Almost Nekkid in Indonesia!

(First published in Bali Advertiser, April 26, 2006)

“If we are inwardly strong, behave piously and praise God sincerely, we need no law, police, force or prison to make us capable of enjoying inner union with the Supreme Spirit. Temptations need no chasing, no fussing. They are sure to vanish in futility.” – Cartoonist T. Sutanto speculating in commentary in the March 17, 2006 Jakarta Post on the ‘sermon’ conveyed by a painting by Mustofa Bisri, a prominent Nahdlatul Ulama ulema

Every time Inul Daratista turns up on our television, which happens less frequently each passing week, my wife makes a sulky remark about my “girlfriend.” I confess to a mild obsession with Inul’s hip-gyrating “drilling dance” and strip-tease stage frolics, although not from any infatuation with the dangdut performer herself. What boggles my mind is her and her many imitators’ appearance on even government TV channels in what is often called the world’s largest Muslim country (disregarding a secular government and bureaucracy). Then there are the transvestites that play the clown on almost every Indonesian variety show, sitcom, and drama.

My idea of US television boundaries are probably dated, but it is hard for me to imagine much of it making it past American primetime television censors, considering the outrage and self-flagellation following the Super Bowl flash of Janet Jackson’s nipple two years ago. And considering the standard Indonesian television fare and the overflowing pulchritude pointedly staring at me from the cover of a recent issue of FHM on local newsstands, I can’t help but wonder what all the fuss is about over the Indonesian version of Playboy. By all accounts, it is tamer than men’s magazines already on the market and less provocative than most of the cleavage-rich late night television. Not that I could score a copy. The 100,000 published were snapped up by eager buyers or burned by protesters long before I had a chance.

It’s hard to imagine, too, that the Islamic Defenders Front, or FPI, is ever going to be successful in shutting down the local version of the magazine, or that further protests by them or other groups are going to do anything other than provide free publicity for the not-even-near-nudie magazine. Press coverage of the debut issue, which appeared in Indonesia Friday, April 7, alternates between quoting members of FPI on the destructive “moral terrorism” of the magazine and quoting “readers” disappointed that the pictorials didn’t deliver more of the goods.

Why do those who would defend any society against moral turpitude never ken to the fact that the more fuss made over threats to the decent and good, the more interest stimulated in them? Indeed, the Jakarta Post reported April 8 that some vendors were sold out of the inaugural issue by 3 am on the day of its release. “Some buyers had placed reserve orders for the magazine days ahead,” the Jakarta Post said. So much for dissuading people from buying the less-than-soft-core Indonesian version of Hugh Hefner’s lifetime ode to fevered adolescent fantasies.

Hefner realized in the early 1950s that other men and young boys liked to look at naked women as much as he did. And in some countries outside the US, where pictures of naked women are against the law, men and young boys will look at pictures of women wearing fewer clothes than they normally do on the street -- which is what the Indian and Indonesian versions of Playboy and the many beer-and-bikinis lads’ magazines base their readership on. As immature as it all may be, there’s no denying the economic sense of it. Wherever the line of morality is drawn, one baby step beyond always produces the titillation desired or feared -- unfortunately for those wishing to protect the eyes and morals of innocent youth through censorship, bans on revealing clothing, prohibitions on displays of affection, and regular burnings of anything even mildly erotic.

A female friend of mine once traveled to a Middle Eastern country where local women did not venture out without wearing the full-length burka. She wanted one as a souvenir and went to a shop in the bazaar to try on a few. A crowd of men gathered at the front while she, fully clothed, tried on one robe after another, the equivalent of a repeated strip-tease performance in the middle of the market. When the shopkeeper realized what was happening, he hustled her into a backroom and rushed to shut the door. In Victorian England, men fell into rapturous, poetic lust whenever they were fortunate enough to see a bare ankle.

It’s ludicrous and inevitably futile for any one group in Java to demand that their limits set the standard for every culture across the archipelago. Mustofa’s, or Gus Mus’s, sermon in a painting? The gyrating Inul doing her drill dance in the midst of devout Muslims praising God and ignoring her, according to T. Sutanto. There’s gotta be a lesson in there for almost everybody.

Copyright © 2006 Lee Roy LeRoi