Gender politics: Indonesia rocked by screen kiss<\/p>\n
AC Grayling, Guardian News Service, London<\/p>\n
Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic country, is currently
\nbeing stirred by a kiss. It is a kiss between a 16-year-old girl
\nand her 19-year-old boyfriend, and it occurs in an Indonesian-
\nmade film set in Jakarta.<\/p>\n
Such is its impact, the film has out-grossed two of the most
\nsuccessful Hollywood films ever to be shown in Indonesia, The
\nLord of the Rings and Titanic.<\/p>\n
It is not that Indonesians are unused to screen kisses, but
\nHollywood films are one thing, Indonesian-made films another.
\nThis one, entitled Ada Apa dengan Cinta? (What's up with Cinta?),
\nbreaks new ground in its depiction of relationships.<\/p>\n
Produced by Mira Lesmana, a young filmmaker, who cut her teeth
\nshooting television advertisements in Jakarta for western
\nproducts, it tells of a pair of high-school students who fall in
\nlove, but have to separate when the boy leaves Indonesia with his
\npolitical-dissident father who cannot bear the constraints of
\nIndonesian society any longer.<\/p>\n
The kiss takes place right at the end of the film when the
\nlovers part at the airport. It is not a Hollywood snog, but it is
\nnot a light buss either.<\/p>\n
When a conservative, religion-influenced society is set alight
\nby the public depiction of a sexual act -- for that is what a
\nlovers' kiss is -- it marks the presence or imminence of moral
\nchange. The crowds who have queued to see this film like it; not
\njust the teenagers, who whistle and cheer when they see the kiss,
\nbut adults also.<\/p>\n
The question is: does a film like Ada Apa dengan Cinta? change
\nthe moral climate, or does it merely reflect a change that has
\nalready happened? Is it a catalyst or a symptom?<\/p>\n
The answer is, both. The reason? There is a feedback mechanism
\nin social change. A moral climate begins to thaw, after a while
\nmaking it possible for a daring individual or group to offer a
\npublic comment on that change, or - more tellingly still - a
\nrepresentation of it in a popular art form.<\/p>\n
The representation, although a consequence of the change
\nbecause it would not have been thinkable otherwise, in its own
\nturn makes further change possible by putting a seal on the
\noriginal change, in a significant sense making it official. By
\nattracting interest and approval from its target audience it
\nbecomes a token of permission for them, and like Indonesia's kiss
\ncomes to be iconic.<\/p>\n
One example of the process is Britain in the 1960s. In the
\nmemories of today's 50-somethings -- the generation who were
\nthere -- the music, drugs, sex and revolution, all wreathed in
\nthe smoke of a thousand joints, doubtless now appear a seamless
\nwhole if remembered at all.<\/p>\n
But there was a series of signal events in that decade which
\nboth reflected what had been happening in the 15 years since
\n1945, and drove those developments further. The 1960s saw the
\narrival of the contraceptive pill, the Lady Chatterley trial, Oh!
\nCalcutta!, and the legalization of homosexual acts between
\nconsenting adults.<\/p>\n
The surrounding atmosphere of liberalization was exhilarating.<\/p>\n
Part of the feeling was that a prevailing hegemony of
\ndisapproval and restraint had been defeated, and that a new,
\nyoung, fresh and delightful world of permission had arrived.<\/p>\n
Something like this could be in the wind for Indonesia
\nfollowing the kiss. If it is, the relaxation of mood would be
\nlike the change that has happened in moral attitudes during the
\nlast two decades in another morally and ideologically
\nconservative society: China.<\/p>\n
The possible, and perhaps even likely, parallels between China
\nand Muslim societies are many and instructive.<\/p>\n
Twenty years ago, young couples strolling along the Bund in
\nShanghai -- China's fastest, loosest city, always ahead of the
\ngame -- might sneak a circumspect kiss under the cloak of night
\nwhen they thought only other young couples were near.<\/p>\n
Now (although the Bund has changed into a motorway, destroying
\nthe atmosphere of the world's only river embankment to be lined
\nwith Art Deco skyscrapers), there are no such compunctions, and
\nthe little Bund garden once famous for its sign "No Chinese or
\ndogs" resembles a corner of London's Hyde Park on a sunny day in
\nrespect of the bare flesh and kissing it contains.<\/p>\n
These changes are symptomatic of many others. If young couples
\nare kissing on the Bund -- and in the parks of other Chinese
\ncities -- as they would not have dared to do 20 years ago, there
\nhave been commensurate changes at the other end of the scale.<\/p>\n
Two decades ago, there were officially no prostitutes in
\nChina. A Shanghai street once famous for its brothels became a
\nmunicipal museum of an extraordinary kind, for reclaimed
\nprostitutes continued to live there as an exhibit of what
\ncommunism had done in the way of saving China from its sinful
\ncapitalist past.<\/p>\n
The ex-prostitutes, well into advanced old age, could give a
\nplausible recitation of what they had been taught to say in their
\n"re-education" lessons.<\/p>\n
Today, the prostitutes are back, not officially but without
\ndisguise. They work the karaoke bars, which have sprung up by the
\nthousand in the last decade or so, and the phrase which describes
\nwhat they do, xia hai, also means "going into business" in the
\nmore conventional sense. In between these ends of the scale other
\nchanges are commensurate.<\/p>\n
Divorce and cohabitation were highly unusual, and certainly
