"We are the ones we've been waiting for." The prophetic Hopi line may be popularized by Obama, but it's what Megawati's camp wished to tell the Indonesian people with recent insinuations, quite publicly, that she ran for president with Meuthia Hatta, the daughter of her father's co-signatory of the Proclamation of Independence. Together they will recreate history.
Never mind that the Dutch and the Japanese, from whom Indonesia declared independence 63 years ago, are no longer around. The second round of Soekarno-Hatta duet is designed not to free the nation from foreign conquerors, but to help Megawati reconquer the nation's top political position.
People say, love is blind. Megawati's top aides in the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) seem to be in a mood for romanticism that prevent them from seeing the absurdity, if not farce, in the pairing. They see a nation ready to be recaptivated by a charismatic twosome, when many see a desperate attempt to recapture the magic in the name "Sukarno-Hatta."
And who else but women are to be the object of this illusory affection? The pairing of Megawati and Meuthia, who is the current Minister of Women's Empowerment, is calculated to appeal to female electorates. So not only because they have the DNAs of the founding fathers, they also have the right gender to lead the country. At least Megawati believes so.
Back in November, speaking to women in Rembang, she equated governing the state with running a household. "Men have no idea how to manage a household. They can't tell chilly pepper [from] shrimp paste, salted fish, and generally ask to be served." She had lost in the previous election, Megawati concluded, because housewives didn't vote for a housewife -- "They voted for a man."
Forget the incongruous analogy, this desperate housewife was essentially saying, "Vote for me because I'm a woman." Hillary Clinton could only wish she had equally charitable audience. While Hillary never wants to be seen playing the gender card, Megawati has no other cards but gender and genes.
If Megawati ever needs a theme song for her campaign, I'm recommending Edwin McCain's The Kitchen Song, or Alice Cooper's Hallowed Be My Name. If she thinks she needs to court younger voters who aren't fawning over daddy's name, she can try Beyonce's Me, Myself and I.
Of late, the former First Daughter and 5th President of Indonesia has attempted explicit parallels between her and her father. A little over a month ago she was criticized for making stinging remarks on the current thin-skinned administration. In one of her rallies in Lampung, Megawati defended her remarks as merely passing on what she had heard from the people.
"I had dialogues with the people on their current situation. Everyone says life's hard. Not one said, it isn't difficult. This isn't me saying." People in Lampung, Megawati told reporters, asked for affordable prices of basic commodities. But since she was not in charge of the government, she could only promise to pass on their grievances to those in charge.
Like her father, Megawati sees herself as "the extension of the people's tongue" -- one of few self-aggrandizing designations Soekarno adopted for himself when running the country.
Too bad the reporters failed to ask why "the extension of the people's tongue no. 2" was tongue-tied for most of her term as president.
Perhaps because at that time the presidential throne came by rather easy. Her party had symbolized resistance against the hugely unpopular Soeharto, and it was almost natural to rally behind a namesake of Soekarno, from whom Soeharto had wrested power over three decades earlier.
So the crown was simply being returned to the rightful owner. She only needed to be herself -- daughter of Soekarno -- to become president. You can say, tongue-in-cheek, it's in her genes. She didn't need to speak to anyone she didn't wish to speak to, especially reporters.
But somewhere along the way, after continuing hardship and mounting corruption at all levels of government, this pedigree thing lost its magic. Indonesians ceased to be enamored by the grand family name, and, worse, economically desperate housewives flung themselves into affair with a military guy. They didn't vote for fellow housewife, they voted for him.
PDI-P in fact has choices of fresh and promising bulls to ride on in the upcoming presidential election. Alas, they ran on Soekarno's legacy and now find themselves stuck with his daughter. This one bull sits at the top of the party hierarchy and won't budge -- she wants another shot at the presidency. She holds fast to another saying of the Hopi Indian elders, one which even Barack Obama wouldn't dare quoting -- "Do not look outside yourself for the leader."
To indulge her, her backers suggested plunging deeper into history -- a repeat of Soekarno-Hatta, in feminine form. Instead of moving forward, the party is going backward. It was propelled to prominence by the weight of the past, but now the past is weighing it down.
They may or may not be the ones we've been waiting for. Truth is, Megawati had her chance as leader, but the people has moved on.
