Abstrack:
My paper concerns Cerita Pulau. Written by Vivian Idris and directed by Fatima Tobing-Rony, Cerita Pulau is the first vignette of the four-part film Perempuan Punya Cerita. It tells the story of Sumantri, a midwife, and her friendship with Wulan, a teenage girl with autism. Living on a small island off the coast of Jakarta, each must struggle for justice, self-determination, and empathetic care in the face of Sumantri?s breast cancer and Wulan?s brutal rape. In my paper, I tease out the parallels between the plot and themes of the film and works of the sastrawangi literary movement, which emphasizes truth telling about female sexual experience and offers a phenomenological exploration of women?s sensuality as a means to empowerment. I ask how the film calls upon tropes of autism and disability to convey these feminist ideals, suggest new resistant subjectivities, and critique Indonesia?s own national ?developmental disabilities? as it negotiates policies concerning gender and access in the context of globalization. I seek to understand the role of disability in the film. In particular I explore how the representation of disability can be mobilized to express major issues of concern in contemporary transnational feminist discourse, seek out new ways of valuing and representing women?s sensuality and authority, and speak to the pressing issue of acknowledging and supporting diversity on individual and national levels. I end the paper by questioning the role of disability awareness and diversity in Indonesia and Indonesian studies today : are efforts such as autism awareness a sign of successful development ? How can contemporary Indonesian media and discourse make room for disabled subjectivities ? How might disability theory, which is an emerging and exciting field of academic study, inform the discussion of identity and self-advocacy in Indonesia today ?
Full Text: