The story and voice of Alima
In They Call Me Babu, a coherent voice-over guides the viewer through the imagery, but it is that of a young woman, speaking softly in Indonesian (with Dutch or English subtitles provided). Through this voice-over, voiced by Denise Aznam, the life story of main character ‘Alima’ unfolds. The audience learns that after the death of her mother, Alima’s uncle marries her off to an old, wealthy Chinese man. In order to escape this arranged marriage, she flees her village to the city, where she looks for work. Eventually, she finds work with a Dutch family, looking after their children as the family’s ‘babu’. The family has multiple children, but Alima develops an especially close attachment to baby Jantje, who she cares for around the clock. Alima joins the family as they return to the Netherlands on leave, journeying through many worldly ports before arriving there. We follow Alima as she takes in all the new impressions, and adjusts to life in the
Netherlands. After a year, Alima returns to Indonesia with the family, with a changed outlook on the colonial order. She questions the differences between how things are organised in the Dutch East Indies versus the Netherlands, and the legitimacy of Dutch rule in Indonesia. When the Netherlands is invaded by the Germans during WWII, the Dutch East Indies come under threat of Japan. With the Japanese invasion, Alima’s
employers are taken to Japanese camps, and Alima is left without a home. She moves to a local village, and starts working for a Chinese family. However, the runnings of the household are entirely different, and Alima struggles to live under the oppressive and militant rule of the Japanese. In this turbulent period she meets Ribut, a young freedom fighter who believes in a free and independent Indonesia. Alima falls in love and soon becomes pregnant, but Ribut is tragically killed during the Independence War fought with the Dutch.
The story ends with the birth of Alima’s daughter, in the newly independent Indonesia.
In traditional documentary practice disembodied, male voice-overs acts as a voice of authority, or ‘voice of God’ narrating the film (Baron, 2014; 149). More often than not, no explanation is given of who the narrator is, and no insight into their personal thoughts or feelings. Bill Nichols describes how the ‘voice-of-God’
commentary sets out to represent “a broader, institutional source of authority” and ’helps to establish a
‘common-sense’ which perpetuates hegemonic whiteness and patriarchal (upper) middle-class values. By steering away from the conventional ‘voice-of-God’ commentary, films like They Call Me Babu hope to free archival images from its objectifying gaze, in this case of Indonesian colonial subjects (Brunow, 2015; 140).
Voicing an affective nostalgia
Much like the Anne Frank video diary, in They Call Me Babu hypermediacy serves to generate immediacy also. It is precisely through the emphasis placed on its presentation of archival footage that the film promises the audience a more immediate and authentic experience (Bolter & Grusin, 1999; 17). The idea that it is
entirely made up of authentic footage of ‘what it was really like’ in the Dutch East Indies appeals to viewers, and allows them to enter into the fictitious narrative presented through these images. Thus, the truth claim of the footage draws the viewer in, yet as they are drawn into the narrative the presence of the medium is forgotten. The awareness of the medium and its indexical bond with the past becomes that which leads viewers to enter into the illusion of unmediated memory; in this case that of the babu.
Other than authoritarian, the guiding voice of Alima is emotive. She speaks of personal experiences as if describing them to her late mother. At the opening of the film, Alima’s voice immediately grabs the audience:
“Mama, I miss you so much. I miss your bent back next to mine. Your sweet smell of sweat and mud.
Your beautiful hands, wrinkled by the wet sawahs. I miss your wise words, your songs, your stories.
Your soft voice, that lovingly calls my name… Alima.”
These words, spoken softly in Indonesian, can be heard over footage of Indonesian women working in sawahs, as well as footage of traditional Indonesian death rituals being performed (see fig. 27-30). Alima’s words express her sense of loss, and a nostalgic yearning for her mother. Her words imbue the images with this nostalgic yearning, as they further evoke the memories she describes. The way in which her words detail the sensations of her memory brings the audience closer to her experience, and stirs in the audience feelings of empathy. By echoing Alima’s words, the images amplify this effect.