Soeharto is gone, but the long-time tyrant continues to bring about discontent in Indonesia.
The cover of the Feb. 4-10 issue of Tempo magazine illustrated the recently deceased Soeharto and his children in the manner of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, and naturally provoked plenty of gripes from Christian organizations.
Indeed, the analogy between Soeharto and Jesus set off a few alarms. First, an email with attached document regarding "Tempo magazine" circulated on my high school alumni mailing list. But being suspicious of email attachments, I only learned of the furor later in the Feb. 6 front page and editorial of Komentar.
The Manado-based newspaper editorial calls Tempo's cover "certainly offensive," as "Christians consider the image of The Last Supper sacred." In other words, Tempo not only had come uninvited to the holy banquet reserved only for Christians, it had made Soeharto the guest of honor. Playing with the Supper, the magazine's chief editor was made to eat humble pie.
Alright, I spiced up that last part. But allow me to join in the rhetorical feast and perhaps break bread with my fellow Christians who were particularly offended by the slight.
To say that we as Christians were snubbed by the parody of da Vinci's work is to say that we felt violated by its unflattering use. The association of Jesus with scandal-ridden Soeharto was not only erroneous, many would say, it was also unwarranted.
But our disapproval may be premature, because who's to say that Christians have a monopoly over da Vinci's imaginative creation -- a product completed centuries before the concept of intellectual rights even existed? When Tempo parodied The Last Supper, who did it violate -- Christians or da Vinci?
We ought to be able to discern our view of the revered God, as embodied by Jesus, from an artistic work of an Italian painter. In other words, we need take the magic out of the object.
And historical context often proves handy when it comes to exorcising the illusion of holiness.
The famous mural by da Vinci is documented to have been created at the closing years of the 15th century for the Duke of Milan, whose family emblem and images hence adorn the painting.
It was a material object created from a painter's imagination, not by divine revelation, as evident in the photographic position of the figures in the painting -- they all sit in one row as if to pose for the painter. The actual Lord's Supper presumably would have Jesus and the twelve apostles sit around the table.
And, rumor has it that da Vinci hired a baker boy to pose for Jesus, while Judas was modeled after a tough looking convict. Such stories behind The Last Supper may very well be cooked up, but they serve as a good reminder that there is nothing inherently sacred in the painting.
The aura of godliness comes instead from elsewhere. If we are to believe the Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin, it is partly a product of capitalist production. To summarize him, before the time of mass reproduction, an object like a painting on church wall carried a ceremonial value and radiated religious aura.
But when technology permits reproduction of the painting in infinite numbers and forms, the object takes on a different kind of aura that comes from its exhibition value (people fly half way around the globe just to see The Last Supper in Milan), singularity (there's only one in the entire world), originality (an authentic da Vinci!), age, even history of ownership.
The supposed sanctity of The Last Supper is not likely to have come from the actual mural, as those offended by the parody are not likely to have seen it, but is arguably the effect of the painting's mass reproduction. Replicas of da Vinci's rendering of the Lord's Supper so saturate our culture -- pop and religious -- that they are now dislodged from the historical context and, given religious subtext, stand as representations of the actual Lord's Supper.
Mass reproduction also guarantees recognizability. The illustrator at Tempo didn't need to spell out what the cover alluded to. Replicas of the mural are ubiquitous and recognizable enough to get across the thematic association. Alas, an artistic rendition of the sacred moment was mistaken as the actual sacred thing -- thus its parody, an insult.
The church is partly to blame for this muddle. Some churches encourage credulous mind-set with regards to religious objects. A friend of mine, for instance, refused to take part in the Catholic communion, because as a child in Catholic school she was told that the sacramental bread and wine are the real flesh and blood of Jesus. I didn't dispute her story because I, too, was told similar thing, hence we're not supposed to chew the bread. In vino veritas with a twist -- in wine is the real thing!
Call it an unholy alliance -- where religious institutions and capitalist production actually feed each other, where material objects are used to nourish faith and faith helps sell the objects. Thus we have a parody of a work of art charged with blasphemy.
Tempo's clever use of da Vinci's work indeed got people's attention, which is perhaps what the magazine really wanted. But it's a shame if our attention stops at the cover. At issue, rather, is what we need to do with Soeharto's sinister legacy. Let's chew on that.
