Volume III JURNAL Nomor 2 KOMUNIKASI Oktober 2014 ISSN 2301-9816 INDONESIA The Circulation Network of East Asian Television Dramas in Indonesia: Television and Pirated DVDs as Intermediaries Shuri Mariasih Gietty Tambunan Abstrak/Abstract East Asian television dramas from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have become a significant part of the cultural global- ization process in the Indonesian mediascapes since the 1990s. The Indonesian cultural, political and social specificities have created significant distinctions on how these television dramas reconstruct the shared imagination of (East) Asia in comparison with how it is in other locales. The research findings have extended the discussion of geocultural/linguistic regions, which argues that the success of a television drama in one region, for example telenovelas in Latin America, is affected by a similar cultural and linguistic background. It echoes that the Asian case should be analyzed in a distinctive framework compared to other regional case studies, specifically in the circulation and distribution process. The research concerns a multi-layered analysis that draws on the methodological resources of textual analysis and institutional research, which contextualized these television dramas culturally, historically and geographically. The aim is to understand how the two primary media technologies in the in-between space of production and consumption, namely television and pirated DVDs, work as intermediaries and also as gatekeepers since they precondition commonalities between these television dramas with local expectations. Drama televisi dari Jepang, Taiwan dan Korea Selatan telah menjadi bagian dari proses globalisasi budaya di Indonesia sejak tahun 1990an. Indonesia memiliki konteks budaya, politik dan sosial yang spesifik sehingga ada perbedaan yang signifikan dalam proses pemaknaan drama televisi ini dalam hubungannya dengan bagaimana imaginasi mengenai ‘Asia’ (Timur) dilakukan di Indonesia apabila dibandingkan dengan negara lain. Hasil penelitian pada akhirnya mengembang- kan diskusi mengenai wilayah geocultural/linguistik yang mengasumsikan bahwa kesuksesan drama televisi di sebuah wilayah, misalnya Amerika Latin, dilatarbelakangi persamaan budaya dan sistem linguistik. Maka dari itu, studi kasus ini, yang terjadi di wilayah regional Asia, harus dianalisa dengan kerangka pemikiran yang berbeda dibandingkan dengan studi kasus di wilayah regional lainnya terutama dalam proses sirkulasi dan distribusi. Penelitian ini menggunakan beberapa metode seperti analisis tekstual dan studi institusional yang memposisikan drama televisi dari negara Asia Timus sesuai dengan konteks budaya, sejarah dan geografinya. Tujuan utama penelitian ini adalah memaknai bagaimana dua media teknologi, televisi dan DVD bajakan, bekerja sebagai intermediaries dan juga sebagai gatekeepers ketika kedua media ini mengkonstruksikan commonalities (asumsi bahwa adanya persamaan antara apa yang ditampilkan di drama televisi dengan konteks lokal Indonesia). Kata kunci/Keywords: Drama televisi, globalisasi budaya, media teknologi, intermediary/gatekeeper, DVD bajakan Television dramas, cultural globalization, media technologies, ntermediary/ gatekeeper, pirated DVDs Program Studi Inggris, Introduction Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya, revious research on intra-regional television Universitas Indonesia, Depok 16424 products countries mainly focused on areas Pwith historical, cultural and even linguistic [email protected] backgrounds shared with the countries of produc- tions. These studies, such as the analysis of Jap- anese dramas reception and circulation in Hong Kong (Leung 2002), Japanese dramas in Taiwan (Iwabuchi, 2001), Korean dramas in Hong Kong and Singapore (Lin and Tong 2008; Kim 2007) or telenovelas in Latin America (Straubhaar, 1991), 84 Jurnal Komunikasi Indonesia Volume III, Nomor 2, Oktober 2014 have concluded that a strong regional flavor and a desire of cultural proximity are the driving forc- The flow of East Asian transnational popular es of these television dramas. However, with the culture products has affected the complex imagi- developing complexity of the cultural traffic, es- nation of East Asia as a part of cultural globaliza- pecially in Asia, the analysis of television dramas tion in Asia. Research working on this area has “…should be oriented towards the structure and concluded that, in the end, cultural globalization modalities through which the products partake cannot be understood within the existing media into the political, social, cultural and economic imperialism model of cultural globalization. Koi- material relations within the different locations chi Iwabuchi (2002) argues that the regional con- where the products are produced, circulated