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Women should not only be powerful as ghosts
Women’s domination in Indonesian horror movies appeared to be the result of their pathetic condition and inferior position.
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Women’s domination in Indonesian horror movies appeared to be the result of their pathetic condition and inferior position. (Shutterstock.com/File)
M
onths ago, I carried out sociolinguistics research on women’s domination in Indonesian horror movies, using a sample of four Indonesian horror movies. The result was quite predictable, but I still found it disturbing.
Female ghosts were portrayed as powerful, vengeful and dominant in the supernatural world, while in the previous life they were the victims of sexual harassment or lived a poor and stressful life. Thus, women’s domination in Indonesian horror movies appeared to be the result of their pathetic condition and inferior position.
While as ghosts women are powerful and dominant, the portrait of women in real life is still upsetting. Negative comments and reactions on recent events, from a female entertainer who removed her headscarf, affairs between women and married men, and a mother who killed her children, show how women are unfairly blamed by bystanders who do not necessarily know the facts of the case in question — including women themselves.
Virginity tests, a bill to revise the Criminal Code (KUHP) that would outlaw adultery and calls against Muslim women taking selfies, show us how women’s lives are still under the control of certain parties who actually have no right to determine what women should do or choose.