The cover of the Feb. 4-10 issue of Tempo magazine illustrated the recently deceased Soeharto and his children in the manner of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, and naturally provoked plenty of gripes from Christian organizations.
Indeed, the analogy between Soeharto and Jesus set off a few alarms. First, an email with attached document regarding "Tempo magazine" circulated on my high school alumni mailing list. But being suspicious of email attachments, I only learned of the furor later in the Feb. 6 front page and editorial of Komentar.
The Manado-based newspaper editorial calls Tempo's cover "certainly offensive," as "Christians consider the image of The Last Supper sacred." In other words, Tempo not only had come uninvited to the holy banquet reserved only for Christians, it had made Soeharto the guest of honor. Playing with the Supper, the magazine's chief editor was made to eat humble pie.
Alright, I spiced up that last part. But allow me to join in the rhetorical feast and perhaps break bread with my fellow Christians who were particularly offended by the slight.
To say that we as Christians were snubbed by the parody of da Vinci's work is to say that we felt violated by its unflattering use. The association of Jesus with scandal-ridden Soeharto was not only erroneous, many would say, it was also unwarranted.
But our disapproval may be premature, because who's to say that Christians have a monopoly over da Vinci's imaginative creation -- a product completed centuries before the concept of intellectual rights even existed? When Tempo parodied The Last Supper, who did it violate -- Christians or da Vinci?
We ought to be able to discern our view of the revered God, as embodied by Jesus, from an artistic work of an Italian painter. In other words, we need take the magic out of the object.
And historical context often proves handy when it comes to exorcising the illusion of holiness.
The famous mural by da Vinci is documented to have been created at the closing years of the 15th century for the Duke of Milan, whose family emblem and images hence adorn the painting.
It was a material object created from a painter's imagination, not by divine revelation, as evident in the photographic position of the figures in the painting -- they all sit in one row as if to pose for the painter. The actual Lord's Supper presumably would have Jesus and the twelve apostles sit around the table.
And, rumor has it that da Vinci hired a baker boy to pose for Jesus, while Judas was modeled after a tough looking convict. Such stories behind The Last Supper may very well be cooked up, but they serve as a good reminder that there is nothing inherently sacred in the painting.
The aura of godliness comes instead from elsewhere. If we are to believe the Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin, it is partly a product of capitalist production. To summarize him, before the time of mass reproduction, an object like a painting on church wall carried a ceremonial value and radiated religious aura.
But when technology permits reproduction of the painting in infinite numbers and forms, the object takes on a different kind of aura that comes from its exhibition value (people fly half way around the globe just to see The Last Supper in Milan), singularity (there's only one in the entire world), originality (an authentic da Vinci!), age, even history of ownership.
The supposed sanctity of The Last Supper is not likely to have come from the actual mural, as those offended by the parody are not likely to have seen it, but is arguably the effect of the painting's mass reproduction. Replicas of da Vinci's rendering of the Lord's Supper so saturate our culture -- pop and religious -- that they are now dislodged from the historical context and, given religious subtext, stand as representations of the actual Lord's Supper.
Mass reproduction also guarantees recognizability. The illustrator at Tempo didn't need to spell out what the cover alluded to. Replicas of the mural are ubiquitous and recognizable enough to get across the thematic association. Alas, an artistic rendition of the sacred moment was mistaken as the actual sacred thing -- thus its parody, an insult.
The church is partly to blame for this muddle. Some churches encourage credulous mind-set with regards to religious objects. A friend of mine, for instance, refused to take part in the Catholic communion, because as a child in Catholic school she was told that the sacramental bread and wine are the real flesh and blood of Jesus. I didn't dispute her story because I, too, was told similar thing, hence we're not supposed to chew the bread. In vino veritas with a twist -- in wine is the real thing!
Call it an unholy alliance -- where religious institutions and capitalist production actually feed each other, where material objects are used to nourish faith and faith helps sell the objects. Thus we have a parody of a work of art charged with blasphemy.
Tempo's clever use of da Vinci's work indeed got people's attention, which is perhaps what the magazine really wanted. But it's a shame if our attention stops at the cover. At issue, rather, is what we need to do with Soeharto's sinister legacy. Let's chew on that.
