honkyTV

As is too often endemic to the human condition, Indonesians love watching television.

Evenings in the alleyways are bathed by the familiar blue glow of pixels whirring and winding their way through the spectral decrescendos of gratification. Come dusk it spills out of windows agape, bounces off murky mirrors, and slinks out under sentinel doors. Ceiling fan blades, mired in perpetualilty, bat it askance; everything from Champion’s League soccer to Hulk Hogan’s reality TV show to combination soap opera/ karaoke programs are cast out, anonymous velocity and terminal identity, into the tropical night’s hazy blue entropy.

My new favorite program on Indonesian TV is a garden variety, Animal Planet, crocodile hunting program. As you might expect it features nerdy, honky, biologist types wearing khaki zip-off shorts (I have been toying with the idea of dedicating an entire entry to the affinity of the white male to these, a highly disturbing trend: stay tuned) rochambeauxing around bodies of water in the dark and subsequently getting overexcited at 15 foot long reptiles.

I can not imagine what it must feel like to be the crocodile in this case: big meal, ensuing food coma, just relaxin’ at the top of the food chain and all of a sudden here comes a bunch of twiggy guys with a bright light and a cable loop attached to a pole. It makes you think twice before you again think that alien abductions are fabricated. I imagine all the crocs hanging out on the muddy shore, chomping game, and working to slap some ladies probably think ‘this guy’ is pretty crazy too.

Anyhow, the saving grace of this particular program is that it is dubbed. Indonesian programming is kind of a mixed bag: Scooby Doo is dubbed, whereas Eddie Murphy movies only have subtitles. In this case though, the dubbing is the main attraction. Crocs thrash about, our intrepid explorers jump in and out of danger’s clamp, hot and bothered biologists detonate the fourth wall with excited explanations, and all the while a breathless Asian voice tries to keep up with the action. Like watching a Kung Fu movie in inverse, it marks one of my giddiest half hours.