Jakarta in its megalomaniacal, glittering glory

Jakarta in its megalomaniacal, glittering glory

B. Herry-Priyono, Lecturer, Driyarkara School of Philosophy,
Jakarta

On the opening day of the Jakarta Fair 2003, which is part of
the 476th anniversary of the capital city, I was in the
commercial district of Kelapa Gading, whose glittering facade had
joined the glitter of Jakarta.

A few hundred meters southward, I was startled by a tightly
fenced-in area measuring over 17 hectares, where heavy
construction was underway. From the boards posted along the
fence, I learned that the area is to be a colossal commercial
center called Gading Square upon which a glittering world is to
be erected: A shopping arcade, the Parisian Walk, the Venetian
Plaza, etc.

Moving a few hundred meters eastward, I saw what used to be a
public space and a horse-race track also being fenced in. I
called a friend with a vast knowledge of Jakarta city planning,
and learned that the area was soon to become the Korean
Commercial District.

On the way home, my soul was haunted by an echo of a comment
uttered by a shocked British friend when he visited Jakarta last
year: "My gosh, I have never seen so many children and young
people hanging around in mega-malls like in Jakarta; not in
London, not in Paris, neither in New York nor in Tokyo." I could
not agree more. That evening, my mind was disturbed by the image
of an area crowded out by three commercial centers within close
proximity of each other.

There is no modernity without a city, but some cities are more
phony than others in its pretense at modernity. One such phony
city is Jakarta.

I was thinking of the disappearance of so many public spaces,
historical sites and conservation areas, and of the many
evictions of the urban poor that preceded the mushrooming of
mega-malls in Jakarta in the last 10 years or so. More
specifically, I was thinking of the psychological makeup that is
being created by such an onslaught of shopping centers.

During my six years of study in Europe, I took a chance to
learn why and how the great cities of the world, like London and
Paris, jealously guard public spaces such as parks, conservation
areas and historical sites. Those cities would never replace
these public spaces with malls or any other commercial centers,
even if the latter is judged highly profitable. It is not only
ecology that is evident, but also societal psychology.

Consider ourselves frequenters of mega-malls. We are
surrounded by saleable items whose availability is within the
grasp of our hands. The items could be anything from dried fish
to the latest Ferrari sports car, but everything is there before
our eyes, luring us to grab them up.

Frequenting mega-malls is not simply a physical matter of our
coming or going. It involves the shaping of both the content and
the form of our mental landscape. More than anything else, the
imprint of mall life is the crowdedness of immediacy and the
mobbish quality of the instantaneous.

The distance between us and the consumer items increasingly
disappears. Instead of prudently choosing our purchases, what is
happening is that our collective psyche is gradually being
cannibalized by the seduction of the items.

It is here that most mainstream economic theories seem to have
gone amiss when they say that the consumers' independence is
sacred. It is also through this process that the lexical
definition of "consumerism" as "the protection and promotion of
consumers' interests in relation to the producer" has degenerated
into "concocted consumption" in the new political-economic
literature. Thus, the adjective "consumerist" has also gradually
acquired its vicious meaning.

What has all this to do with Jakarta's spatial and social
fabric? The unfettered rise of mall culture which is increasingly
commanding Jakarta's fabric of existence seems to have reached an
alarming level. It is not the presence of mega-malls that is
problematic, but its consumerist orgy that is formed by their
unfettered presence.

First, it is a pretense of modernity founded upon a
surreptitious replacement of "citizenship" with "consumership".
Is it a vice or a virtue? Either way, what arises is this general
ethos: If you don't pay for it, it can't be worth anything.

Second, with the crowds of immediacy embodied in the culture
of mega-malls comes the celebration of the instant. Again, a
virtue or a vice? Depends on the eye of the beholder. But if the
beholder has been inculcated in the orgy of the instant, what
happens is the reinforcement of the orgy itself -- who cares
about the long-term impacts! Glitter needs no justification. What
emerges is a generation whose credo is proudly advertised by A
Mild cigarette: "I think, therefore I get more confused". This is
the making of a generation whose banality is interchangeable with
their vacuity.

Third, in this culture of the instant, depth is by definition
lack of accessibility; hence the rise of a shortcut way of life
as wide as society in scope. With it comes an economy that mainly
stands on consumption rather than on the industrious craft of
production. The demise of the manufacturing industry that is now
besieging the U.S. has something to do not only with the worship
of bubble finance, but also with the orgy of consumerism.

Fourth, the way those unfettered mega-malls burgeons is also
the poignant story of many disappeared public spaces, historical
sites and conservation areas.

We may immediately think of the floods that chronically hit
Jakarta, but in reality, the stakes at risk are higher than those
that come with the floods.

We repeatedly lament over the demise of public civility, but
forget that such demise is by no means unrelated to the
disappearance of public spaces. We also lament over the decline
of our sense of history, but forget that this can only be secured
by the jealous guarding of historical sites.

In the ever-flowing river of history, no one can remain in the
past. But Jakarta seems to have blotted out its past recklessly
with more orgies of the immediate instant. Instead of giving a
sense of history, Jakarta's 476th fiesta may offer only a sense
of megalomania.

Jakarta is an orphaned city reflecting itself in the mirror of
bogus modernity.

The corrosion of our lives comes not simply from the orgy of
violence, but also from the orgy of seduction.