Dislodged tales: Javanese goddesses and spirits on the silver screen

• Published in: Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia
• Main Author: Wessing, Robert
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Brill 2008
• Subjects: Linguistics and Language; Social Sciences (miscellaneous); Anthropology; Language and Linguistics; Cultural Studies; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22134379-90003694; https://brill.com/view/journals/bki/163/4/article-p529_4.xml; https://brill.com/downloadpdf/journals/bki/163/4/article-p529_4.xml

Indonesian films and television shows often feature popularly though only superficially known figures from Javanese mythology, including the Goddess of the Southern Ocean Nyai Roro Kidul and her counterpart the Queen of the Snakes Nyi Blorong. In this study I examine the effects of placing the stories about these entities in ‘media space’ (Sen and Hill 2000:199), thus removing them from the local context that in the past infused them with its truth, and making possible their apposition to other truths and values that were previously unconnected to them, and may or may not be congenial with them.