Countering MTV Influence in Indonesia and Malaysia

Preface

Preface Two theoretical perspectives related to international communication (i.e., cultural imperialism and cultural identity) reflect the battle between the forces of globalization and local cultural identity taking place all over the world. In the last decade, Indonesia and Malaysia, two predominantly Islamic countries in SoutheastAsia, have opened their doors to forces of cultural flows and globalization, especially to the intermediary global media. People in both societies are seeking to come to terms with new cultural identities embracing modern media technologies while at the same time wanting to preserve their liberal Islamic culture. This book sets out to investigate and discuss the multilayered “postmodern” cultural identities that are being negotiated, particularly as these new identities relate to adaptation of the use of new media technologies and media forms to the needs of local culture and religion. The study did not try to look at how Western culture is rejected or resisted by Indonesian and Malaysian youth. Rather it looked at how certain aspects of the Music Television (MTV) formula — mainly the technical aspects of presentation and formatting — could be appropriated and refashioned so that the cultural output of the local product does not reflect a Western cultural expression but a Malaysian or Indonesian cultural expression rebranded to look contemporary/modern, without losing the local viii Preface cultural flavour. Thus, the study examines how aspects of MTV create new cultural identities rooted in the traditional culture but refashioned and reinterpreted for local relevance and consumption, so that youth would see it as an expression of their “modern” identity. Choice of Topic As a teenager growing up in Sri Lanka in the 1970s I was widely exposed to a genre of music called baila.1 Drawing on Sri Lankan drumming, Portuguese folk music rhythms, and Sinhalese lyrics, this music was very popular, especially with the urban youth of the time. However, the lovers of Sinhalese traditional and classical music saw the baila as thupai (corrupted) music, as belonging neither to the Eastern nor to the Western musical traditions. Rather, it was seen as having a corrupting influence on the country’s youth. As a result, those of middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds were discouraged from developing a taste for this genre. It was considered much more desirable to develop a taste for the pop music of the West, the Beatles or rock and roll, for example, and the Jamaican reggae, which was popular with Western youth at the time. While working in Singapore some thirty years later, that is, for a five-year period between 1997 and 2002 teaching mass communications to teenage students at a local polytechnic, I became interested in the type of music they were consuming as teenagers of this era. Although on the surface Singapore may seem a very westernized modern city, Singaporean youth seemed not to have been completely won over by Western pop culture, which is Preface ix widely in evidence in the island state today. While they had developed a taste for Western pop music, including R & B and hip hop, many of the Chinese youth were fans of the Cantopop2 stars from Hong Kong. Young Indians were bhangra3 enthusiasts, bhangra being a lively form of song and dance that originated in the Punjab region of India. The Malays were listening to dangdut, a form of Indonesian pop music that has its roots in the folk music of Indonesia, particularly from Java and Riau provinces, but it has since been heavily influenced by Indian Bollywood film music and Arabic drum/dance rhythms. Looking deeper into the issue of why these young people were eager consumers of their own pop music while at the same time not rejecting the Western music available to them, I began to find some interesting cultural and social forces at play. A major player in this was MTV, which, rather than imposing a Western musical culture on the local youth, was stimulating their interest in their own musical genres and modern dance music by using MTV’s production formulas and promotional techniques. During my frequent visits to Indonesia and Malaysia, I noted that on most of the local television channels, especially in Indonesia, dangdut shows were major attractions. In addition, in most Indonesian cities I visited, dangdut discotheques were very common and extremely popular. Because this particular form of music is very similar to the Sri Lankan baila, I developed an interest in ascertaining how dangdut has become so popular...