Power Plays: Wayang Golek Puppet Theater of West Java.

Becker, Judith

Power Plays: Wayang Golek Puppet Theater of West Java. By Andrew N. Weintraub. (Ohio University Research in International Studies. Southeast Asia Series, no. 110.) Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2004. [xvii, 295 p. ISBN 981-230-249-2. $30.] Illustrations, music examples, glossary, bibliography, index, CD-ROM.

This excellent book presents a lively account of the current state of a theatrical genre of prime importance to the Sundanese living in the western part of Java, Indonesia. It is always necessary when writing for an audience that is comprised of non-Indonesianists to explain that puppet theater in Java does not mean children's theater. The puppet theater genres, wayang kulit in Java and wayang golek in Sunda, the former using flat leather puppets, the latter three-dimensional wooden puppets, are highly sophisticated performances including music, poetry, song, and narration that is mostly based upon the epic stories, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. In charge of all aspects of the performance is the dalang, the puppeteer who speaks the dialogue for all the characters, sings intermittently throughout the night-long performances, and directs the gamelan ensemble through established signals.

Weintraub gives enough introductory material concerning the history of wayang golek and its social setting to make this book accessible for someone not familiar with the genre. Wayang golek performances are most often sponsored by a family to celebrate a wedding or a circumcision. A stage is set up outside the house with chairs not only for invited guests, but also for all those villagers who will come uninvited and spend the night watching the drama unfold. Wayang golek is a truly popular entertainment in the sense of appealing to audiences across age groups, social classes, and economic statuses.

Two of the strong themes of this book, and the aspects that I will discuss most in this review, are first, the relationship between wayang golek performances and the technologies that emerged after 1970, and second, the attempts of the Suharto regime, called the New Order (1966-1998), to control the messages presented to the public by wayang golek performances. The New Order dictatorship of General Suharto initiated an unprecedented degree of government control over all aspects of social life including popular public performances. Top-down government control and economic development went hand in hand. The New Order government, a military dictatorship, believed that repression and control were necessary for economic development. They successfully encouraged outside foreign investment in Indonesian business, monopolized the political process in Indonesia, and took a paternal attitude toward the rural majority of Java's population. Weintraub includes the following quote: "Indonesia's unsophisticated rural masses are not to be distracted from the tasks of development by political parties.... Under a law established in 1975, political parties are formally banned from establishing branches below the regency level" (Benedict Anderson, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia. [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990], 115). For as long as anyone knows, Sundanese puppeteers have been partially beholden to social elites as patrons. A wayang golek is an expensive proposition, and the richer members of a village community are more likely to hire such a performance than the poorer members. Weintraub maintains that the sponsorship of the New Order escalated and intensified attempts to control the messages of the puppeteers by the very substantial amounts of money that the government was willing to spend sponsoring wayang golek performances that would include pro-government messages. Weintraub argues that the government officials were most interested in the best-known, popular puppeteers. By sponsoring performances in large, urban areas with huge audiences, and by focusing on only a few of the hundreds of puppeteers who were available in the countryside, the government was instrumental in creating what Weintraub calls the dalang "superstars," a handful of men who were constantly in demand to perform both in the urban centers and in the countryside. During the New Order, these few men performed almost nightly in the three months following the fasting month of Ramadan, and in the other months, performed from 10 to 15 times per month (p. 43). This meant that a few puppeteers became very wealthy, and many, many others rarely had the opportunity to perform at all.

