Meaningless Rants

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In case you don’t know what “latah” means, it translated roughly to “so easily startled that it really is ridiculous.” Actually, that translation is not accurate yet. What’s missing in the description of “latah” is that the person being startled would repeat the latest word he or she had spoken, or just any random verb, noun, or adjective. For example, when a glass fall down and breaks into pieces, a “latah” person would then say “eh copot copot copot!” or “eh sapi!” or “eh botol!” or something as asininely stupid as that.

And don’t tell me that it is something innate within a person to be “latah.” No it’s not innate. It’s something conditioned, from watching how friends act and actually thinking that it’s funny. No it’s not funny. It’s annoying. I mean, I understand that people can be startled. But nowhere outside of Indonesia has this “latah” phenomenon that I know of.  So a plate crashed. So what. OK if you’re startled, you can turn your head to look and jump a little. You may even make some exclamation. But then you don’t repeat the last word of what you have just spoken. Can you imagine a British man saying something like this: “So, I understand that you went to Bali [sound of a door slammed] eh Bali! eh Bali!”

See how stupid it is? That’s why you don’t see this phenomenon anywhere else, but Indonesia. Which really proves the point that it’s not something innate, but learned.

I guess it’s part of a bigger problem regarding Indonesian jokes. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a damn arrogant snob. Well, sometimes Indonesian comedy can be funny. But there’s just this one problem: I’ve never seen any Indonesian comic do deadpan. They always laugh at their own jokes. And it’s not just any kind of laugh: it’s the cengengesan type of laugh, which I will not bother attempting to translate to English. And that’s the funny ones I found. A lot of them do “latah” type of joke and they laugh at it themselves, making no point whatsoever.