Not Just Going for Laughs

Butet Kartaredjasa came into his own in recent years with his wickedly ironic impersonations poking fun at the nation's leaders. With a solid grounding in theater and now a regular on mainstream TV, he tells Bruce Emond he feels that he has stepped out of his famous father's shadow for his own share of the spotlight.

It's not always easy to switch into droll comic mode for Butet Kartaredjasa, especially when he is still half asleep and taking the dawn flight from his Yogyakarta home to an engagement in Jakarta.

The public expects that the 45-year-old rubber-faced actor will comply with a snippet of an off-stage performance. They yearn to hear his deep-voiced, plodding Soeharto drawl, get a glimpse of his perfectly practiced "show of hands" as the Yogyakarta embodiment of SBY or see him scrunching up his face, all protruding lips and bug-eyed, in his take on B.J. Habibie.

Although he will pose for photographs and exchange pleasantries, he refuses to be what he calls a "mynah bird", primped and ready to do his routine at his master's command.

"It's a risk (as a performer) that you will be known by a lot of people, and it's a risk I have to face as best I can," he said at a coffee shop in Kuningan, South Jakarta, after the barista also requested that he pose for his camera phone.

"If someone asks for a photo, well, I have to do it. It's a consequence of what I do. I can't just enjoy the sweet side and not deal with the bitter stuff. The public wants me 'fresh'. It's a dilemma, but what can you do about it? It's part of the job."

Becoming a household name - Butet shudders at the term "celebrity" - is relatively newfound territory for him and has come with his TV exposure. Although he is the son of the late revered dancer and painter Bagong Kussudiardja, much of his career has been spent treading the boards as part of theater companies, playing to limited audiences and with little publicity.

His impersonations of New Order leaders were developed during those theater years, when he began performing with the Teater Gandrik group and doing monologues (he also was a journalist, including working for Monitor tabloid in the mid-1980s). As well as Soeharto, he could mimic his right-hand men: powerful information minister Harmoko and state secretary Moerdiono, who was notorious for uhmming and ahhing his way through media briefings. It was a brave act of defiance at a time when political dissent was stifled.

With the once omnipotent Soeharto hobbled by a failing economy and growing public dissatisfaction by 1998, Butet's act became part of the opposition arsenal.

"I had started doing Soeharto in 1987, but people started to know about it in 1998, when I tried to help effect political change. I tried to do it wherever I could; whether it was on stage, at demonstrations. I wanted to help in the political deconstruction. We were all united by one word -- 'opposition'."

Today, he is a new addition to the cast of MetroTV's Newsdotcom, the revamped version of the political satire Republik BBM, and has appeared in several movies (Petualangan Sherina, Banyu Biru, Maskot). In a measure of his popularity, he also stars in a commercial for a popular motorbike.

He distinguishes between pursuing his art through theater and the practicality of making money in TV and commercials. The first feeds his artistic soul; the other pays the bills, allowing him to maintain an apartment in Jakarta and shuttle back and forth between Yogyakarta to be with his wife and three children.

The impersonations are only a small part of his overall cache of work.

"People now see me as an imitator, but I'm not, I'm an actor. Soeharto, Habibie are roles that I play … I know exactly when I am in the culture of the industry, and when I am doing something cultural. When I perform in the theater, when I write, it's not part of the industry, but part of my self-expression."

He names sincerity and honesty as his best traits. "For me, theater and TV is my fake world. In the real world, I am the way that I really am. I am a regular father, I'm an ordinary citizen when I am on the street."

Butet set some conditions when he received the offer to join the ensemble cast of Newsdotcom, headed by University of Indonesia professor Effendi Gazali. As well as Soeharto and Habibie, he was asked to play the new character of SBY, or "Si Butet Yogya".

"I told them, 'OK, I will do it, but I don't want to play it for broad laughs. I'll try to interpret his character, but I don't look like him, I don't sound like him. I can only evince his character as the people perceive him.' My motivation is to play a role as an actor, not go for laughs or grins.

