capture and
subjectification is also a site for parodie subversion, Budi's homosexuality and Dina's

56 Bourdieu, Masculine domination, p. 121.

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MASCULINITIES IN RECENT INDONESIAN CINEMA 131

obsession with Max Mollo are transcended

and transformed. This is not to say that any of
these characters totally escape their domination, their madness, their homosexuality,
etc. - or even want to. Rather, by undergoing self-reflexive representational transforma
tion to varying degrees, they no longer accept domination as an 'undisputed natural
category'. In the Indonesian context, this is, perhaps, the first step towards generating
amore liberated sense of social order.

Conclusion
Just as the Indonesian nation has found itself in a deep crisis in the years following
the fall of Suharto, as a constructed category the Indonesian 'man' is also undergoing
a period of fluidity. Cultural icons such as the landmark film Kuldesak suggest that the
contemporary image of the Indonesian male is torn between outdated and archetypal
images and 'alternative' or non-traditional masculinities. The alternatives themselves,
as seen in recent fiction, television advertisements and cinema, are contradictory and
ambiguous.
However, contradiction and ambiguity do not necessarily appear to be entirely
negative characteristics. This article has suggested that even apparently 'dead-end'
-
masculinities such as Andre, the rebellious grunge rebel - are also encoded as symbolic
breaks with the dominant image of Indonesian heterosexual masculinity. Furthermore,
even when contrasted unfavourably with Andre, the mad Hariolus is also able to under
mine dominant images of the Indonesian man. Despite many
heterosexual contra
dictions and the paradoxes of self-reflexivity, these symbolic ruptures are extremely
important, as they highlight and question the outdated nature of conservative
patriarchal
- - as
stereotypes such as the New Order thug Yakob Gamarhada well as the physical and
symbolic violence involved in establishing and perpetuating patriarchal dominance.
Through the questioning of gendered power, Kuldesak both refuses and challenges the
New Order's monolithic and patriarchal consciousness, the imprint of which will no
doubt affect Indonesians for many years to come.
Finally, the contradictory and hybrid nature of Indonesian maleness says much
about the realities of contemporary Indonesian life. With the fall of Suharto, and the
disappointment of leaders such as Habibie, Gus Dur and Megawati, it appears that the
of a male hero ? la -
days unifying, all-conquering, Sukarno who often likened himself to
the heroic Bima or Gatotkaca of the wayang- are long gone. However, with the
opening
up of a sense of democratic space for Indonesian filmmakers (and for all Indonesians,
in fact) new voices can be heard. In fact, the multiple perspectives and ideological contra
dictoriness of deeply political films such as Kuldesak reflect what is so exciting and
about Indonesia - so
daunting today the emergence of many identities that have been
suppressed for too long. It remains to be seen, however, whether discussion of Indone
sian male identity is to play a key role in Indonesia's ongoing process of social, cultural
and political renegotiation.

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