In the June 14 episode, there were scenes depicting the struggle of the Korean female team while competing in Jakarta. The coach and the team members talk to each other about their concerns over the poor training facility provided for them, believing that it was done on purpose because the host team feared their star player.

They decided to not file any complaints, as it was minor compared to what they feared most might affect the mentality of the star player while on court: the booing from the spectators. This too, they managed to brush aside with conviction that the star player would play her best and not  give them a reason to undermine her.

She came out the winner, no boos, obviously, and accepted her trophy in a Srikandi outfit and headdress, the female warrior in the Javanese wayang (puppet show) story.

Internet users in Indonesia had a field day – the whole week, to be exact – calling the drama "racist" and "discriminating", giving it bad reviews on iMDb, resulting in ratings dropping from 1.3 from 8.5. Users also defaced the page by changing the title to RacketRacist despite an apology on social media made by Korean TV channel SBS in the comments section of an Instagram post.

It was followed by a petition demanding that the TV station stop production of the drama, which  also aired on Netflix, and issue a formal apology.

Some of our national athletes jumped on the bandwagon, whether they watched the whole series or not. However,  there was an unexpected endorsement from the Badminton World Federation's official’s Twitter account on June 21 for the drama series. That day, Netflix also made extra effort to get viewers to continue watching it.

How all parties involved in this racket are going to score is another matter. But it would be a good case to add on the list of works of fiction – feature films, not documentaries – often used as references to real life issues.

Ken Loach's 2016 film I, Daniel Blake, for example, was used as a reference by then-Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in regard to health and social care in the United Kingdom. Corbyn advised then-prime minister Theresa May to watch it to learn how the welfare system actually affected citizens.

It sparked a debate in the UK Parliament over how the film is fictional and may hurt the feelings of the staffers administering the welfare system, while the pros defended the film as well-researched based on case studies.

Back to the fifth episode of Racket Boys, it's hard to argue that the drama was pure fiction for two reasons. Film aficionados know all too well how much research a Korean writer has to go through to finish a script and how many desks the script has to pass through before getting approval for production. The other reason is because those scenes were too close to home.

It hurt the pride of the people whose country had been the host of world competitions and might undermine the international image of Indonesian badminton.

How Indonesian people react to it, however, may further ruin the already tainted image of Indonesia as depicted in many works of fiction before it.

The first season of Hospital Playlist, also a Korean drama, depicted a patient in one episode as an undocumented worker from Indonesia and therefore needed charity to get treatment. The very episode mysteriously failed to trigger Indonesian viewers.

Some other dramas have described Indonesia as a haven for criminals, a country with corruption problems, but the lack of enthusiasm to debate over this shows that, maybe, us Indonesians have collectively decided to have our pride misplaced.

Instead of appreciating the introduction of Indonesian culture, spoken language and written words in Racket Boys without having to pay for product placement, as in the case of another Korean drama – not a single word about the country producer of the coffee candy mentioned, we chose to let the world know about our newly adopted culture, the cancel culture, which was enabled by "the power of netizens" as local media pompously used in writing about the issue.

We proudly bear the title as among the worst when it comes to online civility, instead of using "the power of netizens" to change the circumstances for a better international image of Indonesia.

Let us all hope that our filmmakers come up with believable cinematic realism about how savvy and civilized Indonesia is in technology, how it upholds good ethics and sportsmanship, and the supremacy of law, not stopping at the fun of living as diaspora who prepare hash brownies for dessert in a thanksgiving feast.

Because, if any, pride should be reserved for our accomplishments, not our shortcomings.

***

The writer is a freelance journalist.

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