Author(s): Mihaela Precup / Language(s):
/ Issue: 01/2014
The Act of Killing (2012) is a documentary by American film director
Joshua Oppenheimer, who went to Indonesia and encouraged former executioners
to reenact their murders from the time of the 1965-1966 military coup, when one
million people were killed after they were accused of being communists. In a country
where the government openly supports the main paramilitary organization,
Pancasila (whose members also participated in the genocide), and glorifies the
gangsters who were paid to kill communists and boisteriously explain the etymology
behind their Indonesian name, fremen (from the English “free men”), Oppenheimer
found that he was not allowed to interview the victims. Instead, he was pushed by
circumstance to tell the story from the perpetrators’ point of view. The main
character, Anwar, is a movie buff and big fan of American popular culture,
particularly gangster movies, Elvis Presley and other movie stars and their standard
costumes such as cowboy hats and bolo ties. His murders, as well as his
reenactments of the murders, are sometimes close quotations of these aspects of
American culture. This paper will be focusing on killing as an act of adaptation,
imitation, and cultural collaboration. From this perspective, the act of killing is
transformed—in the perpetrator’s view—into a performative tribute to a specific
segment of American cinematic culture. The value of human life (not inherent to life,
as Butler warns in Precarious Life and Frames of War) is thus read through the
distancing effects of filmic adaptation; however, through the reenactment of his
crimes, Anwar also appears to open himself up to an understanding of his deeds as
morally problematic and traumatic, and his reading of his victims’ lives changes. In
order to understand how that change is made possible (and how previously bare life
becomes valuable), I will place myself in conversation with theoreticians such as
Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, and others.
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