Introduction
In Bhabha’s Location of Culture, he argues that the stereotype is “a complex, ambivalent, contradictory mode of representation ”. He sees the need to look beyond stereotype as merely a false representation between what is good and what is bad or as a false representation of other binary oppositions and to think of the stereotype as a discursive strategy of colonial discourse which effects both the colonized and the colonizer in a relation of both “domination and dependence” and also “power and resistance ”.
A reading of Bhabha by Bart Moore-Gilbert in his book Post Colonial Theory: Contexts, Practices and Politics confirms that stereotype is not simply a manifestation of the colonizer’s security in his position but in fact it is an indication of his “fractured and destabilized” colonial identity and authority . He starts explaining this concept by stating the importance of “fixity” in colonial discourse. How important it is to maintain the stability of the representation of the image of the colonized in discursive practice. Nonetheless, Bhabha sees a contradictory practice in the reproduction of these stereotypes. They are repeated again and again in various forms as if these forms are constantly trying to validate their claims in society. And the stereotype grows larger than life with each repetition. As McRobbie puts it “it is more than in order to be less than” .
In Indonesia, interracial relationships, along with inter-religion relationships, have always been regarded as sensitive and much discussed issues and the persons in such relationships are expected to submit to social scrutiny. This is particularly so for Indonesian women involved in a relationship with male expatriates of Caucasian descent in particular or Caucasian expatriates (dubbed bule in Indonesian ).
Stereotype about such women are often the source of gleeful ridicule by both male and female members of society. I would argue that the ridicule has to do with the aura of illegitimacy that haunts these relationships; that although these relationships are often thought of as being products of contemporary, global culture, the illegitimacy may be traced back to the colonial era when women are taken as Nyais, concubines, by the colonials; and that contemporary technologies and popular culture (television, internet, magazine, celebrity tabloids, etc) resuscitate and disseminate the stereotype.
This colonial legacy remains to this day when people talk about modern day Indonesian women who are in interracial relationships. These stereotypes are repeated through time and though today much has changed, the core of the stereotype remains intact. These women are judged on the color of their skin and that of their spouse/partner. Not only by the ‘new colonizer’, expatriates who come in droves under the banner of multinational corporation and global free trade, but also by Indonesians themselves.
Beginning as a word of mouth fable from the colonial times, the stereotype has been repeated with the rise of the internet in society. Frequent surfing on the web with the key words bule (a popular Indonesian word to describe Caucasian foreigner) and Indonesian women will unearth tons of blogs, posts and articles about the stereotypes. As it gets repeated the stereotypes get bigger with endless exaggerated embellishments added on as if to ensure the validity of the claim. In this essay I would like to show how the identity and authority of the colonizer is “fractured’” and “destabilized” by these stereotypes (the old colonials, the new colonials, and Indonesians themselves) and also show the ambivalent relation between “dominance” and “dependence” and also between “power” and “resistance” as a result of these stereotypes. In order to do that, I shall also show the relation between the contemporary stereotype and the colonial stereotype of the Nyai by examining a novel titled This Earth of Mankind that takes place in Indonesia during the colonial time about a man who falls in love with the daughter of a Nyai by Pramoedya Ananta Toer.
Have these women become the new Nyais? And finally, is it possible to see the life-choices made by women in interracial relationships as instances of contemporary mimicry of the new colonizer, by which they create the space [or spaces?] of “insubordination, or antagonism” of which Angela McRobbie writes ?
The Old Nyais and Their Masters
The illegitimacy about these interracial relationships may be traced back to a colonial era stereotype dating back to the 17th century until 1942. During the Dutch colonial era, these interracial relationships were made illegitimate by the system of apartheid-style laws protecting strict racial segregation. Yet, partly because of the death of European women in the colonies—particularly in the more remote plantation regions in Java and Sumatra—Dutch men often bought women from the villages to serve as concubines. And “by the 19th century concubinage was the most prevalent living arrangement for European men” in Indonesia . This act of taking a concubine was not legal by law but was something that was ‘expected’ of Dutch soldiers and officers living in Indonesia. As Stoler states “concubinage served colonial interests in other ways. It permitted permanent settlement and rapid growth by a cheaper means than the importation of European women.” These Indonesian women were then referred to as Nyai (which in old Java were actually used as a term of respect for older and married women).
