Childhood, animality and emotions in indonesian film director Edwin’s Babi buta yang ingin terbang/Blind Pig Wants to Fly (2008)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article looks at the ways childhood, animality and emotions are imbricated in the Chinese Indonesian film director Edwin’s film: Babi buta yang ingin terbang/Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly (2008). By examining their entanglement, it demonstrates how the director’s use of childhood as a trope of becoming externalises the complex configuration of emotions embodied by Chinese in Indonesia. Further, this article explores this configuration as the subjective dimension of Sinophobia, here approached as the historical process of positioning Chinese Indonesians as an object of national disgust. Complementing this analysis, this article also examines Edwin’s employment of a pig-imaginary to visually convey the affective effects of contemporary racism in Indonesia. This article concludes arguing that, by employing both childhood and animality, Blind Pig effectively troubles what Chineseness is by means of visualising how it feels from the embodied perspective of a minoritised diasporic subject.