and nection in Asia through the transnational flow of consumed” (Chua, 2012, p.12). cultural products should no longer be analyzed This case study focuses on how East Asian from the West-Rest perspective. television dramas circulate in Indonesia and the Additionally, it is important to define what East process that occurs in the in-between space of pro- Asia means, especially as it relates to this research duction and consumption. The context to be ana- specifically. What is the implication of using the lyzed has moved beyond the proximate East Asian term East Asia as a contrast to the location of the markets of China, Taiwan and Singapore because research, which is in a Southeast Asian country? the focus of the discussion will be a Southeast As argued by Ainslie and Lim (2015), “While this Asian market, located in a different sub-region of area is still defined as ‘Asia’ and is part of the Asia. Two media technologies1, namely television Asian continent, Southeast Asia is a wholly sepa- and pirated DVDs, are taken into account as in- rate part of Asia from those countries considered termediaries, which sometimes also work as gate- to be a part of East Asia” (p. 3). Because these keepers, because they precondition commonalities television dramas come from East Asian coun- between these television dramas with local expec- tries, analysis on how these products are circulat- tations. he arguments proposed in this article re- ed in a Southeast Asian country need to focus on fute previous hypotheses of regional affinities as the comparable characteristics of the countries of a driving force in the flow of television products production and the country of consumption. These within a region. comparable characteristics, such as the cultural, political and social aspects and the “ordinariness” Intra-Asia Cultural Traffic of the audience, are the main reasons why this re- All kinds of cross-border connections are rapid- search is expected to deal with new issues, which ly increasing in Asia. The dynamic flows of popu- have not yet been explored by other research in lar culture happen across national, geographical this area of media studies. and geopolitical boundaries within a specific con- The emergence of a regional East Asian popular textual environment. culture connection, as argued by Chua Beng Huat ...since the 1980s popular culture products (2012), was primarily affected by the liberation of have criss-crossed the national borders of the East media industries in several parts of Asia, which Asian countries and constituted part of the cul- had opened up the market for these television dra- ture of consumption that defines a very large part mas. By the late 1980s, the authoritarian regimes of the everyday life of the population throughout in the region, including China, began to liberal- the region. This empirically highly visible cultural ize the media industries even though the govern- traffic allows for the discursive construction of an ment continues to regulate the transnational flow ‘East Asian Popular Culture’ as an object of analy- even up until now. As a consequence, there was a sis. (Chua, 2004, p. 202) speedy development of television stations. There was a massive amount of airtime that needed to be 1The main focus of this article is the circulation process of filled quickly and inexpensively. Imported serial East Asian television dramas in Indonesia by investigating dramas were considered the best options in filling the institutional practices of a broadcast television station extra airtime, and in early 1990s Japanese televi- and pirated DVD sellers and also by analyzing texts pro- sion dramas were the most accessible ones as they duced within those institutional practices. As an example, were produced abundantly. Consequently, televi- sion stations, such as STAR TV and Channel U dubbing and subtitling are seen not only as cultural prac- in Hong Kong and Singapore, started to fill their tices, for example the low-budget subtitling practices by airtime with Japanese dramas. pirated DVD producers could be analyzed not only from In early 2000, there was a significant shift its institutional practices but also from a textual analysis from Japanese dramas to Taiwanese and Korean of the (broken) English or Malay subtitles. Due to the re- dramas. When Korean dramas first circulated in search limitation, the article will not cover the audience or Asia, audience chose these dramas because they any viewership aspects. The writer of the article has ex- essentially had the same formulae with the previ- plored this aspect in another article: Imaginary ‘Asia’ In- ous Japanese dramas. The successful penetration donesian Audience’s Reflexivity on K-Dramas. In Ainslie, of Korean dramas into the regional market was M. J. and Joanne