Adaptation Panel

Exploring women representation in transformation of film from other media

This research finds that the reduction of women’s voices does not only occur due to filmmakers’ patriarchal factors, but also because of commercial needs. Particularly, this happens when the production company makes sure that the film product is accessible to as many viewers as possible, by reducing content that could cause controversy. This study starts from efforts to examine women’s voice in the wattpad novel Sin and its adaptation to the film, with the perspective of the female novelist Faradita, the female screenwriter Johanna Wattimena, and possibility of male perspective of the director, Herwin Novianto. Kim (2018, p. 23) revealed that women’s authorship is referred to as ‘women’s diaries’ because it tells the world of women through women’s voices. The study started with assumption that, the film adaptation process was having difficulties because it uses the perspectives of a female script writer and a male director. However, the study reveals that commercialisation can have similarly damaging effects to the women’s voice.

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The film Setan Jawa by Garin Nugroho (2016, a silent film with cinematic-orchestral approach as well as the collaboration of various standards across arts disciplines, adapting many cultural narratives in the Javanese context. This film takes the narrative of devil pact, in which it also presents the Javanese wayang, one of which is the story of Drupadi. Drupadi is often a symbol of women’s loyalty and obedience to the universal law, which is marked by obedience to her husband and mother, even though this obedience actually contradicts her Self (I) concept; as revealed in the Mahabharata (India) version of the Drupadi narrative which seems heroic. Using textual analysis, research on the film examines the adaptation of Drupadi’s cultural narrative that is creatively transposed. The results show that there is a director’s personal code (idiolect) which positions women to have another representation offer that is different from a conventionally cultural narrative, even though within certain cultural values, from the point of view of social convention (sociolect), it still leaves questions about the question of the appropriateness of women’s representation. being creatively transposed in a film that seems to be shown to have the power to carry out its destiny not as a sub-ordinate.
Keywords: idiolect, creative transposition, Javanese devil films, women’s representation