"With a political parody, people can smile, laugh, sit in a corner and reflect, even get annoyed. That's its nature … I appreciate the idea of Effendi Gazali in wanting to educate the public about democracy … I'm on the same wavelength, with my monolog and theater work …"

Controversy surrounded Republik BBM - a rollicking satire about jockeying for power among the political elite - when it was on Indosiar private TV station. There were those who said lampooning the country's leaders was inappropriate and, in the tired but standard argument for anything considered a threat to the status quo, not in keeping with Indonesian values, however one conveniently chooses to define them.

Butet argues that political satire is not new in this country, citing theater performances and radio programs of the past that were funny and full of pointed criticism. It's simply that the medium has changed to reach a much wider audience.

"What we are doing now is continuing that artistic criticism. The Javanese call it guyon parikeno, where you mock someone without hurting them. And the person who is mocked laughs along with you."

For that reason, he will not exaggerate physical deficiencies, because, "it's too easy to slip into insults when you try that". Instead, he plays Habibie as childlike in his deference to his onetime mentor Soeharto, desperately seeking a little affirmation after their famous parting of the ways when the strongman's rule ended in 1998.

His Soeharto, wearing a neck scarf to signify his chronic physical ailments of recent years, remains the stoic Javanese leader who keeps the relationship on his terms - at a safe distance.

"I'm playing with the political discourse that the figure constructed. For example, SBY is perceived by the public as only being able to make promises, a chronic vacillator. So when I play him, I will have him say, 'I will listen'."

He has heard from a journalist that Habibie enjoys the show. He does not know how the Soeharto family reacts to his characterization.

He refuses to engage in revisionism about Soeharto, even if the more forgiving would rather let the old man fade quietly into history.

"As a human, of course you have empathy for the suffering of others," Butet said. "But you also cannot detach yourself just like that from historical realities. If I try to compare his physical suffering now with that of the millions of family members of the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) who were victimized, who actually suffered more? That's only one case; and we're not including Kedung Ombo, the Lampung case. There are millions more victims."

* * * *

Mention Butet's name, even today, and it often invites the comment: "Ah, Bagong's son."

When he died in 2004, the famed dancer was lauded as one of the grand old men of the Indonesian arts, a figure with the rare ability to retain respect for tradition while selectively incorporating modern genres.

Butet was born on Nov. 21, 1961, the fifth of seven children. The oft-repeated tale is that Bagong decided his next child would be called Butet, in honor of a popular song by a North Sumatra singer, even though it is a girl's name among the Batak people.

As a child, he was immersed in Yogyakarta's artistic ambiance, watching dancers, painters and performers of traditional theater. He, like his siblings, also studied dance, but decided the theater was more to his liking when he was a student at the Performing Arts High School.

"I enjoyed the theater most because you get to interact with everybody from all the different arts, whether it's design or voice."

And the other attraction was that it was not his father's specialty.

"If I was a success in dance, people would have said, 'Well, he's Pak Bagong's son.' People wouldn't be surprised. So I felt more confident, it was my challenge. It's the psychological problem of famous people's children -- how to find their identity. But I was able to do that without relying on my father's big name."

As he grew into adulthood, other differences caused problems. His father was a staunch supporter of Golkar, the New Order political machine, and, Butet said, very close to Soeharto.

"There were things about him that I didn't like and wouldn't follow. He was hard, easily angered and emotional … It was a tough time. I tried to hide my identity as Pak Bagong's son. I used the name Butet K., for Kertaradjasa, not Kussudiardja."

He describes a major dispute over a thesis, in which he said artists should establish business ventures as the foundation to pursue their art. His father was incensed, pointing out that he never "stooped" to that.

Butet's wife, Rulyani Isfihana, was a student of Bagong's in Yogyakarta when she met her husband.

"Pak Bagong had a military background, so he was tough and disciplined and it was how he reared his children," she said during a visit to Jakarta. "Butet is not like that. He is a very tender, loving father. I am the one who has to bring our children in line and act as the disciplinarian."

But time heals and emotions mellow: Butet said they reconciled in the final years of his father's life, when he was already recognized for his own artistic talent. Today, he sees similarities with his father in his ability to mix with people from all walks of life, and his discipline and professionalism in managing his time and art.

"As I've got older I've realized that there is an indisputable fact - I'm his son. And I am glad of that I am because otherwise I wouldn't be what I am today. I wouldn't have had my upbringing, exposed to the arts and the books that I was."

