A quizzical view of Bali's mystique

Bali: Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture

By Michel Picard

Archipelago Press, Singapore

1996, 231 pp.

JAKARTA (JP): Bali's wondrous culture and the fawning attention paid it by outsiders have been both boon and bane.

Venerated as the ultimate cultural object of desire and scrutinized by anthropology's leading lights such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, Bali is today the exotic wanderlust for thousands of tourists from distant shores.

Through it all, the prized showcase has threatened to topple from its pedestal, or so the naysayers would have us believe. Yet this pessimism over Bali's cultural fragility is nothing new, Michel Picard writes in this formidably researched and engrossing examination of Bali's development as a touristic culture.

Ironically, it was the Dutch who first sounded the warning bells of impending destruction of Balinese culture as it affronted outside forces. Bali was one of the last parts of the archipelago to fall to the Dutch (only Aceh held out longer) and they quickly realized they had a jewel in their possession.

The colonial administration began to research and record this cultural treasure as it simultaneously set about to use it for its own vested agenda. Picard writes that the Balinese, like the ugly duckling which has never received a compliment in its life, were rendered self-conscious at the admiration bestowed upon what they considered simply part and parcel of life.

The Dutch held up the mirror of recognition to the Balinese, suddenly making them aware that everything they themselves considered mundane aspects of their daily living -- religion, harmony with nature -- were revered by others as unique and beautiful.

Of course, the Dutch were not merely impartial colonial altruists bent on preserving this little outpost of culture for the world. The Hindu religion on the island presented a bulwark against the growing tide of Islamic-influenced nationalism sweeping Sumatra and Java, and fitted nicely into the Dutch plan to divide and conquer. The colonists nurtured an intellectual Balinese native class who assumed the role of cultivating and guarding this precious cultural identity.

Tourist arrivals were just a trickle during the 1920s owing to almost nonexistent infrastructure and accommodation. But word on Bali's temptations were already getting out and the adventurous found their way to the island; there were 1,429 tourist arrivals in 1929 compared to just 213 five years earlier.

Foreign artists such as Walter Spies and Rudolf Bonnet became part of a growing expatriate community in the 1930s. They set up workshops for local Balinese artists and started them on the road to commercializing the traditional arts. Mead and other anthropologists, including the Mexican illustrator Miguel Covarrubias, brought back grainy films and photographs touting this seemingly untouched corner of the world.

Tourist promotional efforts were stepped up during the decade, all created with a soft, enticing focus. One 1939 tourist poster, accompanied by the blurb See Bali, featured a dusky bare-breasted maiden posed against an inviting tropical backdrop. Bali was so well known by the 1940s that it was featured in one of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road movies, albeit on a Hollywood sound stage.

World War II and the ensuing war for independence decimated the fledgling tourist facilities already in place and the island's artistic community. The new republic had more pressing issues to worry about in the 1950s and early 1960s than developing its tourist amenities. But by 1969, the pristine vistas of many developing nations, including Indonesia, were recognized as viable means to gain valuable foreign currency for development projects.

Through the mid-1970s, Bali's basic infrastructure still made it a rough trip for all but the hardy willing to forsake creature comforts for a few weeks of going native. Bali was a must see on the hippy trail of young travelers in search of cheap drugs and spiritual enlightenment (one of the many plates and illustrations throughout the book includes a stern graph showing appropriate and inappropriate clothing for visiting a government office).

Widespread electrification of the island that same decade and the central government's decision to wean the country off its dependence on oil exports changed all that. Bali, with its reputation preceding it, became the showcase for the development of tourism within the archipelago, just as it was during the Dutch administration.

Picard draws other parallels between the shaping of Bali's touristic culture today and under colonialism. The plans for holding up this wonder to the rest of the world, presenting the Bali that should be seen, are drawn up by the powers that be, with the Balinese administrators left to put it into action. They are the bureaucratic descendants of the intellectual class which ran the show for the colonists.

Is Bali headed down the path to ruin and destruction in the onslaught of package tourists, sweeping development and increasing commercialization? Mead, writing in 1978, believed as much, claiming that Christianity, Islam and industrialization would strip away at the core of Balinese Hinduism and reduce it to a sideshow for tourist consumption.

Picard's verdict is more equivocal. While there is no doubt that outside cultural influences do impinge on the existing culture, he believes the Balinese are skilled at maintaining boundaries between the sacred aspects of their culture and the profane forays from outside.

He uses the metaphor of a tree to represent Balinese culture, with the roots as religion, the trunk as traditional customary order, and fruits as its works of art. The trunk has inevitably withered under foreign onslaught, Picard believes, but the roots and fruit have prospered through tender nurturing.

But long-term forecasts on upheaval within Balinese culture are inevitably inconclusive. Colonialism started "Balinizing Bali" nearly 100 years ago, but the most pronounced developments have only come within the past quarter century. It still remains to be seen whether the tree can withstand changes in its cultural climate in the next millennium.

-- Bruce Emond