Book
Review Essay: A Colonial Perspective on the Indonesia-Netherlands Comics
Connectionby Rik Spanjers
Ruud
den Drijver. Indocomics:
de ‘katjangs’ van de stripkunst. Amsterdam: Baltimore Publications, 2022. 9789082654936
The
academic research of comics is inextricably entangled with the work that, in
past and present, has been done by makers, collectors, reviewers and fans. Comics
research in the United States would not have been the same without some of its
initial gestures in the works of Coulton Waugh, Jules Feiffer, Will Eisner, Ron
Goulart, Mort Walker, art historian David Kunzle and Jim Steranko. In France,
as Ian Horton and Maggie Gray have recently shown in Art History for Comics
(2022), comics research started in the 60s from the work done in the Club
des Bandes Dessinées and the Société civile d’études et de recherches
des littératures dessinées (Horton and Gray 2022, 13). In the Netherlands
too, it is impossible to think comics outside the early work of Kees and
Evelien Kousemaker, whose Strip voor Strip, een verkenningstocht (1970)[1] and the slightly later Wordt Vervolgd:
Stripleksikon der Lage Landen (1979)[2] laid the foundations for
the historiography of 20th century Dutch comics culture.[3]
Within the context of comics
studies, then, it does not make sense to think in terms of professional and
amateur research, or research done within the context of academic institutions
and independent research. Instead, comics studies consists of many different
kinds of research aimed at different publics. In the Netherlands, for example,
Joost Pollmann, on the one hand, combines his work as journalist and (comics)
reviewer with specialist publications on comics culture such as Letterlijk
en figuurlijk: Strips kun je beter lezen (2011)[4] and De Stripprofessor:
vijftig colleges over tekenkunst (2016).[5] On the other hand, Kees
Ribbens, who in the context of his work as an endowed professor
of Popular Historical Culture of Global Conflicts and Mass Violence at Erasmus
University Rotterdam has written about
comics for several academic publications, has also co-published[6] an overview of the
representation of history in comics that has a broader public in mind than his
academic work (Getekende tijd: Wisselwerking tussen geschiedenis en strip 2006) [7].
Just as all papers for academic
journals have certain generic commonalities, the first moves of early comics
studies in different national context are also alike in specific ways. One of
the most important one of these is that, possibly in an attempt to counteract
the ghettoization of the comics medium, comics culture is often placed in
rather broad art historical contexts. Early comics historians have tied the
medium of comics to a rather incredibly wide array of art historical traditions
and/or specific works such as caricature, Trajan’s Column, the Bayeux Tapestry,
catchpenny prints, hieroglyphics and the cave paintings of Lascaux. And even if
I have been recently convinced by Ian Horton and Maggie Gray (or by Kunzle 40
years ago) that this art historical emplacement of comics within broader pictorial
traditions is not without merit, I have always been very suspicious of many of
the all-to-easy connections that have been established between contemporary
comics and some of the more consecrated works and traditions from the canon of
European art history. Such comparisons are emancipatory first and foremost,
which is why many of them would not endure into a more rigorous historiography
of the medium.
It is exactly in this connection between European art history and comics
culture that the recently published Indocomics: De ‘katjangs’ van de
stripkunst,[8]
unveils its most important claim for Indonesian comics. In the third chapter of
his book, “Het ‘katjang’ mysterie,”[9] Ruud den Drijver names the
warthog (or pig) painted on the wall of the Sampeang Cave on South-Celebes as the oldest
ancestor of contemporary comics characters (den Drijver 2022, 61). He does so
somewhat tongue-in-cheek, clearly cognizant of the hyperbole of the assertion
that he constructs here. With this one move, den Drijver manages to undermine
the now so clearly Eurocentric perspective of many other comics histories. By
choosing to compare comics to a clearly Eurocentric conception of art history,
these histories restate the emancipatory underpinnings of this comparison. If
we really want to investigate comics in a broader art historical context, the
Sampeang warthog shows us, it does not make sense to replicate a brand of 19th
century Eurocentrism while doing so. This should be the goal of a history of
the interactions between Indonesian and Dutch comics culture. Such a history
destabilizes existing preconceptions of the differences between “West” and “East”
and combats stereotype and essentialism in the depiction of both Indonesia and
the Netherlands. Excepting the warthog, however, Indocomics is not such
a history.
