Mimicry in the Form of Garuda Superhero’s Costume Design

Living in the age of globalization, with the advancement of networking technology, it has become more important than ever to study the way cultures interact and relate to one another.

Now with the access of internet, it becomes easy for ideas to spread from one end of the world to another. For the purpose of this essay however, it is important to see how the West and the East adopt one another’s culture in the form of mimicry. Which is why this essay is going to focus on the form of mimicry in the costume design of Garuda from Garuda Superhero, a 2014 film directed by X-Jo, and how it is similar to the costume design of Batman from The Dark Knight movie trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan.

 But before delving into the main topic, it is imperative to establish what mimicry is and how does it happen. Etymology speaking, mimicry comes from the greek word mimetikos which means “to imitate”. The term refers to a biological phenomenon where there are certain resemblance between one species to another in terms of their anatomy and behaviour (Bullock & Trombley, 1999). However, in post-colonialism context, it refers to the dynamic of cultural representation. Bhabha (1984) states that “colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizeable Other”. To put in another way, it is how the colonialist countries interpret as well as represent the Other cultural touchstones to mold them into their vision. Viewed through that lens, mimicry is a kind of cultural power play. Bhabha even elaborates that by “normalizing” the Other, “the dream of post-Enlightenment civility alienates its own language of liberty and produces another knowledge of its norms.”

However, mimicry can also be a two-way process where the Other adopt the West’s culture in the form of westernization. But why would the Other wants to adopt their colonizer’s culture? This has to do with the conception of orientalism. Edward Said (1978) states that colonizing countries divide the countries in the world into two opposing sides i.e. the West (the occulent) and the East (the orient). This socially constructed “sides” allow colonizers to present a narrative where the West is considered as the more superior, advance, and enlighten race while the East is considered as an exotic, backward, “Other”. For some percentages of the world’s population, this is a narrative that is considered as true, leading to a number of countries embracing westernization. Indonesia is among these countries. The clearest evidence of this lies in the fact that our system of government is a democracy and the fact that there is a growing phenomenon of English code-switching within Indonesia’s citizen (Setiawan, 2016). Our cultural exchange with the West more or less begins when the Portugese landed in Malacca and when the Dutch began to colonize Indonesia in the 16th century.

With the definition and the reasoning behind mimicry established, we can now move on to the example stated in the first paragraph, which is the similarity between Garuda and Batman in terms of their costume design. Images of the two is provided  below:

To the left is the image of Batman’s costume design from the movie The Dark Knight Rises and to the right is the image of Garuda’s costume design from the movie Garuda Superhero. Based on the image above, the similarity between the two can be seen clearly. There is the ovewhelming black color covering both of these attire and armor-like structure of the costume. Finally, there is the overall head design. There is a similarity of curvature around the eyes and how the mask all leads up to two pointy ends, although in the case of Garuda’s design, the two ends are connected. This is something that needs to be examined further. Given the name of the superhero, Garuda, the filmmaker perhaps intended for the superhero to evoke the image of the Garuda bird from the Pancasila, emphasizing the nation origin of the hero. However, the head design bears no resemblance whatsoever to Garuda or even any bird. Based on this, it is clear that Garuda’s design was intended to mimic Batman’s design.

 So how does this came about? There is certainly a chance that this is merely a coincidence, but given the uncanny resemblances between the two costume, that seems unlikely. Perhaps it would be useful to know the background surrounding Garuda Superhero’s conception. Years before Garuda Superhero was released, Christopher Nolan directed and co-wrote The Dark Knight trilogy, a series of movies consisting of Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). The trilogy is a commercial and a critical hit, grossing over $2,460.7 million worldwide according to Box Office Mojo (n.d.) with The Dark Knight in particular being lauded as one of the greatest superhero movie of all time. Roger Ebert, one of the most revered hollywood film critic, wrote in his review (2008) that The Dark Knight expands what comic-book movie adaption can truly capable of, stating that, “The Dark Knight move the genre into deeper waters. They realize, as some comic-book readers instinctively do, that these stories touch on deep fears, traumas, fantasies and hopes.” Pointing back to how the East wants to mimic the West in part due to a (socially-constructed) conception that the West is superior than the East,  perhaps the filmmaker of Garuda Superhero wanted to ride The Dark Knight popularity wave by giving its superhero costume a similar design. Perhaps it was simply a nod toward the movie trilogy that kicked off the rise of superhero films. Even though X-Jo has already developed the idea for Garuda Superhero since 2004 (Hazliansyah, 2013), a year before Batman Begins was released, it is more than possible that The Dark Knight trilogy resonated so deeply with the filmmaker that it becomes an inspiration for the Garuda costume, intentional or not. Either way, without a direct confirmation from X-Jo, these reasonings are all merely a speculation.

 However, what we can say with some amount of confidence is that the similarity between Garuda’s costume and Batman’s costume is a case of mimicry where Indonesia tried to mimic the visual of America’s cultural icon. This example prove how mimicry is not just a one-way process of the West appropriating the East, but a two-way process with both sides mimicking one another for each of their own purposes.

References:

Bhabha, H. (1984). Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse. October, 28, 125-133. doi:10.2307/778467

Bullock, A. & Trombley, S. (Eds.). (1999). The new fontana dictionary of modern thought (3rd ed.). London, England: HarperCollins Publisher.

Ebert, R. (2008). The Dark Knight. Retrieved from https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-dark-knight-2008

(Future Fadhli here. This essay was written for my Intercultural Studies class at UPI. I saw the two images above, and I thought to myself, "Welp, that look similar," and I just ran with it)