Forever Narrating “Merdeka” Memori Melompat, Popular Culture, and the Indonesian War of Independence

The Indonesian War of Independence is ubiquitous in Indonesian popular culture. Memories of the past and the cultural products that represent it go hand in hand. These cultural products participate in a narrativizing project that help to define the Indonesian War of Independence and the meaning of freedom (merdeka) after Indonesia’s independence. By analysing case studies from historical re-enactment, cinema, and music, this dissertation studies how cultural memories of the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-1949) are produced, represented, and consumed through contemporary Indonesian war-themed popular culture released between 2009 and 2019. It proposes to see these cultural memories as a form of memori melompat (‘jumping memory’). Memori melompat is always about the nation and, even though it jumps away from it, like stretched elastic, it inevitably snaps back to it. This sheds new light on theories that suggest that memory can travel freely across political, cultural, and national borders. The case studies in this dissertation show that this straightforward mobility of cultural memory does not apply to every local context as frictions do occur when memory travels. In Indonesia, memories of the war travel temporarily, briefly, and not far. It therefore suggests more of a jump rather than a journey.