“...don’t be too serious, dear audience.
This show is only jass kéddéng,
jass for laff (just kidding, just for laugh)...”

—Tukul Arwana’s catchphrase in his talk show
Empat Mata and Bukan Empat Mata.



EARLY FEBRUARY THIS YEAR, there was a somewhat amusing grumbling coming from the direction of Romy Rafael, the renowned hypnotist who has popularized hypnotism through, among others, the show Master Hipnotis on RCTI in mid-2009. The hypnotherapist who now focuses on working at his clinic complained that a show “on the other station”, hosted by a “famous presenter” and ostensibly talked about hypnotism, did not, according to him, conform to the ethics of hypnotism.

In the show “on the other station”, the “famous presenter” trashes the aura of mystery that used to surround hypnotism (an aura that Romy had painstakingly created, mind you, and I presumed this began with Deddy Corbuzier). The hypnosis done by the famous presenter is portrayed in a humorous atmosphere, but it becomes problematic as the presenter randomly divulges the mistakes and disgrace of anyone on the set.

(Hint: replace the phrase “the other station” with “SCTV” and “famous presenter” with “Uya Kuya”. Make sure you get it right. If this is still not clear enough, just go watch Uya Emang Kuya or “Uya is Kuya Indeed”, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday at 5.30 pm. On the other days of the week, his beloved daughter, Cinta, plays pranks on people in the show Cinta Juga Kuya, or “Cinta is Also Kuya”.)

According to experts such as Romy, hypnosis is a method of creating suggestions, which presumably is useful for therapy. In the show on the other station, the hypnosis, Romy believes, is “mistaken and unethical”. Romy said, “Hypnotherapists must not do that [i.e. divulging others’ secrets]. To be able to get into the mind of a person, we must obtain his or her permission, and that person still has 100% control of the mind.” In other words: there are clear technical and ethical restrictions.

Technically, the hypnotized person still retains a certain psychological wall that prevents her from doing something against her conscience. If A believes that killing is wrong, any kind of hypnosis can never make A kill. If B thinks graft is wrong, no kind of hypnosis can make B commit graft. Making B a member of the House of Representatives might be a more effective way to make him commit graft.

If it is impossible for an act of hypnotism to penetrate such psychological walls, how can it break through the psychological wall that protects one’s memories of disgrace, which should be thicker? Our dear Mr. Romy finds it difficult to understand how hypnotism, which he has practiced for years and years, can suddenly be used to expose others’ disgrace and secrets without their permissions. First of all, this does not conform to the second restriction: that of ethics. Second, if that is at all possible, why cannot we simply hypnotize our corrupt officials and members of the House of Representatives to come out and hang themselves?

Of course, this does not mean that Uya Kuy… oops, the famous presenter, I mean, is a better hypnotist than Romy. Had we forced him to explain himself, I have no doubt the presenter would admit that his show is merely done for entertainment. “Jass keddeng”, Tukul Arwana would have said.

* * *

Romy Rafael is in a classic fix. To promote the therapy method of hypnotism, he has done one show after another on television and presented his wares in entertainment shows. To a certain extent, he must admit that there is an element of manipulation in his shows; i.e. real hypnosis does not take place as swiftly as we see it on TV, although it might indeed be effective. Editing naturally plays a significant role to grab people’s attention and… to entertain.

What is it, then, that will make him able to prevent others from pushing the boundary even further in the game, in the name of entertainment? What can he do when, taking advantage of his popularity, Uya Kuy… the famous presenter on the other station makes a similar but funnier show, albeit with clearer signs of manipulations? Romy is helpless when the credibility of the method that he has practiced for so many years is threatened. When the show on the other station is proven to be a mere entertainment show (and therefore a lie), the credibility of hypnosis will be damaged, and it will be as if Romy is lying, too. On the other hand, if the audience believes that the famous presenter is truly practicing hypnotism, the result will be the same: the credibility of hypnotism is damaged because it would appear as if hypnosis can be used to divulge others’ shameful secrets, and perhaps even to harm others.

This case inevitably makes us return to the age-old and eternal debate about the message versus entertainment. Observe the irony of Romy’s dilemma: his method of hypnotherapy has become popular due to the television shows, but it has also appeared shallow precisely because of television shows, too. What is wrong with entertaining the audience, anyway? Isn’t it true that Romy, just like any of us, is “forced” to accept that entertainment is an effective and efficient tool to convey messages? Isn’t today the era when we can no longer deny that entertainment and messages are tightly interlinked, and almost inextricable from each other?

Neil Postman, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, presents his views that for us today might sound very conservative, but they are unfortunately still true. Postman indicates that there is the curse of the medium, that the television, which is an audio-visual medium, seems to have to present everything entertaining at all times. Perhaps because the audio-visual medium essentially spoils our most gullible sense, it has the tendency to mislead, just like the shadows in Plato’s cave. The process then continues: seeing the package(s) of entertainment, the audience might fall into the trap of misreading something, or using a wrong context to understand something that might actually be conveying a serious message.

Does this mean that we take the audience as dupes?

