VICE Asia’s mini doc video ‘Are Indonesian Universities Failing to Protect the Victims of Sexual Assault?’ (published on YouTube 7 May 2019) explores within 15 minutes a complex human-interest area, remaining true to the company’s stylistic brand. VICE is a well-established professional digital media organisation and has offices across the world. As shared on the VICE Media Group homepage, the company has an ethos of global storytelling: “the world is ever evolving and full of raw, untapped potential. We exist to help people navigate it all”. This is evident within the mini doc as the production value is high; the visual and audio equipment is noticeably expensive, and the amount of b-roll and quality of editing is testament to them being a well-resourced company.
As the title describes, the video is about the experiences of university students in Indonesia. Universitas Gadjah Mada, one of Indonesia’s most prestigious universities, had been recently exposed for the sexual assault of a student on a school-sponsored trip and the school’s attempts to cover it up. The video sees victim, Agni, share her story and the ripple effects it caused within the student activism community. The video cuts between scenes of protests on the campus, the interviews with Agni, and b-roll of Agni applying makeup and getting into cosplay. The final shot showed Agni dressed in full anime cosplay, shoulders exposed and standing on the beach, embracing the wind. This image, while hopeful and evocative for a western audience, was an interesting choice given Indonesia’s increasingly conservative values. This is suggestive that the western media group to whom VICE Asia is a part of has influenced the way they go about their storytelling. Rather than sharing a ‘safe’ story for an Indonesian audience, they chose to take a more critical and heavily western approach to uncover the systemic sexism present within Indonesia’s academia.