The nostalgia produced by the fictional voice-over in combination with the authentic images is reminiscent of Susan Stewart’s understanding of the inauthentic and ideological nature of nostalgia. In On Longing, Susan Stewart writes about the souvenir, describing it as something that exemplifies the ‘capacity of objects to serves as traces of authentic experience’ (Stewart, 1993; 135). The Dutch colonial family films can be considered souvenirs, in the sense that they serve as traces of the family’s life in Indonesia. They once served to demonstrate and authenticate the personal narrative of the family, when presented to their family and friends. The images thus acted as the point of origin for this personal narrative, and as a source of personal nostalgia for the family. According to Stewart, souvenirs must always remain partial in order to give rise to narrative and nostalgia in this way. Nostalgic desire cannot arise without the unbridgeable gap between the souvenir and the past it refers to, as it is created precisely through this impossible yearning for the past (Stewart, 1993; 136).
Similarly, the narrative given to a souvenir is always partial and particular, as it pertains to the possessor of the object and ‘cannot be generalised to encompass the experience of anyone’ (Stewart, 1993; 136). As Stewart explains, a nostalgic narrative seeks to reconcile ‘the disparity between interiority and exteriority, subject and object, signifier and signified’, and in so doing is necessarily particular and personal (Stewart, 1993; 136-137). However, as Stewart writes, nostalgia arises from the distance between the souvenir and the past it refers to, rather than from the referent itself (Stewart, 1993; 145). Since traces are partial, other narratives can be told by way of them. Although They Call Me Babu deconstructs the nostalgic and romanticised view of the colonial presence in Indonesia that its footage originally represented for Dutch colonial families, it now is transformed into another kind of nostalgia.
Fused with Alima’s personal story, the images now come to refer to her particular experience, and lend themselves to new meanings. The images are made to express Alima’s nostalgic longing, which affords the film a sense of intimacy and an aura of authenticity. The intimate voice-over shares upon the audience an inner world, as if uncovering a truth which lies under the surface of the images. This creates an ‘authentic imagining’ of Alima’s experience, as the audience imagines the meaning the archival footage holds for her story, connecting the images to her words as the film progresses. Thus, the film’s voice-over brings about an affective nostalgia, which allows the viewer to identify and empathise with the character of Alima.
Sights, sounds, traditions and folk tales
Aside from Alima’s voice-over, the soundtrack to They Call Me Babu is hugely instrumental in affecting the audience. This soundtrack by film music composer Alex Simu combines sounds recorded in Indonesia with new, electronic sounds. Three Javanese Gamelan instruments, two violins, two violas, one cello and one harp make up the music and in this sense, the film adds an Indonesian soundscape to the Western perspective of the images. According to Brunow, a film score specifically composed for a film can control identification, and by employing traditional Javanese sounds the film clearly establishes itself as connected to Indonesian traditions.
As part of the sound design of the film, realistic sound has been added to match and fill up the images, to allow the audience to ‘hear’ them. This happens in the very first scene of the film, where the audience watches as Indonesian farmers herd their cattle. The sounds of the cattle can be heard, as well as their bells, and soft music swells as a backdrop to these lulling sounds. As the audience is shown images of landscapes, and the sun going down, crickets can be heard chirping in the background (fig. 31). When Alima arrives in Bandung, she is overwhelmed by all of the sights and sounds, and so the sound design includes the sounds of cars and horse drawn carriages and people milling in the streets. Cleverly made to match the archival footage used, a dog can also be heard barking just as a dog runs across the street (fig. 32). By paying close attention to the images in this way and introducing accompanying sounds, the footage is brought to life and this aids the ‘authentic imagining’ the film enables. However, the sound score may actually give rise to the archive affect more so when the sounds do not quite match; Baron writes that ‘a shudder of historical awareness emerges from the slippage between the image and the soundtrack’, believing that the temporal gap between visual and aural tracks gives rise to the archive affect (Baron, 2014; 162). For instance, the scene where Alima arrives in the Netherlands is filled of the sounds of seagulls, ships docking, and the welcoming fanfare. The pictures swell with all of the sounds, creating an atmosphere of excitement and novelty. The viewer is aware of the absence of the ‘correct’ sounds, yet these sonic accompaniments elevate the images and make the history captured within them feel more ‘real’ and present (Baron, 2014; 162).
