I just finished reading Eka Kurniawan's "Cantik itu Luka" ("Beauty is Wound") that is a hybrid between Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk and Child of All Nations: women as prostitutes and nationalism combo. My symbolism reading of the book is reverse colonialism through the multiple "rapes" towards the colonists by the colonized country. The colonists here are represented by pure and mix-breed of Dutch, Japanese, and Javanese creoles. Meanwhile, the colonized is represented by the men, thugs, military, ghost, and curse that lingers around the mixed-race descendant. Anyway, these symbols are like machismo in rotten jelly. Why?
Well, feminist reading is inevitable in interpreting the book. However, the voice that Eka uses is like a defense attorney's point of view in speaking on behalf of these beautiful women. The readers cannot see what happens in the women's minds since they are frequently in the situations where the men are objectifying them. We could almost see a bit what is going on in their head, at least in the main character's (Dewi Ayu) with actions that she takes. But most of the actions are by volunteering her bodies to the others. Similar act is also taken by her first daughter by (without force) deciding to get married with her raper to payaback to him by giving him the status but not sex during their marriage. This does not make sense, but maybe tantalizing for the machos (in the later stage of marriage finally she opens up to him sexually so his husband would not kill the love of her life).
Reading the book is like reading Eka Kurniawan's detailed wet dreams and at some point it is tiring. As a reader, I am tired with the overuse of sexually-exerted vocabularies and the word "tai". Then, all of the main female characters are described as sexy, beautiful, yet sexually inferior. Meanwhile, none of the male characters are delightful. All of them have some sort of rowdy and bold background in martial arts, military, hunting, and grave digging. These are not necessarily impressive, and as an Indonesian reader, I don't feel represented by either the women who are raped exactly because of their beauties nor the men who "payback" for the nation.
Moreover, as any popular Indonesian literature, the theme revolves around nation-making, communism, sex, prostitutes, beautiful women, ugly women, and shit. Like, literal shit. Storyline-wise, it is heavy with description and the characters' past, but lack of narration. Typical. I think the theme will keep on hunting us as readers until the state and any related stakeholders take some good measures towards them. The theme is actually great. But Eka's large use of the theme are too vulgar so it tastes like floating in the surface, and afterall it ends with over-sentimental patriarchal loser line; After having encounters and wild imaginations with beautiful girls (and kills them!), the son of our "hero", Krisan, decides to just have sex and love an ugly girl named Beauty. One day, the ugly girl asks, "Why do you love me, a woman with ugly face?", and Krisan answers, "Since beauty is wound". Clearly, he cannot handle better women. The grandeur of the first line of the novel: Prostitute Dewi Ayu waking up from the dead like Jesus is ended with melodramatic fear.