Instead, den Drijver’s book offers
an uncritical retracing of Dutch orientalist stereotypes which imprison the
works of comics art that are discussed in it back into a colonial perspective.
This does not mean that there is nothing of worth in this book. The work
deserves praise for the way in which it maps the influence of what might be
called the Indonesian-Dutch comics connection. Den Drijver is right to point to
the prominence of Indo-European comics artist in the history of Dutch comics
culture; creators such as Eppo Doeve, Thé Tjong-Khing, Aimée de Jong, Paul
Teng, Peter van Dongen, and Peter Nuyten have and continue to play a central
role in the development of Dutch comics culture.
But Indocomics is not just an
attempt to sketch the individual histories of these comics artists, but is also
a search for the “unique mark”[10] that these creators have
left on comics culture (den Drijver 2022: 131). The word “unique” gestures
towards much that is problematic about the approach that den Drijver pursues in
Indocomics. In what way can the (post-) colonial context of Indonesia
and the Netherlands be a place to talk about uniqueness? It is already
incredibly difficult, if not impossible, as den Drijver himself shows, to offer
neatly defined descriptions of the different nationalities of the creators that
are discussed in this work (den Drijver 2022: 7). For a long time, birth in the
Dutch-Indies did not make one a Dutch citizen, but a Dutch subject. Citizenship
was only possible for those who were born in the Dutch-Indies and who had
either a Dutch father or two Dutch parents. This complexity disappeared partly
after Indonesia’s independence after World War II, but was quickly replaced by
a less-formally-anchored, yet just as complicated web of imagined and lived
identities, such as Indonesian, Indo-European, Toktok, Molukkan, and Dutch
(Oostindie 2011: 26-33). This all goes to show how difficult and dangerous it
is to subsume all these different relationships of individuals to the colonial
history of Indonesia and the Netherlands into a singular experience, which, in
turn, might be characterized by a “unique” approach to comics. The experiences
of different Dutch postcolonial subjects have varied substantially, not in the
least based on the colors of their skins. What is more, these complexities
multiply when one adds the illusionary character of any kind of uniform
Indonesian or Dutch national context to it. As Benedict Anderson shows in Imagined
Communities (2016), some perceived differences between national cultures
are the product of a process of uniformization that started in 19th
century Europe. One can try and define Dutch culture positively, but often
Dutch citizens cannot venture past cliches such as the struggle against water,
the 16th century golden age, “polderen,” pillarization, tulips, directness, and stinginess (Wekker 2016: 20-21). However, if one starts looking
at different parts of the Netherlands, or even individual Dutch people, such
cliches often are very poor descriptors. For Indonesia, a country that consists
of approximately 17.500 islands, 270 million inhabitants, and at least 1300
different cultural communities of different sizes, references to a uniform
national culture, or a national character, are even more preposterous.
Throughout Indocomics,
however, to characterize the uniqueness of Indonesian-Dutch comics creators, he
makes references to such national cultures:
An explanation [of the uniqueness of comics made by
makers with a Dutch-Indies background] might be found in the [Dutch] “just be
normal”-mentality. Only those who carry within themselves the traces of a
different, less sober culture, can extract themselves from this national
character. This raises the question whether comics creators with a Dutch-Indies
background differentiate themselves from others, and if they do, how this
difference is marked. And can connections be made to the Javanese or Balinese
culture? (den Drijver 2022: 9).[11]
By
presenting the Dutch national character as something negative from which
creators with a Dutch Indies background can extricate themselves on the basis
of a “carried trace” of a different culture, den Drijver seems to be placing
Dutch culture in a bad light. Furthermore, by distinguishing between Javanese
and Balinese culture, den Drijver at least introduces some diversity into his description
of Indonesian cultural history. Describing culture as carried traces, however,
reproduces the othering of Dutch persons of color in the Netherlands (Wekker
2016: 7, 15).
