Tratados Relativos a los Derechos de Autor

This chapter examines Indonesian filmmakers’ struggles to undermine the hegemony of

bapakism in terms of the gender relations of production in commercial cinema between

2000 and 2014. I unpack the negotiations and potential compromises employed by commercial filmmakers in staging their gender politics designed to replace bapakism

with an alternative masculinity ideal, namely the ‘new man’. The ‘new man’, unlike

bapakism, does not emphasise the breadwinning role. As I explained in Chapter 2, the

deep and protracted economic crisis towards the end of the twentieth century sped up the maturation of crisis tendencies within the structure of the gender relations of

production. Rapid and profound changes within the structure rendered the breadwinning men/homemaking women arrangement obsolete. Consequently, the cultural exaltation of bapakism is no longer taken for granted. By exploring the filmmakers’ struggles in

promoting the ‘new man’, in this chapter I extrapolate how the filmmakers attempted to redefine the official gender order and to what extent their endeavours succeeded.

This chapter is guided by the following questions. How did progressive

commercial filmmakers engage with contemporary gender politics as they intentionally attempted to undermine the hegemony of bapakism and the gender relations of

production in their films? How did they deal with the political–economic pressures of commercial cinema in doing so? What can the filmmakers’ struggles inform us about transformations in Indonesia’s gender order at this time? To this end, I focus my investigation on the texts and the production politics of two films: 7/24 and Hijab. I

select these films mainly because they emphasise the renegotiation of the gender relations of production at the household level in their narratives and character development. Both explore how husbands and wives must adapt to the changing

Evi Eliyanah

dynamics of the gender relations of production as the wives’ careers in the public sphere flourish and they bring more income into the family. Yet, unlike many other

contemporary films and others before them, these films do not resort to reproducing the officially sanctioned gender relations of production. They do not force the wife to return to the confines of the domestic home and reinstate the husband’s role as the sole and rightful breadwinner of the family. Instead, these films make the husbands adopt an alternative masculinity which helps them navigate with their wives the changing landscape of the gender relations of production.

I argue that the filmmakers’ struggles to promote the ‘new man’ as an alternative ideal indicates that there is new hope for the presentation of an alternative ideal

masculinity—a hope that has fostered more fluid and equal gender relations of production. Yet, such a fight for change pursued on screen was riddled with middle- class biases. In the filmmakers’ struggles to legitimise the ‘new man’ as an alternative ideal masculinity through 7/24 and Hijab, they attempted to break away from

bapakism’s rigid and unequal gender relations of production. The filmmakers did so by

defying men’s normalised role as the families’ sole or primary breadwinner—a notion that is central to the definition of bapakism. Instead, they favoured portraying men’s

involvement in day-to-day domestic and caring duties, while not encouraging men to entirely give up their paid work. However, we cannot help but notice that the

filmmakers’ struggle was largely focused on the interests of Indonesian middle-class professionals, rather than lower-class men. By doing so, the filmmakers ignored the constant struggles of lower-class men in negotiating their masculinities with the official and popular ideals. The filmmakers were also biased towards middle-class men’s interests in maintaining paid work, albeit negotiated, as a marker of gender and class. Apparently, the filmmakers were not yet open to idealising full-time stay-at-home fathers/husbands as representations of the ideal ‘new man’.

Chapter 4. Reel New Man and the Gender Relations of Production

Why do representations of the gender relations of production at the household level matter in the struggle for hegemonic masculinity? As suggested by Micaela di Leonardo (1987: 441) and Carla Jones (2004: 511–12) the household is a locus of the private political struggle to negotiate conditions of gender and class inequalities, that have resulted from the official prescription of the gender relations of production. This private struggle matters significantly because it is often at this private level—in household spaces—that men and women constantly negotiate such inequalities. Undoubtedly, the official arrangement of the gender relations of production has much wider implications beyond the household level. It shapes what type of jobs and how much time is considered fit and proper for work and for which groups of men and women. Furthermore, it shapes the meanings associated with women’s and men’s work for the family as well as for the nation. It also affects who should be prioritised to benefit from certain government programs, or who should have access to certain public facilities. Yet, while women may be able to break through the glass ceiling and achieve the highest career position available in the public sphere, they must continue to

negotiate with gender and class inequalities that take place in the private sphere. In Jones’s research (2004) on middle-class households in Yogyakarta, for example, middle-class wives who pursued careers in the public sphere continued to shoulder the emotional burden of domestic and caring responsibilities. While these women tended to delegate the day-time caring and domestic duties to live-in domestic assistants, they still had to manage and oversee the assistants’ work. Their husbands were liberated from this responsibility because of their role as breadwinners. Indeed, Indonesian men and women constantly have to negotiate these inequalities of gender and class in their private, household spaces. Cinematic representations open up avenues for such private struggles to be visible in the public sphere. The cinematic representations of gender and

Evi Eliyanah

gender relations at the household level are popular imaginings of how such negotiations are engaged with in real life.

This chapter unfolds with the following structure. The section immediately following this introduction situates the filmmakers’ struggles in promoting the ‘new man’ as an alternative ideal in 7/24 and Hijab, to the long-running tradition of

representations of ideal masculinity in Indonesian cinema. Drawing from textual analysis, I contend that aesthetically the filmmakers try to break away from the

hegemonic idealisation of bapakism. They do so by subverting the cultural significance

of male breadwinning practices and instead promote men’s active involvement in day- to-day domestic and caretaking duties—duties generally associated with femininity and women. Supporting the argument laid out in the textual analysis, the second section discusses the filmmakers’ motives and their negotiation with the political–economic dimensions of commercial cinema as they seek to undermine hegemonic masculinity around the gender relations of production. Drawing from interviews with filmmakers and media releases, I argue that the promotion of the ‘new man’ in 7/24 and Hijab is a

political intervention engaged by politically conscious filmmakers who are intent on addressing the unequal gender relations of production that have been sustained by

bapakism. However, as I indicated earlier, this political intervention is situated in the

crucible of middle-class bias. The third section demonstrates that the commercial filmmakers’ alternative ideal, as seen in 7/24 and Hijab, is in the interest of middle-

class professionals. The chapter concludes with a summary and a reflection on the political dimension of various screen representations of ideal masculinity.

Reel ‘new man’ of 7/24 and Hijab: Overturning the cinematic tradition