Adapting a Popular Culture Genre to Criticize an Authoritarian Government: Balinese Artists Attack Suharto's Repressive Indonesian Regime

During President Suharto's 1966-1998 reign in Indonesia, freedom of the press was severely restricted. Through the use of humor, ambiguity and symbolism from their traditional shadow puppet genre, however, clever Balinese cartoonists were able to express far more critical opinions about Suharto's authoritarian government than were print journalists. In traditional Bali, shadow puppet plays were very important for teaching the proper Balinese ways to behave. They may have been an even more important medium of socialization than television is in the United States today. The puppeteers used clown-servant characters (who were sometimes reincarnations of gods and often acted to promote the best interests of the common people) to criticize contemporary government policies and actions. They were careful to do this in a very subtle manner, however, to avoid serious retaliation by the political authorities. Several Balinese cartoonists have created their own distinctive characters that perform the same function as the clown-servants of the shadow play genre. Wayan Gunasta Pendit, for example, has written that his I BREWOK character is like the clown-servant of the shadow plays because he “can praise, make fun of people, criticize or even tease” his political master (or the audience) just like cartoonists can.1 This article will show how two of Bali's talented cartoonists were able to express some serious criticisms of Suharto's authoritarian regime. Three of the specific cartoons that will be analyzed were on display at an exhibition titled “Globalisasi” (Globalization) at the 1997 Bali Arts Festival. The fourth was published in a book of cartoons that was for sale at the exhibition. Before these specific example cartoons are presented, however, the dangerous political environment in which they were created will be described. “Jango” Pramartha, one of the cartoonists who organized the Globalisasi exhibition, optimistically includes the following motto on his business card: “Cartooning is Not a Crime.” Gus Martin, another cartoonist organizer of the exhibit, also demonstrated fear of being arrested as a criminal for his cartooning. The author of a tourist magazine article promoting the Globalisasi exhibition noted that Martin uses two antagonistic clown-servant type characters. To Americans, they look and interact much like the Laurel and Hardy film comedy team. Here is the evidence that our well being has truly increased! Everything is equal! Whatever there is we share together! If I have money, you also share it! If I eat, you too eat! But it still isn't exactly even because somehow you manage to work it so…our PORTIONS are different! Anyone who reads the script will know exactly what I'm referring to. Yet on the very surface, the real target is not identified. If anyone, the only person I can be said to be criticising is my own character, Delem. And that is no crime. (Emphasis added.)2 In the U.S. political context of the 1920s, such a Laurel and Hardy dialog could have been interpreted as an attack on a president's “the business of government is business” economic policies. The Indonesian political context was President Suharto's efforts to legitimize his regime by claiming that the political stability his authoritarian government was enforcing was required to promote the rapid economic development of the country. Clearly, Martin's cartoon is attacking Suharto's development plan as one that benefits Indonesia's rich elite (called “big men”) far more than the masses (the “little people”). When I lived in Indonesia in the 1970s, Madam Tien Suharto was sometimes referred to (privately) as “Madam Ten Percent”. On return trips in the 1980s, I noticed that the president's wife had become “Madam Twenty Percent.” By the 1990s she was “Madam Thirty Percent.” Any thoughts that these kickback percentages may be exaggerated were erased by credible reports in the late 1990s that World Bank project funds in Indonesia were indeed being “diverted” at this scandalous rate.3 In short, cartoons that implied that Suharto's regime was greedy and corrupt were fundamentally true. In such circumstances, authoritarian governments are very likely to react harshly to critical cartoons. Even foreign cartoonists had to be careful about how they criticized the Suharto government if they wanted to avoid serious consequences. Peter Nicholson made the mistake of drawing Suharto as an orangutan in a cartoon published in The Australian newspaper on October 20, 1997. The Suharto-faced ape was swinging on a vine (underneath an “Endangered Species” caption) to escape the raging flames of a forest fire that was labeled “Corrupt Economics.” The Far Eastern Economic Review reported that “senior Indonesian officials were so furious” that it was doubtful “whether a tepid one-paragraph apology on the letters page would save the Australian newspaper's Jakarta bureau.”4 When I wrote Nicholson to purchase a copy of the offending cartoon, I inquired about the incident. He replied that after he submitted his Suharto as an orangutan cartoon along with some others for consideration, he was told only that one of his other cartoons had been selected for publication. Nicholson was not told that the Chief-of-Staff of the paper's Sydney office (who knew Indonesia well) had pointed out at the staff meeting that the orangutan idea would be deeply offensive because the Dutch colonialists used to call Indonesians “monkeys”. In short, Indonesians would view the cartoon as racist. “Blissfully unaware” of this racism factor and because he drew “politicians as monkeys all the time”, Nicholson submitted his orangutan cartoon again several days later. This time the Chief-of-Staff was out of town but the Editor-in-Chief (who had been overseas at the time of the earlier rejection meeting) had returned and was back in charge of all editorial decisions. He saw the cartoon on his desk, liked it, and—unaware of its racist overtones—approved it for publication. The Indonesian government reacted vigorously, Nicholson continued, and was “going to close down our very important bureau in Jakarta and expel our correspondent (and my close friend), Patrick Walten.” Australia's Foreign Minister tried to