We often think of memory and history hand in hand. We recall the what’s happened previously through memories, but some things stand out more than others: we remember our first apartments, our first love, days when our lives changed forever. We forget the shitty days at work or the long commutes home. Memories are first-hand accounts of the world as it was, though the thought itself is ephemeral and ever fleeting.
Conversely, history is a past that often transcends our personal experiences. It tells us when events happened and their importance, even if we weren’t there to witness it. French historian Pierre Nora writes that, ‘Memory takes root in the concrete, in spaces, gestures, images, and objects; history binds itself to strictly temporal continuities, to progressions and to relations between things. Memory is absolute, while history can only conceive the relative” (9). In this way, history is a tool that collapses the past into an abstraction of events that are meant to be understood in relation to one another whereas memory has an immediate relationship to the world around us. Yet, once the past has been assumed under the title of history, it becomes a totalizing force: history is able to set strict parameters that define whose memory matters, is worth amplifying, and repeating through classrooms, monuments, and museums.
History as a rigid and biased framework poses a problem for excluded voices whose past also matters. However, memory don’t always neatly conform to history’s grasp. Sometimes, its very existence can challenge the status quo, or like phantasms, become a lingering presence the passing of time cannot shake. In the documentary, The Act of Killing (2012) by Joshua Oppenheimer (co-directed by Christine Cynn and Anonymous), memory and history blend into a genre-bending retelling of Indonesia’s 1965-1966 genocide, which killed nearly one million people. The film follows Anwar Congo: an aging gangster who participated in the killings. He’s also a bit of a local celebrity who’s unfazed by his crimes. In order to justify his participation, he says, “Whether this ends up on the big screen or only on TV, it doesn’t matter. But we have to show…”
“That this is history.” Herman Koto, a friend, answers.
“This is who we are! So in the future people will remember! […] We, in our simple way, step by step, will tell the story of what we did when we were young!”
It’s not just him though. Anwar and Herman are part of the Pancasila Youth movement, a right-wing paramilitary organization, that emerged from the death squads responsible for the genocide. Today, it holds several positions within the federal cabinet and is held in high regard by a substantial portion of the general public. As a result, the official narrative of the genocide is muted rather than reconciliatory; many Pancasila Youth in the film justify their actions as a necessary evil in order to save Indonesia from communism. Conversely, while there are still survivors and descendants of the genocide, they cannot openly talk about their stories for fear of silence and oppression. Even some of the people who participated in the film are credited as ‘Anonymous’. While this is to protect them from repercussions by anyone offended by the film, it also creates ghosts out of real people whose memories are subjugated to the margins of Indonesian history.
This dynamic grants the Pancasila Youth a lot of power in shaping the narrative around the genocide. Though there may be more than one perspective present within history, there is always a dominant force within it working to maintain its position and power to the masses. This is History with a capital H. Filming a documentary highlighting the role of their organization in the genocide allows them to display their power and prestige. Furthermore, their active participation during the filming of The Act of Killing, ranging anywhere from being extras on set to doing makeup or setting the stage. In their eyes, they are recreating history, not the past. What is implied is that this is our history, this is what we as a society share. If you don’t agree, then you aren’t one of us.
However, what makes The Act of Killing so captivating is that these very people who participated in the genocide decide to re-enact their crimes for the camera. They embody their own memories to portray their History. Often times, the scenes are shocking or tense. Many tow the political line by committing to the role or laughing off the actions of their past lives. At the same time, the emergence of different memories (and their ghosts) allows for participates to engage in dialogue with themselves that may not otherwise happen. This allows for History itself be challenged.
In Anwar’s first re-enactment scene, the follows him through a shop filled with colorful bags hanging from the walls. He heads towards a back door, and up a staircase. On the rooftop balcony, Anwar, clad in a bright green shirt and white slacks, explains that the space is home to many ghosts. They were the people killed by Anwar and others. He recalls the stench, how he devised a different way of killing to avoid blood. It’s only natural then that he asks his associate to kneel on a slab of rock so that he can demonstrate how to use garrote wire around his neck. However, when later re-watching this scene, he remarks that he would have never worn a white shirt while working and says, “I look like I am dressed for a picnic!”
The desire to recreate his memory as accurately as possible perpetuates an ideal of Indonesia’s History. In this scene, he isn’t bothered by his re-enactment of torture and killing. He’s frustrated that he wore the wrong attire, which makes him look out of place and unserious. This is what he remembers. The people murdered, the violence, their presence is dimly perceptible. At the same time, this is a turning point in the film as Anwar steers the documentary into his own vision of History; one intermixed in genres, memories, fictions, and dreams. Fidelity takes a back seat to spectacularism as members of the Pancasila Youth speak fondly of the movies that impacted them in their youth. Film genres like western or gangster act as a different lens on events and offer unique dialogue with the past that would otherwise not be achieved through a ‘historically’ accurate reproduction of events. In another way, these memory mash-ups further contextualize the participants outside of the film’s scope.