The long colonial history of the stereotype is the subject of the novel This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. It is a novel about colonial life in Central Java in the late 19th century. The story tells the tale of a young Javanese student, Minke, who is granted the privilege because of his royal lineage of studying at a European School amongst ‘pure’ Dutch. He falls in love with Annelies, the beautiful Indo-European woman. Annelies is the daughter of a Nyai the concubine of a Dutch plantation and farm owner, Herman Mellema. As a young girl Nyai Ontosoroh was sold to Mellema by her father, in exchange for the prized position of the clerk for the company owned by Mellema. In those days, most Dutch men living in Indonesia already had a wife in their home country, and it was common practice for these lonely men to take a local woman as a concubine for the duration of their stay. And in those times Nyais, bore the mark of a sinful woman, a whore, a mistress, a concubine. Even Minke in the first part of the story still adheres to this stereotype:
“…it felt as if the whole world knew, that such indeed was the moral level of the families of nyais: low, dirty, without culture, moved only by lust. They were the families of prostitutes; they were people without character, destined to sink into nothingness, leaving no trace. ”
It was as if it was the choice of these women to be taken as a mistress by the ruling Dutch, when in fact these women were taken from their families, sold, or given as an offering in return for a favor without their consent. And sexual service was not the only thing expected from the women. According to Ann Laura Stoler, the term concubinage in Indonesia also meant various “arrangements” which also included labor without pay and legal rights to the children she bore . As victims of circumstances, these women also had to bear scorn from society (both from their fellow country men and women and also from the Dutch) who likened them to prostitutes and women with low morals who should be avoided at all costs. This view was also extended to their family members as Toer writes in his story of Minke’s life after his introduction to the family. Minke became an outcast, avoided by his classmates and teachers. This was the consequence of being acquainted with a Nyai and her family in those days. The fate was even worse for the children of these interracial relationships. Called by the Dutch name of voorkinderen (which means children from a previous marriage or union), the term was “marked to signal illegitimate children of a mixed union” .
The Nyais were alienated from their families and culture with the task of adjusting to a new life style and culture in a short time. Nyai Ontosoroh explains this to her daughter: “He never forced me to do anything, except study. In this matter, he was a hard but a good teacher” . And then she adds, “I studied everything possible about my master’s wants: cleanliness, Malay, making the bed, ordering the house, cooking European food” . This is a form of what Bhabha calls mimicry, which, he argues, is actually a form of colonial discourse strategy which represents the colonizer’s need for a ‘recognizable’ and ‘reformed other’ .
At first the difference attracted Mellema, which lead to his appropriation of her as his mistress. However by training her in Dutch customs, language, knowledge, Mellema shows the other side of the coin: his anxiety of the unfamiliar difference of the ‘other’ who is now living in his house, hence the attempt to familiarize the differences by assigning her a more familiar life style, a lifestyle mimicking his own. This, in its truest form is an evidence of colonial mimicry which Bhabha (adapting Samuel Weber’s formulation of the marginalizing vision of castration) describes as ‘the desire for a reformed, recognizable other, as a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite’ .
However, Bhabha also adds “in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference”. In This Earth of Mankind this is apparent in Mellema’s decision, in spite of having taught her everything she needed to know about European culture, after recreating her as a “Dutch woman with brown skin”, he still refuses to completely embrace her as someone who is on the same level as him . He does this by refusing to marry her. This is the difference that he must maintain in order preserve his control over her. He further tries to reinforce this difference by constantly reminding her that even though she is ‘cleverer and better than all of them’, it is still impossible for her ‘to be like a Dutch woman’ .
