http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/world/asia/23indo.html?_r=1&ref=asia
Indonesians Embrace American-Style Reality TV
Ed Wray for The New York Times
On a reality show called "Minta Tolong" ("Ask for Help"), a woman named Siamti
gave thanks this month when she won $100 for helping a disabled person.
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: May 22, 2009
JAKARTA, Indonesia - On Indonesia's hottest reality TV show, participants are
reunited with long-lost friends and loved ones. On another show, a family going
through a rough stretch is chosen for an extreme home makeover. A spoiled rich
girl, appearing in another hit that may sound familiar, is plucked from the
city and dropped in the hinterland.
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Ed Wray for The New York Times
For "Tukar Nasib" ("Fate Swap"), a girl and her mother lived in the home of a
poor family. A village boy watched the filming.
The programs are from Indonesia's rich and ever-growing array of reality
television shows, with Indonesian faces and backdrops but American roots. They
have become so popular that they recently displaced soap operas as the
country's ratings leaders and are exploring every subgenre of reality
television, like talent contests and dating shows and social experiments.
The United States has long worried about the fate of Indonesia, the world's
most populous Muslim nation, where radical Islamic groups staged a series of
attacks against Western interests in the early years of this decade. But the
country's television viewers have embraced shows that, though not explicitly
American, are American in their formats, conceits and, often, values.
The genre is ascending here as political Islam, surging five years ago, has
lost momentum among voters. The success of reality television - technically
British in origin but identified here with American culture - reinforces the
results of the country's recent general election. In that election, voters
seemed to be motivated by issues like good government and better living
standards rather than the role of religion in society.
"The influence of American culture is growing, and these reality TV shows
present not an innocent hope for the future, but a particular American version
of it," said Ariel Heryanto, an Indonesian scholar and editor of "Popular
Culture in Indonesia," a collection of essays on Indonesian film and television.
"A lot of people were taken aback by the Islamization of Indonesia, and the
pendulum has swung back the other way," said Mr. Heryanto, who recently became
head of Southeast Asian studies at the Australian National University in
Canberra.
"We're trying to experiment with different versions of modernity, and this time
American culture is in," he said.
Reality television shows have been around for a few years, but they began
dominating the ratings late last year, according to AGB Nielsen Media Research,
which tracks programs on Indonesia's 11 national stations as well as 10 local
ones. They scored high in all social and economic categories, but especially
among affluent urban viewers.
"I'm not surprised that they've become popular, but I'm surprised at how huge
their ratings are," Indriena Basarah, general manager for Asia for Fremantle
Media, the London-based production company behind "American Idol" and the
worldwide "Idol" franchise, said here in Jakarta.
These days, there are 79 Indonesian reality television shows made by local
production companies. The current ratings champion, "Termehek-Mehek," which
roughly means "Sobbing," reunites people - anyone from long-lost relatives to
wives abandoned by their husbands - in highly emotional and often
confrontational settings. Other shows have a sharper social edge, like "Jika
Aku Menjadi" ("If I Were"), which places a middle-class or wealthy person in
rural Indonesia.
In a recent episode, a college student named Tashia, born and raised in Jakarta
in a well-to-do family, is seen playing the piano in a living room out of
Middle America and singing "What a Wonderful World." Suddenly, she is
transported to a dilapidated house in a village where she experiences how an
elderly couple, Abah and Emak, survive by making and selling snacks made of
coconut and sugar. There are no Paris Hilton-like putdowns of the sticks. But
in the end, it is clear Tashia is happy to be going home. "Thank you Abah and
Emak for giving me this precious lesson, so I can live my life," she says.
In another show, "Tukar Nasib" ("Fate Swap"), a poor family and a middle-class
family switch houses temporarily.
In a recent episode, ominous music played as the middle-class family struggled
to live in the poor rural family's house. One daughter was so terrified that
she could not fall asleep. Still, the family adapted, dutifully doing the poor
family's farm work and even clearing cow manure.
Meanwhile, happy music comes on as the poor family is seen enjoying life in the
middle class, eating red apples out of a fruit bowl and, of course, watching
television. The father is too lazy to take on his middle-class counterpart's
job at a transportation company, but his wife gets the idea. "We have to work
harder," she says, "so that our son can go to school, be smart, successful and
become a rich man."
In a country with a wide income gap, the show offers a rare look into how
others live and serves to affirm the lifestyle of the tiny urban middle class,
said a psychiatrist named Dr. Andri who has written about reality television
and, like many Indonesians, uses only one name.
The reality shows represent another chapter in the evolution of Indonesian
television. During the three decades of the Suharto dictatorship, stations,
whether state outlets or privately owned, hewed to the military government's
point of view. Except for news, there was little original content; airtime was
filled with American shows like "MacGyver" and "The Golden Girls."
Eventually, the American diet inspired a reaction as Islam began playing a
larger role in the private lives of Indonesians and in politics. The American
shows gave way to additional local programming as well as less politically
sensitive imports, in the form of soap operas from Latin America, Japan, Hong
Kong, India and South Korea.
"Now we have these reality shows that are copycats of American shows," said
Rachma Ida, an expert on Indonesian television at Airlangga University in
Surabaya, in East Java. But for the most part, she said, "people don't realize
that these new shows are very much American."
Eko Nugroho, the president of Dreamlight World Media, a producer of reality
television, said the shows succeeded not by promoting American values but by
tapping into universal desires.
One of his shows, "Bedah Rumah" ("House Change"), focuses on a poor, deserving
family whose house undergoes radical improvement. Mr. Eko was also responsible
for "Tukar Nasib," the show in which poor and middle-class families trade
places.
Mr. Eko, 41, who earned a master's degree in business administration from Oral
Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., said producing "Tukar Nasib" made him
realize that everybody in the world had the "same dream, no matter who you are,
no matter what nationality you are."
"But," he added, "Americans are the ones who first promoted this dream and
these values through the media, so people think this kind of dream or values is
American."
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