Throughout Indocomics, den
Drijver pushes to find difference between comics made by creators who do and do
not have a background in the Dutch Indies. In that sense, Indocomics is
a strong example of the way in which colonial history is other othered from the
national historical narrative, instead of approached as an integral part to it
(Wekker 2016, 13). This skewed perspective causes den Drijver to countermand
the complexity introduced by the incredibly intricately crosshatched history of
Indonesia and the Netherlands with a stylistic analysis based on colonial
stereotypes and a binary division between “West” and “East”. Comics creators
with a background in the Dutch Indies are described as introducing “sambal”[12] (den Drijver 2022: 11), a
“magical” atmosphere through the heavy use of black shading (14), and as
referring, both consciously and unconsciously to “East-Indonesian art … famous
for its wajang puppet theatre and colorfully painted wall panels” (25).[13] In his attempts to create
a separate category within Dutch comics culture for creators with a background
in the Dutch Indies, then, den Drijver lapses into colonial stereotyping. For
it is only from such a colonial perspective that the category of “Indocomics”
gains enough coherency to make sense.
Take, for example, den Drijver’s
analysis of Iris (1968) by Hertog van Banda and Thé Tjong-Khing. Den
Drijver’s argument is that this comic should not only be read in the context of
Pop Art works such as Jodelle (1966) by Guy Peelaert. Because of its use
of primary colors, which are supposed to remind readers of Javanese wall panels
(den Drijver 2022: 22), it should be seen as a prominent example of the early
“Indocomics.” Perceived as a whole, however, Iris is much closer to the
work of Peelaert and other sixties counterculture comix, than it is to Javanese
wall panel art. One can definitely argue that traces of a Javanese art
historical tradition can be found, but by enlarging these influences at the
cost of much closer—historically and culturally—inspirations, den Drijver
creates a distorted view of the hybrid cultural context in which this work was
produced. This distortion, moreover, becomes problematic when den Drijver, in
an attempt to enlarge the Indonesian characteristics of Iris, writes,
“with an almost ritual dedication Thé Tjong-Khing handles a Chinese pencil”
(den Drijver 2022: 25).[14] Besides “sambal” and
magic, the “Indocomic” is thus also characterized by the ritualistic way of
working of its creators. Den Drijver’s tendency to highlight and enlarge
difference using colonial terminology recurs when he compares creators with and
without a Dutch Indies background on the bases of the art historical traditions
from which these creators are purported to work:
The on first sight subtle, but immense difference
between all these creators is that they [artists with a “Dutch” background]
drew traditionally, somewhat like the classical Dutch masters. The magical
lighting of Kresse, Toonder, and Wijn is a ‘clair-obscur’ that is related to
Rembrandt, with at the most an exotic outing towards Caravaggio. The indocomics
of Thé, Doeve, Kloezeman, van Boxsel en Van Giffen cross naturalistic boundaries
in multiple ways. (den Droeve 2022: 28).[15]
What
does den Doeve mean here? He seems to be pointing to a difference between an
artificial, cinematographic form of lighting and the more naturalistic lighting
of the painting of Rembrandt and Caravaggio. But can one really argue that the
lighting of Rembrandt and Caravaggio is naturalistic? Den Drijver is right to
see a slight difference in intensity between the use of shading/lighting in the
artists he discusses here. But by connecting this kind of shading, via the
detour of Jacques Tourneurs’ Night of the Demon (1957), to the Javanese
shadow puppet theatre (30), instead of, for example, the use of shading in the
in that time incredibly popular comics of Milton Caniff and Hugo Pratt, den
Drijver’s underlines his colonial perspective.
