In the chilling season one finale of HBO’s Lynchian drama The Leftovers, a chain-smoking cult known as the Guilty Remnant break into homes of their fellow Mapleton, NY, residents and set up creepy, life-sized dolls acutely resembling family members who disappeared during a rapture-like event three years prior. Dressed in clothing worn by the departed that was reaped from previous break-ins, the dolls are, in some cases, positioned in the same locations in which these folks were last seen alive. The motive behind such twisted conceit is, essentially, to give the townspeople a harsh reminder of what happened; you’ll have to watch the show yourself, if you’re not already, for more context.
If you are watching, surely your heart skipped a few beats, as mine did, when Nora Durst, a sort of accidental heroine played brilliantly by actress Carrie Coon, goes downstairs to find life-like replicas of her missing husband and children seated at the breakfast table. She screams silently in agonized horror, and for a moment you wonder if there’s something fundamentally wrong with you for considering this entertainment.
For about 15 minutes in Jakarta, I similarly wondered if something was amiss with the Museum Bahari planning committee, for they have taken a page from the Guilty Remnant playbook with brand-new dioramas featuring the same type of fleshy, life-like mannequins used in The Leftovers. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the idea behind such bizarro throwback installations was suggested and, somehow, approved.
Located in the northern Sunda Kelapa harbor area of Kota, Museum Bahari is situated within cavernous warehouses originally built and used by the Dutch East India Company from the late 17th century onwards. In a city short on proper tourist sights, the museum attracts visitors almost by default, most of whom amble about the sparsely filled facility with earnest boredom for ten minutes before moving on.
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There are miniature, not-so-detailed replicas of European and native sailing vessels here, more replicas there…. and a few more replicas over there, near a wall covered with photographic portraits of former Indonesian military naval commanders. Signage is minimal, and the opportunity to provide any kind of true maritime learning moment in a place with a long, fascinating maritime history is squandered. In short, Museum Bahari is a sorely under-funded facility in need of some love, direction, and PR.
To the latter, consider the museum’s perplexing mission statement concerning kids:
Children are the future! This rather commonly heard phrase is easily expressed; nevertheless it is a sound statement for Indonesia. Whether children visit the museum with their parents or with their class accompanied by a teacher, the main issue is that children should amuse themselves. This is a focal point of the maritime museum.
Perhaps it is this goal of self-amusement that inspired the museum’s series of nightmarish, second-level dioramas populated with fleshy dolls dressed as famous (and not-so-famous) adventurers, navigators, religious deities, and mythical beings. In a further unintentional nod towards the macabre, the preserved corpses dolls are set up within the only air-conditioned quarters of the building — nobody, after all, enjoys the stench of preserved corpses mannequins wilting in the Jakartan heat.
There are, naturally, installations dedicated to famous seafarers, like this one featuring famed 17th- and 18th-century British explorers William Bligh, William Dampier, and James Cook. (Dampier is not pictured here; I’m not sure who that creep is in the background.)
In one happy scene, we see natives greeting their Dutch invaders.
And in this painstakingly rendered display, the brutal World War II Japanese occupation is commemorated in appropriately jolting fashion.
There are more — many, many more — sprawling in succession across the second floor of this old VOC warehouse. The exhibition is open, yet unmarked as of October 2014, and the only sounds in these otherwise dead-silent rooms are whirring air-conditioners and floorboards creaking beneath your feet. Go on, kids, amuse yourselves!
Once the preserved corpse doll exhibitions are completed, next up is a third-floor maritime maze in which children are challenged to navigate paper vessels safely into port. To encourage attentive engagement, however, this hands-on learning experience will be fraught with danger. DKI Jakarta, which manages Museum Bahari, has posted a short preview of what to expect:
