Film Review: Another Side of the 2014 Presidential Election

When I first saw the title of this documentary, I thought that this film would discuss the controversy of the 2014 Presidential Election. From the title of the film, it is clear that in that year, Indonesia was indeed waiting for its seventh President. The difference in quick count results between the presidential candidate pair number 1 (Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa) and the presidential candidate pair number 2 (Joko Widodo-Jusuf Kalla) was still fresh in the minds of the Indonesian people. The media successfully divided the public's votes. It is proven that until now there are still the terms Kampret and Cebong for supporters of Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo. Even though it has been almost 6 (six) years since the 2014 Election took place, there has even been the latest Presidential Election in 2019. However, these terms still continue to exist.

After watching this 1 hour 15 minute film, it turns out that the main thing about this film is not just about the chaos of the 2014 Presidential Election. The film involving 19 videographers wants to depict the reality of Indonesian society who are voters in the 2014 Presidential Election and also wants to capture the public's reaction to the Presidential Election. Dhandy put together the film Yang Ketu7uh neatly and anti-mainstream. At that time, the majority of discussions and chatter in the media, both mainstream media and social media, were about the difference in quick count results and it was as if the public was made to wait for who the winner was and why the difference in quick counts could occur. However, Dhandy saw it differently.

There are four people whose lives are highlighted. The four people come from different areas. They are Suparno and Sutara who live in Jakarta, Nita who lives in Ciputat (South Tangerang City, Banten), and Amin Jalalen, a resident of Indramayu Regency (West Java). The selection of these three locations is sufficient to describe the lives of people on the other side of Jakarta, on the outskirts of Jakarta, and in the regions, with transportation costs that are efficient enough to produce a film.

This film successfully portrays another side of Jakarta. In Jakarta, which is known as a metropolitan city, this film depicts that there are still, even quite a lot, slum areas. This slum area shows that it is true what people think about the harshness of life in the capital city, or as the saying goes, "The Capital City is Crueler than a Stepmother". Suparno's slum in Jakarta is even slumier than Amin's in Indramayu.

Each character in this film shows their own side of the struggle. Nita, who is 60 years old, has to support her five children and grandchildren. In fact, Nita's children are of productive age and Nita is no longer in the productive age group. The portrait of her old age who still has to fight in the world of work by becoming a daily household assistant seems to support the picture of the difficulty of meeting basic needs, namely food, even though she lives on the outskirts of Jakarta. Nita explains that she works for her daily food. She once received 400 thousand per month. That amount of money is far from enough to live on the outskirts of Jakarta, considering the high price of basic necessities.

Dhandy successfully builds an argument about the harshness of life on the outskirts of Jakarta. So, what about the image of life in Jakarta? Suparno and Sutara who live in Jakarta are depicted working odd jobs as construction workers and motorcycle taxi drivers. Dhandy does not highlight their jobs, but rather the primary needs in the form of a place to live occupied by Suparno and Sutara. From the place of residence, Dhandy illustrates that Suparno and Sutara's house is far from decent. They live in the Tanah Tinggi area, Johar Baru, Central Jakarta. Their two houses are each only 6.65 square meters in size. The bathroom and kitchen are also outside the house. Even more unfortunate, Sutara has to live with five children and a wife in such a narrow space. The character Amin who is depicted living in Indramayu, is depicted as a sharecropper. Based on data from the Central Statistics Agency, the majority of the Indonesian population works in the agriculture, plantation, forestry, hunting, and fisheries sectors. Amin is one of the residents who earns a living in these fields. The film tells the story of Amin, who earns a living by working on state-owned land because agricultural land is very limited.