Besides creators who were born in
the Dutch Indies and thus had a firsthand experience of the colonial past, den
Drijver also includes works made by artists who were born in the Netherlands,
but who had one or two parents or grandparents born in the Dutch Indies. Den
Drijver locates and enlarges similar traces of Javanese and Balinese culture in
the works of these makers, and notes that this second generation does refer
more explicitly to the colonial past, which is something that the artists from
the first generation never really did. In his analyses of the works of these
more recent artists, his tendencies towards essentialist over-analysis becomes
even more clear. The few examples that den Drijver picks from Peter van
Dongen’s postcolonial masterpiece Rampokan (1998-2004) are not enough to
place it into his previously defined category of “Indocomics.” Instead of
fitting neatly within that category, Rampokan shows, in both its clear
line drawing style and its narrative, the hybridity of traditions and identities
that characterizes colonial history. By looking at this work with an
essentialist perspective that tries to tie it down to one coherent tradition or
culture, one misses everything that makes this work one of the most important
Dutch comics.
Even with an artist that has as
diverse international influences as Aimée de Jongh, den Drijver continues to
focus almost solely on her Indonesian roots. While noting that de Jongh’s style
is heavily influenced by both the European and the Japanese comics traditions,
den Drijver characterizes her page compositions in Days of Sand (2021)
as “ancient Javanese and Balinese decoupages and transitions” (den
Drijver 2022: 111),[16] without actually offering
any substantial proof to back up his claims. I have always seen much more of
the thousands of pages of Japanese comics that de Jongh has read and the many
she made as a doujinshi artists in her current breakdowns than anything else.
Just as was the case with van Dongen’s work, den Drijver misses the blending of
different traditions that characterizes de Jongh’s work because he cannot see
beyond his self-made category of “Indocomics.”
Comics are a transnational
phenomenon. As Eike Exner has recently reiterated in his Comics and the
Origins of Manga (2022), it is impossible to ground manga as uniquely
springing from a Japanese tradition. One can only understand manga as a
transnational cultural cross-pollination. I believe the same goes for Dutch
comics, which cannot be characterized through the paintings of the Dutch
masters or catchpenny prints, but is a wonderfully strange amalgam of
Franco-Belgian, American, Indonesian, British, and, more recently, Japanese
influences. By drawing national lines through comics cultures, we risk
repeating a 19th century madness that will only bring scholarship
further from understanding the object it studies.
This does not mean, however, that
there are no traces of the national in comics. Of course, it is possible to find
parts of Javanese or Balinese visual traditions in comics made by creators with
a background, however down the family tree, in Indonesia. But instead of
conjuring up the notion that these “traces of culture” have been spoon-fed into
these authors in their upbringing, comics scholars should investigate the ways
in which creators that work in the present refer back to the colonial past. Den
Drijver’s work, in this sense, approaches its objective backwards. Instead of
thinking of cultural tradition chronologically, the author could also have started
from the present. In that case, the Indonesian heritage of these creators is
not an inescapable part of the national character of an artist, but, seen
positively, a source of inspiration to tap from the present, and, seen
negatively, a past with which they are, because of continuing systemic racism
in the Netherlands, forced to relate themselves to on a daily basis. Part of
what den Drijver calls “Indocomics” would then not stem from an unbroken chain
of tradition, but would be works that consciously engage with the colonial past
in order to shed light on it or provide it with new contexts. Much more than as
prisoners of an identity defined by others, such an approach would show comics
artists with an Indonesian background as cultural tastemakers that use comics
to interrogate the complex colonial heritage of both Indonesia and the
Netherlands.
I would like to thank Eeva Langeveld for her critical reading of an earlier version of this piece.
A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 24:2.Works
Cited:
Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Rise and Spread of Nationalism (Revised Edition). London: Verso.
den
Drijver, Ruud. 2022. Indocomics: de ‘katjangs’ van de stripkunst. Amsterdam: Baltimore Publications.
Exner, Eike. 2022. Comics and the Origins of Manga. New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press.
