Hostile but longing, deriding or joking? A personal reflection by means of the SERASA site

I AM someone who has a need for distance. First; triggered by many personal conflicts and a sense of frustration about Jakartan life, I moved out from the city of my birth around four years ago; what else if not to maintain a certain distance from those problems. Second; this is an admission about a cheesy fact: with this departure, I deliberately played an active role in manipulating my feelings. Who knows, perhaps the hostility will turn into longing. In any case, I cannot deny the fact that Jakarta is a part of my identity.

Thanks to the progress of the communication technology, I can safely say that my tactic works. First; the distance enables me to see things more clearly, more rationally, and, most importantly, often with a better sense of humor.[1] Second; I seek pills to cure my longing for a variety of things. The chats with people, rarely occurred when I was still in Jakarta, become more frequent, sincere (a difficult thing to have whenever I might be), and easy; I also value more the unique quality of the capital’s informal aspects, such as the food carts and motor-taxis (which, honestly, make things easier, as long as we are not car drivers or some rash people trying to experience Jakarta on foot); and, what I want to discuss here, I cure my longing by laughing.

In my journey to seek some morsels of laughter and some shreds of connection, I stumbled across SERASA.[2] To quote the introduction: “SERASA is a blog that reveals the mystery behind funny, peculiar things, those that your Verstand can’t accept, weird things happening in our daily lives, no matter in what form…” Presenting simple photos stamped with a huge watermark and the background color of pink that clashes with letters in primary colors, it seems that SERASA had simply been born absurd. Let us have a look at SERASA’s selection of ridiculed objects: everything that has been twisted, from the usual suspects such as the T-shirts from Mangga Dua shopping district, as well as shoes with the brand of Bubbery (not Burberry—Picture 1), to the extraordinary “suspects”, like the signboard of a restaurant named Burger Queen that unashamedly (and certainly illegitimately) adopts the visual appearance of Burger King (Picture 2); or the free category objects, like a bottle of a drink called Jeniper (short for Jeruk Nipis Peras, or Lime Juice; Picture 3). These objects tell me that there is one word that Regina Kencana the editor fails to mention in her introduction to the blog: beside funny, peculiar, irrational, and weird, SERASA is also rather stale.


WHY IS SERASA FUNNY?
Why not? SERASA separates its visual jokes into four categories: “Fake Merk” (merk is Indonesian for ‘brand’), which presents to the altar of ridicule the usual suspects, forgers of well known brands; “Wrong tulisan” (tulisan being the Indonesian equivalent for ‘text’) that tries to laugh at people’s honest mistakes such as ‘SEPAGETI’, ‘HOT DOK’, or a stall named ‘KAVE YAYANG’ (Picture 4); “Cool Kampanye” (Kampanye means, simply, campaign) that focuses on notices or advertisements with dubious connections, such as a supermarket that gives its clients a present of five packs of noodles for every purchase of Rp150.000 (I’ve warned you, it’s stale) (Picture 5); and “Others”—which means “et others”, for those who don’t get it—presenting things such as a reversed post office sign (Picture 6), etc.

Deliberately or not, such categories concur with the basic theories about how to be funny. First, SERASA as a blog has functioned as a means to release the pressure of boredom for those who understand the difference between Burger King and Burger Queen and can readily answer the question of “What’s so funny about Buberry?” Second, the category of “Cool Kampanye” tries to underline impropriety as something funny (again: it’s stale). Third, two of the main categories in this blog, “Fake Merk” and “Wrong Tulisan” allow the audience to laugh at people who exist in opposition to them: those who cannot differentiate between King and Queen, or know nothing about all things Burberry. If we observe closely the information presented in this post, however, it will transpire that the owner of that pair of Buberry shoes is none other than the editor Regina Kencana's mother![3]

We can certainly feel much better if we see others in a worse condition than we are. Here, the ‘distance’ is present again, but more as a gap rather than that which facilitates the process of understanding. It is common to laugh at others due to their foolishness, misfortune, and mistakes. Unfortunately, such kind of humor can be taken as equal with derision, and can thus be included within the category of lowly humor. The infantile character of this kind of humor has the potential to demean the victimized party.[4]


THE ILLUSION OF FORGERY AND THE SUBVERSION OF “TWISTED PRODUCTS”
Let me turn your attention to another matter for a while. On February 2, 2009, through the chat window of Yahoo!Messenger, I had a chat with Coki (not his real name), an owner of a fashion store in the region of Seminyak, Bali. During the conversation, he expressed his wish to seek sources for forged sport shoes, to sell them in his store. He planned to line the forged shoes along with the original shoes with the same brand, differentiated by one thing only: the price.