In addition to following the daily lives of the four figures and asking what their dreams and political choices are, this film also tells about the campaign journey from 2009. However, what is most dominantly depicted is in accordance with the title of the film, namely the campaign journey in 2014 until the difference in quick count results and the announcement of the winner of the 2014 Presidential Election. The image of the journey of the 2014 Legislative Election and Presidential Election is depicted in a noisy manner such as a campaign packed with masses and fiery speeches, as well as several election symbols such as the selection of ballot numbers, the atmosphere at the KPU office, the atmosphere of voting at the TPS by each presidential candidate, quick count results, election results and victory speeches.

In terms of political preferences, Dhandy is quite neutral in making this film. Dhandy portrays Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto equally. The two figures who are each other in the presidential election, have the same portion of the story. There is a depiction of the campaign of Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto which was attended by a sea of people. Likewise with the political parties participating in the 2014 Election. The hustle and bustle of the people's party is truly depicted in this film.

The Dual Meaning of Bruno Latour's Visualization of Thought

This film makes the audience rethink how the interaction between politicians and society actually is. The pattern of interaction between politicians and society built by Dhandy seems to agree with Bruno Latour's theory, namely politics of things (in German "dingpolitik" and in English "politics of things"), as a shift in meaning from practical politics (in German known as "realpolitik") or politics that are not moral. Politics of things or politics-hal was first put forward by neologists in Germany and translated as a series of risky experiments in investigating what could mean for political thinking to turn things around to be more realistic. Meanwhile, practical politics is described as something materialistic, without further ado, and only interested.

There is a double meaning of the film's visualization related to politics. On the one hand, through the visualization of the portrait of the people's desire for a national leader, Dhandy wants to give a message to politicians, at least they care about the lower middle class so that the relationship that is built between politicians and marginal voters is a symbiotic mutualism relationship: politicians get votes from the marginalized and the marginalized get benefits in the form of increased welfare. But on the other hand, as if pessimistic about the politics of good intentions and returning to practical politics, after the victory speech scene, the lives of the marginalized are depicted as unchanged. Nita who is still a daily household assistant, Suparno who is still a daily construction worker, Sutara who is still a motorcycle taxi driver, and Amin who is still a sharecropper. Implicitly, this film wakes us up from the beautiful dream of good-intentioned politics and returns to the real reality of practical politics where politicians only prioritize their group and ignore moral responsibility towards these marginalized people.

Is Bruno Latour's Thought Impossible?

Dhandy's pessimism towards politicians in this country cannot be separated from the image built by the media about politicians. Research has revealed that media depictions of social groups can contribute to the development and perpetuation of stereotypes, thus influencing interpretations and behavioral tendencies towards stereotype targets (Oliver, Hoewe, Ash, Kim, Chung, & Shade, 2014). In the context of politics in Indonesia, this social group is politicians and the stereotype in question is the bad deeds of politicians such as breaking promises, corruption, and only caring about their group.

Long before the stereotype of corruption existed, the media had already succeeded in creating a priming effect for the stereotype. If a strong cognitive relationship between politicians and corruption already exists in the memory, then when society is faced with immoral politics, society seems to be accustomed to the situation. The media is indeed influential, but in an era as developed as today, the audience should be smarter in dealing with the priming effect of the media. In my opinion, this view is biased because in reality there are also good politicians even though their numbers are small. Bruno Latour's thinking is certainly not impossible. The film Yang Ketu7uh should have been more optimistic in building arguments about political actors in the country. At least the public becomes aware that they should not be biased in viewing political actors and build society to have more trust in the political actors of their choice. Or at least by presenting hope for goodwill politics in the film, political actors who watch this film can be more optimistic in changing the stereotypes that are attached to them.

References

“Population Aged 15 Years and Over Who Work by Main Field of Employment 1986-2017”. In Central Bureau of Statistics, August 2017
Latour, Bruno. “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: How to Make Things Public”. Atmospheres of Democracy 1444,2005.
Arendt, F and Marquart, F. "Corrupt Politicans? Media Priming Effects on Overtly Expressed Stereotypes Toward Politicians." In Communications 40, no. 2 (2015): 185-197