Tweet Her Rite, Sherina Speaks

Sherina’s Next Bold Move

In March, Sherina Munaf passed the magical number of 1 million followers on Twitter. It was widely hailed in the mainstream media as a landmark coming of age in Indonesia’s intense love affair with the new specter of social media. 

Twitter followers are only one measure of influence in the network – retweets and other factors are more important – but it’s a sure indication of popularity. The achievement inevitably spawned a level of follower-envy, but still everybody seemed impressed – well, nearly everybody; the newly anointed über Twitterati herself did not consider it such a big deal. 

“I have no idea why it happened, seriously,” she says ruefully at a Japanese restaurant not far from her South Jakarta home. A self-confessed perfectionist, the singer-songwriter chooses her tweets wisely, aiming to inspire and inform. She is not into the school of manic tweet preaching about every thought that comes to mind, and definitely not into retweeting compliments sent her way (a practice she detests) for her 1,290,000 and counting followers. 

“It’s not like I tweet every day. I only tweet occasionally, sometimes I forget, and sometimes I choose not to tweet,” she says. Most of her followers are, perhaps, her peers, who grew up hearing her childhood albums and watching her in Petualangan Sherina (Sherina’s Adventure, 2000), the movie musical that was hailed as a savior of the local film industry, then in the doldrums. 

They have seen her make the successful transition from cute moppet warbling her heart out on screen to a cool teen with two albums released in the past four years, unlike some unfortunate onetime child stars who are now “where are they now?” stories. Like her, they are the nation’s urban middle class children of the 1990s, who are experiencing social and personal freedoms only dreamed of by their elders growing up during the authoritarian New Order regime (the daughter of an ad executive, Sherina was not yet 8 years old when president Soeharto resigned). 

The Internet, coming along at the same time as sweeping social and political change, has also helped usher in this new age. But while cyberspace provides an arena for fans and celebrity chasers overjoyed to be 140 characters closer to their object of adoration, it also provides anonymity, which makes it an ideal stomping ground for passive-aggressive haters. Twitter’s “Mentions” timeline brings any hateful comments right back to the subject. 

“I totally understand, in the way that if I was having a really bad day I might say something mean about Britney Spears if I thought she wouldn’t read it. But sometimes people don’t realize that the person they are writing about does see it, and it can be very hurtful,” Sherina says. 

“Before you had to Google to find that stuff. But on Twitter it’s right before your eyes. Sometimes, we can be patient, but at others we flip out, especially as a woman at that time of the month.” 

She chooses to put such attackers in their place in her own way. She understands that disputes in social media are not just played out between the parties involved, but also come to the attention of many others who are watching – and judging. 

“I choose to ignore them, or log off,” she says of haters. “But sometimes I will reply to them. I’m not going to say, ‘hey, Satan ...’, stooping to their level. It’s the way I was brought up; if someone is being aggressive, then you have to be dignified in response.” 

Clued In Sherina made the crossover from cute child star to piano-playing teen singer in 2007 with the release of Primadona. Or rather, make that angry teen singer; she used “prima donna” in its common English usage denoting diva-ish arrogance, not the Indonesian meaning of something exceptional. She revealed in the album notes that the title song was written in a fit of anger. “With ‘Primadona’, I had so much anger that I just wanted to vent it,” she says. 

She was 17, and had written and arranged almost all the songs on the album, yet she felt she was not in control. She looks over the cover of the September 2007 Weekender, showing her staring pensively into the camera, the cover line stating “All Grown Up”. Perhaps that should have been “all made up”, as she was still in full makeup from a morning photo session with a women’s magazine. Nice concept, she says, but it was not her. 

“I don’t like the makeup, my eyelashes are so fake, the lipstick is a strange color, there’s too much blush on,” she says bluntly. Truth be told, with her hair tousled and wearing only a little makeup, she looks younger today. Back then, she says, she was clueless, leaving her styling up to the “experts”. What they thought worked for her often did not; she was uncomfortable wearing high heels on stage and unable to move the way she wanted. 

“I was powerless four years ago, I didn’t have the power to say what I wanted. I just went with the flow, what other people thought was right for me,” Sherina says. “In getting older, of course we start to find out new things about who we are.” 

The freedom to make her choices came with Gemini, released two years ago. She cut her hair for an edgier and fresher look than the incongruously primped and preened teen of Primadona. 

