‘Female’ functions as a signifier, either as a fearful woman who possesses fearful magic and exercises a reign of terror over the populace or those ‘proper’ women who are represented as traditional, obedient and pleasant. Gladwin underlines the notion of a grotesque and evil priestess-ness in the horror narrative of 1970s as a well-worn standby in the genre. Stephen Galdwin (2003) contributes his valuable analysis on the history of Indonesian horror genre and its political resonances. Karl Heider (1991) describes the use of ‘horribly humorous’ scenes as a distinctive aspect of Indonesian horror movies. In Indonesian horror films, the otherness of the monster/ghost is, however, an endless source of mystery, fascination, fear, pity and even laughter. But this analysis tends to ignore the complexities of female characters in horror films. Sen points out that horror film represents femininity as a silence. Sen (1994) has argued that the use of feminine (female) ghosts in Indonesian films is a way of dealing with the culturally problematic sexuality of women. Indonesian horror films manifest undoubtedly to what monsters are like and spend relatively little time on articulating or developing those assumptions. The representation of gender has been the subject of theoretical debate for many years, and much of what one finds in Indonesian horror films during the period of 1970s-1990s falls readily within conventional categories recognizable from the production of other media, other cultures, and other ages. Women are primarily physical creatures, defined in large part by their surface appearances.
It is safe to say that the female characters in this period horror film almost always end up becoming ghost. This is exemplified most obviously in the large numbers of women who became the monster (the ghost). A crucial aspect of that monster-ness is a female body. The representation of monster in Indonesian horror film, moreover, is largely defined by its physical appearance and what cause it to become a monster. The best way to approach this very typical film is by considering what monsters are like and where they come from. The Indonesian horror film is a particularly grotesque genre-a genre dedicated exclusively for the grotesque. From 1998 until 2008, out of the 281 films produced, over 70 are horror films, constituting a major genre in the revival of the Indonesian film industry. The success of Jelangkung was soon followed by a plethora of other films that offer new narratives and new ways of representing horror.
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Three years after this major political and social change, two Indonesian young filmmakers-Rizal Mantovani and Jose Poernomo-made the first horror movie of the new era, entitled Jelangkung (2001). The feminine grotesque is a central motif in the explosion of Indonesian horror films following the end of the New Order regime (1967-1998). Suzzanna as The Snake Queen in “ Nyi Blorong” (1982)
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