With the difference in place, Mellema grows to feel more secure and continues to transfer all of his knowledge including how to run his company and slowly begins to let Nyai supervise the daily operation of his company. Little does he know that as he grows fonder and more dependent on her, she becomes more and more independent. As she starts preparing for the day when Mellema would leave the country and abandon her (this is a common practice in colonial times) she starts shedding her old identity as Sanikem (the name given to her by her parents):
“Yes, Ann, as time went on, the old sanikem began to disappear completely. Mama grew up into a new person with a new vision and new views… Sometimes I asked myself: Had I become a Dutch woman with brown skin? ”
This mimicry has created a third space for Nyai’s resistance and subversion from Mellema. Toer himself sees this subversion of the colonized as an important part of the story. He uses this subversion at the beginning of the story to give a different view to his reader about the power relation between a native and a colonizer, between Nyai and Mellema. This is shown in the second chapter of the book when Mellema gets angry and threatening as he discovers Minke in his house, without his permission. In defence of her guest Nyai, threatens him back and tells Mellema that he has no rights in the house:” ‘A mad European is the same as a mad Native!’ Her eyes burned with hatred and disgust. ‘You have no rights in this house. You know where your room is.’ The Nyai pointed to a door. ”
In this story the mimicry has indeed unsettled the colonizer and provided “a space for insubordination and antagonism” which is taken to the extreme in this story by showing how Nyai can triumph over Mellema in that dispute. With this mimicry, Nyai has also taken her enslavement as a turning point from her old self who is always governed and controlled by another (first her father and then Mellema) to someone that has control over her self: “So it was that I began to understand that in reality I was not at all dependent on Mr. Mellema. On the contrary he was dependent on me” . In this novel, Pramoedya reveals the ‘fractured and destabilized’ identity of the colonizer as a result of the ‘third space’ of subversion created by the stereotype and mimicry.
The New Nyais and Contemporary Stereotypes
For the colonials, illegitimacy of these interracial relations was used to reinforce difference, to further accentuate segregation and the divide between the pure blooded Europeans and the low ranked natives. This colonial legacy of illegitimacy remains the essence of contemporary stereotypes of modern day Indonesian women who are in interracial relationships. These stereotypes are repeated through time and though today much has changed, the core of the stereotype remains intact. Women who are in interracial relationships or even women who are seen with a bule man are still seen as ‘bad women’, which means easy, promiscuous women with loose attitude towards men and questionable morals, by both Indonesians and by the expatriate community living in Indonesia.
The stereotype is widely available on the internet through personal websites and weblogs to online chat forums. A website created by an expatriate living and working in Indonesia called Jakartablokm.com has even dedicated a separate category describing Indonesian girls one would most likely find in a typical Jakarta bar designed to attract expatriates, with no less than 30 categories of girls . He uses terms like gold-diggers, sharks, derelicts, psychos, and brain dead beauties to describe the women frequenting these bars. Another popular term that is used frequently when describing these women is the term ayam. A blog entry titled ‘On The New No Ayam Policy’ by an expatriate man living in Indonesia talks about the stereotypes in detail: ‘Ayam should suffice as it is well understood by everyone. Personally I don’t really care if you want to call them ‘pembantu’ or ‘slutty’ or ‘exotic’ or whatever’. And to further illustrate he describes the word slutty in this context as: ‘Ugly, classless, tasteless, misbehaved, ill mannered and fashion challenged. Slutty Ayams are the worst of this sub-species, aesthetically speaking.’ This blog is actually a summary of several discussions happening around the same time on personal blogs about these stereotypes. “Ayam” in Indonesian literally means “chicken”. In this context the term has been used to represent a certain group of Indonesian women who frequent places where these new colonials congregate. These ‘new colonials’ are likening these women to something that is less than human in order to be able to feel superior to them. However, the degrading process does not stop there. Not only do they refer to these women as less than human but also as being powerless when confronted with humans, something raised only to be consumed by humans. In this case it is clear where Bhabha’s thinking comes into play, how the stereotype is exercised to construct an image of something that is less than the colonizers on the bases of physical attributes and other differences in order justify the exercise of power over them: “The objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction” .
This notion of treating women as livestock is also apparent in colonial times as described by Toer when he tells the story of how Nyai Ontosoroh wants her daughter to have a better life than her, to be able to marry anyone she likes: “You, my child, you must not be treated like a piece of livestock. My child may not be sold to anyone, no matter what the price” . In this story Nyai Ontosoroh is referring to herself when her father ‘sold’ her to Mellema in exchange for a high position in the company. This exploitation does not exclude Indonesian men. Toer’s description of this exploitation based on racial character can also be seen in his choice of name for the main character, Minke. In the story the reader is never told who Minke’s real name is and at the beginning of the story Minke was reminded about how he got his name. It was actually a nickname given to him by his teacher when he came close to calling him a monkey (which was what the Dutch used to refer to Indonesian natives) when he scolded him. Monkey is also what Mellema called Minke the night he sees Minke in the house without his permission. He uses the term to degrade Minke as a native compared to Europeans, even though he has learned to ‘mimic’ the Dutch by going to a Dutch school and speaking the language: “ ‘You think, boy, because you wear European clothes, mix with Europeans, and can speak a little Dutch you them become a European? You’re still a monkey’ “.
