Seks Undercover: Ikon Bokong Inul (Basis No. 03-04, Th. ke-52, Maret-April 2003) [Sex Undercover: The Icon of Inul's Buttocks (Basis No. 03-04, Year 52, March-April 2003)]

Abstract

A long essay by Sindhunata, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the cultural magazine Basis (Yogyakarta), in the Kaca Benggala column of the Sex Issue, March-April 2003. Starting from the bestselling book Jakarta Undercover: Sex 'n the City by Moammar Emka (Galang Press, reprinted eight times in two months), Sindhunata reads sex not merely as a matter of erotica but as a symptom of social change. Referring to Herbert Marcuse (polymorphous perverse), Freud, Adorno, Baudrillard, Michel Houellebecq, Volkmar Sigusch, Ulrich Beck, Erich Fromm, Slavoj Zizek, and Rainer Maria Rilke, he sets out the sexual revolution and its paradoxes: liberated sex in fact becomes public, giving rise to exhibitionist, narcissistic, and egoistic individuals, is fragmented into a commodity, becomes the metaphysics of capitalism, and turns into sexual violence. He also highlights cheap sex tabloids, pornographic VCDs, and moral hypocrisy in the Clinton-Lewinsky case. The essay closes with a call for a spirituality that loves sex as a gift of the Creator, and with an analysis of the phenomenon of Inul Daratista's goyang ngebor ("drilling" dance), including the cover of Time magazine of 24 March 2003 and the response of KH Mustofa Bisri, as an icon of the release of Indonesian society's sexual stuffiness. The pages of the article contain photographic illustrations from Der Spiegel and classical paintings.