SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Dorce Gamalama is one of Indonesian television’s best-known celebrities. She first rose to fame in the 1980s and her career is very much based on her public profile as a transsexual woman. This article focuses on Dorce’s performance of gender and class in two films: Dorce ketemu jodoh (Dorce meets her match, 1990) and Dorce sok akrab (Dorce up close, 1989). In Dorce ketemu jodoh, Dorce represents herself as a woman, albeit one who is unlike other women, and who is confident enough in her gender identity not to shy away from gender playfulness. In Dorce sok akrab, Dorce’s character encapsulates the possibility for upward social mobility as an integral aspect of New Order development ideology, though it is a mobility which strongly resists notions of westernisation and elitism, and is instead firmly rooted in local forms of cultural identity.