Had I operated with the same method as SERASA, I would capture the screen that recorded the conversation and ridicule Coki’s way of writing “snickers” for “sneakers” (the fact that Coki is a businessman selling fashion products for the upper middle class made the incident even funnier to me). But I am not Regina, and thus I could not turn that conversation into something funny for you. The thing that caught my attention in this incident is the illusion of brands in Coki’s plan. His plan did not actually constitute a deceit, because he honestly presents his commodities with their respective true values, according to logic and general wisdom: the original things will certainly be more expensive than the forged ones. I do not have to explain further that in my notes Coki is certainly guilty of mass trickery. My subsequent question is directed more to his buyers (if there is any): If you know it is forged, why do you buy it? If it is true that we construct our identity within the cultural frame of which we are also a part, and had we had an imaginary mirror in which we would see ourselves buying and wearing objects because of what they connote, should we not be ashamed to buy forged objects?[5] Or can the shame perhaps disappear if we buy the same objects on Jalan Seminyak, Bali, in a store with neat windows and surrounded by white men (and women), instead in the midst of a chaotic trade center in the capital city, in a tiny stall that does not even have a window? Perhaps, then, our imaginary mirror should be turned into a real one that could record all these irrational behaviors. At this point, we have the right—and should—laugh out loud without any guilty feeling.

Here the objects whose pictures are presented by SERASA play their role. The Buberry or Guci (with one ‘c’) products do not provide the illusion I mentioned before. I call this object twisted objects, not bootlegs. Twisted products, to me, are droller than simple bootlegs.[6] Regina was not simply being generous when she mentioned that this act constituted “hidden creativity behind uncreativity.”[7] It is only creativity that can thoroughly dodge discussions about copyright and intellectual property like this, seemingly saying, “Originality? What’s with it? Intellectual property? What right does it have?” Complete your imagination with the tongue sticking out from the mouth of the person posing the questions. For the city residents, doesn’t SERASA, by means of its records of surprising and unpredictable twists, offer a universe in which we can rest a while from our daily lives that is fraught with planned and controlled advertisements? By being fully aware of the possibility for these products to serve as metaphors from real spots of desire unpredicted by any city planner, we can use the power of these products to take over the power of the market.[8] Whoever says that the staleness that SERASA presents is only a product of mere derision? Whoever thinks that Regina’s selection of objects are negative and not worth closer inspections?


ORIGINALITY, MEDIA, AND REALITY
Returning now to SERASA, let me share with you some of the outcome of my conversation with myself. Laugh if you must.

The first question: Apart from the distance that I have vis-à-vis SERASA’s objects of ridicule, what has made me consider SERASA’s acts as funny (to me, staleness is a form of hidden humor)? Room temperature is one answer. My entire experience with SERASA always takes place in a room with controlled temperature. I do not see the products while vying for some extra space with the pedestrians, motorbike riders, and street side vendors on the pavement; neither do I view them while sitting on a cheap plastic chairs by the side of the road, or on the hard, narrow chair of the Metrominis. No. Rather, I experience it all in front of the laptop, on a rather comfortable office chair (albeit a Chinese bootleg from a product by a legendary American designer, priced at a quarter of the original product), or simply while lying relaxed in a self-sufficient, air-conditioned room. The distance provided by the medium of computer camera and screen transforms the meaning of a visual element from annoying and metric into something entertaining and measured in pixels. “Originality” that Regina states as the first prerequisite for an object to be selected and presented by SERASA is meant as the originality of the process in which the contributor-photographer takes the pictures. In other words, the objects presented on SERASA are not objects with dubious origins that come and go in the form of forwarded e-mails in our inbox. In this sense, “originality” is a concept of experience rather than of objects.