Asked the craziest thing he did in his life, Butet joked: "Acting as an adviser to my father when he wanted to remarry."

With the overarching father figure, his mother often appears as a biographical footnote in their family's story. She was a midwife; Butet has talked about how he accompanied her to her work at a clinic and decided that he wanted to be a doctor, because he was the "boss".

"My mother had a deep influence on me," he said. "I saw how she totally devoted herself to my father. And she suffered. She told me all about her suffering caused by my father, all the bad things he did, everything. I saw my father from all sides. I knew he had a dark side from my mother's stories. I chose to take the positive side and get rid of the negative things."

He still dreams of meeting her again, and when he wakes up there are tears in his eyes.

She left him with two parting wishes on her deathbed.

"She asked me to pray for her. And she also asked me not to cause my wife the same suffering as the wife of an artist."

* * * *

On a rainy night last December, Butet took the stage at Taman Ismail Marzuki in Cikini, Central Jakarta, for a performance of his monologue Matinya Tukang Kritik (Death of a Critic). Those famously hilarious impersonations aside, it is here that Butet's talent is set free to shine as he skewers the hypocrisy and pretensions of human nature, as well as the confounding injustice in society.

Self-important and bemoaning the late arrival of a valuable letter, the critic orders around his shuffling servant, Bambang, who offers words of wisdom through his simple narrative on the world around him. Butet updates the performance for current events and each audience, this one a corporate gathering of autoparts agents. As well as frequent nods to the CEO ("he's paying me tonight," he quips), there are pointed asides about the legislator-and-singer sex video scandal and the Sidoarjo disaster.

In territory where most others fear to tread, he is brave enough to show images of a raid conducted by self-proclaimed arbiters of morality.

"Come down, Bambang," he shouts at one point, before turning to the audience and uttering in a stage whisper," to our friends in the audience from the intelligence agency, I'm not alluding to THAT Bambang."

Only a couple of weeks before, Butet scrubbed up well to cohost MetroTV's sixth anniversary celebration, putting on a black jacket and tie for the glittering occasion. But going mainstream on TV or turning on the talent for a corporate client has not tamed the rebel within.

For our first meeting, he arrived in his standard offstage wear of cargo pants and T-shirt, this one bearing a rendition of the UN logo and the message "United Nations of None". A few days later his attire of choice was a chairman Mao T-shirt and a People's Liberation Army cap. He is a chain smoker and, with typical irreverence, says he considers it a "good" habit.

Butet recognizes he stands astride two cultures, one signifying the Javanese past of his forefathers, the other modern Indonesia in transition.

"As a Javanese, I wouldn't be sitting here drinking this," he said, pointing to the mixed juice concoction in front of him. "I would think about how much I could eat with the price of this drink … But now I check if people will be home when I want to visit, that is the Jakarta part of me, not Yogya. There you just go by someone's home; if they are there, good, if not, well, come back later."

He is dismayed by the changes brought by globalization, with Indonesian cultural roots buckling from the assault.

"I'm sad when I see what is happening, where Indonesia is made an object of this great force, capitalism or whatever you want to call it. Tastes are changing, people's beliefs have changed. Our tastes are being made the same."

It's the lack of quality education and attendant critical thinking that are to blame, he believes.

"What makes me sad is when people from the lower class feel they are going up in the world when they consume those kind of products," he said of fast food and gadgets. "If they don't, then they feel they haven't gone up. And that is when their income is actually how much? We just don't have critical thinking. Our education only teaches through an indoctrinative way, it doesn't stimulate people."

It's not all gloom, however. Butet is a confirmed advocate of pluralism; he notes his wife is from East Kalimantan and his children, although Muslim, attend Catholic schools, even if their father has an "unclear" religious affiliation.

He thinks Newsdotcom can continue to serve in educating the public about democracy if it seeks to change and does not get stale.

Butet also praised some of the changes made by the SBY administration, despite the public criticism of its foot-dragging in effecting reform.

"A governor or a minister can go to prison, which never happened to public officals before, so it's good," he said. "Law enforcement is better, even if it's not perfect. It's a small step in the right direction.

"If law enforcement improves, education is better, then maybe three of four generations along the way we will get the Indonesia we want."

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