Listening to the Indonesian landscape is an important theme in the film, and brings the audience further into Alima’s experience. Throughout the film, spiritual elements to do with rituals, traditions and superstitions can be found within the interplay between sounds, images and narrative. At the start of the film for instance,
Alima prays to the rice god Dewi to send her a sign as she works up the strength to leave her village.
Eventually, she hears the tokeh bird call seven times, after which she finally dares to leave for Bandung.
Folk tales are another recurring theme in the film. In her voice-over, Alima tells the story of the kedassi bird, who was seduced by an overfed bird to fly along to a distant country, with the promise of finding lots of food there. Upon arriving, the kedassi bird falls asleep, and wakes up to find himself all alone and unable to communicate with anyone of this new foreign land. Throughout the film Alima compares herself to the kedassi bird, practicing Dutch words on the ship so that she will not befall the same fate. Another folk tale is about a girl who takes a wave home only to discover it wouldn’t roll; the wave is homesick for the other waves. When the girl returns it to the sea, the wave immediately starts rolling again. Alima recalls this tale as she takes the ship back to Indonesia, wondering whether she will find her footing again once returned. In this way, Alima retells these stories from her childhood to relate her anxieties and fears in the present. These folk tales further establish the film’s connection to Indonesian traditions, and allowing the film to present itself as representing an authentically Indonesian perspective.
A new perspective offered through montage
In order to undo the colonial perspective and construct an Indonesian one, Beerends cleverly employs montage to shift the focus of the archival films she appropriates from the Dutch colonial families that produced them, to the Indonesian women and men ordinarily to the background of the image. The footage is often reworked in such a way that certain figures are highlighted, oftentimes by providing close-ups centring a particular young woman in the frame. In these instances, Alima’s voice-over seems to refer to the
experience of these women, allowing the audience to relate her words to what is happening in the footage.
For example, when Alima is looking for a sign to leave her village at the start of the film, the image focuses on a young girl who stands along side rituals being performed for rice god Dewi (fig. 33). As Alima says, “I wait for a sign”, it cuts to a close-up of her praying, and the girl’s image and forlorn expression stands in for that of Alima (fig. 34). Beerends often repeats shots to support the narrative told by Alima, zooming in or mirroring them so that they appear new. When Alima tells Jantje the story of the kedassi bird, the story is accompanied by footage of a babu walking away from the camera, with a child resting on her hip (fig. 35).
This footage is repeated moments later, but mirrored, so that it still serves the narrative without appearing repetitive (fig. 36). In another instance, Beerends appropriates footage of a babu together with her Dutch family on the deck of a ship. In the narrative, Alima and her Dutch family are returning to Indonesia, and on the journey home she reflects on how the trip has changed her and whether home will be changed for her too.
As she recalls the story of the girl and the wave, imagery of the babu on the ship deck is repeated in different forms; the whole image which includes the children to her left, and then a close-up singling out the babu (fig.
37-38). This repetition of the imagery centres the babu, prompting the audience to imagine what she might be thinking as she looks out over the vast ocean.
The images, music and sound design together produce affect, with their poetic interplay giving the film a melancholic, nostalgic sense. Many of the images included are breathtakingly beautiful, such as the images of an Indonesian woman standing amidst clouds of kapok fibre at a Javan kapok factory. The fluffy clouds
whirl around her silhouette like a soft snowstorm, and in the voice-over, Alima reveals that she is expecting a child (fig. 39). The image of a little baby wrapped in Indonesian fabrics appears in the clouds of kapok, gently pulsing in and out of view (fig. 40). Transposing this image onto the kapok gives a magical sense of enchantment, as if Alima were dreaming of her future child and this dream were visualised on screen.
