Managing Popular Culture: Comparing Old Order, New Order, and Reform Periods

Abstract

In the paper, I review the existing literature about the burgeoning of popular culture in Indonesia and how political elites manage popular culture. The review encompasses three major periods in the Indonesian history : Old Order (1945-1967), New Order (1966-1998 and Reform (1998-now). I observe how government in each historical period treated popular culture, and how extensive types of popular culture were developed under different cultural policies. The Old Order government imposed heavy restrictions upon Western popular culture. Meanwhile in the New Order period, the government, with industrialisation programmes and liberalisation policy, paved the way for the reintroduction of Western popular culture. The Reform period has seen the more sophisticated dominance of popular culture practices and products in Indonesia. In this paper, I also show how the enormous success of forms of popular culture has influenced political elites, particularly in the Reform period, in their attempts to win the masses.