JAKARTA, KOMPAS – Filmmakers, game designers and history enthusiasts have used creative means to introduce our national heroes to the younger generations. Such efforts must be continued so that the narratives of heroic nationalism become etched in the minds of millennials.
At least 11 biopics on national heroes have been released since 2010, including Kartini, Guru Bangsa: Tjokroaminoto (The Nation’s Teacher: Tjokroaminoto), Jenderal Soedirman, Soekarno, Sang Pencerah (The Enlightener), on noted Muslim cleric K.H. Ahmad Dahlan, and Wage, on composer Wage Rudolf (W.R.) Supratman, who wrote the national anthem, “Indonesia Raya” (“Great Indonesia”).
Director John de Rantau said he was motivated to make Wage when he realized that not many youths were familiar with the historical figure.
“Many [youths] do not even know the names of our [national] heroes, let alone the contributions they made for the nation. We need to reintroduce their stories through a variety of mediums to refresh our recollections of these heroes,” John said on Saturday (3/11/2018) at Jakarta’s Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM).
John said that he decided to tell the story of W.R. Supratman’s life, as he believed the writer and composer of the national anthem was a visionary figure that made an unparalleled contribution to Indonesia. The 2017 film portrayed several key stages in Wage’s life, including his career as a jazz musician, journalist and writer. Wage then goes on to tell how he was moved to write the song that would later be adopted as Indonesia’s national anthem.
John said that he researched his subject for five years before making the film. He sought references and materials on W.R. Supratman from various sources, including museums. “Ironically, I bought many books on Wage from secondhand book sellers,” he said.
Revan Pasha, a 12th-grader at Jakarta’s SMAN 7 state high school, said that the biopic helped him to better understand the national hero. He learned from the film that W.R. Supratman had been incarcerated by the Dutch colonial government for writing “Indonesia Raya”, and that the composer died young. Before watching the film, Revan said he had little idea of who W.R. Supratman was. When he first saw the film’s poster, he pronounced the composer’s first name as the English word “wage”.
As time goes by, the stories of Indonesia’s long-ago heroes may fade from the collective minds of the younger generations. Many youths may know more about superheroes, whose fictional tales pervade the mediums of popular culture. On the other hand, the heroic tales of historical figures are often conveyed to the younger generations in unstimulating ways (Kompas, 11/6).
University of Surabaya lecturer Adhicipta Wirawan said that his 10-year-old child was having difficulty understanding history lessons at school. Upon observation, Adhicipta found that history teachers often spoke in front of their classes without actively engaging the students. Students are told to memorize the lessons, making it tedious.
In order to make history more interesting, Adhicipta created a game called Linimasa (Timeline) a few years ago. Linimasa is a card game that encourages children to learn about historical figures and incidents, and covers the subject from the 1908 establishment of Boedi
Utomo to the 1962 Trikora Operation. This way of learning, he said, made history lessons more fun.
Adhicipta said he had studied the way Japanese game designers used that country’s historical narratives in games. “For instance, Astro Boy, which is highly popular in Indonesia, is called Mighty Atom in Japan. The story was inspired by Japan’s suffering from the atom bombs. Children can [learn about] Japanese history while playing [the game],” he said.
Indonesian History Community (KHI) founder Asep Kambali, a Jakarta State University (UNJ) history education graduate, agreed that history lessons must be made more attractive through the use of contemporary mediums such as films and novels. However, Asep said that he hoped writers and filmmakers would thoroughly research their subjects before making these creative products, as he sometimes found historical inaccuracies in popular films and novels.
“Surely, there are esthetic and dramatic reasons to make the stories more entertaining. However, this should still be handled carefully, so that the audience will not have misguided ideas on historical events,” he said.
Asep and the KHI teach history to youths through empirical means. The KHI often takes students on historical tours and overnight stays at museums. Such activities are intended to immerse the young people in the stories of what happened at these historical sites to help them understand the role of the events within the greater context of local and national history.
“The ideal method of teaching history is whatever is fun,” said Asep. If the students were interested in the lessons, they would care about history. This is evidenced in the KHI’s growing number of members, which now tops 25,000. (JAL/DNE/DEW-LITBANG)