Political animals: An activist from Love Indonesia, Love the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), abbreviated to CICAK, holds up a sticker of his organization at a protest in front of the police headquarters in South Jakarta, on Oct. 30. JP/Wendra Ajistyatama
One needs not be a media observer to notice the rising popularity of these two characters. They’re in the newspaper headlines, in the city’s murals and in the backdrops of various art performances. Meet Indonesia’s latest celebrities: the gecko and the crocodile!
No, you’re not going to read yet another wrap-up article on the tug of war between authorities. Let’s leave the political analysis for a more serious page, shall we.
It’s how the members of the animal kingdom have found their way into our vocabulary and slang that might also be interesting to look at. And it’s not actually rocket science.
Giving people names is one of the ways that helps humans interact. Borrowing names from wildlife in some respect qualifies as a sub-category in human interaction, and gives rise to figures of speech with positive and negative connotations. Behind all those words lies the relationship mankind has with its fellow living beings.
Centuries before Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, almost every civilization had its own take on using animals as the object of fables and metaphors.
Long before being used as a term referring to the underdog in our country’s latest debacle, the gecko was the Balinese’s creature of knowledge, symbolizing the presence of the goddess Saraswati.
As for crocodiles, their qualities seem to have lent themselves to womanizers, referred to as buaya darat, to the crocodile-shaped bread offering in a Betawi wedding, the roti buaya, and the city Surabaya. Not to mention more than a handful of tales where the sharped-teeth beast takes on either antagonistic or protagonistic roles.
“The use of the crocodile in the roti buaya symbolizes the hope that a marriage will last forever, as the animal is known as a faithful creature,” Betawi cultural observer Ridwan Saidi said.
No crocodile tears: A man stages a theatrical performance with animal puppets in Monas on Nov. 2, showing a crocodile biting a gecko, to describe the fight between the KPK and the police that has recently monopolized the public’s attention. JP/P.J. Leo
This, in turn, explains the term buaya darat, an expression referring to the two-legged crocodiles that walk around changing partners, unlike their crawling counterparts.
Meanwhile, the crocodile has also become one of the symbols of Surabaya — derived from the Javanese words sura (shark) and baya (crocodile) — to portray the history of the city, where a battle between the two animals took place. Again, it’s a figure of speech.
Legend has it that the rebellious Jayengrono — a soldier who led the locals’ fight against the Tartar army, and Sawunggaling — who was sent by the Majapahit kingdom to prevent Jayengrono from becoming ever more powerful and threaten the kingdom’s authority, fought in Surabaya.
It is said Jayengrono possessed the battling power of a crocodile while Sawunggaling was armed with the force of a shark. Both died in the battle and the scene was named after the event.
Fables and animal metaphors feature heavily in history written before the modern era. While as children we tend to take stories involving animal characters literally, as we grow older we try to read between the lines, when recounting the fables our parents used to read to us.
The late author Pramoedya Ananta Toer once said there’s a tendency to portray figures deemed political enemies during the Indonesian kingdom era as animals.
Pramoedya’s Mangir, part of his less-famous tetralogy set in the pre-modern era, attempts to debunk the myths surrounding legendary and mythical animals in the Javanese culture. As a modern interpretation of 16th century Babad Tanah Jawi’s Mangir, Pramoedya’s work tells the story of giant snake Baru Klinting.
Reading ancient Javanese semi-historical literary works needs to be done carefully and not literally, as they are full of myths and metaphors. The snake Baru Klinting, for example, actually refers to a snake-skinned rebel during the era of the Mataram kingdom, explains Pra- moedya.
Portrayal of personified animals has been man’s way to say things between the lines. Man can “act like an ape,” be a “copycat” or live in a “dog-eat-dog” world.
In Indonesian, kumpul kebo (living like buffaloes) or samen leven refer to living together outside the marital bond, kambing hitam (black goats) to scapegoats, tikus (rat) to corruptors and badak (rhinoceros) to those deemed to have a thick skin or no shame.
“It occurs in any language and it’s actually interesting how certain animals are depicted differently in one language to another,” linguist Anton M. Moeliono said.
Take the snail, for example. In the Anglophone world, snail refers more to slowness and patience.
But, in the Malay language, the hard-shelled animal is used to convey the idea of narcissism, with the saying siput memuji buntut (a snail praising its own tail) referring to someone who is self-absorbed.
“But, more and more, the animal metaphors we use are translated from Western ones while the Malay ones we can actually relate to better are increasingly forgotten, as they are not taught in our language textbooks,” Anton added.
Climate also plays a part in making certain animals popular in metaphors and fables in one culture and less known or even unknown in another. In the Malay culture, calling someone a kancil or a Javanese mouse deer is a more popular way of referring to a cunning character than the Anglophone fox is.
In the world of bad words or swearing, animal terms are remarkably well represented too.
Being the most ancient is swine and being the most popular today is dog and its derivatives, with snake and rat featuring in between.
Makes us wonder whether the animals use us for their name-calling, doesn’t it? What would “man” mean in their cursing vocabulary?
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