cool the wrath of Suharto's officials by assuring them that Australian cartoonists draw politicians as monkeys all the time. Also, the Editor-in-Chief had to fly to Jakarta to meet with Indonesia's Foreign Minister. Finally, things calmed down and The Australian was allowed to keep its Jakarta bureau. Nicholson explained that he was embarrassed about his cartoon's racist overtones and would not have resubmitted it had he been aware of this problem. He was further embarrassed when he was praised on a T.V. program as a “brave hero fighting the good fight against totalitarianism.”5 Nicholson's embarrassment over his cartoon's unintended racist overtones is justified, but his modesty about fighting the good fight is not. His numerous cartoon attacks on Suharto's corrupt and brutally repressive government are more impressive than those of any other cartoonist whose work I know. Indeed, his cartoon depicting Suharto crooning “I Did It My Way” (published in The Australian on May 18, 1998) is the most powerful cartoon argument against an authoritarian leader I have ever seen. Now that the context has been set, four specific cartoons will be presented and analyzed. Because the Balinese cartoonists who drew them were subjects of Suharto's politically repressive rule, the creation of these intriguing cartoons required bravery as well as skill. Stumbling upon the “Globalisasi” exhibit was serendipitous because I was not expecting to find anything very political at the month long festival of cultural performances. I was so elated to discover a cartoon I understood to be attacking the sham nature of Indonesia's elections as staged by Suharto's authoritarian regime that I immediately decided to part with the Rp. 300,000 ($136) purchase price. The young man I handed my big wad of banknotes to spoke good English, so I asked him to help me interpret some of its more subtle political elements. When he didn't tell me anything of significance, I concluded that he was an apolitical person who was merely helping out by manning the cartoon and book sales table. A year later I learned that he was cartoonist Jango Pramartha when I visited his studio in search of more political cartoons. He recognized me and was very interested to hear how much my students and I liked the 1997 election cartoon. As I examined the score of cartoons he had for sale, I was pleasantly surprised at how helpful he was when I asked about their political implications. I attributed his political openness to the fact that because President Suharto had been forced to resign the previous month, the press was becoming politically free again, and so was he. Only at our third meeting in late 1998 did Pramartha confide why he had not helped me interpret the election cartoon when we first met. He thought I was a C.I.A. agent who would report the very critical nature of the cartoon to the Suharto government. He had been so worried that he had immediately phoned his cartoonist friend to warn him that his cartoon had been “discovered” and that he might be in serious trouble! The three of us can laugh about this now because we have become trusted friends, but I still feel guilty about causing them both considerable anxiety. Clearly, however, the climate of fear created by Suharto's politically repressive regime was the fundamental cause of this unfortunate situation. Appendix A This interpretation is reinforced by the inclusion of a Hindu priest who looks like Santa Claus in the cartoon. This seems to imply that if the villagers behave like “good little boys and girls” and vote correctly in the elections, they will receive presents as a reward. The Suharto government's top political leader in Serang, West Java was not even subtle about this blessings in return for votes essence of Indonesia's parliamentary elections. He blatantly promised to give three goats to any precinct in which 100% of the voters poked their pencil-like voting sticks through the government's Golkar Party symbol. If an entire village of precincts voted 100% for Golkar, it would be rewarded with three water buffalo. If a whole sub-district of villages delivered a 100% victory to Golkar, it would be awarded three motorcycles. This campaign strategy worked especially well in the Carenang sub-district in which twenty precincts and four villages delivered all their votes to Golkar. Overall, Golkar raised its share of the votes from 57% (in the 1992 election) to 72%.6 Thus, it seems apparent that the cartoonist was targeting a serious defect of the political system Suharto imposed on Indonesia after his troops took over the country (in response to an alleged communist party coup attempt) in 1965. It is too easy for Americans to criticize Indonesians who sell their votes for material gain. I like to ask my students whether they would vote for a different presidential candidate in response to a rival party's promise to install a satellite television dish on their dormitory building (plus hook every room up to it) free of charge if everyone who lived there voted for that party's candidate. (This was an actual situation reported7 by a graduate student doing research in Indonesia in 1997; her building's residents yielded to the temptation!) Very few of my students claim that they would turn down such an election campaign bribe offer. I hope a U.S. candidate like Donald Trump doesn't read this, buy a satellite television company, and launch a successful presidential campaign! These final words from a Canadian newspaper editorial summarize what all politically aware Indonesians know but fear to say: “…Indonesia's ‘festival of democracy’ is anything but. It is a regime of repression, little else.”10 Even the festival element of this slogan proved to be sadly ironic. Over 250 people were killed in election-related activities, many in traffic accidents related to festive motor vehicle caravans and political rallies where supporters flaunted their party's colors in flags, banners and T-shirts.11 As with sports rivalries, such taunting can provoke violence. Some of the most serious incidents were reactions against some overzealous “color war” sorties ordered by the powerful governor of Central Java. Governor Suwardi gained notoriety as the most outrageous perpetrator of the Golkar's election tactic of painting all sorts of things yellow, the party's political color. The