Further question pertaining to this condition is related to the context. Let us take one example here, the post dated on May 9, 2009, titled “Ada Kontraksi Di (sic) Bawah” (“Contraction below”, Picture 7). The information of “Location: Soekarno-Hatta Airport, Terminal 2F” refers to the originality of the experience as I have mentioned before. Then the second information of “The charge: Shhhhh… Silence! Someone’s in labor” and the comment of “Geeeeeeez… how embarrassing! It’s the airport, you know… Many whites milling around” provide some value toward the object of ridicule in the context of imaginary time and space. Another void that is not presented directly, but plays a role in creating a thorough perception regarding the object, can be filled by the editor’s subjectivity, responsible as she is in presenting something funny for her audience. What is SERASA, other than a form of sectional joke of a certain class, presented in a space with a greater access to anyone, anytime? If SERASA had been mine, the opportunity would enable some unavoidable improvisations: “Location: Gaya Gallery, Ubud, the exhibition of Stephan Sagmeister’s experimental works. | Charge: WOW, what a genius! | Caption: Untitled, Jakarta, 2009.” Indeed, I would choose to nudge my audience to be generous and laugh at themselves, instead of joining them to laugh at others. Although Regina says that “it’s cheap to judge”, I think that invariably depends on who the judge and who the defendant.

The communication media is the next one in the spotlight. The fact that I now communicate more frequently and sincerely with people I consider important—through text messages, electronic messages, Messenger and Skype—compared to when I still could actually meet them as we were living in the same city, is an admission of guilt of being a communication addict, requiring some media to communicate. I am the sort of creature with the same needs with Regina’s. Our needs for communication are no longer satisfied by analog communications. By incessantly adapting to the technology of communication media, we are forever hoping that some richer, more profound, and more simulating process of communication will constantly take place. There is no turning back; I am hooked. Considering my relationship with SERASA, I have to admit that this craving has even spread to my funny bones. I need the help from communication tools even to laugh. On a certain level, I am an invalid when it comes to humor.


THE GATE TO POSSIBILITIES
Regina is not fully aware—due to her naiveté when she made the blog simply to share jokes—that what SERASA does can be used in a more critical perspective to question the consumptive behavior of the society, as well as our cultural perspective about what we consider as real. With her proven talent for humor, it is possible that the world view SERASA has adopted can serve as a tool for social criticism, which according to Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor in The New Yorker, is to “invert the power structure and underline the power of the society,” maintaining us all within the limit of sanity.[9]

Although Regina herself has stated that she never expects SERASA to be big, there are many gates of possibilities that SERASA has opened for its audience. Perhaps, through these gates, the promise of an era without references, which should do away with the segregations of class and caste, will finally be realized. This time, all we need is imagination.

If it is up to me and my imagination, such I think will be the line of development for SERASA:
1. Publish SERASA as a book. But, wait, apparently, Regina has done it.[11]
2. Create an international version. Oh, wait, someone else has done it.[12]
3. Celebrate the twisted products. Launch a buying company or a special boutique for the fake products, or perhaps create an ad with Dian Sastro as the model.[13] But, wait a minute, minus Dian Sastro and a few other details, someone else has done it, too, which can be proven simply by typing the phrase “channel fake clutch bag” into Google search window![14]

Last: due to the desperation caused by a lack of imagination, what if we simply mimic the three enterprises I mentioned above and amass financial profits and reap popularity from there? Funny: mimicking the success of enterprises whose operations have been based on the process of imitation; in other words, it is a multi-level simulation. Even funnier: combine it with the marketing operation that has attacked people around us in the last few years—multi-level marketing. The upshot: multi-level marketing of multi-level simulation.

Considering the quality of the joke I just made, it is clear that, unlike Regina, I have no talent for jests.




Phnom Penh, Juli 2009
Translated by Rani Elsanti




FARID RAKUN. Born in Jakarta in 1982, he studied architecture at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Indonesia, in 2000 – 2005. After working in the construction industry for four years and making architectural drafts in Bali, New Orleans, and Phnom Penh, he decided to take a break. Apart from working as an editor in Karbon Journal from January 2010, he teaches at his alma-mater as assistant lecturer.