This Diplomatic Dispute Will Not Be Televised

It’s good that Indonesia never had a conflict with Mexico, or we wouldn't have gotten our dose of addictive '90s Mexican telenovelas many of us nostalgic of today. We wouldn't have fallen in love with Dulce Maria’s character in “Carita de Angel” or the tale of puppy love between Anna and Pedro in “Amigos”. I mean, if you look what has been happening in Turkey the past week, you'll see how soap operas can end up in the middle of messy international conflicts.

Last week MBC, a TV station owned by the Saudi royal family, decided to ban all Turkish dramas on their channel for no clear reason. Up until the ban, the Arab-dubbed shows were doing so well in Saudi Arabia to the point where it contributed to the increasing number of Saudi tourists visiting Turkey.

“We will try to replace Turkish soaps with premium-quality Arabic dramas that embody the values and traditions of the region,” MBC spokesman Mazen Hayek told Agence France-Presse.

In an interview with a local Saudi media, Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz said that Turkey, Iran, and other radical Islam groups are a part of “triangle of evil”, where Ankara is supposedly trying to form a caliphate government.

Of course, this wasn't the first time where politics affected the silver screen. Much like the now banned Turkey's "Kiraz Mevsimi"—“Cinta di Musim Cherry” on Indonesian TV—highly popular South Korean soap operas “Boys Before Flowers” and “My Love from the Star” were forbidden in China. The government of China issued the ruling after Seoul supported the US deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system in 2016. China heavily opposed this decision and decided to ban all forms of Korean Wave into their country.

Then there's the ongoing Qatar diplomatic crisis, where Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Egypt banned everything Qatar starting June 2017. Qatar citizens are still banned from staying and visiting those four nations. Since last summer, diplomatic representatives of those countries have been withdrawn from Qatar’s capital of Doha, and flights from and to Qatar have been blocked. Egypt even closed down Qatar Airways' air paths and the airline had to re-route their flights.

Teuku Rezasyah, an international relations expert from University of Padjadjaran, said boycotts of different forms of pop culture have always been implemented by governments everywhere. Towards the end of President Sukarno's rule, for example, his anti-Western administration banned Indonesian musicians from playing rock music, because it was seen as harmful to the local culture. No one was immune to this, not even the legendary band Koes Plus, whose members were imprisoned for four months for performing covers from The Beatles in 1965.

The tricky part here is that the definition of a ban is broad, and can either be direct or indirect. Within the context of the entertainment industry, a boycott may not be implemented overtly like China's ban on Korean soap operas. Demanding foreign TV shows to be dubbed, or limiting the air time of a show for a certain period of time can also be considered indirect forms of boycott.

“Countries are afraid of having reciprocal boycott, so they will try to outsmart one another without being so obvious,” Rezasyah told VICE. “The smarter nations will not announce it openly, instead they will implement behind-the-scene regulations that basically do the same thing.”

So essentially, every nation is boycotting the penetration of foreign entertainment industry to a certain extent.

“The entertainment industry has a psychological side that can enter people’s subconsciousness," Rezasyah said. "In the long term, it becomes one country’s form of 'soft power.' It’s a very strategic way [to establish power] even though it’s a burden financially."

A pop culture expert from art association Pabrikultur, Hikmat Darmawan said the world used to boycott commodities such as food, but as technology and TV grew, boycotting an entertainment industry can be just as devastating to a country as boycotting their food imports.

“It's also a good political statement,” Hikmat told VICE. “It’s light, easy to do and it contains easily cultivated symbolic values such as patriotism.”

Hikmat said that in a consumption-based economy, the spirit of collective patriotism through slogans like “block foreign cultural products” is easy to activate. Such boycott will not only protect the country from other’s politics but also their “foreign” culture.

That’s why its not a surprise when Indonesia was in a conflict with Malaysia a while ago, when there was a call from some Indonesians to boycott Malaysia’s popular children's show "Upin & Ipin". Instead of boycotting Malaysia’s import commodities such as iron and engine, boycotting their import cultural product was going to be easier to justify.

“If a country ban another country’s products of entertainment, they could go, ‘If you’re a patriot, you can live without [those products],'" Hikmat said. "But to ban a food commodity such as rice and to say ‘If you’re a patriot, don’t eat rice’ is way more difficult to pull off."