This discursive practice of dehumanizing a group of people by reducing them to a degrading stereotype also carries another meaning. Even though these new colonials refer to these women by degrading terms, there is still a sense of exoticism about the women that attracts them. By developing categories of Indonesian women and also specifying these women in very detailed categories to recognize and ‘conquer’ them (this is apparent in personal blogs like jakartablokm.com with detailed guides to Indonesian women and in which bars to find them), these stereotypes actually betray their (expat desire) desire for the women. Bhabha’s concept of the stereotype as fetish, helps us understand this idea that the stereotype as a colonial discursive strategy is actually a form of fear and fascination at the same time . Freud describes fetishism as a case when, “the normal sexual object is replaced by another which bears some relation to it, but is entirely unsuited to serve the normal sexual aim…” . In Bhabha’s reading of fetish and the stereotype, he argues that both are similar in construction. Both fetish and stereotype connects something that is different, disturbing, unfamiliar with something that is more accepted and “familiar” (the foot as the fetishized object to replace the castrated penis in Freud’s case, while the labeling of these women as ayam is a familiarization process of the seemingly different object). The labeling of the woman as an ayam is a form of familiarization of the seemingly different object. In enforcing these stereotypes, they are showing a fractured sense of their own identity and authority as the ‘new colonials’ who have come to make their living in Indonesia. This raises a question: can this act of dehumanizing women be seen as the resurrection of the old colonial anxiety (as seen in Mellema’s case which eventually became true when he was eventually cast out from his own house by his mistress)?
In this case of the contemporary stereotype there is always a play between the image of the woman as ‘easy’, cheap with questionable morals while on the other hand there is also a desire for the different, ‘exotic’ looking women. With regards to this, Bhabha argues that fetishism or the stereotype as fetish is always “a play” between what is rejected and feared and what is accepted and even desired . This is evident in the content of some articles found in blogs written by expatriates living in Indonesia where the discussion is centered around the reason why bule man prefer Indonesian women with very specific physical traits. The title of one such blog is: Bules Like Pembantus? . This blog summarized heated discussions about similar topic of Western men and Indonesian women in three other blogs and asked his readers about their opinion on the matter. Pembantu is actually the Indonesian word for maid. What is of particular significance is the physical appearance usually associated with the stereotype of “maid”: long black hair, dark skinned, with a flat wide nose, and protruding lips. To most people these are the facial features of people from Central and Eastern Javanese kampung (village), where many women come from to look for jobs as domestic servants in the capital. It is not considered attractive or beautiful by contemporary Indonesian ‘standards’ of beauty. Several commentators of the blog see these physical traits as the sign of exoticism that some Western men may find attractive in Asian women. This discussion was actually sparked by a post in a personal blog, written by Thang D. Nguyen , a Vietnamese writer who is now working and living in Indonesia, where he wrote about a conversation he had with an Indonesian friend about the type of Indonesian women that Western men like. He quotes his Indonesian friend asking the question: “Don’t you think that many of the Indonesian women that white foreigners (buleh) go out with or marry are so unattractive?” He then continued to quote the friend saying: “They look like maids, don’t they?” He finishes the post by summarizing that for Indonesian men “an Indonesian woman with a dark complexion, buck teeth, and a high forehead typically found among remote mountain villagers in Java, is not beautiful.”
This post then sparked a lengthy discussion over the matter and was also taken up by other bloggers. The topic has also moved into mainstream media, when this post by Nguyen was rewritten and published in one of the main English newspaper in the country, The Jakarta Post, with most of the demeaning comments and reference to the pembantu look replaced with words such as such as unattractive, dark skinned or chocolate skinned women . This physical feature of the stereotype then becomes more powerful as it becomes the easy-to-spot character to categorize and label the women. With regards to this, one can look at Baudrillard’s notion of representation and control as Robert Young writes: “as soon as the other can be represented, it can be appropriated and controlled” . Thus, as soon as these women can be represented as something that is less than human (ayam/chicken—a commodity) and as domestic servant (another commodity), they can be appropriated and controlled.
