Intergenerational Archipelagoes: Trans-Motherhood and Transing the Indonesian Family in Realita, Cinta, dan Rock n Roll and Lovely Man

Abstract

Non-normative genders and sexualities were sutured into the cultural fabric at the dawn of Reformasi in Indonesia, the period of democratic renewal after the fall of General Suharto in 1998, when same-sex romance and transgender identities began to make a significant presence in the wave of counter-cultural filmmaking. Two films about transgender motherhood from this period are discussed in this chapter: the popular 2006 film Realita, Cinta, dan Rock n Roll (Reality, Love, and Rock n Roll) and the 2011 film Lovely Man. Both films demonstrate the stereotypical conventions of transgender identities onscreen-the ‘reveal’, hyperfeminine drag, and the embodiment of trans-femininity by muscular leading men. This chapter considers the ways in which trans-motherhood reconfigures the Indonesian nuclear family into a more unsettling/unsettled unit that resists fixity of boundaries. I argue that ‘archipelagic intergenerational relations’ bring into focus the ways in which the Indonesian family is transed when the transgender mother and biological child reunite after estrangement. Archipelagic intergenerational relations are intertextual and rely on the ever-shifting ways transgender characters are defined and captured in Indonesian cinema and discourse.