\nunmentionable, when Deng Xiao Ping first came to power. Now they
\nare becoming normal, if not quite yet the norm.<\/p>\n
Morals under the first 50 years of Communist party rule in
\nChina were every bit as prim as those typical of the most
\nconservative Islamic societies.<\/p>\n
Immorality of the conventional kinds -- mainly (as usual)
\nsexual immorality -- was regarded as uncommunist and in some
\nobscure way a threat to party control. (This was not how the
\nCommunist party in Britain thought before 1939; not a few of
\nthose who joined it did so because of the permissiveness at its
\nsummer schools.)<\/p>\n
But the old Chinese dispensation of concubinage and relaxed
\nattitudes to "vice" of all kinds was swept away by the new
\nmasters, and a fierce intolerance of western attitudes to private
\nlife supervened.<\/p>\n
Under the direction of China's own Mrs Grundy, one Deng Li Xun
\n(known as "Little Deng" to differentiate him from the tiny Deng
\nXiao Ping, who was half as tall), campaigns against "spiritual
\npollution" were conducted during the 1980s in an attempt to
\nprevent the Chinese, and especially young Chinese, from imitating
\nwestern styles in dress, coiffeur, dancing, attitudes and sex.<\/p>\n
The effort failed.<\/p>\n
To say that exactly the same attitudes and practices are
\ntypical of Islamic societies is to register the fact that the
\nmorality required by adherence to a faith -- by whatever name the
\nlatter goes -- is seen by the orthodox upholders of the faith as
\nimportant to its survival.<\/p>\n
But as in Indonesia, other Islamic societies are showing signs
\nof shift towards more liberal attitudes.<\/p>\n
The prime example is Iran. A third of the Iranian population
\nis under 30, and has therefore grown up under the post-Shah
\ndispensation. In the past 10 years, the ban on pop music and
\nstrict dress codes for women have collapsed in the face of
\nyouthful pressure.<\/p>\n
There are public pop concerts now, and women wear
\nmulticolored headscarves which reveal their hair. The young of
\nIran do not want to exclude the world, they want to join it.<\/p>\n
Morality and ideology always stand in an interesting
\nrelationship. The contemporary west leaves morality largely to
\nthe private sphere, and tolerates a wide diversity of outlooks
\nand behavior there, in accordance with its liberal ideology.<\/p>\n
Strongly hegemonic ideologies, as until recently in communist
\nChina and still in theocratic or quasi- theocratic dispensations
\nsuch as Muslim countries, do not leave morality to the private
\nsphere, and are actively interventive.<\/p>\n
The Saudis have, as the Taliban had, special police to enforce
\nmorality. So, when the moral and ideological begin to change
\ntheir relationship, the latter leaving the former increasingly
\nalone, interesting possibilities and new problems appear.<\/p>\n
The reason that moral conservatives oppose seemingly innocuous
\npractices such as teenage kisses is that they think there is an
\ninevitable connection between them and the larger permissiveness
\nwhich the west exemplifies, and which is returning to China. What
\nthey fail to recognize is that social phenomena such as
\nprostitution and marital breakdown exist in any society, but very
\nmuch underground in the repressive ones.<\/p>\n
The cost of driving them out of sight is paid by the rest of
\nsociety in the form of repression and limitation. When the latter
\nis lifted, the other phenomena merely come into view. And it is
\nhealthier for a society that they should be in view, for then
\nthey are less harmful.<\/p>\n
More importantly, the public discussion of human
\nrelationships, especially in such a potent public medium as film,
\nis essential to the good of individual lives themselves. If
\nrelationships are ever stilted, unimaginative, unsatisfying,
\nexploitative, furtive, sleazy or violent, it will have a great
\ndeal to do with the meddling hand of moralism.<\/p>\n
If there is a troubling level of relationship breakdown,
\nfamily unhappiness, failed marriages, unwanted pregnancies,
\nespecially among single girls and young women, and a high rate of
\nabortions, it will again often be because of conservative moral
\nattitudes - specifically, the counterproductive effect of the
\nendeavor to control natural human sentiments and desires by means
\nof denial, by limiting knowledge and opportunity in order to
\ndirect the affective side of human nature into as anodyne and
\nroutine a channel as possible.<\/p>\n
Moralists think that if they expose people -- and especially
\nthe young, those volcanoes of hormones -- to as little
\nstimulation as possible by censoring romantic images and sexual
\nreferences, and by keeping people as much in the dark and as much
\nunder a sense of prohibition as they can, they will thereby
\nsqueeze "immorality" out of daily life, or at any rate keep it
\nbottled.<\/p>\n
But there exactly lies their mistake. Imprisoning such
\nfeelings is an invariable recipe for empowering them. Ignorance
\nabout how to deal with them means that when they express
\nthemselves, they might do so negatively, even harmfully, and with
\nserious consequences - which is almost always the result when
\nsecrecy, ignorance and shame combine.<\/p>\n
Indonesia's kiss might well mark a change towards greater
\nopenness and acceptance of the place of love and sex in human
\nexperience, not least of its importance to the young. If it is,
\nit will symbolize much more than just this: for when the stays
\nare loosened on the sphere of private morality, much else begins
\nto breathe more freely in the society at large.<\/p>",
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