Another form of control over the stereotype and a vehicle to ensure its validity by constant repetition, is offered by contemporary popular culture, in particular TV commercials. In Indonesia, television broadcasts an almost endless array of commercials for skin whitening products. Most of these commercials are of brands from various multinational companies such as L’Oreal, Unilever and P&G that have been dominating the country in their own right along with other multi national corporations invading the country under the banner of free trade and globalization , creating unreachable dreams for Indonesians where every women is fair skinned, happy and rich with the only worry they have is trying to get the guy next door to notice them. And for a lot of Indonesian women the hope of ever achieving that dream is to purchase a bottle of whitening product being advertised and also by purchasing clothes from Western brands like Guess, Gap, Topshop, Zara, Mango, etc. Not too mention the popularity of studying abroad (preferably in a university in the US or any of the Western European countries) which has become one of the main qualifications for one to be employable (in a well known company with a good position) in Indonesia. This can also be seen as and example of Bhabha’s mimicry which relies on the concept of resemblance, the colonized mimicking the colonizer in every little detail resulting in a realization that even with all the knowledge they have learned about the colonizer’s culture, education, way of life they will never be exactly the same. In This Earth of Mankind, Nyai Ontosoroh learns all the ways of the Dutch from Mellema until she herself questions her identity of being Dutch woman with brown skin. Nonetheless, the colonizer always puts the colonized back in their place by confirming that it is impossible to be exactly like them. As evident in this quote of Mellema answering Nyai Ontosoroh when she questions whether or not she has become a Dutch woman: “It’s impossible for you to be like a Dutch woman. And it’s not necessary either. ” In old colonial time, the mimicry stops at this point. Now with the introduction of whitening products, Indonesian women also have the option of being ‘white’. This is also another form of the new domination by foreign capital that is coming in, which is further playing on the social/class divide between the haves and the have nots in Indonesia with some physical embellishments thrown in.
These whitening product commercials are inserted in domestic soap operas in which the overwhelming majority of female protagonists are much lighter-skinned than the average Indonesian woman. These soap operas, called sinetrons, have one of the highest ratings and, in fact, compete with infotainment shows that actually feature news and gossip about actresses and actors from these soap operas. An average Indonesian viewer watches around 24 hours of sinetron every month . This means 24 hours of constant streaming of stereotyped images of women and the standard ideal representation of what is considered beautiful and ideal, and this does not even include all the infotainment shows which also have high ratings and commercials.
Alongside the ideal picture of beauty, there is also the ‘ideal’ stereotype of the opposite of beauty, which is seen in the character of the domestic servant, a staple in all middle to upper class households shown on television. In contrast to the fair skinned, Eurasian looking female protagonists, there is also the stereotyped image of the domestic servant. In accordance to the stereotype of ‘maid’, the part is usually played by actresses who are darker skinned and with a more ‘native’ or Malay looking features, which most probably is the source. This dichotomy is further amplified through contemporary Indonesian popular culture with versions of the fair/dark skinned, rich/poor, educated/uneducated, city kids/ village children stereotype. The servant is always shown as someone coming from the kampung. Most people associate living in the village with working in rice fields, under the sun, hence the darker skin of the women and men originating from villages. This rings true in the fore-mentioned Jakarta Post article where the writer mentions that “in most Asian societies, a dark complexion is the symbol of peasantry, hard labor, and life in a rural area. By contrast, a fair complexion is the symbol of high-society status, leisure, and life a cosmopolitan city “. Thus, the word kampung (or the adjective kampungan) has also become synonymous with being tacky, not modern and uneducated. A way of dressing and talking are also other ways of identifying someone as kampungan and, by extension, as domestic servants. In contemporary popular culture, the beautiful heroines are always dressed in the latest fashion, while the costume designer of these shows go to great lengths to dress the so-called kampungan people in a cheesy, tacky, ‘cheap’ manner, much like how the chavs are described in British popular culture.
