Young and Restless: Representing Male Adolescents with the Spirit of Reform in Hai Magazine

This article is about Hai, a magazine for boys in Indonesia. It looks into representations of male adolescents against the backdrop of post-Suharto (New Order) Indonesia. Political reform and media deregulation in 1998 transformed the Indonesian mediascape into a freer space for social and political expression. This article suggests that Hai's content represents male adolescents who adopt the spirit of Reform, which is associated with openness towards and engagement with issues that were seen as politically and socially taboo under the New Order. This magazine has become a site for male adolescents to exercise their freedom of speech, performing their role as young citizens by identifying and discussing problems that were previously silenced. Overall, the narratives of challenge and resistance create a microcosm of the nation-state within the magazine and project male adolescents as future leaders of the nation.