Indonesia's formal culture is trapped in cul de sac

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Kompas daily carried a rather theatrical statement of Abdurrachman Wahid, known as Gus Dur, in its May 31 edition.

It quoted him as saying that our culture is already dead, buried in its fervent desire to serve the interest of the existing institutions of power. As a result, we have developed a culture of violence.

This is, in the opinion of Gus Dur, terribly wrong. Culture should rest upon and derive its strength from morality, and not from violence. Gus Dur reminded his audience that violence is immoral.

This particular pursuit of culture has made our state a vehicle or instrument for those with power to subjugate those without power. Thus our state exists to serve power. Within our culture this power system has developed its own absolute autonomy which cannot be questioned by anyone. This, in the end, is the most burdensome form of colonization.

How should we react? Gus Dur's formula is the following: "I do not see the need to oppose this situation. I have reserved a room in my heart in which I exercise the freedom to question the morality of others' behavior."

How true is Gus Dur's portrait of the present condition of our culture?

I do not believe our culture is really dead. What Gus Dur described is true only as far as it concerns the "formal culture", the culture of those with power. If we look, however, at the situation among those without power, then we will see a different picture.

In this world morality is still very much alive. The fact that Gus Dur still draws a very big crowd wherever he speaks is indisputable evidence to me that behind or beside the formal culture is the "popular culture", the real culture of the people.

The existence of this culture has been obscured by lack of publicity. No mass media makes a serious attempt to report about life within this popular culture. Such coverage does not sell. Who would buy it? The poor?

It is generally believed that popular culture is shallow, abrasive and trivial. This prejudice used to be considered absolutely true within Javanese culture. Among the Javanese, popular culture was considered inferior in every respect to "palace culture".

Popular culture was looked upon as a culture belonging to those "who live close to stones, and far from kings" (cedak watu, adoh ratu in Javanese dialect).

After independence, however, these popular cultures have developed into autonomous cultures, independent from any trend set by palace cultures. The East Java variation of the Javanese classical dance, for instance, is no less fascinating than the traditional classical dance of the Yogyakarta and Surakarta palace varieties.

Popular culture is now heavily overshadowed by formal culture. The current popular culture has no patrons, has no sponsors. It is not even on the map of the Ministry of Education and Culture, I am afraid. In time, however, it will grow into a mature culture, independent from and equally visible as the formal culture.

As Prof. Philip H. Phenix stated in one of his books: "Popular culture need not be mediocre and trivial. Meaning is lost both when knowledge is abstruse and inaccessible and when it is commonplace and superficial." The present popular culture looks trivial because it has no access to the best insights of our civilization.

How to safeguard this popular culture and how to protect it from being corrupted and co-opted by the formal culture are two problems that must be solved. If Gus Dur has a special room in his heart, so do people without power.

And I think there is a great correspondence between the criteria of right and wrong that have been operating in Gus Dur's heart and similar criteria that have been working in the hearts of people without power. Again, the fact that Gus Dur still has a big audience means that his feelings regarding the present situation are silently shared by millions of people who, like him, abhorred violence and long for justice.

Our current popular culture will be able to fight against the corrupting influence of the formal culture, I think, if it is given the opportunity to communicate freely. In my view, popular culture is by necessity local in nature. There are thus many local popular cultures which lack the opportunity to communicate among themselves. In contrast, the formal culture is national and has all the means to communicate with any party it wishes to reach.

Reaching a target does not necessarily mean being accepted. People cannot be forced to listen. They can be forced to hear, but not to listen. As far as I know, there are many views of the formal culture which have been rejected by the ordinary people. They simply refuse to accept certain things which are forced on them.

Herein lies the strength and resilience of our current popular culture, I believe. It has its own belief, its own conviction, its own vision. No amount of violence, physical or otherwise, can force common people to believe what they refuse to believe or what they cannot possibly believe.

An important variable in this case is that the language of the formal culture is different from the language of the popular culture. The language of the formal culture is the product of manipulative thinking, whereas the language of the popular culture is the product of straight feeling. The language of the formal culture is exploitative, whereas the language of the popular culture is emotive.

This difference of language constitutes the main reason for the absence of genuine communication between the formal culture and the popular culture, between those with power and those without power. The current popular culture manages to survive precisely for this reason. The same reason allows realistic hope concerning the future of the popular culture.

I would say our culture is not dead. What has happened is that the formal culture has come to the end of a cul de sac, and is therefore practically dead. The popular culture, on the other hand, is alive and kicking and in dire need of fresh air. It is our collective duty to breathe fresh air into the lungs of popular culture.

The writer is an observer of a social and cultural affairs.