Stranger in Paradise - Made Wijaya

By Wombat | March 20th, 2006 | 2 Comments »

In the Jakarta Post yesterday there was an excellent article by that literary genius Made Wijaya on Inul’s bum, and, that old favourite of ours, the porn bill.

Stranger in Paradise: Inul’s bottom is to blame

All through the years under founding father Sukarno, Indonesia was recognizable as a nation of island people with a respect for feminine beauty, in all its forms. The founding president himself was an avid collector of Lee Man Fong’s luscious paintings of cheong sam and sarong-clad beauties — Fong being Asia’s answer to the Sam Vargas of Playboy’s Vargas girls fame.

In this era of emerging nationhood, Indonesian women were known for their coy charms and refinement. Indonesian society was conservative, but certainly not prudish. (Sukarno made sure of that!)

During the Soeharto years, a period of military occupation, a more risque mood prevailed among the masses, if not at Madame Tien Soeharto’s doily-strewn bunker with its origami excesses and aquariums. Like the soldiers, certain sectors of society craved more carnal pleasures, with the infamous Tari Ular of East Java and the Sundanese Jaipong achieving wide popularity.

And who will ever forget Camelia Malik’s gyrations?

During the same decades, Jakarta’s transsexual trolling beat, Taman Lawang, was barely 500 meters from the Soehartos’ Jl. Cendana base. Mini-skirts on these ladies of the night got shorter and shorter as the Soeharto years rolled on.

When Habibie came to power, the wadam — an acronym for wanita-adam, literally meaning “man-woman” — were driven from their hereditary cruising grounds, only to resurface on the Kuningan overpass, opposite the then Regent Hotel. By this time, mini-skirts had become optional. Many polite families returning from wedding receptions at the nearby the Sunda Kelapa mosque, or from vespers at Emmanuel church, would be shocked on the overpass by a hirsute display of full frontal nudity by a flashed map of Tasmania. But still society remained silent, preferring to self-regulate rather than overreact.

During the late 1990s, under the rule of the liberal and fun-loving president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, jaipong-style dance spectaculars returned with a vengeance, this time in the form of dangdut dancing, that wonderful East Javanese tension-breaker popular in Surabaya, which is also Gus Dur’s heartland.

The hydraulic bottom of one Inul Daratista, in particular, attracted the attentions of the silent majority and protests were heard. Inul became famous across the Malay archipelago, being flown in a government Hercules on more than one occasion to entertain the troops, in the tradition of history’s other great bottom-wobblers: Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich.

The reign of Megawati Soekarnoputri coincided with the emergence of the hipster as a major fashion force in Jakarta society. Megawati’s healthy respect for individual liberties was accompanied by a surge in Western behavior among the masses, particularly in Jakarta, where necklines and waistlines were plunging.

Neo-conservatives attempted to push an anti-pornografi and anti-pornoaksi — which can only be translated as suggestive or pornographic behavior — bill through the House of Representatives during this era, but it was voted down.

In the present era of social and economic reform, under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the conservatives are again taking aim at sexy dancing, topless bathing and lewd — or almost nude — art. The new Draconian laws proposed to control excesses are striking fear into the hearts of many.

The Balinese, in particular, are very worried about repercussions for their culture — sexy joged dancing, topless bathing in the river, and erotic temple carvings are part and parcel of life in Bali. Balinese tourism is likewise dependent on a certain relaxed attitude toward morality and sexuality.

The Balinese are nothing if not prudish!

What is Bali’s history of nudity and sexual licentiousness, one may well ask.

The island of Bali burst onto the international art and erotica scene with the publishing of German art photographer Gregor Krause’s sensational 1936 book. His photographs featured beautiful maidens bathing bare-breasted in riverside springs.

For Orientalists around the globe, it had been a long wait since 1906, when the first images of a beatific Bali — featuring ornate sea-side temples and languid, artful natives — reached the Western world via the drawings of Dutch war artist W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp.

In 1938, renowned Hollywood director Busby Berkeley included a Bali-based production number — “I wanna go back to Bali, they don’t have a word for no” -in his Gold Diggers in Paris.

The implication was that the “island of the gods” was awash with lithesome teens in sarongs having hula lessons (this was far from the truth, but the image persists to this day).

Things were heating up in the U.S. too: the Javanese expression goona-goona, popular in Bali at that time to describe black magic, was adopted as early as 1938 as New York slang for “nookie” in the night. It can still be heard in New York to this day, in certain quarters.

In 1940, actress Constance Bennet and her husband the Marquis de la Falaise made a hauntingly beautiful film called Legong: the Island of Virgins, which featured a languorous lead actress called Putu. Her perfectly formed breasts got an Academy Award nomination for best supporting act.

After Road to Bali — starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamore in a wet sarong — hit the big screen, the world’s mammary voyeurs were positively panting. European travel companies were promoting tours to see the “8th and 9th wonders of the world”, respectively.

In the 1950s, Sukarno was appalled by all the slobbering — German tourists, in particular, were singled out for censure. He decreed that the women of Bali must cover up in public. A French couturier was imported to fashion a suitable chemise. The world lost its most gorgeous topless culture, but gained a politely prudish populace. Jakarta was appeased, Bali rolled on regardless.

For the next 55 years things went along swimmingly, with only the tourists popping them out in public and the traditionally demure Balinese promoting their island on its scenic and cultural attractions rather than the god-given gifts of the female populace.

In late 2005, certain factions again started pushing for the adoption of the controversial anti-pornografi dan pornoaksi laws. One imagines that the delicate sensibilities of these neo-cons were riled by the dangdut dancers that hog national TV screens and the increasingly “Western” portrayals of Indonesian women as sex objects in the nation’s media.

The violent objections of the Balinese against the mooting of such new laws, expressed in daily demonstrations across the island, is evidence of the Hindu populace’s fears that the introduction of anything that suggests of sharia will spell the beginning of the end for their unique culture.

“Are we to do away with lingga and yoni statues?” the temple priests cry. “Will Dewi Ding Dong (the faux fornicating puppet giants that parade in certain East Balinese villages) be banned?”

“I suppose they (the neo-cons) think that they are holier than thou,” screamed Gus Dur in the nation’s press, echoing a common Balinese sentiment sometimes heard in temples and palace courts when a person presumes spiritual or moral superiority.

– Made Wijaya

P.S. I am writing this in India, watching a Bollywood movie production number called Do Do the Voodoo with Hindoo leading ladies in shorty “mumblers” having their legs violently ripped open and then twirled around in an aggressive way that makes my valve slam shut. In The Hindu paper I just read, there are photos of Delhi’s new Hindu Morality police, the equivalent of Malaysia’s mobile sharia officers wading into Lodi Park canoodlers with rattan canes. “Cane chairs, not people,” I screamed.