‘Tradition’, ‘Modernism’, and the Struggle for Cultural Hegemony in Indonesian National Art Theatre

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Notes

¹This article benefited greatly from comments by Matthew Cohen, as well as the two anonymous readers solicited by Indonesia and the Malay World.

²I begin by first defining what I mean by ‘national culture’, since as Yampolsky has pointed out, this term has proven difficult to pin down in Indonesian public discourse (Yampolsky 1995: 701–10). What I mean here, by national culture are specific cultural products in fields such as literature, theatre, cinema, visual arts, and to some extent, television, which use the Indonesian language and/or which are seen by their creators as contributions to the new national culture which is often viewed as developing parallel to, but also in interaction with, the main currents of contemporary international art. More narrowly, I will focus on that sub-field of Indonesian national culture – the national art theatre – which sees itself as a contribution to the realm of serious high artistic creation. The national art theatre, as I am defining it, consists of all the groups and individuals involved in producing this type of theatre, as well as its critics and the institutions and officials who help administer it.

³ Pesantren are Islamic boarding schools, often run by a charismatic scholar of Islam (kyai) and located in rural areas, whose curriculum at that time consisted mainly in instruction in Islamic knowledge and scriptures.

⁴During this period, progressive cultural nationalists such as Ki Hajar Dewantoro were also engaged in establishing a ‘post-colonial’ educational system based partly on ‘Javanese’ ideas of education fused with western progressive trends such as those embodied in the Montessori system. See Tsuchiya (1987) for an historical account of the Taman Siswa movement.

⁵In fact, Poedjangga Baroe was not well received by many more radical nationalists precisely because it was regarded as too ‘western’. For an extended discussion of this, see Keith Foulcher's valuable study of the Poedjangga Baroe group (1980).

⁶Many of these notions, excepting perhaps that of hybridity, are very similar to those of the English Liberal Humanists (F.R. Leavis, Q. D. Leavis, William Empson, I.A. Richards) whose work was being developed in the 1920s and 1930s, and may have been available to Indonesian intellectuals through Dutch education, or through some other means of access to contemporary trends in European literary criticism.

⁷ Perasaan sentimenteel kasar dan rendah rakjat banjak haroes disaring, disublimeer mendjadi perasaan jang bersih dan bagoes. Itoe semoea pekerdjaan kesoesastraan kita dengan djalan sadjak dan roman.

⁸Mention should be made here of Armin Pané, who constitutes an important exception to this attitude as demonstrated in his attempts to collaborate with members of the popular urban theatre in the group Sandiwara Pantjawarna beginning in 1943 (Sumardjo 1992).

⁹That this group shared some of the same sense of noblesse oblige and patronising attitudes of other factions of the elites can be seen in McVey (1986). Their theoretical similarity to the universal humanists is demonstrated by Foulcher (1986).

¹¹ Kita menyadari sepenuhnya betapa penting peranan kesenian dan kebudayaan dalam kehidupan satu bangsa … Demikian penting peranannya sehingga pembinaan kebudayaan nasional itu tercantum dalam garis-garis besar haluan Negara. Dalam garis-garis besar haluan Negara itu, ditegaskan bahwa pembinaan kebudayaan nasional harus sesuai dengan norma-norma pancasila. Karena itu saya ajak seluruh seniman dan budayawan kita, saya ajak Dewan Kesenian Jakarta, untuk segera memikirkan hal itu. Mungkin jawabannya belum dapat segera kita temukan dan kita sepakati, namun bagaimanapun juga pikiran-pikiran kita ke arah ini sudah harus kita renungkan. Akhir-akhir ini saya memang selalu mengajak kita semua untuk mem-pancasilakan segala kehidupan kita. Hal ini adalah sangat jelas, justru karena kita telah menetapkan pancasila itu sebagai dasar Negara dan pemandangan hidup kita; dan karena itu harus membimbing dan menjadi isi dari pembanggunan Indonesia.

¹⁰Examples of censorship and government warnings even during the Sadikin period are the stopping of a run of Arifin C Noer's play Orkes Madun: Madekur dan Tarkeni in 1974 due to objections to the play's poster and content by Islamic groups (Asa 1974: 46–48) and Mayor Sadikin's warning against nudity and other acts deemed inappropriate during a performance of Putu Wijaya's Lho in 1975 (Tempo 1978: 52).

¹²One need only read several of the speeches and documents produced by Suharto and his associates, Ali Murtopo and Abdulkadir Besar, during the first few years of the New Order to see the ways in which the concepts of pancasila and traditional culture were being formulated to limit possibilities for political dissent. See the translated materials in Bourchier and Hadiz (2003: 37–54).

¹³The most prominent of these (and their documentation) are the 1973 Dewan Kesenian Jakarta Forum on the results of the national script-writing competition (Budaya Jaya 1974); the 1976 seminars held in conjunction with the Dewan Kesenian Jakarta's ‘Inter-Dewan’ Arts Week/Theatre Festival (Budaya Jaya 1976); the 1980 Pertemuan Teater (Sihombing et al. 1980: 1–162); the 1982 National Theatre Festival/Meeting (Rendra 1983: 45–57); the 1985 Theatre Meeting/Symposium (Malaon et al. 1986), and discussions at national theatre festivals in 1986, 1993, and 1996.