By assigning a certain stereotype to differentiate a group of people from others, one is actually acknowledging the differences and at the same time showing one’s fear of that difference and, in this case, attraction to that difference. Bhabha argues that fetishism or the stereotype as fetish is always “a play” between what is rejected and feared and what is accepted and even desired . In this case there is always a play between the image of the Nyais as ‘easy’, cheap with questionable morals while on the other hand there is also a desire for the Eurasian look, which is the result of these ‘feared’, illegitimate relationships. This brings one back to the issue of illegitimacy. In This Earth of Mankind, Minke falls in love with the beautiful, fair skinned Annelies, however Toer also shows Minke’s fear about entering the house of a Nyai in the first part of the novel by describing her house as “eerie and sinister .”
This desire is quite evident when one observes Indonesian popular culture on the media. Almost all of local soap operas feature Eurasian looking models and not to mention lifestyle, teen, women and men’s fashion magazines which feature where the use of Eurasian looking or even Caucasian models has become an unspoken norm. Some magazines even go as far as requesting that their stylists only use Caucasian models or ‘white’ looking Eurasian models. I experienced this when I worked for an Indonesian edition of a British magazine. Hence, the mother is rejected, because of the aura of illegitimacy that always surrounds these inter-racial relationships, while the hybrid of the relationship is embraced and worshipped by the society.
Some comments on the blogs also mentioned the fact that not all Indonesian women in interracial relationships can be boxed into the dark skinned ‘domestic servant’ look category. Some also mention the fact that a lot of Indonesian actresses and models and other women from middle to upper social class are also in interracial relationships with white foreigners. However, this statement is actually reinforcing the existing stereotype among Indonesian men that women with fair skin equals to class and ‘good’ behaviour, as most examples given with the statements are usually of Indonesian celebrities with fair skin and Eurasian features.
Indonesian men respond to this phenomenon of Indonesian celebrities pairing up with foreigners with posts such as All Local Men Unite, which was the subject on a thread of a posting forum, posted by an Indonesian male in 2004 . The initiator of this particular thread displayed his worries about Indonesian women being taken over by foreigner. This fear is brought about by the fact that more Indonesian women, especially celebrities he sees in tabloids, are choosing to settle down with foreigners instead of local men. The discussion then once again returns to the stereotype of the unattractive, dark skinned women who would usually attract a white man. I would also argue that their fear is also rooted in the fact that white men, both in the old colonial time and today, are still seen as richer and more powerful. This argument is also evident in the discussion of another contemporary stereotype that is circulated among Indonesians for the new Nyais, which is the label gold digger. The domination of the multinational corporations in Indonesia has brought about major changes in the employment field. Now more and more people from other countries are coming to work in Indonesia, with most of them occupying high level management positions with huge paychecks. This has given rise to the common assumption that being white is synonymous with being rich. As Fanon writes (as quoted by Bhabha): “the originality of the colonial context is that the economic substructure is also a superstructure…you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. ” And this statement describes what was and is still going on in Indonesia, white men are seen as having more power and more money than natives with a few changes: in the old colonial time, they were plantation owners and colonial government officials while now they are managers of big multinational companies.
All these facts, recalls another stereotype, one which is concerning the ‘new colonizer’, these expatriates coming from ‘wealthy’ Western countries, bringing their powerful troops to conquer Indonesia’s wealth by setting up multinational companies and controlling the production and harvesting of Indonesia’s national resources, while at the same time occupying all the high positions of the companies without giving any chance for the ‘natives’ to make a small claim of what should be rightfully theirs.
Albert Memmi asks the question why does one leave his country to expatriate? The way he answers in his book The Colonizer and The Colonized, gives us an idea of the reasons most expatriates choose to settle in Indonesia today. A colony is defined as “a place where one earns more and spends less. You go to a colony because jobs are guaranteed, wages high, careers more rapid and business more profitable” . Confirming this, Ian, a British man who settled in Indonesia for almost five years, whom I interviewed for this essay states,” In Indonesia I managed to secure a very high position at a TV station, which probably would not have been the case, had I stayed in the UK.”
