Film and manpower

Film and manpower

From Jayakarta

The employment of Indonesian workers abroad has given rise to
a lot of heartrending problems related to human rights
violations, inhumane treatment and workers not being able to
enjoy many of their rights.

There are reports about some workers not receiving their pay
and others being treated lower than animals and mercilessly
tortured. We have also read and heard reports about many women
workers having been raped and sexually harassed and also about
some of them having been punished and about one woman worker
having been beheaded.

These migrant workers, male and female, are compelled to find
work abroad because they cannot get a job at home. They risk
their lives, crossing the sea to another country sometimes on
board an improper vessel. Many of them have got drowned. Some
have been made prostitutes while thousands of them have been
jailed for illegal entry into another country.

All this should not have happened if our leaders had not
issued too many prohibitions with the result that employment
opportunities have shrunk. Doing so just for the sake of covering
up decadence will not guarantee any welfare. It is hoped that our
leaders, who can fulfill all the needs in their lives, will not
so easily introduce prohibitions.

A case in point is the national film industry, which is now
virtually on the very brink of bankruptcy. In fact, the film
industry can provide employment to quite a lot of people because,
certain cast excepted, one does not have to possess certain
qualifications to join the film industry.

The national film industry has very nearly collapsed because
if there are some sexually hot scenes, the ministry of
information will give the earliest and strongest reaction.

Indonesia is not as small as Brunei Darussalam, a country
where the states guarantees the lives of its people. Indonesia
has a population of some 200 million people, the world's fourth
largest population. This means that many need to be fed.

Now the choice is whether or not these sexually hot scenes
must happen in Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and
other countries because many of Indonesia's women migrant workers
have been raped or turned into whores in these countries.

Of course not all films must present sex scenes. Quality films
do not need such scenes. Quality wide-screen films, however, are
expensive to produce. TV films, mostly depicting household drama,
are not popular because many of the viewers themselves are now
embroiled in their household crises and are therefore in a
stressful condition. (Just imagine, every day there is a
likelihood of a price increase. The state electricity company,
for example, has made it a point that the tariff of electricity
will increase every three months.)

Unfortunately, certain TV films which can cater to the taste
of the viewers are usually carelessly made.

Owners of TV broadcasting stations never care whether their
films get an audience or not. The most important thing for them
is that there are a lot of commercials. In this regard, it is
therefore expected that the ministry of information may take
action to silence indiscriminate criticisms of national films
launched by the press. Films depicting many sexually hot scenes
are easy targets for reviewers. These reviewers need money to
feed themselves so they continue to write about such films in
great lengths. The longer an article is, the bigger the fee will
be. This is not to say that any of these reviewers are harboring
an ill intention.

MUL

Jakarta