Abstract
This chapter situates an analysis of the Indonesia film Penumpasan Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI in the context of Cold War Southeast Asia. We can loosely translate the full title as “Crushing the Treachery of the Indonesian Communist Party and the September 30 Movement.” My clumsy English rendering does not capture the snappiness of the original Indonesian with its hints at the country’s love for an alphabet soup of acronyms and initials. Indeed, released as a 271-minute feature film in 1984 and later available in a shorter 217-minute home video, Indonesians often refer it to as simply G30S/PKI. That this shorthand is also the widely accepted term for the failed September 30, 1965 coup d’état, which was used as a pretext for the destruction of the Indonesian Community Party (PKI) and a wide range of progressive groups and individuals labeled “communist,” underlines the significance of the film. Repeatedly seen by almost everyone in Indonesia for some 15 years, G30S/PKI was central to a state-directed campaign that created the current conventional knowledge of these historical events (Surono 2017). I argue that the film’s impact was so profound that it became Indonesia’s collective memory, making it one of the most successful propaganda films of all time. Furthermore, G30S/PKI’s lurid violence and sexuality and disturbing messages further traumatized the nation during President Suharto’s genocidal New Order (Orde Baru, 1966–98). As it was forced upon a generation of children, the legacy of the film continues into the era of democratic reform (Reformasi or “Reformation,” 1998–present; although some wags now call the period starting in 2018 “Regrasi” or “Regression”). Recently, a new generation of Indonesian historians have coined the term “Lubang Buaya Narrative” for this state-imposed historical memory (Djakababa 2009; Sullivan 2019). Named for the site of the most disturbing and unforgettable scene from Penumpasan Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI, their terminology recognizes the film’s importance in Indonesia decades after the Cold War.