Gotot Prakosa

           I genuinely enjoyed Gotot Prakosa’s presentation, and I found it was moving to see a filmmaker so unwavering in his devotion to his country and art, and be able to mesh the two together so elegantly. I didn’t know much about Gamelan other than a brief introduction in a World Music class, and was totally ignorant of Wayang theatre, and really enjoyed seeing how Prakosa could infuse even his more light-hearted work with his passion for his country.

I considered the veiled figures in Prakosa’s film to be the antithesis to other female characters we’ve seen, such as those in Hitchcock’s films. Rather than mute subjects of the protagonists’ gaze, an unreachable objet a, the female characters in Takwa are mute observers of violence and destruction. For one thing, they are practically the only females in the film, the others existing mostly as quickly forgotten casualties. Despite their visible concern for other characters, they exist mostly in serenity as a juxtaposition to the frenetic visual action, unnoticed and unthreatened by either of the opposing forces. When Prakosa answered a question regarding what he considered the veiled women to represent, however, my thoughts changed.

    Prakosa said that the women represented his personality, his point of view as a filmmaker and a citizen. He said they demonstrated that not everyone should be swept up in violence, that a historical observer is necessary. The women could visually negotiate the rift between the eternal and the undeniable mortality.

After hearing Prakosa’s comments, I began to see the veiled women as a round-about Lacanian objet a. They, like the dreams and hopes of the protestors, are idealized and untouchable, a manifestation of a consciousness expressed through the act of violence, for without the violence and protest the veiled figures would not exist, and without her, the protests would not be possible. She is both the spirit of the revolution and its ultimate goal. As Hitchcock’s heroes would be incomplete without their incompleteness i.e. they are defined by their search for a feminine ideal, so too are Prakosa’s characters defined by their failure to obtain their revolutionary ideal, represented by a veiled woman. In this way Prakosa’s veiled female character is a creation of male desire. This desire is not sexual as it is for Hitchcock’s characters; it is the desire for freedom and liberty.

I don’t think it’s a shock to confess that I’m not well-versed in Indonesia’s history or culture, but I just found it odd that in both Vertigo and Kantata Takwa, two films that couldn’t be more different, the female characters exist to constitute an ideal or goal for the male protagonists.

Eventually I just worked myself into a corner with hypotheticals. What would happen or what would it mean if any of the protesters or assailants took notice of the veiled women? Are they meant to be a physical, three-dimensional character interacting with the others, or are they an extension of the filmmaker, a smudge left on the film by the filmmakers hand to draw attention to his influence and point of view? And I wondered of the real women caught up in this conflict. Was there a place for them in this fight? Or would their existence, as on film, be left without a voice or presence, a uniform mass whose place was mediated by their relationships to the male heroes of the revolution?