Being Papuan Boys: Children Subject Formation in Denias, Senandung Di Atas Awan (2006) Sari, T. et al., 2024/Papuan Boys Subject Formation in Film

Children are often viewed as naïve figures having no political interest that therefore they are used to represent minority groups in Indonesian movies. Denias Senandung di Atas Awan is one of the films telling about the life of Papuan boys living in mountainous area close to nature. Along with its exoticized scenic pictures and traditional folks, this movie serves the struggle of those children in getting education believed as a way to a brighter future. Launched in Post New-Order Era, it becomes a new hope in term of bringing the peripheral ethnic into the centre of Indonesian culture through the screen, giving a chance for a wider Indonesian audience to know about Papuans. Being centralized, the representation of these children in the movies should help to meet that hope. By analyzing the multimodality of movie, this research is conducted. Aimed at exploring the operation of power in Indonesian ethnic-relation context, this article dismantles that through the analysis on the intersection of their identities of ethnicity, class and age, the Papuan boys’ portrayals confirm that they become subject of asymmetric power relation in Indonesian centre-periphery construction. They are brought to the centre but racialized and not more than being a power display of the centre. In relation with the nation interest on uniting its people and geography, the Papuan boys become the subject of the nation project preparing them as ideal citizens formed in their school and family. Resistance exists but the process eventually keeps bringing these children into the position of conforming this nation interest.