by Consuelo Laclaustra

Salomon (1991) states that as well as there is a truth, we can find its counterpart, what is false. That being said, he believes that in order for good taste to exist there is also the aberration, in some cases, of bad taste in aesthetics.  Bad taste, he continues, is the “no eye” for composition and color, however there is another side, an ethical dimension where there is a “depiction of the forbidden, the blasphemous, the vulgar expression of the inexpressible, the provocation of the improper and cruelty” (1).   The root of kitsch culture comes from this sense of decadence proper of a culture with no boundaries, and no wonder why is “bad-taste” what portraits the horror of the plot in The Act of Killing. The documentary, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, tells the story of Anwar, the founder of the right-wing paramilitary organization Pancasila in Indonesia, who in 1965 became the head of the anti-communist movement, responsible of killing thousands of civilians with his bare hands.  Oppenheimer faces Anwar and his friends, and encourages them to tell us their story in any way they want. Anwar chooses to do a movie.  From beginning to end, the documentary seems an unrealistic dream of a culture long dead and so distant from ours.  Oppenheimer shows us a military group obsessed with pop culture and with the need of presenting a gory and inexistent profile of an obsolete group hidden by fear. The use of talk shows similar to those of the 80´s, drag queens, idyllic landings and right-wing gangsters makes us wonder on the words by Salomon. The images of the wires used to kill mixed with cowboys and the western culture, plus the conversations filled with the horror of the rapes and pedophile acts, referred as “better times” caused what kitsch culture did at the beginning:  repulsion and sickness. The spectator does not only feel rejection but remains in a state of shock throughout the development of the story. It seems that nowadays pop culture and mass information does not amuses the individual, however the human being whenever he or she has to face the absurd with the cruel, becomes almost immediately a reflective entity, and the laughter of the audience is no longer caused by the absurd but by the impossibility of believing that such things can happen in the XXIst century.  The Act of Killing proves that cruelty can find different forms, and that “bad-taste”  is not only present in the aesthetic composition, but in the ontological matter of men.

Robert C. Salomon, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, On Kitsch and Sentimentality, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Winter, 1991), pp. 1-14