Postcolonial Myths

Abstract

This chapter examines the aftereffects of the U.S.-backed New Order government’s violent excesses and their legacy of trauma, crisis, and horror. Since Suharto, the country’s struggling “transition” into a democratic civil society has been hampered by its inability to acknowledge and move past the killings of 1965-1966. Indonesia’s genre-dominated cinema reinforced New Order ideology because its formulae begot predictability, which dovetailed with the New Order’s premium on social and political stability. At the same time, Hollywood genres Americanized colonial subjects and their memories. As a result, even films precipitated by the reformasi movement working through the traumas of Suharto’s violence, take continued comfort in generic closure and resolution. For example, Americanism functioning as psychic conduits and historical indices in reformasi coming-of-age stories, emerges through the discursive beats and rhythms of the road film.