Horton, Ian and Maggie Gray. 2022. Art History for
Comics: Past, Present, and Potential Futures. London: Palgrave.
Oostindie, Gert. 2011. Postcolonial Netherlands:
Sixty-Five Years of Forgetting, Commemorating, Silencing. Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press.
Wekker, Gloria. 2016. White Innocence: Paradoxes of
Colonialism and Race. Durham NC, Duke University Press.
[1] Comic by Comic, a Reconnaissance
[translation author].
[2] To Be Continued: An
Encyclopedia of Comics from the Low Countries [translation author].
[3] Kees Kousemaker was also the
founder of the now famous Lambiek comics shop, which was Europe’s first
comics shop and is the oldest still operating comics shop in existence. Much of
Kousemaker’s work on comics has found its way into the Comiclopedia, an
illustrated compendium of over 14.000 comics artists from around the world.
[4] Literally and Figuratively: Reading
comics [translation author].
[5] The Comics Professor: Fifty
Classes on Comics [translation author].
[7] Drawn Time: The interactions
between history and comics [translation author].
[8] Indocomics: the ‘katjangs’ of
comics art [translation author]. The term katjang was used in the Dutch Indies
and the later Dutch Indonesian community to refer to a bawdy young boy.
[9] The ‘katjang’ mystery
[translation author].
[10] One of the difficulties of
presenting a review of a Dutch book in English as that my translations of
direct quotes might skew the perspective slightly. In this case, den Drijver
writes “de unieke stemple die zij op de stripcultuur hebben achtergelaten” (den
Drijver 2022: 131), which I translate as the unique mark which they left on
comics culture.” I will paraphrase in the main text as much as possible, but
will also note down the original Dutch texts in footnotes.
[11]
Een verklaring [van de unieke stempel R.S.] kan worden gezocht in de ‘doe maar
gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg’-mentaliteit. Alleen diegenen die de sporen in
zich dragen van een andere, minder nuchtere cultuur, weten zich aan deze
volksaard te onttrekken. Het werpt tegelijk de vraag op of het zo is dat
stripmakers met een Indische achtergrond zich onderscheiden van anderen, en zo
ja, waaruit dit blijkt. En valt er een verband met de Javaanse of Balinese
cultuur aan te wijzen? (den Drijver 9).
[12] Sambal is a, in the
Netherlands, famous spicy sauce that is associated with Indonesian cuisine. Den
Drijver thus describes comics creators with a Dutch Indies background as
spicing up Dutch comics culture.
[13] “de
Oost-Indische schilderkunst […], bekend van wajangspelen en kleurrijk
beschilderde wandpanelen” (25).
[14] “Met bijna
rituele toewijding hanteerde Thé Tjong-Khing een Chinees penseel” (25). On page 33,
den Drijver repeats the same colonial stereotype when he describes the
rendition of a European sacrificial ritual in Romano Molenaars Roodhaar (2014-2022):
“The European, Batavian rites of sacrifice are rendered by him [Molenaar] with
a Balinese-sacred dedication that reminds of the precision of Asian rites.” In
Dutch: “De Europese, Bataafse offerfeesten worden door hem geportretteerd met
een Balinees-sacrale toewijding die aan de precisie van Aziatische rites
herinnert” (den Drijver 2022: 33).
[15]
Het ogenschijnlijk subtiele, maar immense verschil met al deze tekenaars was
dat zij [de tekenaars met een Nederlandse achtergrond] traditioneel tekenden,
ongeveer zoals de klassieke Hollandse meesters. De magische belichting van
Kresse, Toonder en Wijn is een aan Rembrandt verwant ‘clair-obscur’, met
hooguit een exotisch uitstapje naar Caravaggio. De indocomics van Thé, Doeve,
Kloezeman, Van Boxsel en Van Giffen gingen in meerdere opzichten
naturalistische grenzen over. (den
Droeve 2022: 28).
[16] “aloude
Javaanse en Balinese decoupages en beeldovergangen” (den Drijver 2021: 111).
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