Indonesian Queer and the Centrality of Heteronormative Family

This extract from the Associated Press report on the release of Nia Dinata’s Arisan! (The gathering) in 2003 captures the significance of a new phenomenon that began to ripple through the Indonesian film world in the early years of the 21st Century. Long derided on cinema screens as figures of fun, people of non-normative sexualities in films like Arisan! have begun to be portrayed in affirmative and non-discriminatory ways. Some filmgoers found it a familiar portrayal. “It’s very accurate because I’ve got friends like that and gay is not something that is very unusual in Jakarta. Everybody knows that,” commented one viewer to the BBC’s Jakarta correspondent (Harvey, 2004).