Did this investment of the New Order pay off? On this point, Weintraub's discussion is nuanced. And the more that this reviewer learns of the situation, the more that caution seems appropriate. The puppeteer has long been expected to comment upon the current political situation, and can easily turn an episode from the Mahabharata into a commentary on something contemporary. But as has been pointed out by another scholar writing about another Javanese puppet tradition, a wayang performance is not primarily about a message (Ward Keeler, "Wayang Kulit in the Political Margin," in Puppet Theater in Contemporary Indonesia: New Approaches to Performance Events, ed. Jan Mrazek [Ann Arbor: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, 2002], 98). The vast structure of an all-night performance with its requisite mood songs, mystical interpolations, and its "irremediably hierarchical view of the world" make it difficult to manipulate in any straightforward manner. The form itself dictates a looseness of meaning, the possibility of many interpretations, and a fluid, unspecified intent. Weintraub acknowledges that "superstar" dalang often included government messages, but he does not believe that the audience was thereby entirely convinced and thus supportive of all the programs of the government. He shows how it was possible for a superstar dalang to include simultaneously government messages and to debate, contest, and even subvert those messages. Particularly in the sections of the performance that involve the clown characters, the clowns can make statements that are decidedly counter-hegemonic while allowing the puppeteer himself complete deniability. The uncouth clown characters can be said to "be-and-not-be" the puppeteer himself. Significantly, after the fall of the dictator Suharto in 1998, puppeteers began to be openly critical of the New Order and the vast corruption of the Suharto regime.

Another significant focus of this book is the influence of new media on wayang golek performances. The first was the introduction of cassette recordings in the 1970s. As Weintraub points out, this new technology was much more transformative than one might think. Comedy sections that were expanded on popular cassettes influenced dalangs to expand comedy sections in the traditional-style performances. Furthermore, recording companies were interested in making a profit and thus were only interested in recording the superstar puppeteers, thus intensifying the narrowing of the field of possible puppeteers. One byproduct of the cassette culture is that now puppeteers are familiar with each others' work. Formerly, it would not have been seemly for one famous puppeteer to be in attendance when another puppeteer was working. Now, they all are familiar with the musical innovations and story innovations of each other and are under pressure to distinguish themselves as unique by yet further innovations. Evolving technologies thus stimulate further artistic novelties within a traditional genre.

Speaking of musical innovations, one of the startling parts of Weintraub's book is his description of the musical innovation called "multilaras" gamelan ensembles. Several different tuning systems are used in Sunda, and generally, this means that only one of them is played on any given gamelan. But among the superstar dalangs, some have created gamelan instruments with many more keys that are thus able to play pieces in more than one tuning. Anyone who has ever played in a gamelan ensemble knows how every piece is intimately tied to particular kinesthetic movements. The idea of having to relearn all those kinesthetic patterns in order to strike the proper keys or gongs on a "multilaras" gamelan ensemble seems formidable. But many Sundanese musicians are now totally at home with these new outsized instruments.

Weintraub also discusses the influence of televised wayang golek performances in which audience interaction, puppeteer improvisation, and story unpredictability are restricted or eliminated. He makes the argument that instead of being a participant, the television viewer becomes a critic instead, with no personal attachment to, nor any bodily presence with the puppeteer. On the other hand, some critics believe that television can enhance a performance by allowing close-ups of the performance in much the same way that televised football games allow at-home viewers a more intimate view of the action. An indication of the continuing popularity of wayang golek is that a lively public discourse is on-going in the mainstream press about issues relating to new technologies, the social responsibility of the dalang, the desirability (or not) of expanded comedic scenes, the pros and cons of reliance upon written texts, and the influence on performance of the government schools for the arts.

Undertaking the description of a complex genre and its intimate relationship to governmental policies and new technologies is a formidable task. Weintraub's integration of an ethnographic study with the perspective of cultural studies and media studies is almost seamless. After reading this book, no one could possibly assume that expressive forms such as wayang golek exist in a timeless world of artistic autonomy. Everything that happens in everyday Sundanese society has some impact upon the other-worldly performance genre of the great epic stories of wayang golek. Mythology and the quotidian are completely intertwined.

I cannot conclude this review without mentioning the outstanding CD-ROM that accompanies it. One can listen to all the musical examples in the book as well as see a puppeteer in action, read about the history and social setting of wayang golek and see certain musicians in action as well. It is a delight. This book takes its place among the best of the books about the wayang genre in Java.

JUDITH BECKER

University of Michigan