Cinematic Representation of Chinese-Indonesians’ Trauma in Jason Iskandar The Day The Sky Roared

Authors

  • Anton Sutandio Maranatha Christian University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21512/lc.v13i4.6000

Keywords:

Chinese-Indonesians, cinematic representation, film studies

Abstract

This research analyzed a contemporary independent Indonesian film entitled The Day the Sky Roared (2015) that was directed by Jason Iskandar. This 10-minute silent film talked about the anxiety of Chinese-Indonesians through the eyes of a mother and her daughter regarding the historical trauma of the May 1998 tragedy. The fact that the film was produced about 17 years after the tragedy suggested the director’s awareness that the trauma remained due to the absence of reconciliation and closure. This research would show how the short film frames the incident and trauma of the Chinese-Indonesians. The research was a combination of trauma studies and film studies that focuses on the visual analysis of the film’s cinematography and mise-en-scene to show the cinematic representation of Chinese-Indonesians’ trauma. The findings show that the portrayal of Chinese-Indonesians still strongly suggests unrelieved psychological discomfort, albeit, at different levels, that is closely related to the traumatic past and the pervasive stereotyping of Chinese-Indonesians.

 

Dimensions

Plum Analytics

Author Biography

Anton Sutandio, Maranatha Christian University

Senior Lecturer in Bachelor Program in English, Faculty of Letters, Maranatha Christian University (1998-present), and the Assistant to the Dean of the Faculty of Letters (2014-present)

References

Adam, E., & Mitroiu, S. (2016). Remembering the past: Representation of women’s trauma in post-1989 Romanian cinema. Cogent Arts and Humanities, 3(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2016.1182718.

Braga, M. H., & Da Costa, V. (2011). Color in films: A critical overview. Crítica Cultural (Critic), 6(1), 333-346.

Ferron, M. & Massa, P. (2014). Beyond the encyclopedia: Collective memories in Wikipedia. Memory Studies, 7(1), 22-45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698013490590.

Flückiger, B. (2017). Color and subjectivity in film. In M. S. Reinerth & J. N. Thon (Eds.), Subjectivity across media: Interdisciplinary and transmedial perspectives (pp. 145-161). London: Routledge.

Grayshield, L., Rutherford, J. J., Salazar, S. B., Mihecoby, A. L., Luna, L. L. (2015). Understanding and healing historical trauma: The perspective of native American elders. Journal of Mental Healing Counseling, 37(4), 295-307. https://doi.org/10.17744/mehc.37.4.02.

Iskandar, J. (Director), & Tirta, T., & Andre, I. (Producers). (2015). The day the sky roared (Motion Picture). Indonesia: Buttonijo Films.

Kristiono, M. (2018). Dari Tionghoa ke Tjina: Telaah sejarah terhadap demonisasi etnis Tionghoa di Indonesia (From Tionghoa to China: A historical review of the demonization of Chinese ethnicity in Indonesia). Verity: Jurnal Ilmiah Hubungan Internasional, 10(19), 34-48. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.19166/verity.v10i19.1309.

McGregor, K. (2017). Exposing impunity: Memory and human rights activism in Indonesia and Argentina. Journal of Genocide Research, 19(4), 551-573. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2017.1393948.

O’Rawe, D. (2006). The great secret: Silence, cinema, and modernism. Screen, 47(4), 395-405. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjl031.

Paramaditha, I. (2017). Film studies in Indonesia: An experiment of a new generation. Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 173(2-3), 357-375. doi: 10.1163/22134379-17302006.

Rokhani, U. (2017). Produksi kultural film indie ke-‘Tionghoa’-an di Indonesia. Rekam: Jurnal Fotografi Televisi Animasi, 3(1), 1-12. doi: https://doi.org/10.24821/rekam.v13i1.1705.

Setijadi, C. (2016). Ethnic Chinese in contemporary Indonesia: Changing identity politics and the paradox of signification. Perspective, 12, 1-11.

Setijadi, C. (2017). Chinese Indonesians in the eyes of the ‘pribumi’ public. Perspective, 73, 1-12.

Sulaberidze, S. (2016). The cinematic representation of the traumatic experience in youth (In contemporary documentary film). Master’s thesis. Retrieved from https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/42745/thesis%20%283%29.pdf?sequence=1.

Thaniago, R. (2017). Disciplining Tionghoa: Critical discourse analysis of news media during Indonesia’s new order. Master’s thesis. Retrieved from http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8916918/file/8916922.pdf.

Williams, M.T. (2018). Assessing PTSD in ethnic and racial minority: Trauma and racial trauma. Directions in Psychiatry, 38(3), 179-192.

Downloads

Published

2019-11-27
Abstract 1246  .
PDF downloaded 469  .