Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 55

Balinese Artists and Suharto’s Regime

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Conclusion

When asked how he viewed his role as a cartoonist, Gun Gun answered with
the question: “Isn’t it actually that human beings are like puppeteers while cartoons
are the puppets?”'*^ Clearly, he views the roles of the cartoonist and the puppet
master as being identical. The purpose of this article has been to illustrate how two
perceptive, thoughtful, and clever Balinese artists adapted their thousand year old
shadow puppet genre to the modern cartoon medium to express their opposition to
some of the more corrupt and manipulative activities of their country’s authoritarian
government. Because Suharto’s government was also brutal and repressive, these
daring and patriotic cartoonists also deserve to be admired for their courage.
Now that a new government has come to power through reasonably free and
fair elections in 1999, the Indonesian people are at long last able to enjoy the fruits
of a free press. It is hoped that the cartoonists who attacked the excesses of Suharto’s
authoritarian regime will now dedicate themselves to an even more difficult cause:
building public support for democratic values and procedures. Indonesia is an
extremely diverse country (in terms of language, race, religion and geography)
that aspires to achieve the “impossible dream” of its national motto: Unity in
Diversity. This will be a long and arduous task, as those of us who live in a country