¹⁴Those festivals occurred in the following years and locations: 1976 (Jakarta); 1978 (Jakarta); 1982 (Jakarta); 1985 (Jakarta); 1986 (Padang); 1993 (Surakarta); 1996 (Bandung).

¹⁵Reflecting his dream of a united Indonesia, Sumardjo believed that through knowledge of the various traditions, Indonesians would become more unified, a vision that was refracted in a way he himself might have found appalling in, for example, the TVRI showcasing of various sanitised and dressed up regional dances during the 1980s.

¹⁶Sumardjo was aware of the ideas of the American Abstract Expressionists (Sumardjo 2000: 463–74) which likely reinforced the key concepts of the ‘universal humanists’. Guilbaut (1983) has argued that Abstract Expressionism and its theoretical underpinnings were propagated abroad by US business people and government organs as a cultural component of its Cold War strategy. However, David Craven (1999) in contrast, suggests that such efforts were not in line with the political views of the abstract expressionists themselves, nor were they always received with the effect hoped for by those wishing to promote allegiance to American culture, values, and leadership.

¹⁷Though Goenawan was never a member of the PSI, and did not seem socially comfortable with most of the party members according to Janet Steele, he did spend considerable time in the environs of PSI members in the late Sukarno era and may well have been influenced by, or at least found support for his own ideas, in their, and Syahrir's thinking. His commitment to individual freedom, openness and interest in world intellectual currents, rejection of chauvinism and dogma, as found in his many Catatan Pinggir columns seem, at the very least, to demonstrate a real congruence with key Syahririan themes. See Steele (2005: 30–32).

¹⁸For several early examples, see ‘Maxi mini kata’ (Tempo 1972a: 50); ‘Menangkap lalat’ (Tempo 1972b: 24); ‘Siapa takut lakon Pinter’ (Tempo, 1972d: 38); ‘Woyzeck yang kocak, yang getir’ (Tempo 1973a). None of these are attributed to specific authors, but later reviews attributed to the authors listed above show many of the same characteristics, suggesting that the same writers were at work. See for example, see Asa (1973a; 1973b; Asa (1975) and Mohamad (1974; Mohamad (1975).

¹⁹By the 1970s, Rustandi was already an honoured older generation figure one of whose most prominent works, ironically, embraced the realism prevailing in the 1950s.

²⁰See for example the essays by Putu Wijaya, N. Riantiarno, Danarto, Aspar, Wisran Hadi, and others in the documentation collected by Sihombing, Sukirnanto, and Ikranegara in Pertemuan Teater 80 (1980) to get a sense of the extent of the experimentation, study, and thought related to traditional forms in which many prominent New Order theatre workers were engaged.

²¹During this period, Asrul Sani was still actively writing about the theatre and emphasising the need for art theatre to search for human identity and self-identity, since he felt modernity was based upon individual values rather than those of the group (Sani 1997: 241–54; 1974).

²²Despite his belief that tradition needed to be transformed to meet new times and individual truths, which align him partially with the more critical, modernising current within national culture, Rendra, as Winet points out, was also highly critical of western culture and remained committed to seeking indigenous answers to Indonesia's problems (Winet 2005: 153).

²³For a list including at least two performance bannings during the 1980s that officials justified with a similar logic, see YLBHI 1994: 49–50.

²⁴Not coincidentally, perhaps, two of Bagong's sons, Butet Kartaredjasa and Jadug Ferianto, featured prominently in Gandrik.

²⁵ … dengan humor kami mencubit tak terasa sakit.

²⁶ Seperti biasanya, drama komedi Teater Gandrik kali ini sarat dengan kritik terhadap masyarakat, meski tidak sesarat drama Teater Gandrik sebelumnya yang lain. Kritiknya pedas, seperti sambal untuk lauk nasi. Yang dikiritik entah ia itu pejabat pemerintah atau siapa saja mau tak mau tergelitik urat ketawanya sebelum mengenai urat kemarahan. Orang timur memang harus dikritik dengan humor agar tak cepat tersinggung.

As usual, Teater Gandrik's new comedy is full of social criticism, though not as full as Gandrik's previous plays. The criticisms are sharp, as sharp as the taste of chilli paste on rice. Those criticised, whether they be a government official or whomever, will find that, whether they want it or not, their funny bone will be tickled before their anger is incited. And of course eastern people have to be criticised through humour so they don't get angry too quickly.

²⁷John Pemberton (1994), as summarised by Hughes-Freeland (1997), identifies adiluhung as not essentially Javanese, but rather a marker of modernity formed in reaction to Dutch colonial control. Hughes-Freeland glosses adiluhung as meaning ‘original value’. She argues that the concept applies not just to what we now consider ‘art’, but to many aspects of culture more related to notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘custom’ (Hughes-Freeland 1997: 481–82).

²⁸Here it should be noted that a few earlier ‘neo-tradionalists’ did attempt to integrate elements of traditional ritual into their modern performances – most notably, Ikranegara with his ‘Ritus Topeng’ series of performances. However, this was not such a dominant current at the time, and recourse to traditional theatrical elements was much more likely to be to wayang and folk theatre forms like ketoprak, with the story material often being tales of court intrigues and power struggles.