CONSUMING GOSSIP: A RE-DOMESTICATION OF WOMEN

CONSUMING GOSSIP:

A RE-DOMESTICATION OF WOMEN

 

 

Women's movement—from its rebirth in 1960—has singled out that advertising is one of society's most disturbing mass cultural product (van Zoonen; 1994) and in the following years, the popularity of soap operas has become another serious one. (Scodari: 2003). In the case of Indonesia, celebrity news shows, popularly known as 'infotainment', have shifted advertisements and also soap operas to become the most influential and disturbing media product.

Unlike 'reality shows' like 'Big Brother' or 'Lost' which fictionalize 'real life', 'infotainment' is not fictional, but reality—or documentary—filmed purely for its entertainment value. The format of these shows usually consist primarily of accounts of a celebrity's love affairs, divorce, life style, drug use, daily activity, sexual abusement, hobbies, conflicts with other artists and such like, simultaneously related to the world of commodities. As it exposes the real domestic and familial details of artists' lives, infotainment is in fact sends an elementary sense of 'low culture' as here they promote and patronize far and wide and audiences are driven to seek temporary celebrity news.

Currently, there are more than 30 separate infotainment programs on all thirteen privately owned TV stations in Indonesia. In SCTV for instance, it even has seven different gossip shows and are spread through the day from Monday to Sunday providing hot gossip on any Indonesian public figure. Young girls, university students, house wives, maids, workers, career women can be totally obsessed and become chain TV watchers from 7 a.m to 8.30 p.m as these popular shows always continually portray programs featuring entertaining women.

In Yogyakarta—one city which is famous for its educational aspect, and  the location of thousands of students who come there  from all over Indonesia to study—almost every university female student possesses at least one television set in their boarding room. Based on my research and close observation in the Yogyakarta's suburb of Mrican, lots of them turn on their TV in the very early morning either to learn the latest gossip or just to kill time before going to college. Knowing the newest hot gossip seems obligatory for them in order not to miss one episode of the artist's issue. Like the other thousands of young girls, they have been addicted to infotainment for over than seven years. Infotainment appears to be a daily subject of conversation and has become a people's spectacle referred to as tontonan masyarakat.

If soap opera audiences have to follow a fixed schedule to watch the show—although as we know the use of VCR/TV guide becomes a timetable for the weeks recording, rather than a dictate for scheduling leisure (Hayward: 2003)—infotainment viewers need not to worry about missing today's gossip show as it will always be available at any other time and in any case, most gossip shows programs more or less present the same material. Like soap operas which aim at women at home (Dines: 2003), so do gossip shows. But if the technology of a VCR has freed women not to always have be at home to watch their favorite soap, the large number of similarly programmed Infotainment has equally helped female viewers especially—working viewers—to be able to always have access to the pleasure from it.

The pioneer of this infotainment boom is Cek&Ricek which has been broadcast on RCTI now for nearly eight years. Since it has consistently maintained high ratings and, has proved successful commercially, over the years, the number of such programs have been mounting up. Their success has been followed by, amongst others: KISS (Kisah seputar Selebritis), Kabar-Kabari, Kabar-kabari Sensasi, Betis (Berita Selebritis), Otista (Obrolan Selebritis Kita), Silet, Insert (Informasi Selebritis), Ceriwis, Go Show,  Go Spot, Dorce-Show, Hot Spot, Sindanglaia, Halo Selebriti, Was-was, Gosip Apa Gosip, Kasak-Kusuk, Kasak-Kusuk Investigasi, In Dang-Dut, Cross-Check, SMS, Kiss Plus, Insert Pagi, Cek and Ricek, Selebriti & Kriminal, Was-Was and many more. One thing for sure, infotainment has become an Indonesian own model today and is clearly based in the national capital Jakarta, where it has become one of Indonesia's TV's largest and fastest growing industries.

What matters, however is not the success of those television products but the impact of their show as culture and values also come into play.  Issues surrounding the nature of these gossip shows become a serious challenge to the ideology of feminism. Gadis Arivia, the chair of Jurnal Perempuan (Women Journal) and one of Jakarta's leading feminists elite has delivered her critical views on this issue. In my talk with her, she says that the one and only orientation of the very many infotainments is capital. To run this business is very easy and cheap. They do not need to conduct researches or to use their brain. They just sell gossip and conflict. The more gossips and conflicts the better the ratings or magazine sales.

Furthermore, Arivia stresses that as the orientation of these infotainments program is entertainment which can make profit—that is hiburan murahan--, the segment of information is unnoticed. Those programs are intended not to educate but to deceive the society/women (Arivia, 2005). She further explains that the concept of infotainment which flows into the presentation of gossips and conflicts is an implementation of dichotomous thinking; to condition audiences not to think about a message—that is, as to be an intellectually active audience—but conversely, they are trained only to follow—into being a passive dumb audience. In my view, gossip shows become a dangerous air pollution that the women audience breathes every day. It reinforces conservative and domestic values. I have shown above, female viewers become legitimate targets for cultural subject position. The shows which offer a never ending format of problem with a familial and gender bias provides new space and opportunity for women to be away from women' s participation  in public life while reinforcing that persistent notions of gender inequality as something natural and inevitable. The day time presence of those gossip shows surely affects the meaning of women's common sense in the complex of Indonesian social formation.

The new television phenomenon at least represents a serious factor in both attempting to influence women's thinking and in encouraging a large number of women now to stay home. In so doing, the potential of women's power become withered dealing with a powerful force of un-educational stuff like gossip shows. This is fundamental to how women behave and define the world. It is this new genre of female oriented TV show which leveled down women's role in Indonesian own society Although like other businesses which concentrated in Jakarta and other big cities in the Java, this mass culture entertainment may effect the role of women in Indonesia at large. Apart from the women's achievement, what I want to put forward here is that this phenomena of infotainment endangers the role of women in general which had been established by women activist. If in the past, the state reinforced its ideal of domesticated femininity through state mechanism, nowadays, the media through the crowd of presence of unhealthy gossip shows mediates between pleasure and conventional women's role. Simply said, the celebrity gossip shows phenomena have constituted a new kind of return of domestication of women. 

 

 

 

 

Vissia Ita Yulianto

INSPICIO,

She is the writer of Pesona "Barat" di Indonesia.

This article is part of her paper presented

in SEASREP 10^th Anniversary Conference, Chiangmay.

She can be reached at vissia_ita@yahoo.com

---

Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.