purpose of this “yellowization” campaign was to promote the government party's image of overwhelming power and popularity. Flash flood-like waves of yellow paint (often applied overnight) covered such things as road curbs, crosswalks, lamp posts, railings, flower containers, tree trunks, government buildings, and even mosques. The most humorous strategem involved a statue of a naked (the custom in ancient times) Olympic athlete that a Golkar supporter adorned with a canary yellow loin cloth.12 The leaders of the main opposition party in Central Java (the United Development Party, a coalition of Islamic groups) viewed Governor Suwardi's “yellowization” campaign as an abuse of power and took him to court because he had failed to get it approved by the provincial legislature. The party's supporters, however, responded tit-for-tat by repainting things green (their party's political color) or white (one of Indonesia's two national colors). When Chinese shop owners in Pekalongan failed to repaint their yellow store fronts green, as ordered by opposition party militants, sixty shops were looted and burned. In Temanggung fights broke out; eight people were injured plus seven motorcycles, a car, and a house were damaged.13 Tusuaria engages in the political use of color in his cartoon by making too many things yellow: all the clothes of the villagers, the stands and most of the fruits in the offerings on the women's heads, plus all the banners, umbrellas and balloons. This is calculated to annoy Balinese viewers because about 85% of them (as indicated by the results of the “free and fair” 1999 election) favored Megawati's opposition party. Many Balinese, however, reluctantly voted for Golkar in 1997 to protect their economic interests. For example, one store owner I talked with the day before the 1997 election confided that he wanted to vote against Golkar, but that he wanted to get his valuable business license renewed even more. He lived in a precinct dominated by small shop owners that lived behind (or above) their businesses. All of them were painfully aware that expedience dictated that they vote for the Golkar party even though they resented its policies and methods—including “yellowization”. Through his extensive use of yellow, Tusuaria is simultaneously pleasing unsophisticated Golkar viewers—including government censors—and fueling the resentment of the Balinese viewers. The typical Balinese voter not only opposed the central government's authoritarian and repressive political rule but also the corruption, cronyism and nepotism pervasive in the way Bali's lucrative tourism economy has been dominated by Suharto's sycophants. The Appendix B cartoon features a large man who has stuck his fork into a big bite of food shaped like the island of Bali. He is preparing to devour it after ripping it into pieces with his frightening, shark-like teeth. While I was viewing it at the Globalisasi exhibition, a European man turned to me, pointed at the huge man, and said guiltily, “He is us.” I agreed with him because the hungry for profit man appeared to be a rich foreign investor from Europe or America who was buying land from its Balinese owner to develop as another luxury tourist resort (like those I had seen proliferate all over Bali since the mid-1980s). Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D The cartoon communicates this in two frames. The upper one pictures two men happily clinking their glasses together to toast the benefits each anticipates from the business deal they have negotiated. That the big investor is indeed from Jakarta is confirmed by the fact that his tie stripes are the Indonesian national colors of red and white. The lower later. This time the of the from investor is up to the that he has from the In the of the Balinese man in that he has gained It is that the cartoonist uses his but I BREWOK character to that the Balinese people are being by the and politically powerful in Jakarta that all of the over other that the country of On sale at the 1997 Globalisasi exhibition was a book of cartoons by Wayan Gunasta Pendit, who is as I a copy but later that it was through I returned to my copy only to discover that every one of the or so on sale was these same My of were reinforced by the fact that all these from the following two of the and If the did this they the cartoon on page that Bali's provincial as a traditional his some Indonesian are being in of his These are small (as in Appendix an actual of the at his is a the of Indonesia's what could be some (the are and what might be interpreted as a A year later my interpretation that this cartoon was that Governor was in office in return for was reinforced by some Australian me an 1998) from their Australian newspaper in which a Balinese was as that Governor and the of Bali's provincial about the they just to keep Jakarta and look after a well Balinese I about in an but intriguing by that Governor has a of over Finally, a Balinese friend me an by reports that when Balinese against the tourism they the three different words the letters to the that the is Governor and that he is seen on television or his is Balinese often because he every development project that down from This evidence confirmed my that cartoon is a and clever attack on Governor political The and tourism provincial government approved were by the powerful economic and political of who were sometimes by foreign to resort such well as and When asked how he viewed his as a with the it that are like puppeteers cartoons are the Clearly, he the of the cartoonist and the puppet master as being The purpose of this article has been to how two and clever Balinese their year shadow puppet to the cartoon medium to express their opposition to some of the more corrupt and of their authoritarian government. Because Suharto's government was also and these and cartoonists also to be for their Now that a government has to power through free and elections in the Indonesian people are at long able to the fruits of a free It is that the cartoonists who the of Suharto's authoritarian regime will now to an even more building for and Indonesia is an country (in of and that to the of its national in This will be a long and as those of us who in a country that is still to its national motto of can

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