“With Gemini, I was like, screw it,” she says. “I took more control. But then I’m a control freak. I’m not comfortable when there are people who think they understand me better than I do myself.” Music being a business, she says she learned the art of compromise, and held off on the angry songs. 

“Gemini is about love songs, because I wanted people to relate to me. And people relate much more to love songs than anger.” 

It was an evolution in her career, as taking a more commercial route brought her to a much wider audience. To that point, Sherina’s mother had managed her career, but it can be difficult mixing family and business interests. She is now under separate management. 

In the intervening years, she has landed many endorsements, including for a cell phone provider, cosmetics and, most recently, hair-care products. They are part of her professional commitments, and she treats them professionally. She enjoyed a trip to China to observe first-hand the technology behind the shampoo she endorses, and states that she can only endorse something she personally has tried (chicken nuggets would be out of the question as she does not eat chicken, she adds).

 

Sherina has also used Twitter to promote her activities but says she recently pruned her timeline of all her “watch me on ...” tweets – a move she describes as a very cleansing experience. 


Back to School 

One thing Sherina hates is being in her comfort zone – it makes her uncomfortable. 

But no doubt many will be shocked to hear she is planning to leave the entertainment industry to attend university. She is committed to making a movie musical early next year, coming full circle from her film debut in Petualangan Sherina. “I kind of see it as my last contribution to the market, and then I will have the whole year to focus on my preparations for university,” she says. 

Sherina, like many members of her new, more outspoken generation, has had the privilege of making choices. Although her parents tried to discourage her, the second of three daughters, from her entertainment ambitions at the outset of her career, ultimately it was her decision. “They would tell me, this could happen if you do this, and this could happen if you do that, but it was up to me,” she says. 

She gets that she may be seen as throwing away her golden opportunities, that it would be daunting to try to come back to the top after a four-year hiatus. “It’s something I have always wanted to do,” she says of studying at university. “But I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t do it now, when I my mind is still fresh.” 

Curiously, she says life is about a lot of “pretending”. “I’m not really an entertainer, I don’t really like that people know me. I’m not Mulan Jameela who can really entertain, I’m not a people person. I’m more [comfortable as] the person behind the scenes.” 

So why do it? “It’s for university, to finance my schooling,” she replies quickly. “But I cannot lie, I like singing. I used to like it, but now I’m bored of singing the same songs to the same audiences. I want something new.” 

She is torn between two schools: Berklee College of Music, where she would study film scoring (Sherina famously hummed along to Disney songs while being fed as a toddler), or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she would major in neuroscience or biomechanical engineering. Critical Thinking Science is a new passion, cultivated in recent years by watching Stephen Hawking documentaries and reading. 

Although she has talked about enjoying her high school years at the British International School, she did not find science fun. She wants to be a science “communicator”, helping young people to use critical thinking. 

For Sherina also uses the power of Twitter to observe social behavior, including looking at differences between urban tweets and those by people from the regions, and also the tendency of people to take information on face value. 

“I see that people are so quick to draw superstitious conclusions, and that makes people shallow,” she says of the lack of critical thinking. “On Twitter, people only see one side of something, they make a big deal of it with finding out the facts first, and then it becomes a trending topic!” Critical thinking is important to her, ruled as she is by a rational and practical nature; she acknowledges she is not a spiritual person. 

She rattles off a list of names of the inner circle from the 300-odd people she follows on Twitter. Most also share her pragmatic and skeptical viewpoint, and she has to find them smart (internationally, they include the caustic columnist Christopher Hitchens). 

In early July, she became involved in a Twitter debate about Darwinism that would have done Mr. Hitchens proud. “Please feel free to comment on the weakness of a theory as long as you have really read up on the argument. Done.” 

In another, she wrote “… if you say [evolution] means humans are descended from monkeys, then you clearly haven’t read the book!” 

Still, isn’t it a tad creepy having a hoard of people marking her every word? “We’ve become used to it,” she says of social media’s spread. “But I much prefer Twitter to infotainment reporters coming to our door, asking about our private lives. It’s better for me to make that conscious choice about what information to put out there.” 

Sherina talks to Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post Weekender, pics credit as tagged.

  Indonesian Heartthrob Blog by Furansizuka Cs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.