Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

REFIGURATION OF IDENTITIES AND FUTURES IN TIMES OF TRANSFORMATION 133of women (his legendary sexual energy). That thewomen are objectified, framed in static timeless posesas paintings on the walls, defines the limits of spatialenclosure normally attributed to feminine and domesticspaces, reminding and highlighting to the audiencethe absence of any physical presence of the nurturingand caring woman and thereby the productivity of thefamily, which is consistently contrasted by the generalswho were kidnapped later on in the film while in thebosom of feminized domestic and (re)productive spaces(the bedroom), effectively linking “the containment ofwomen to the gendering of space” (Sipe 2004, 94).Sukarno’s palace is signified as an absence, as thedisembodied presence of women and the symbolicpower of the nation, signaling it as the measure of allother spaces.If the nation space in Darah is the exterior spaces,and the interiors are duplicitous, in G30S the exteriorsymbolizes anarchy as it is overrun by youths andthe forces of the Indonesian women’s organizationcadres known as Gerwani, while the interiors from thepresidential palace to the secret backrooms and officesof the communist plotters, the homes of generals andtheir officers become the site of struggle for the nationspace. Ninety percent of the film is played out withininteriors.In G30S the nation is in the home and the countrysideis filled with instability and perversions. “Here thehousehold is a conduit, where concepts of landscapeenter the domestic space, reshaping it as well as theexterior world that the home is ostensibly definedagainst” (Sipe 2004, 95). If it is in this sense that if themilitary is associated with land and territories, then itsinfiltration into feminine spaces needs to be re-orientedand re-anchored for martial purposes and that wassignaled early before the kidnapping sequences. Beforethe long seamless edited sequences of the kidnappingsof the seven generals begin, as one of its main scenes,the film introduces the audience to the daughter of theleading general, Nasution, where space is signaled andarticulated unmistakably within the terms of power andgender.The sacred space of the military can never directlymirror hers or any woman’s, as the painting diminishesher role and woman’s as a mere reflection in the mirror,and as a space about to be infiltrated and taken overby military struggle as a space for the nation. Whatthis play or reconfiguration in spatial relationshipspronounces/announces is that while the painting takeson dominant position, the traditional domestic spaceof the feminine as embodied by mother, daughter andmaid exists as merely a reflection, and diminished asone where woman’s role is confined to herself as areflection and representation of masculine authority.This demarcation and articulation of spatial categoriesis necessary to clear the path, to revise female space inorder to assert and augment male and military poweras they perform their active engagement within thedomestic spaces in the battles to come. The little girl’sfantasy needs to be corrected, reoriented in front of themirror.What the painting also articulates is the all-dominantand pervasive presence of the father and the military,even when he is not home, as that around which thecenter of family as the sacred institution revolves. Thisis underlined as the daughter and her sister run outsideat their father’s return to greet him, where the camerapositions our view from the curtained window of theliving room, so as to announce his male authority aspervasive/belonging to the exterior though his voicereverberates from the interior space of the living room,where the home “functions as the site of infiltration ofexternal, patriarchal conceptions of space, resources,time, work and leisure producing the privacy andindividuality crucial to middle class identity, feminineand masculine” (Sipe 2004, 95). However, in G30S,the home as nation space for ideological struggle needsto transform domestic space as the embodiment ofmasculinity.The image of women connects these spaces. I wouldgo so far as to posit that the acknowledgement of themilitary’s version of the events, as a recognition of its ownphallocentric nature, is tied to its need around LubangBuaya to falsely report Gerwani’s (the Indonesianwomen’s movement’s) perverted display of its power bydismembering and severing some of the generals’ bodiesand sexual organs, which were disseminated in thepublic arena. This threat to the male body/politic fromthe “uses” of women as sexual signifiers in Sukarno’spalace as draining his sexual power and male powerneeds to be re-oriented to women as signifiers of theproductivity of the family at the heart of the nation inGeneral Nasution’s home within masculine space. It isonly then that at the end scene, the little girl’s life cantake on the burden and weight of the whole nation as ithangs in a hospital cot between life and death, so thatalthough death is her star that mirror’s her fathers, as apejuang, as fantasy in front of the vanity mirror, the realstar to match and add to her father General Nasution’schest is the death of spaces for women, lest like Gerwani,they may embody their independent spaces aroundthe w/hole of history at Lubang Buaya. To put theseAsian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows