Encouraging Unity Across the World’s Largest Group of Islands

When Sesame Workshop international producer Ginger Brown arrived in Indonesia to work on Jalan Sesama, the locally produced version of Sesame Street, she quickly learned that she was going to have to place her full trust in the Indonesian team that was building the television studio.

After asking a few times if she could please see the building, which was “nearly finished,” Brown accompanied the Indonesian production team to the site. What she saw was far from finished; there were four walls, a dirt floor, and not much else.

This was nothing new to Brown, who has had similar experiences with unfinished studios in the past. On those occasions, the studios were finished and beautiful by the time shooting was scheduled to begin, so she took the sight of the half-built studio calmly.

“I looked at it and I said, ‘they’ll be done, I have faith in production people,’” Brown says, recalling that her colleagues from the Sesame Workshop team were “looking at me kind of anxiously and worriedly.”

Shaping a cohesive national identity

Pulling a studio together into a cohesive whole requires hard work, patience, and the belief that everything will come together in the end. For Indonesia, made up of 17,508 islands strewn across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, shaping a cohesive national identity presents a similar challenge – and it’s one that can’t be stuck together with mortar.

The world’s largest archipelago and fourth most populous country straddles the Australian and Asian continents, and because of its unique geographical situation has long grappled with creating a common national voice.

It’s also presented a challenge for Sesame Workshop and their production partner Creative Indigo, who teamed up to create Jalan Sesama, which debuted in February 2008.  

The country’s national motto is “Bhinneka tunggal ika,” which translates loosely to “unity in diversity,” and more literally to “Although in pieces, yet one.” The show’s title, Jalan Sesama, reflects this mentality, translating to “Togetherness Street.”

Jalan Sesama’s focus faithfully reflects the national motto. As Brown describes it, “The focus of the show is unity through diversity, and I think there is a sense of bringing people together.”

Tantan, Momon, Putri, Jabrik (Jalan Sesama)

“I think success for this show would be to further define what that [Indonesian] national voice is. If we can do it for kids, give them a sense of what Indonesia is and what their fellow Indonesians are like, that would be great,” Brown says.

This challenge is at the heart of the Jalan Sesama curriculum. The show’s first season focuses on Indonesian culture and concentrated on reflecting Indonesia back to the children watching. Through mirroring the language and alphabet back to viewers, while showing them children from various other islands around the Indonesian archipelago, Jalan Sesama seeks to show kids that they are a part of something.

A segment called “My Flags” expresses this attempt at increasing national solidarity, showing children and Muppets standing together, waving the Indonesian flag, and singing about how they’re all from one country.

Another live action film called “Friendship and Unity” shows children holding hands and talking about where they’re from. Each child speaks in his or her own Indonesian dialect, and the group has a final message before running off to play a game of tag.

 “Although we have different languages and origins, we are good friends. Now we are going to play cat and mouse!”

An alphabet that looks and feels Indonesian

Brown says that as a new show, Jalan Sesama seeks to reflect much of Indonesia back to the children who are watching it. By using local material for the productions that feels very much of their region, she says, children feel that the show is something they are a part of.

“The more that we can do to mirror back -- this is your language, this is your alphabet -- and show kids throughout the archipelago, the more they may feel part of something rather than isolated, knowing that kids throughout [Indonesia] have all seen this,” says Brown.

To achieve this, Jalan Sesama uses a lot of local footage that shows children the Indonesia they are familiar with, as well as the Indonesia they have yet to discover.

Creative Indigo executive producer Ivan Sugiharto says that this is a marked difference from much of the country’s children’s programming, which is imported and dubbed into Indonesian.

“Children from rural and urban areas can really look at Jalan Sesama and say ‘Okay, that’s my street,’” Sugiharto says.

The team also developed a flying superhero character, Gatot Kaca, who is based on a brave and powerful flying knight who appears in a well-known Javanese legend. Gatot Kaca is a shadow puppet, or wayang, and incorporates elements of the shadow puppet threatre, which is an important part of Indonesian culture. The Gatot Kaca cartoons show the puppet flying up into the air and drawing a “letter of the day” for viewers.  

Brown explains that Gatot Kaca is a way to make the alphabet an Indonesian experience for the children.

“In new productions, one of the things you can do most for kids is to show their alphabet as being their own, surrounded by local material that feels very much of their region. So we did the whole alphabet using this [wayang] character.”

Broadening perceptions of gender roles

The show is also seeking to break some gender stereotypes and broaden girls’ opportunities in Indonesia.

Putri and muppeteer Feriana Tiarnida

“We somehow want to create a difference in Indonesian culture, where normally a girl goes to school and then they just go home and ultimately strive to be a good mother and that’s it.”

Putri, one of the Muppets developed specifically for Jalan Sesama, is a spontaneous, daring girl who expresses herself freely; Sugiharto says that these traits aren’t too common.

“The stereotypical Indonesian is very humble and they don’t really say what’s in their heart and mind,” he says.

Similarly, Momon, a boy monster, is a very neat perfectionist.

“You won’t find that in a lot of boys. So with this we’re trying to recreate and sort of change the culture a bit.”

After just one season on the air, Jalan Sesama has covered a lot of ground. Brown’s decision to place her full trust in her Indonesian partners who were overseeing the studio construction paid off, too. Shortly after her first visit that revealed a building site with much more work to be done, Brown went back – and found a completed studio space.  

Funding Partners
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Production Partners
Creative Indigo Production

Broadcasters
Trans7