Sarumpaet's play, well directed but contains flaws<\/p>\n
Max Lane, Contributor, Jakarta<\/p>\n
If you are interested in learning about Indonesian cultural life
\nsince the overthrow of the dictator Soeharto, you should not miss
\nRatna Sarumpaet's new play Anak-Anak Kegelapan (Children In The
\nDarkness).<\/p>\n
Sarumpaet has continued her record of identifying and bringing
\nto the mainstream stage issues of political morality central to
\nIndonesia's future.<\/p>\n
Her past plays in this genre have been Pesta Terakhir (Last
\nParty), covering the attack on the anti-Soeharto activists
\nholding free speech forums at the headquarters of the Indonesian
\nDemocratic party (PDI) in 1996; Marsinah Accuses based on the
\nstory of Marsinah, a tortured and murdered labor activist and
\nlast year's Alia, whose story was based on the sufferings in Aceh
\nunder military rule.<\/p>\n
Children In The Darkness takes up the events that began the
\ncriminal history of Soeharto's New Order, the mass murders
\nfollowing a foiled coup in Sept. 30, 1965.<\/p>\n
This issue has been discussed semi-openly in the media, books
\nand in non-governmental organizations for some time now.<\/p>\n
Former president Abdurrahman Wahid began to speak of this as
\nan issue needing national moral correction but was only able to
\ntake it so far. Sarumpaet's play is the first real attempt to use
\nmainstream cultural activity to confront society with important
\nquestions concerning these events.<\/p>\n
Sarumpaet's approach is fundamentally a moral one. The climax
\nof her moral challenge to society is focused in the last scene of
\nthe play where her hero, Imam, the critical and independent-
\nminded son of a fascist general, confronts his father and his
\nfather's lackeys with the fact of the mass murder of the members
\nof the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).<\/p>\n
"The country would have been destroyed if that party had come
\nto power," answer's one of the fascist ruler's military lackeys.<\/p>\n
"Is that a reason to kill all these people?" replies Imam
\npassionately. Imam goes on to reject his father and his father's
\nwishes that he follow in his footsteps as a national leader.<\/p>\n
This scene crystallizes Sarumpaet's moral challenge: a
\nnegative assessment of the PKI by the military was not a
\njustification for mass murder. This injustice must be rectified.
\nThis open moral stand taken on the stage in Taman Ismail Marzuki
\nin Central Jakarta is an important event in post-Soeharto
\ncultural life.<\/p>\n
The play has good acting and, within in its aesthetic form of
\nmoral statement, well directed. At the same time, Sarumpaet's
\nlong play contains flaws which weaken its overall impact.<\/p>\n
The story which she has decided to use distracts people,
\nespecially young people still unfamiliar with the facts of 1965.<\/p>\n
Her tragic heroine, Zuraida, is the granddaughter of a woman
\nimprisoned on suspicions of being a member of the PKI. She has
\nsuffered as a result, the subject of discrimination and stigma as
\nwell as of pressures from a mother in denial of reality and
\nriddled by guilt for not defending Zuraida's grandmother and for
\naccepting a position in the government of the oppressor.<\/p>\n
But Zuraida's grandmother was not a member of the PKI.
\nSarumpaet's story makes her somebody wrongly accused of being in
\nthe PKI, the subject of plots to do with an extra-marital affair.<\/p>\n
In fact, nowhere in the play do any of the consciously
\ntargeted victims of the mass murder have a chance to speak: the
\nmillions of people who consciously decided to join and be active
\nin the PKI, the largest legal party in Indonesia in 1965.<\/p>\n
This weakness is underlined again in the opening scene where
\nagain another victim is highlighted: a teacher of the Islamic
\nreligion who was killed, again mistakenly accused of being PKI.<\/p>\n
Sarumpaet misses the opportunity to address the key central
\nmyth used to defend the New Order's immorality on this question
\nand upon which society's acquiescence is also based.<\/p>\n
This is not the myth that the PKI was responsible for the
\ndeath of generals in 1965 or that the PKI was behind the 1965
\ncoup or that the killings were a result of spontaneous popular
\nrevenge.<\/p>\n
In fact, Sarumpaet does raise the issue of the Soeharto
\ngroup's knowledge of the coup and makes it clear that she thinks
\nthe military was responsible for the killings.<\/p>\n
The real myth was that the PKI was made up of evil people who
\ndeserved to be killed. It does not help in rebutting this myth by
\nnot having any characters who can present a case for the PKI.<\/p>\n
My criticism is not that Sarumpaet should have defended the
\nPKI or its ideology, but rather that she should have let them
\nspeak. What were they struggling for? What motivated them? What
\ndid they want for Indonesia? Only by answering these questions
\ncan we begin also to answer the question: what were those who
\norganized the mass murders trying to stop?<\/p>\n
This absence also creates an aesthetic flaw. By reducing the
\nsubstance of the play to Sarumpaet's moral statement devoid of
\nthe necessary political elaboration, the aesthetic form of the
\nplay becomes one of statement alone.<\/p>\n
Her script is written not as a dramatic and evolving story,
\nbut rather as a series of scenes mostly meant to provide an
\nopportunity to make a statement, usually in the form of angry
\ndeclamation or tragic soliloquy.<\/p>\n
This flaw, the flaw of focusing on the "wrongly accused",
\nactually weakens the impact of her correct fundamental moral
\nstatement in the final scene.<\/p>\n
It is and was wrong. A great evil of the 20th century, to
\ncarry out the 1965 to 1967 mass murders of between 500,000 and a
\nmillion people simply because they were suspected to be in the
\nIndonesian Communist Party.<\/p>\n
But in raising an argument about this whole event, it is also
\nwrong, I think, to deny the members of the PKI a voice in
\npresenting their case.<\/p>\n
This absence has the danger of reinforcing the very taboo and
\nstereotype that the ideas and actions of the PKI are indeed evil,
\nor biadab ("barbarian") to use Imam's word.<\/p>\n
It seems that they are so evil indeed that they are too taboo
\nto be explained even in a play addressing the very issue of the
\nmurder and suppression of these millions of citizens and their
\nviews.<\/p>",
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