Moch. Zainul Arifin, Benni Setiawan, Cahyaningrum Dewojati
In the context of staring at the suspect, women's and men's eyes see things differently. Recently, the Indonesian people were shocked by the falsification of a scenario by the top police officers of the Republic of Indonesia regarding the death of Brigadier J. Bharada E, who became the suspect in the shooting of Brigadier J, got a lot of female supporters. Because of that, there are five females who manage an Instagram account @richliefams.id to support Bharada E. As a member of the National Police with the image of a guardian of masculinity, Bharada E is stared at and constructed by the female gaze. This article examined how the female gaze objectifies and constructs the masculinity of Bharada E, an Indonesian police officer who became a murder suspect. The research results showed that the female gaze on the Instagram account @richliefams.id made Bharada E an object of enjoyment for watching. In staring, the female gaze constructed the masculine image of Bharada E with various instabilities, ranging from hypermasculinity to powerlessness, such as active-passive instability, conqueror-subjugated instability, and masculine-feminine instability. The image of masculinity showed differences when it was correlated with tribes and job classes. In addition, the five women managing the Instagram account @richliefams.id made Bharada E's image a commodity to be traded for capital gain. Thus, the female subjectivity behind @richliefams.id which objectified and commodified the image of Bharada E was still under the logic of neoliberal hegemony. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s).
Media and Cultural Studies, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Department of Communication Studies, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Department of Language and Literature, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