Perhaps Romy has indeed a reason to worry, at least for today. Take, for example, the incident that befalls the alumnus of The Master (an audition for magicians on RCTI, aired in mid-2009), Limbad. Limbad’s style of magic has a tinge of debus, or the traditional magical show, and he has been accused of sorcery and thus banned, simply because people were too lazy to view something with rationality. I imagine Limbad, who has established his public image as “someone who never speaks”, must have felt the itch to actually say something and explain: even if my magic has a tinge of debus, it does not mean that debus is sorcery! Oh well. What to do. It’s his own fault: why on earth does he create a public image of himself as someone who never speaks in the first place? As for Romy, it won’t be surprising if there will be such accusations against Romy’s method of hypnotism someday in the future; perhaps it’s just a matter of time.

Oh, all right.  If I go on, I would fall into the trap of conservatism: preaching about spectacles and lessons, restrictions, preventions, etcetera, etcetera. It is actually a simple matter of ethics: how far does the “entertainment” violate the rights of others? How far does the entertainment direct people’s perceptions toward the undesirable path? In this case, I wholeheartedly agree that we still need regulators, as long as they are people-based. With regulators, entertainment and messages can be judged and put in a balance, the opinion industry can have a healthy competition, and the entertainment does not ignore the messages.

Yes, I know, you will accuse me of being conservative and so not postmodernist. Why should we bother about “messages”? Isn’t it true that “messages” come from a hegemonizing, patronizing attitude etcetera ethchetra? (Sorry, it’s all so mouthful.) It’s rather difficult for me to respond to that, dear friend. Does taking a postmodernist stance mean that we should reject “messages”? Nope. To me, postmodernism is a useful tool for us to realize how “messages” can be manipulated and used to the advantage of those in power; it does not mean that we should reject messages entirely. I think Romy Rafael’s predicament has a lot to do with precisely the absence of messages.

Let us return to the issue of hypnotism. The people of “the entertain world” (well, that’s how they call themselves anyway, what can we do) can defend themselves by questioning: Is it not true that precisely because the show is a mere entertainment show and everything has been scripted and contrived, the people who are presumably hypnotized are not truly so, and the presenter does not really divulge anything of shame? The people there are okay with such divulgence, and it means they are acting. It’s just a show, isn’t it? But here lies the problem. That fact is precisely disturbing for several reasons. First of all, although it is all in the name of entertainment, with an ostensibly realist presentation, no matter how clever or educated the audience is, there has been a violation of ethics.

Second, this shows how with the dominance of entertainment, and as entertainment takes precedence over the message, ethics disappears and becomes irrelevant. This is the era of entertainment as the ideology and the goal itself. Let us remember the relation between entertainment and message. Once, in an era that has made Neil Postman grumbled, messages could still be inserted in packages of entertainment, and this was—and is—a legitimate practice. The problem would be what kind of message it is; one of peace and political awareness as in the election-day advertisements made by Garin Nugroho and his Visi Anak Bangsa group in 1999, or one of fascist lunacy in the style of Hitler and Riefenstahl?

What do we have today? Entertainment is presented simply for the sake of entertainment, forgetting one communication phenomenon with which we should all become familiar by now: there will inevitably be a message, no matter whether one has been intended or not. Along with the shallow laughter of the presenter, with no intended meaning and purely for the sake of entertainment, the audience might take in messages where one has actually never been intended. Such unintentional messages might be: it is okay for us to slap someone in the face; civility is ridiculous and boring; etc. It turns out that we do not need any conspiracy to turn us into fools.

Who says that the drug-induced society of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World has not come into being? Is entertainment opium, or is opium entertainment? It’s all the same.

With the ideology of entertainment, not only has there been misreading, but there is even an eternal circus, even when it comes to issues that are supposed to be handled in all seriousness, for example the state matters. With this ideology of entertainment (it should actually be the ideology of Pancasila, for goodness’ sake!), it is understandable why members of our House of Representatives, as well as our leaders, have all turned into show-loving people. They do not hesitate pushing and kicking one another, making a spectacle of themselves, grinning here and there, just for the sake of having their fifteen minutes of fame on TV.

How worrying is such ideology? Well, of course this will create an impasse in the administration, just like during the opium war. If previously people went into an opium den and turned into useless creatures, today people want to entertain or be entertained, and turn into… useless creatures.

It is rather scary to think that such desires tend to be addictive once we submit to them. We then need to increase the dosage all the time. People say that the Roman circus had initially not been any different from the colorful and cheerful modern circus that we have today. However, because it was the one and only form of entertainment at the time, and there were no PlayStations or cable TVs in sight, people demanded for the circus to be more intense, more passionate, and gradually the gladiators’ arena came into being. Blood must be spilled and heads must fall before the audience would cheer. Who knows, perhaps one day, when the kicking and pushing at the House of Representatives is no longer adequate, members of the House of Representatives will have to kill one another before we would cheer them on. (Hmmm… tempting idea, perhaps?)

Honestly, talking about this overdone entertainment and nihilist ideology makes me rather depressed. Perhaps I simply need entertainment. Or hypnosis.