Today, not only the top jobs are taken over by foreigners, most of Indonesian natural commodities have also been taken over by multinational companies. In his book, The New Rulers of The World, Pilger exposes some of the largest of the multinational companies operating in Indonesia “The Freeport Company got a mountain of copper in West Papua. An American and European consortium got West Papua’s nickel. The giant Alcoa company got the biggest slice of Indonesia’s bauxite. A group of American, Japanese and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra, West Papua and Kalimantan” . Multinational companies also benefit from the fact that they can employ Indonesians for lower level jobs and also middle management positions at a much less cost than importing their own countrymen. Reza, an Indonesian working for a multi national company I interviewed for this essay, expresses his fear of not being able to progress much after he has achieved the middle management level: “I am now only one step away from becoming a brand manager of multinational personal care company, but I really don’t see how I can move further up the ladder if I’m not a bule.” Now, powerless to stop the appropriation of their country’s natural resources without being able to even make a small claim on what they perceive to be rightfully theirs (in the form of high level employment), Indonesian men (and women) are seeing how this wealth and power owned by the ‘new colonials’ are enabling them to also ‘takeover‘ Indonesian women. Indonesian women have become commodities and in a false bid to protect them from being appropriated by the Westerners, Indonesian men resort to degrading the new Nyais with demeaning stereotypes. “All these women equate white foreigners with money, when they see a bule guy all they see is the dollar sign because they know all the big companies here are headed by bules,” says Budi (not his real name), another Indonesian man working in a multinational company.
This fear and anxiety shared by today’s Indonesians of the appropriation of resources by the West is similar to the fear Indonesians share in colonial times. Toer describes this through the analogy of the rape of the helpless Nyai Ontosoroh (as the representation of the fertile and beautiful land of Indonesia) by Mellema . In Toer’s story Nyai Ontosoroh represents all the resources that have been appropriated by the colonials. When one sees this story through contemporary cultural setereotypes, these women are still seen as bodies that can be exploited. By ascribing derogatory and demeaning stereotypes (ayam/chicken and pembantu/maid), women’s bodies are once again seen as something that can be exploited and consumed. In the same stereotype one can see the fractured sense of identity and power of both the colonizers and the colonized.
The New Nyai and Her Space for Subversion
In the story of the old colonial times, one can read Toer’s tale of Nyai Ontosoroh’s efforts of becoming ‘the very best nyai’ as a form of mimicry, which in turn provides her with a space of subversion. How is this space of subversion exercised in contemporary stereotype? When one tries to employ Bhabha’s concept of mimicry to contemporary stereotype, one also need to discuss the physical mimicry of the women in question. The physical quality that characterizes the ayam stereotype is carried through in discussions of their way of dressing. Often associated with the lower social class trying to mimic members of the upper social class in a brash and flashy way, slinky and sexy clothes with big and flashy accessories are much-mentioned traits. Mira, a general manager of a local PR agency who is also happily married to a white Australian, always makes it a point to dress ‘up’ when she is out with her husband and son. And what Mira means by dressing ‘up’ is dressing in exactly the opposite way of how the stereotype is seen in society. She would try to avoid wearing low cut tops and dresses and also too short skirts. Instead opting for modest simple outfits with very simple jewelry or professional looking clothes, such as two-piece suit sets. Thus, in this case Mira has taken the stereotype and uses it in reverse to give herself her own space of identity. Knowing the stereotype, she feels that she is much more in control of how she is letting others view her as a spouse in an interracial relationship. In this case she has created a new meaning for the stereotype as it’s described by McRobbie that the stereotype can “become an instrument for new modes of self representation” .
Other ‘victims’ of the stereotype recognized how destructive the stereotypes can be and they decide to create a space of their own by creating an alliance of Indonesian women in interracial relationships in the form of an organization called Srikandi. Quoted from the website, Srikandi is a “non-political and non profit organization for Indonesian women of all religions who are married or were previously married to foreigners. Its mission is to create a mutual bond between members by providing a forum for networking, support, sharing of experiences and information for self improvement, and to enhance family life” . The formation of this organization signifies these women’s recognition of being seen as something different and also their rejection of the stereotypes.
