Pornography debate heats up
Pornography debate heats up
A raging debate on flourishing erotic media has added fuel to
public resentment over mounting unresolved national problems.
Some government officials and youth groups are crusading to
reverse the media "revolution". The Jakarta Post's journalists
Pandaya, T. Sima Gunawan, and Stevie Emilia and contributors
Tjahjono Ep and Ahmad Solikhan examine the saucy issue.
JAKARTA (JP): After about half an hour of browsing, Iwan
pulled two Rp 1,000 banknotes out of his trunks, threw them at
the newsstand attendant and picked up a copy of Pop.
"Isn't it great? Spend Rp 2,000 and get lots of saucy pictures
and stories," he grinned, clambering onto his bike and pedaling
away clutching a copy of an "adult" tabloid featuring a busty,
scantily clad woman posing provocatively on the cover.
Many newsstands in major cities have been busier than usual
lately thanks to erotic tabloids, magazines and illicit
publications which have come out in droves over the past month.
Badri, who runs a newsstand on Jl. Kaliurang, Yogyakarta, said
he sells about 50 copies a week of erotic tabloids and magazines,
which cost Rp 3,000 to 4,000 each. His regular customers are
mostly young women and middle-aged men.
Publications selling sexual fantasies are thriving amid tight
competition with the regular news media.
If sex content, both pictures and articles, is a yardstick of
press freedom, then Indonesia has probably just joined countries
proud of having free media.
The unprecedented freedom of the press spurred by Soeharto's
downfall last year has also given rise to pornography. In big
cities like Jakarta, the "adult magazines" are sold side by side
with children magazines.
Newspaper boys at busy intersections aggressively offer the
tabloids to motorists without fear of being apprehended by the
police. And bystanders are getting used to buying one without
shyly looking around.
Scenes of newspaper boys shoving adult tabloids in the face of
bystanders' are common at Harmoni roundabouts, just a few meters
from the Bina Graha presidential office. Transactions there are
done as if to show that no government authority can stop the new-
found freedom to enjoy erotic reading.
Some of the adult magazines, such as Pop, Power, Map, Kiss,
Liberty, Tragedi and Top, are brand new, and others like Popular,
Pos Film and Matra are old ones with fresh courage.
Not all juicy media, it turns out, have the mandatory
government publishing license. They have names but no address or
lists of journalists, editors or publisher. But they all sell
like hotcakes thanks to flashy pictures and hot stories.
The growing number of sexy media is often attributed to the
government's policy to simplify the procurement of publishing
license for a publication.
In the Soeharto era, when the press was tightly harnessed,
tabloids would feature soft porn material, and illegal hardcore
pornography publications were widely on sale, albeit covertly.
The tabloids and magazines feature topics like how to find
child prostitutes or tips on how to enhance sexual enjoyment.
They also carry explicit accounts of readers' sexual experiences.
One tabloid goes so far as to tell readers where to get call
girls in various towns in Java.
A Surabaya-based magazine, Top, gives names, physical features
and particular sex "skills" of favorite call girls in a brothel
in Bojonegoro a small town in East Java.
Editors and advocates of adult media insist that what they
publish is not pornography but, rather, "artwork" or sex
education, which people cannot obtain at school.
"Can anybody criticize us, give me the definition of
pornography?" asked Slamet, a marketing executive of Pop. "All
the contents in the tabloid are true stories that people can read
with their heart beating faster," he said with a nasty chuckle.
He said he knows many people are hypocritical about adult
magazines because they enjoy reading them but they will say the
media must be killed for promoting pornography.
Sex objects
Obviously, not everyone is happy about the presence of the
magazines. Women's rights activists, for example, charge that the
media portray women as "sex objects".
Smita Notosusanto, a member of the Jakarta-based Society
against Violence toward Women, said that the exposure of
revealing pictures stains the image of women.
"Women are treated as a commodity, not as human beings with
personalities. They are exploited to make a profit. As for the
women, I don't blame them. They need money. But isn't it fair if
they then receive such treatment?" she asked.
Traditional critics of such media are Muslim groups that do
not want to see publications carry any articles or photographs
they considered obscene.
Wave after wave of Muslims have demonstrated their disgust of
the media that they say are "threatening the morality of the
young".
Last week, adult media enjoyed a spurt of free promotion when
the city police summoned top model Sophia Latjuba for a five-hour
questioning on her nude picture on the cover of the May edition
of Popular magazine.
The magazine's photographer and executives were also summoned
for questioning. The police action, apparently, did not harm the
adult media business. Popular enjoyed greater sales with agents
reporting a sellout. People became aware of soft porn
publications at newsstands in their neighborhoods.
In a show of concern, senior Cabinet ministers made a media
showing last week, telling journalists that the authorities would
"take stern action" against anyone deemed responsible for
publishing pornographic material.
To prove they are serious about their threat, the police have
set up a special team in charge of monitoring the media. As has
the Ministry of Information.
Under Article 533 of the Criminal Code, anyone showing or
offering sexually arousing objects are punishable by two months
imprisonment. The Criminal Code has no definition of pornography.
But it does have articles covering obscenity and indecency.
Interestingly, Minister of Information M. Yunus Yosfiah, who
has won major adoration for allowing greater press freedom, said
that pornography was not his cup of tea. Because pornography is a
criminal case, the responsibility for handling it lies with the
police, not his office.
But this does not mean he is among those who are happy with
the mushrooming erotic media. In a Cabinet meeting at the Bina
Graha presidential palace on Wednesday, ministers gleefully
received tabloids carrying pictures of partially clad women that
Yunus distributed to show that media freedom has been misused.
"Many of the publications can be classified as pornography and
they are freely traded in by children on the street," Yunus said
on a separate occasion.
The increasing pressure on the government to take action
against the erotic media has forced the media people to lay low
-- at least for now.
"You have to duck when you come under public scrutiny," Slamet
said.
Media observer Ana Nadhya Abrar theorized that the flourishing
juicy media is spurred by pornography on the Internet. They
publish erotic material to gauge public reactions.
"The trick turns out to be effective," she said. "It cannot be
denied that the media make a lot of money."
As the sex-oriented media stay under heavy attack, debate is
raging over the definition of "pornography". The media and
advocates insist that the disputed pictures are "works of art"
and the articles are light matters that people are supposed to
enjoy in leisure.
Th. Gieles, an ethics teacher at Sanata Dharma University,
Yogyakarta, said the pictures in licensed erotic magazines
largely fall in the "sensual" category, which does not aim to
sexually arouse readers. While pornography, as unlicensed media,
is aimed at sexually arousing readers.
"Generally the pictures in licensed media are sensual-artistic
in their design," he said.
According to Gieles, what needs better government control are
pornographic video compact discs, not erotic magazines and
tabloids, which can be properly controlled by the public.
Defining pornography, it appears, is not that easy now that
the public is flooded with sex publications.
"Everyone has a personal interpretation and different point of
view," Ana said. "The issue must not be blown out of proportion,
so that Indonesia can focus on more pressing issues."
Some advocates of media freedom say the government's threat to
punish erotic mediums is just another trick to silence the media
in general and to put the brakes on media freedom. Or to divert
public attention from mounting crucial issues that the government
is unable to handle.
Now that the war against pornography is ensuing, erotic media
lovers are wondering if they still can have those "stories that
they read with their heart beating faster".