The Carnivalesque and the Colonial: Bakhtinian Analysis of Satire and Power in Nineteenth-Century Javanese Wayang Kulit Performances

This study examines the subversive dynamics of nineteenth-century Javanese shadow puppet theatre (wayang kulit) through the theoretical lens of Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, grotesque realism, and heteroglossia. Set against the backdrop of expanding Dutch colonial hegemony and the rigid feudal hierarchies of the Central Javanese courts (Surakarta and Yogyakarta), wayang kulit functioned as a critical discursive space wherein dominant ideological orders were simultaneously reinforced and radically destabilized. By analyzing archival performance texts (pakeliran), literary manuscripts such as the Serat Centhini, and colonial administrative records of indigenous theatrical gatherings, this article demonstrates how the comic interlude (gara-gara) and the grotesque clown-servants (punokawan—Semar, Gareng, Petruk, and Bagong) articulated sharp social critique. Through bodily humor, linguistic irreverence that subverted rigid Javanese speech registers (unggah-ungguh), and parodic inversions of both native aristocrats (priyayi) and Dutch colonial officials (tuan besar), the performances created temporary zones of ideological suspension. The article argues that the Javanese carnivalesque did not merely operate as a benign socio-psychological safety valve, but rather constituted a sophisticated, multi-layered register of indigenous anti-colonial resistance and popular counter-hegemony that challenged the totalizing imperatives of colonial modernity.