In the past six months we have been besieged by images of both the April 9 legislative and the upcoming presidential elections.
The images framed by the television reveal the whole gamut of the political arena at play – from political rallies to the personal opinions of the people and the candidates. The images bring us about as close as we can get, without really being there, to unmediated reality.
There are numerous television programs broadcasting formulaic news coverage, talk shows, documentaries, interviews and presidential and vice presidential debates with wide-ranging topics, specifically focusing on the events building toward the legislative elections and now the presidential election on July 8. Compared to past elections, we have never seen the presidential candidates speak so much.
It is fascinating to witness how the mainstream media constructs the political campaign through its presentation of primary frames, images and discourses.
The political campaigns are seen, by a huge majority of the population, through television broadcasts. The average size of a television set in an average Indonesian household would probably be between 14 to 21 inches.
This is the physical frame by which the political arena enfolds in the minds of the Indonesian people.
The perspective of a viewer at home is limited to whatever is inside the frame of a television set and the boundaries of the rectangle screen itself. This is why the image that is being represented becomes extremely important.
Take for example the three different declaration events by the presidential candidates. The first pair of presidential candidates to declare their candidacy was Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto.
On TV, it was perceived as a simple no-frills ceremony held at the Proclamation Memorial in Jakarta.
In front of the larger-than-life statues of the founding fathers Sukarno and Hatta, Kalla was dwarfed by the statues and a much taller Wiranto. Most of the news footage of this event gave the impression that it was scantily attended by supporters, due to the camera angles, lenses and the final editing process used by the media.
How events such as these are shot by television cameras are crucial to how the audience at home will perceive the campaigns and ultimately choose who to vote for. Megawati and Prabowo’s declaration, held in a giant rubbish dump east of Jakarta, is a fine example.
Print media coverage mostly reported on the impressive turn-out and enthusiasm of the huge crowd at the rally, but this was not the case with television broadcasts. Most of the footage shown on various television channels was shot with a long telephoto lens (probably due to the distance from the allocated area for the media) thus creating compressed images of the duo.
The effect of this type of shot is that it focused not only on the presidential couple, but also whoever was standing close by.
Every grimace, frown, bored look and smile was exaggerated. The podium that was almost level to the crowd also created blurred images of upraised hands capturing the moments with their mobile phones and cameras, obscuring the candidates. The whole image was chaotic.
The Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono-Boediono declaration held in Bandung, West Java, was the most grand and impressive, echoing presidential declaration events in the US. Carefully positioned cameras, swooping wide-angle crane shots revealed the red, white and blue (the color of the Democratic Party) banners that decorated the interior.
The color coordinated pair accompanied by their wives were positioned in such a way that the meaning of power and incumbency was apparent.
Multi-camera coverage of the audience also revealed other political party members who were supporting the candidates.
On the one hand, the constant attendance of Yudhoyono’s son (he was eventually elected into the legislature) in the same frame as his father inevitably communicated the idea of SBY’s heir.
This was especially compounded by similar outfits and body language seen in the repeated news coverage of both the legislative and presidential elections. Without going into the realm of cognitive science, the audience can react in diverse ways to these images; they can be influenced, swayed or rejected.
The framing described in the examples above is largely uncalculated, unlike the political commercials of the candidates where the images are controlled and designed. The presidential election campaigns, after the Soeharto era, have for the most part been extremely verbal, with images of the candidates clenching their fists emulating the perennial Merdeka! (Independence!) historical stance adopted during the struggle for Indonesian independence.
The direct and prosaic displays of information, or in other words, the “hard-sell” approach has now developed into more sophisticated albeit eclectic forms of short narratives with no real innovation.
The political commercials of the various candidates range from the ludicrous karaoke commercial where Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto sing, to a jingle appropriated from an instant noodle brand for SBY’s commercial. Megawati and Prabowo Subianto’s focus has been on the theme of poverty, but images of them walking in markets and talking to farmers do little to evoke sincerity and concern.
Commercials as a form of mass persuasion should endeavor to appeal to the current values and interest of those groups whose tastes will hopefully spread to much larger groups.
It is unfortunate that the framing of political agendas in terms of media coverage in this year’s elections has not been utilized to the fullest as the inherent nature of the media is transformative.
The writer is filmmaker and lecturer in Cinema Studies.