For example, Anker recreates a killing while dressed like a cowboy. He explains that he watched American films like gangster films growing up and would imitate them as it made him feel like he was in a movie. The following shot is a surreal mash up of him dressed cowboy walking through the jungle with a communist on a leash. Flanked by two horses, the center of the shot has two elephants grazing further back. Anwar leads his actor through the bush and feigns an execution.
It’s clear that cowboys represent a tough, gritty man. A macho man who isn’t afraid of anything. They can also represent justice in a place deemed ‘lawless’. All of these possible meanings allow us to see what is still a Historical re-enactment by further exploring the psyche of the so-called winner.
In another scene, the background is a misty waterfall and lush green rock faces. There are ethereal women slowly dancing. Their white skirts blind the scene as they smile past the camera. At the center once more is Anwar, dressed in a stark black robe, and Herman, who is dressed in a cerulean sequin dress. Two gaunt men appear in dark clothing. They pull the wire off of their necks and drop it to the ground. One pulls out a medal and drapes it around Anwar’s neck. They shake hands and the man says, “For executing me and sending me to heaven… I thank you a thousand times, for everything.”
The juxtaposition is jarring. It’s clear that this scene isn’t meant to represent the past. If anything, the scene makes the genocide seem supernatural and its history, beyond humanity itself. It fortifies Anwar’s actions during the genocide as a legitimate and even spiritual in nature as an act of mercy towards those murdered. Nora writes, “History has become our replaceable imagination” (24). It’s a spectacle, painted in saturated colors, with smiling women and ethereal landscapes. It can also be revamped and reinterpreted as needed. History is not a constant force but a fleeting illusion attempting to represent the past.
It’s only when Anwar takes on the role of a victim does the gravitas of the situation weigh in. In a gangster-style homage, Anwar sits between a couple of men wearing fedoras, white button ups, and dark ties. There is fake blood over Anwar’s head. After being tortured and interrogated, he breathes in deep as Herman ties a blindfold over his eyes and secures his hands behind his back. A wire is placed around his neck and Herman fakes pulling it tight.
As they repeat this shot a second time, Anwar shakes his hand to stop. He says, “I can’t do that again”. He stares listlessly at the ground as Herman tries to coax him to drink water.
Upon watching this scene within his home, Anwar asks Oppenheimer, “Did the people I tortured feel the way I do here? I can feel what the people I tortured felt. Because here my dignity has been destroyed, and then fear comes, right there and then. All the terror suddenly possessed my body. It surrounded me, and possessed me.”
The shot is focused solely on Anwar. Oppenheimer answers from off-camera, “Actually, the people you tortured felt far worse, because you knew it was only a film. They knew they were being killed.”
“But I can feel it, Josh. Really, I feel it. Or have I sinned. I did this to so many people, Josh. Is it all coming back to me? I really hope it won’t. I don’t want it to, Josh.”
At the end of the film, Anwar returns to the space where he proudly showed off his killing techniques. He struggles to explain what he did. “I know it was wrong, but I had to do it”. Anwar wanders around the balcony. He dry-heaves into the gutters and sits down. The memories fully resurface, alongside his moral dilemmas, now clearly in conflict with history’s narrative. “Why did I have to kill them? I had to kill… my conscience told me they had to be killed.”
Indonesia is haunted by the past, even as History further narrows its gaze away from the genocide and towards new nation-building projects. Yet, this isn’t a story exclusive to one place or people. Canada and the United States, for example, have profiteered from the continuous genocide of indigenous peoples. The Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) and Every Child Matters movements highlight the violent and systemic erasure of vulnerable and marginalized people in settler colonialist society. Look to Russia, who is currently in their own process of rewriting history to minimize Ukraine as a cultural entity.
I believe that History is the tool of the powerful. It is neither a linear process of events and actions, or a static point in time. History is the constant reinterpretation of the past as it is convenient. It’s built on the premise that individuals collectively buy into a specific timeline with its own contingencies: common goals, enemies, beliefs, and practices that can be replicated and memorialized. History also erases. It destroys people, places, things. It homogenizes what’s left.
In juxtaposition, the past is a choir of memories out of tune. Voices shift in sync or sing different lines. They fight for dominance, fade into the background, or rarely, combine in harmony. The past is a wall of sound that can’t simply be listened to. We must be active participants, heralding memory as truth, not as apparition. We must remember our memories, even when no one else believes in them. We must remember.
Works Cited:
Emont, Jon. “The Propaganda Precursor to “The Act of Killing”” in the New Yorker. 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-propaganda-precursor-to-the-act-of-killing. Accessed 10 Aug. 2023.
Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations, no. 26, 1989, pp. 7–24. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2928520. Accessed 28 Aug. 2023.
Oppenheimer, Joshua, et al. The Act of Killing. Drafthouse Films, 2012.
Short Ends 