In this way, the images of the film are made to express Alima’s innermost thoughts and feelings. Oftentimes, the exterior landscapes they capture seem to represent her interior, emotional landscape. For instance, when Alima dreams of an independent Indonesia, the voice-over is accompanied by idyllic footage of mountains and fertile rice fields, and as she talks of being part of something big the images show huge clouds of billowing volcanic smoke (fig. 41-42). Confessing that she sometimes secretly yearns for the Dutch era, when she “didn’t know yet that the ‘peace’ that reigned then…was only a brittle layer covering suppressed unrest”, Alima’s words appear over steaming and bubbling volcanic landscapes, slowly building up the pressure to erupt (fig. 43-44).
Another montage showcasing the powerful use of symbolic imagery sets in towards the end of the film, when Ribut goes off to fight in the Independence War against the Dutch. Footage of soldiers standing in the road and of Indonesian women and children in the towns and villages is followed by footage of darkened, stormy clouds of smoke. This leads into a compilation of intense images of rooster fights, traditional dances of figures in rooster costumes, and men battling crocodiles (fig. 45-47). Tense, melancholic music
accompanies these images, together symbolising the violent struggle of war. The montage ends dramatically when the music falls silent, and a corpse can be seen floating down a river. Alima’s voice returns, lamenting
“Ribut, my love…”.
Alima’s voice-over, written by Beerends, allows the audience to take in the images with new eyes, and to imagine what they might reveal from an Indonesian point of view; also concerning the ways of the Dutch colonials. An example of this is a segment during which Alima goes to a wayang performance, a traditional Indonesian puppet show. The footage shows Dutch spectators seated facing the puppeteer, a seemingly advantageous seating arrangement because it allows them to admire both the puppets, and the puppeteer at work. However, Alima explains the Indonesians in the audience understand that it should be watched from the shadows, allowing for the visual effect of the puppets to work its magic. While the Dutch spectators watch both puppets and puppeteer to see how it is performed, they are missing the point of the art form. By way of this scene, the film shows the different positions of the Dutch colonials and the Indonesians in terms of how they understand and engage with Indonesian culture. Another example of how the film comments on differing attitudes is clear from when Alima travels with her Dutch employers to the Netherlands. Footage of the family boarding the ship is followed by a montage of various stops along various ports. Over footage of Egypt, Alima speaks of the many new impressions she is overwhelmed with, but also of how the Dutch seem unaffected by their exotic travels. “They behave the same wherever they go, as if the whole world belongs to them”, she says, over images of the Dutch riding camels, smiling and waving to the camera.
Through montage, Beerends employs archival images to authenticate the film’s narrative around these topics, and to reveal the power relation between the Dutch and the Indonesians that lurks just below their surface.
The montage that perhaps does this most clearly and affectively comes halfway into the film, when WWII has broken out and news reaches Indonesia that the Netherlands are occupied by Germany, and the Dutch start to lose their grip on the colony. In her voice-over, Alima explains: “More and more people around me wonder why they are still in charge here, as if a suitcase has been opened up, full of hidden grief and suppressed thoughts.” As she speaks about the suitcase of hidden grief, the camera focuses on a young babu sitting by a playing Dutch child (fig. 48). The camera cuts to a close-up image of the girl’s face, revealing her mournful expression, just as Alima says “suppressed thoughts” (fig. 49). Melancholic music swells, and a montage of different footages of babus follows. One sequence shows a babu being kicked over by a Dutch man as she bends over a pile of kapok fibre in the garden, and another shows a Dutch man mimicking and mocking an Indonesian woman as she faces him (fig. 50-51). More sequences follow of colonials being carried or served by Indonesians, lingering on the tired facial expressions of the workers as they do so. These segments interject footage of a winding road, filmed from a car navigating its many twists and turns, adding a sense of endlessness and entrapment to the sequences it cuts between. Montage here functions as a means for Beerends to deconstruct one memory of colonial Indonesia and substitute it with another. Instead of the romantic picture of benevolent colonials treating their servants like family, the film here presents its audience with the darker side of colonial households —from the point of view of the colonial subject.