Another form of stereotyping that has found its way into the mainstream media is the class-biased stereotype (darker skin is often thought of being equal to lower, uneducated class). Mainstream magazines targeted for upper class Indonesian women and teen such as Cosmopolitan Indonesia, Seventeen Indonesia and Cosmogirl Indonesia, recognize the dark skin stereotypes and challenges them with special articles (articles about healthy and clean skin instead of fair looking skin), choice of models (Cosmopolitan, Seventeen and Cosmogirl have all used models that are considered to be darker) and even advertising (to advertise Seventeen when they first started, the magazine decided to portray the magazine using four different looking girls with one of them being darker skinned with curly hair). Some may argue that these magazines jumped on the bandwagon of darker skinned beauty simply because it was popular at the time to talk about these issues (with The Body Shop leading the way with campaigns stating things like: You don’t need to have be fair skinned and slim to enjoy life). Nonetheless, this can also be seen as an attempt to produce new meaning to contradict the stereotype, and in McRobbie’s words a “reworking of the stereotypes” .
Conclusion
Stereotypes of Indonesian women and Western men date back to colonial times, with traces of it still very much alive in and contemporary stereotype enforced by popular culture. The technologies of power behind the colonial discursive strategy of the stereotypes work to create a racial and social divide based on skin color among Indonesians themselves (as people coming from the same racial background). When in the past this colonial discursive strategy is created and maintained by the colonials to ensure a relation of power, in contemporary stereotype it is maintained to provide people with unreachable dreams and fantasies to ensure the domination of the ‘new colonials’ which are multinational corporations dominating the country’s economic front.
However, following Bhabha’s thinking, the stereotype always carry a double meaning and it creates as much a disturbance for the colonizer as it is for the colonized. While even though these women are rejected and derided though the stereotypes, at the same time their difference makes them desirable as a new and easy to manipulate potential market. In its binarism, this stereotype works as a fetish which, according to Robert Young in his reading of Bhabha, “gives access to an identity which is based on mastery and pleasure and also on anxiety and defence” . Moore-Gilbert agrees with this reading of Bhabha and further states that Bhabha translates the stereotype not as evidence of fixity and stability, but rather as a form of “destabilized and fractured” sense of identity and authority. This ‘fracturing’ of the colonizer’s identity can be seen through the constant repetition of the stereotype through popular culture and also more personal discursive practice (such as weblogs, etc). It is as if the colonizer is constantly trying to “guarantee certainty” through the persistent repetition of these stereotypes . Until today, through continuous exaggerated repetition of these stereotypes, these women still remain as the society have it and as Bhabha puts it “an ‘other’” and yet entirely knowable and visible” . However, this continuous repetition of the stereotypes also provides a space for agency and subversion from the colonized. The ‘old nyais‘ uses mimicry as a tool to fight back and to create her own space, as illustrated by Toer in the story of how Nyai Ontosoroh gains her master’s trust to control the house and business and in the end it resulted also in control over him. While in contemporary cultural practice, the use and the meaning of the stereotype is turned around and given another meaning by the ‘new nyais’ to create their own space to subvert the negative stereotypes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bhabha, Homi K. (1994) The Location of Culture, London: Routledge.
Freud, Sigmund (1977) On Sexuality: Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality and Other Works, London: Penguin Books.
McRobbie, Angela (2005) ‘Look Back in Anger: Homi Bhabha’s Resistant Subject of Colonial Agency’ in The Uses of Cultural Studies, London: Sage Publications.
Memmi, Albert (1974) The Colonizer and The Colonized, London: Earthscan Publications.
Moore-Gilbert, Bart J. (1997) Post Colonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics, London: Verso Books.
Pilger, John (2002) ‘The Model Pupil’, in The New Rulers of the World, London: Verso.
Stoler, Ann Laura (2002) Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Toer, Pramoedya Ananta (1996) This Earth of Mankind, trans. Max Lane, New York, London, Victoria, Toronto: Penguin Books.
Young, Robert (1990) ‘The Ambivalence of Bhabha’ in White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, London: Routledge.
ARTICLES AND ONLINE RESOURCES
Nguyen, Thang D., “Beauty, Indeed, is in the Eyes of The Beholder!”, The Jakarta Post, sec. Lifebites, 28 October 2006
http://jakartablokm.com/
www.new.coratcoret.com
http://thangthecolumnist.blogspot.com/
http://thejavajive.com/blog/?p=479
http://theunspunblog.com/2006/10/04/bules-like-pembantus/
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