Good Morning!
Oh My God, my heart is pounding!
First of all, I would like to say sorry if I keep reading the notes because this is TEDx
Talks, not a subject that needs to be memorized, so there are the notes.
(audience laughs)
Before I start, talking about “Dua Garis Biru”, talking about the story, talking
about the rational, I will talk about my parents first.
Disclaimer, my parents are nice and thoughtful parents, always trying to be better all the
time.
But, they are the boomers’ generation.
When I was born, their age was (already) forty years old, and my second eldest sibling was
thirteen years old, and during their parenthood, they are not the parents who could talk about
sex openly.
So, my parents, my mother to be precise, start talking about sex when I was nineteen years
old, at that time I was washing my face.
So those nineteen years were – I married at twenty-one years old – two years before
I married.
At that time, I was washing my face in the bathroom and then my mother came in, she stared
at me.
I used the soap, and I stared back at her, and she said, “Gina, don’t do anything
with a man.
Your body is precious”.
I was speechless, I stared at her, she stared at me, then my mother said, “Okay”.
Then she left the room and I was stunned.
That’s it, that was my first and last conversation about sex with her in my whole life.
The thing is, I have been curious about sex since I was about five years old.
At that time, our family watched, please do not follow, the second Lethal Weapon, around
1990 maybe you were just born.
I’m exposing my age.
So, the main character, Mel Gibson is a detective, since he is a detective in Hollywood movie,
so there are a lot of bombs and injury scenes.
In a scene together with his female co-star, they are checking each other’s wounds and
start teasing each other.
My father, as the responsible parents in the context of the 90s, immediately closed my
eyes.
The problem is, he closed only a little (illustrating), so it is clear what was on the screen.
I was a child who was full of curiosity who never specifically got an explanation about
this matter.
Then, in my first year of junior high school, my cousin, a girl, and I were curious about
pornographic movies, “Eh, have you watched that or not, Gin?”, “No, I have not”.
Finally, because in the past, there was still no high-tech internet, we both took public
transportation for ten minutes to the VCD (Video Compact Disc) place.
Then by playing cool, my cousin asked, “Bro, do you have that video or not?”.
We finally got it.
Then, ten minutes later, we went home.
Then, we watched it and there was no story, right away there were two Japanese people
having sexual intercourse, and of course, I was traumatized.
It also happened on the first day of Ramadan.
(audience laughs) Well, as children, we prayed “the sins will
be erased”.
Then, when I was in high school, there was another curiosity, an Indian movie called
“Kama Sutra”.
When it was played, turns out it is an arthouse movie, it was my first movie to get to know
Mira Nair, my favorite movie director, and finally, I found out how the sex in the story
was treated and how women were treated.
However, when we look at it, movie and sex are united, in the sense that I could know
about sex were from Japanese, Indian, and American people as a teenager, but I could
not open a room for discussion.
So, what actually opens up a room for our discussion?
Things that open up space for a discussion are the context and the story.
Well, that is why, when I got the chance, I chose to create “Dua Garis Biru”.
I created Two Blue Lines ten years ago.
At that time I already had children, then I didn't want to make the same mistakes as
my parents, I wanted to provide a comprehensive sex education, because I didn't know how much
more difficult it would be when my child was born and the world was in the palm of his
hand, on a cell phone .
But, when I wrote it down, there was even more fear.
When the first draft of the scenario was finished, I couldn't finish it.
Because I realized more and more, when I became a parent, the more I felt the tremendous fortune
of being able to escape my misunderstanding about sex.
There are so many people out there, especially women who are victims, if they don't have
sexual intercourse, it doesn't matter whatsoever.
But there are psychological scars that are constantly brought on until they end up disconnecting.
Then, there are also those who get pregnant outside of marriage, they must be married
off, not to mention those who have an abortion, and so on.
Fortunately, I was stuck, for ten years, I kept looking for possible stories, and finally
came to a point when I understood one thing, that a story and loving a child have one thing
in common, namely rationality.
Being rational means doing something sensibly.
movie is a process of recording beliefs.
