Seeing Indonesian Ghost Films through Document Theory
Authors: Suprayitno  
Published: November 2020

Hantu (in Bahasa Indonesia), or ghosts, are portrayed as the incarnation of monstrous or evil souls wishing to harm humans (Amin et al., 2017). Most modern Indonesians still believe in ghosts, proven by an outgrowing number of ghost films. From the 1970s until the present, more than 320 ghost films have been made and can be differentiated according to each culture, custom, and religion in Indonesia. Indonesian people believe that ghost films in Indonesia are scarier than ghost films from abroad because of a symbolic bond between ghosts and traditional myths represented in the films. For example, one of the ghost films in Indonesia titled Pengabdi Setan or “Satan’s Slaves” that has been watched by 4.2 million moviegoers was using gender (e.g. the fertility of women), occupation (e.g. the profession of artists), and religion (e.g. the role of religious leaders) as the conservative narratives’ symbols.

However, based on scientific consensus, the existence of ghosts is not a valid concept and is classified as pseudoscience (Regal, 2009). Yet the existence of ghosts cannot be falsified because of the human belief besides the world’s end and the belief in the spirits of the dead has existed ever since humans embraced animism before humans began writing texts (Bunge, 1999; Briefs et al., 2010; and Nees, 2015). After humans knew letters, studying Indonesian’s belief in ghosts through document theory is almost as important as studying humans’ development in writing. Previous studies on ghost films have been identified from the fields of cinematography, culture, and film criticism, yet they have not been examined through the lens of document theory. This paper aims to understand ghost films in Indonesia through concepts in document theory such as materiality, productivity, and fixity.

The results discuss the material aspect of ghost films as documents with informative material regardless of the film’s genre, based on document theory (Otlet, 1934; Briet, 1951). Our findings also show productivity and fixity; for example, ghost films are creatio ex materia as information creation and use are the materials from which ghost films are created (Gorichanaz, 2017) and have the ability to tell the same story over different places and times (Levy, 1994; Narayan, 2015). For instance, ghost-type such as Pocong and Kuntilanak has indicated the concept of ghosts that passed down by previous Indonesian ancestors. This study, however, does not discuss recent efforts to perpetuate those memories through the film, but rather the film as a material is important to analyze through document theory.

In terms of productivity, ghost films have the added value of releasing ghosts as materials, triggering the human imagination and our ability to provide evidence of changing epistemic perspectives over space and time. In terms of fixity, our study opens opportunities for further research, such as fluidity, floating fixity, authenticity, and other aspects with which to analyze ghost films as (digital) documents. As an additional result, drawing from Foucault’s panopticon concept (Foucault, 1970; Wood, 2003), we found that perpetuating the power from which people have unconsciously been mentally controlled is a kind of panopticism. Since documents function as panopticons, ghost films have provided power and will “discipline” people because these ghost stories can be haunting and frightening. Thus, the panopticon metaphor in ghost films emphasizes the internalization of external surveillance rationales so that people have accepted these rationales as part of the self-practices because they can never be sure the hidden others are watching them (Lupton, 2016).