Now that the porn bill is passed I’ve often been asked to comment and preferably rage over it. However, not one to dabble in porn on a day-to-day basis (I guess my desire to show off my naked ‘derriere’ to the public being well past behind me) to be honest I am now quite indifferent to the whole controversy. Not because I agree with the bill, mind you, but because the whole affair is nothing but a reflection of the silliness that a lot of people seem to delight in promoting for no other reason except to show off their silliness. And I’m certainly loath to spend my precious time and energy getting bogged down in futile argument over what is art and what is porn.
I also don’t think that the bill will be the death knell of artistic creativity or the beginning of a witch-hunt as some people have opined. On the contrary, energy goes where thought is. Tell people not to display or talk about nudity, fornication and big knockers, then you can bet that’s the only thing people will think about. Ban anything to do with sexual organs, sexuality and the act of sex, I bet my money that sex would be in everybody’s heads, even those who would otherwise not even think of it.
If anything in a country that treats its citizens like children needing to be watched over and regulated then it should not be surprised if they act like children – mindless, irresponsible and often rebellious. Tell people not to talk dirty and that would be the first thing they do. Already I notice that speeches and lectures are peppered with ‘double entendres’ these days simply because the porn bill put porn on people’s minds. What the porn bill does is making pornography a new national obsession where previously there was none: introducing an unnecessary prohibition on something that the majority of people do not really take a huge interest in as an overriding social issue.
I’ve seen films of bare-breasted Balinese women in the days gone by and they went about their lives quite happily until some dirty-minded outsiders who associated breasts with objects of lust imposed their dirty minded values on them so that they too lost their innocence, fell from paradise to a world ruled by base and impure thoughts and duly covered themselves up.
This is a pity as the majority of Indonesians (unlike repressed Europeans and Prudish Americans even) generally have a healthy attitude and relationship to natural bodily functions. The acts of farting and burping are quite acceptable social expressions giving rise to hearty laughter rather than looks of disgust. While talks about sex in all its shades and nuances (even amongst women!) and dirty jokes are regular staples in regular polite circles. Unlike puritanical westerners, sex and the body for Indonesians are not dirty. Funny, yes, but not a taboo subject. Especially when one is already married, in which case it really is a required and mandatory topic of conversation. (eg. ‘Joni and I are trying for a baby now so as of yesterday we stopped using contraceptives.’ Or ‘Try using this product my mother gave me when I got married. You can really ‘serve’ your husband three times a night).
I must admit I cringe when I listen to radio talk shows discussing about sexual problems and sexual relationships. Though superficially cloaked in marital context (nudge nudge wink wink) the frankness of the topics and the breadth and depth of these discussions often would make any accidental listener blush with embarrassment. As to advertisements one only needs count how many there are that promise if you use this or that product a man can satisfy his wife several times a day or a woman please her husband whenever the occasion rises.
The porn bill, far from making people condemn porn, is actually forcing people to think about sexuality as a pornographic thing or like sexually obsessed Freud, see everything in terms of sex. An object represents either a phallic symbol or the female vulva. Far from allowing adults to take on the responsibility for their own social actions, parents for the way they bring up their children and teachers for developing their students into thinking individuals, the bill keeps the population a perpetually angst-ridden teenagers with dirty thoughts and fantasies on their minds and suppressed unnatural desires. It robs people of the innocence to see the body as a pure God’s gift to be respected and cherished, reducing it to an object for a social discussion of what is and what is not acceptable. When a woman breastfeeds her baby on a bus will she be arrested for ‘porno aksi’ or act of pornography?
A natural act or thing only becomes unnatural when discussed, analysed and theorised too much. The correct way to deal with the porn bill is to ignore it, let it rot and fade into oblivion like the many silly regulations that exist in this country. After all, a society that condones paedophilias and bestiality without much public disgust and outcry (I think the ‘ulema’ who married the twelve year girl and the man who raped a cow should either be jailed or locked up in a mental hospital) still has a long way to go in getting their morality on the proper track. (Tempo English)
16 November 2009
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