Story and storytelling is the process of how we make the logic of the story or story building.
Or if it is a little loose, nowadays children, uh... in the past generation called it, plot
hole.
Then keep wanting to bring out curiosity, so that people become engaged with what's
on the screen.
Now, when the movie doesn't make sense, we as the audience will lose our emotional bonds,
we will start to get anxious, then ask many things, "This is illogical, the character
period is like that?", And so on.
Because when someone tries to write a story that makes sense, there is a logic to build
on.
When we as story creators are aware that there is a logic to be built, then there are story
arguments that can be built.
When story-arguments are built, we don't need to rely on moral messages.
Moral messages go one way.
The moral message will directly enforce what a creator wants to convey to the audience.
It is no different from when we suddenly get a WhatsApp message, then we get advice, accompanied
by "I'm sorry just want to remind" with hand emojis like this (illustrate) a lot.
We are uncomfortable because we feel being pushed, doesn't make us think.
Now, I wanted to make Two Blue Lines into an emotional story that was built rationally.
Two Blue Lines is the story of two children who wanted to take responsibility for their
mistakes, but then they found themselves in an irrational world where they did not get
a good sex education because of their parents' fear.
Later when their parents found out, they took over to solve the problems for these two children,
Dara and Bima.
Then there was a tug-of-war kind of situation on how they wanted to take responsibility.
However, being responsible requires rational reasoning and empathy.
Those are two things that I think are starting to arise now, but rarely found in the world
of parenting, the world of education, and are not openly discussed by many.
Especially when we are in the world of social media, where everyone is more confined by
their niche within small groups based on algorithms, we are getting more and more gullible, ironically,
we are also starting to build a "wall" between them and ourselves.
It won't make hard-to-talk things like sex becoming easy to talk about.
Dara and Bima are examples that only serve as displays of things that really need to
be discussed seriously.
People choose to ignore and follow their emotions.
Emotions of fear, fear of embarrassment, rather than choosing to face the problem face to
face: what really is the problem when we talk about sex?
People want to love but they are too emotional, hence they forget to teach their children
to love themselves and to learn to love others rationally.
When we let our children to love rationally, or parents to love rationally, then we will
believe in their self-autonomy.
That is how sex education is, it does not just talk about sex intercourse, but giving
you the understanding of what our bodies need to respect ourselves, to protect ourselves,
and to respect each other.
In the beginning, when the teaser was just released, there were people who immediately
got scared because they did not use their rational thinking.
They watched it for one minute, then they said, "Okay, this movie is dangerous and should
not be watched."
Then this statement made a new wave.
Fortunately, there are only 50 signatures on a petition to stop the movie release.
It's the remaining 115 minus 50 people who are fighting back.
But from that fear, which I admire from the current Generation Z, they wanted to build
an even bigger wave.
What happens on social media is young people, the viewers, saying, “We, young people,
need sex education, you adults never give it to us.
You hide behind your fear, but you forget to protect us completely.”
Because of Two Blue Lines, with the overwhelming welcome from teenagers who may still have
a sense of naivety holding them back, with that courage, Two Blue Lines can get these
young actors and I to talk about sex education openly, both in small towns when we went on
a roadshow and on a national TV, even in Malaysia.
But, even though there was a wave of courage when this movie was in the cinema, there were
still many people including teachers, school principals, parents, even Biology teachers,
who forbade their children to watch this movie because they did not use their rationality
and did not want to open a room of discussion.
Why so?
Because it's hard.
Well, a story that is built rationally will make people who have the courage to love rationally,
to love better, to be able to have the teaching material.
People like this teacher, when his students are streaming, he is someone who is willing
to choose the difficult discussion for the future of his students.
He watched Two Blue Lines with his students to talk about such things.
It's easier to censor, it's easier to avoid difficult discussions like sex or other like
Indonesia's history for example than to have the discussion.
Therefore, we need love and rational stories.
We cannot rely on movies to help our young people, but we can use movies to open the
discussions for us.
Let's choose courage, let's choose love, and let's choose rationality.
Thank you.