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166 Marshall Clark
most effective ways to salvage a sense of social or political relevancy from the literary
life of the New Order, and the late New Order in particular, is to focus on these
writers and their "Aesopian" reworkings of the wayang world.
Some of the most memorable scholarship to examine the social and political
dimensions of modern Indonesian literature during the New Order discusses writers
who heavily draw upon the wayang tradition in the creation of their literary works. For
example, Michael Bodden's analysis of Teater Koma's Suksesi (Succession) and Y. B.
Mangunwiya's Durga Umayi, two works which appeared in 1989 and 1995
respectively, explores in detail how these texts appropriate and subvert the wayang
tradition while simultaneously challenging the foundations of the New Order's
authority. 32 Elsewhere, Keith Foulcher comments on the role of wayang and tradition in
the fiction of leading New Order writers such as Danarto, Putu Wijaya, and Leila
Chudori, suggesting that their literary expression is relevant to contemporary Indonesia
and its cultural development. 33 In a study written in the early 1990s, Barbara Hatley
argues that from the 1970s onwards much of Indonesia's cultural expression was
characterized by a vigorous reinterpretation of regional cultural traditions such as the
wayang, re interpretations which also included important critical reflections on
contemporary Indonesian society. 34 In a later study of modern theatre in the New
Order era, Hatley goes one step further to spell out the key sociopolitical role and
aesthetic characteristics of the synthesis between traditional Javanese cultural
expression and modern performance art:
Absence of alternate channels of political expression arguably directed attention
to performance as a site of socio-political critique. And the intimate audience
connection and ideological influence of traditional, regional forms of theatre
made them attractive models to follow. Theatre groups adopted the idioms of
local theatre genres, but often in a satirical mode which challenged and contested
their standard social meanings. Subversive renditions of traditional legends and
comic caricatures of kings and courtiers undermined the discourse of
contemporary power holders, seeking self-aggrandisement through association
with a glorified "Javanese tradition." 35
In contrast to Maier's over-the-top pessimism, Hatley's optimistic comments could be
taken as evidence that the repressive character of the New Order regime also spurred
the creativity of a significant number of Indonesia's artists, at least in terms of
directing their creative energy, and undeniably oppositional tendencies, to the
extremely subversive potential of traditional cultural forms. In a sense, Hatley's
Order Indonesian Theatre/' in Culture and Society in New Order Indonesia, ed. Virginia Matheson Hooker
(Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 49-50.
32 Bodden, 'Teater Koma's Suksesi"; Michael H. Bodden, "Woman as Nation in Mangunwijaya's Durga
Umayi/' Indonesia 62 (October 1996): 53-82. Y. B. Mangunwijaya, Durga Umayi (Jakarta: Pustaka Utama
Grafiti, 1991).
33 Keith Foulcher, "Postmodernism or the Question of History: Some Trends in Indonesian Fiction since
1965," in Culture and Society in New Order Indonesia, pp. 27-47.
34 Barbara Hatley, "Constructions of Tradition/" pp. 48-69.
35 Barbara Hatley, "Cultural Expression and Social Transformation in Indonesia," in Reformasi: Crisis
and Change in Indonesia, ed. Arief Budiman, Barbara Hatley and Damien Kingsbury (Clayton: Monash Asia
Institute, 1999), pp. 268-269.