From internum to externum: adaptation, censorship, and governing atheism-communism in Atheis/Kafir (1974) under Suharto’s New Order

Abstract

Purpose

This article examines how Atheis/Kafir (1974) transformed an inward crisis of faith into an outwardly governable problem of atheism and communism under Suharto’s regime. Rather than treating Sjuman Djaya’s film as a neutral literary adaptation or a simple anti-communist vehicle, this study asks how adaptation and censorship redirected Hasan’s religious doubt, Rusli’s revolutionary charisma, and Anwar’s anarchic unbelief into a state-legible morality tale about belief, deviance, and ideological danger.

Design/methodology/approach

This article uses close intermedial reading of novel and film. Adaptation mapping identifies changes in plot, characterization, focalization, closure, and visual form, while paratextual and censorship-oriented analysis situates those changes within Orde Baru (New Order) cultural governance. This study also draws on Indonesian film historiography that positions Sjuman Djaya as a major auteur whose work combined social critique, intellectual intensity, humour, melodrama, and negotiation with regulatory constraint.

Findings

This film does not simply condemn every figure outside religious orthodoxy. Sjuman Djaya’s work presents Hasan’s strict religious formation, his encounter with secular modernity, Rusli’s non-totalitarian revolutionary idealism, Anwar’s destructive unbelief, and Islam’s positive ethical and meditative dimensions. Yet censorship and adaptation reshape this complexity into a governed field of visibility. The movement from “internum” to “externum” occurs when private doubt becomes public deviance, and atheism becomes readable through the political grammar of communism.

Originality/value

This study repositions Sjuman Djaya's work (1974) as a key case for understanding adaptation, censorship, and religious-political governance in New Order cinema. It shows that atheism-communism nexus was not formed by state censorship alone, but through the meeting of literary interiority, film form, Sjuman Djaya’s auteurist negotiation, and the regime’s demand for moral regulation.