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Talking about revolution through comics
Politician Budiman Sudjatmiko chooses comics as his medium to talk about revolution in the hope of reaching the younger generation
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Politician Budiman Sudjatmiko chooses comics as his medium to talk about revolution in the hope of reaching the younger generation.
Known as a rebellious youth icon in the 1990s, Budiman Sudjatmiko still clearly remembers when he landed in jail in 1996 due to a “revolution” that he carried out to bring down the authoritarian new order regime of former president Soeharto.
In 2013, he shared such an experience in his autobiographical novel Anak-Anak Revolusi (The Children of Revolution).
After the novel was criticized for being too thick and boring, he transformed it into a comic trilogy and in August, he launched the first one, Komik Serial Anak-Anak Revolusi I: Talking about a Revolution (Revolutionary Children Comic Series: Talking about a Revolution).
For him, the democracy that the Indonesian younger generation enjoys today should not be taken for granted and through his comic trilogy, the 46-year-old wants to convey such a message.
“This comic aims to remind them of Indonesian history from the New Order to the reform era with ‘a new package’. To make politics, history, economy and philosophy easily understood,” said the lawmaker from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
For the adaptation, he teamed up with writer Yoga Adhitrisna and illustrators Hari Prast and Wastukancono. He selected them after being impressed by their work, comic strips Kisah Blusukan Jokowi (The Story of Jokowi’s Impromptu Visits), created to help then Jakarta governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo win the presidential election in 2014.
Talking about a Revolution tells of the bloody July 27, 1996 tragedy, when two opposing camps of the party now known as the PDI-P clashed at the party’s headquarters on Jl. Diponegoro in Central Jakarta.
However, in the comic, Budiman reveals his other side: A nerd hooked on philosophy books who was never afraid of criticizing the corrupt government in his speech but who stuttered in fright when it came to approaching women he liked.
He also discloses his motivations for entering politics.
At the age of 5, he had already witnessed his neighbor, who usually accompanied him to play in a rice field behind his home in Cilacap, Central Java, commit suicide because he was unable to repay a debt to a moneylender, an experience that made him understand what poverty means.
Budiman, whose father worked as a salted-egg seller, also learned that many children around his home could not go to school because their parents did not have enough money.
In light of this, the idea of revolution came into his mind from a very young age.
Knowing that knowledge is power, Budiman started to expand his political horizons by reading the books of philosophers, ranging from Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus to Jean-Paul Sartre, when he was a senior high school student in Yogyakarta.
In the school, he met new friends who were also interested in politics and had similar agenda: making a revolution.
Reading the 86-page Talking about a Revolution is not enough to fully understand Indonesian history and politics. However, the comic serves as a good short introduction for young people born after the reform era.
According to Yoga, the major challenge of adapting Budiman’s novel into comic form was translating his political thoughts into eye-catching cartoons because in comic form, narrating a story is not enough.
“Showing, not telling. Comics are different from novels,” he said. “He [Budiman] is smart. But, he is a very serious person. If you want to talk about something funny, don’t be with him,” he added, laughing.
The process of making Talking about a Revolution took only one year and for Yoga, working with Budiman was easy as he was open-minded about the ideas that he and his two partners conveyed.
Yoga was surprised to learn that the comic strips he made for Jokowi were what caught Budiman’s attention. “He [Budiman] asked, ‘who made this comic [Kisah Blusukan Jokowi]? I want them to make a comic about myself,” Yoga recalled.
Budiman, who liked to read the French comic series The Adventures of Tintin when he was little, hopes his comic trilogy will motivate more comic writers to discuss Indonesian issues and history in their works.
He said that another reason he had made a comic about democratization in Indonesia was the inspiration he found in the works of Dutch comic artist Peter Van Dongen, who made the graphic novel Rampokan Jawa (Java Looting) a tale set in the troubled years after the declaration of independence in 1945.
Rampokan Jawa, released in 2005, made him realize that Indonesian history and politics could also be interesting material for a comic, he added.
Budiman plans to release Talking about a Revolution’s sequels — Forever Young and Darah Juang (Blood of Struggle) — in the near future. “I hope that this comic can provide material for discussion and inspire its readers to self-reflect and start revolutions in their lives.”
— Photo by A. Kurniawan Ulung
