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View all search results‘Tilik’, sexist stereotypes and our collective insanity
The technique adopted in Tilik reminds her of how Gerwani women were depicted in the New Order propaganda film G30S/PKI as being evil.
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re there some movie characters you love to hate, e.g. Maleficent, the Joker, Darth Vader? After all, antagonistic characters are what make the protagonist look good right?
Indonesian netizens are currently transfixed by one such character, Bu Tejo, from the 32-minute short film Tilik. First released in 2018, the producers uploaded it on YouTube on Aug. 17 this year. It went viral, became a trending topic on Twitter, tweeted 28,000 times, while #buTejo was tweeted over 61,000 times. In less than a week since it was first uploaded on YouTube, it had been viewed more than 5.2 million times.
The story line: A group of hijab-wearing emak-emak (housewives) from a village in Bantul near Yogyakarta, ride in the back of an open truck to visit their Bu Lurah (female subdistrict head) who is sick in hospital (see Short film Tilik grabs netizen’s attention with ‘ghibah’, ‘emak-emak’, The Jakarta Post, Aug. 22). The title of the film means “to visit” in Javanese.
During the ride, the women gossip. Bu Tejo leads by casting doubts about Dian, a young, single attractive female office worker, insinuating that she is an immoral woman. When one of the other women in the truck chimes in and says that she saw Dian with a middle-aged man (assumed to be her sugar daddy), it encourages Bu Tejo to provide more “proof” that Dian is a bad woman by saying that she saw Dian on the internet in revealing, compromising poses. After all, the internet doesn’t lie, does it?
Another character, Yu Ning, Bu Tejo’s antagonist, feels uncomfortable with Bu Tejo’s badmouthing Dian, and tries to tell the latter to watch what she says. They end up arguing.
When they finally reach their destination, they discover that they cannot visit the Bu Lurah as she is still in intensive care. By chance they meet the Dian that Bu Tejo had been gossiping about, and she is with an older man, which is taken by the women as confirmation of Bu Tejo’s suspicions about her.
It is curious how such a film like Tilik could go viral, given there is nothing exceptional about it. According to Kevin Alloca in a 2012 TED talk, it has to do with the presence of a tastemaker, unexpectedness and community participation. The “tastemaker” is the endorsement of well-known film makers such as Joko Anwar and Ernest Prakasa; the unexpectedness is possibly the ending, and participation is of course all the views, reviews and discussions about the film.
