[PREV - STRANGE_TRIANGLE] [TOP]
BALI_UNVEILED
August 29, 2022
I think I may have been underestimating a
point that should've been obvious:
Quite a lot of Bali's reputation as an
unspoiled island paradise, and a lot of
the Western obsession with Bali is based BAREMINDED
on the appeal of women's naked breasts.
At the outset of the twentieth century, the fashion in
Balinese dress had women going with bottom covered, but
breasts typically bare. This is an excellent example
of different practices meaning different things in
different contexts, because to the west this had a
tremendous sexual charge associated with it, but this
actually tells you very little about Balinese culture
except that it's pretty hot there and you don't often
need a lot of clothing.
Embarrassingly enough, I kept missing the
significance of this in the Western view
of Bali-- much of the things you read
about Bali refer to it delicately without
dwelling on it.
There's a very good book by Adrian
Vickers, "Bali: A Paradise This is the kind of book I
Created" (1989) which goes into might've ended up writing if
the way Western observers of Bali this were my field: perhaps not
have a way of seeing what they a work of genius, but it's very
want to see there, always viewing solid, very well referenced and
it through the lens of previous yet quite readable...
commentary...
And while the thesis is the
This Vickers book certainly doesn't sort of thing beloved by the
skip the subject of breast-appeal-- in pomo critical theory types, I
fact, the subject has an entry in the don't think the phrase "social
index-- but I think it also doesn't construct" is used even once.
play it up as much as it might...
For example, they cite the book by
Hickman Powell, "The Last Paradise"
(1930) as an early example, but I
don't think they make it clear how
obviously tit-obsessed it is.
Hickman Powell was a professional reporter,
and he's got an *angle* for you, his angle
is he went to Bali to "satisfy myself that
other men had lied", but he quickly
concludes Bali is the real deal... when a
beautiful young topless woman strolls by:
"The belles of Bali, where were they? I had seen
men leer, and nudge, saying: 'They don't wear any
shirts.' Men's voices had grown deeper and their
eyes dim, as they spoke of chaste dryads in a
tropic Arcady. Well, here they were, in their
_sarongs_ and tight-waisted, long-sleeved, sloopy
_bajus_. I might as well have been in Sourabaya,
port of Java, whence I sailed last night."
Then he drives south, heading inland, climbing up
Batur, and has the "cynical" thought that they're
"doing a good job for the tourists." But:
"Then appeared a solitary female figure, swinging
toward us up the road. The sun shone russet on an
earthen pot above her head, matched to the stripes
of a bold _sarong_ trailing easily from waist to
feet. A scarf fell carelessly from a shoulder, and
the bronze bowls of maiden breasts projected
angular, living shadows. She walked majestically,
with slowly swinging arms, with never a glance for
staring eyes that now rolled past her."
But then, while that's easy to make fun of,
you have to give Hickman Powell points for
this:
"... suddenly the warming air was spangled
with shimmering jets of sound. Before a
temple men sat playing bells, and strange
instruments like a xylophone. And wonder
of wonders! it sounded as oriental music
*should* sound-- like muffled laughter of
forgotten gods."
It's pretty common, I think, for
more serious authors to oh so
casually allude to the undressed
nature of Balinese dress without E.g. the Vicki Baum book,
belaboring it, which may be why I "A Tale from Bali" has a
didn't pick up on the central few asides about women
nature of this sooner. casually bathing naked
outdoors.
"Paradise Created" includes some
striking black and white plates of
Balinese women, just the sort of With changes in diet the
thing to capture the Western mind: Balinese aren't *quite*
slim, elegant, casually showing so slim these days,
breasts without being coy about it though their faces have
as a Western "show girl" would be-- that same "exotic" look;
doubly exotic, really:
The build of Balinese women Asian and yet obviously
then was also in fashion in not Chinese or Japanese.
the West circa 1920 or so: the
tall, slim, small breasted
look was very Modern.
Along the way, Vickers comments on a book
that had illustrations that had a life of
their own, irrespective of what the author
intended (or pretended?) they were to show.
Vickers book could easily work the same way.
I have a copy "Covarrubias in Bali" (2005), a
collection of Miguel Covarrubias paintings with
some Rose Covarrubias photos: topless woman were
a very common subject for both of them.
[link]
Right around then, it seems like
everybody wanted to be Gauguin: PITA_MAHA
[link]
The current wikipedia page for Bali,
has some material attributed to
Thomas Doherty, "Pre-Code Hollywood: [link]
Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in
American Cinema, 1930–1934" (1999):
"The sensuous image of Bali was enhanced
in the West by a quasi-pornographic 1932
documentary 'Virgins of Bali' about a day
in the lives of two teenage Balinese girls
whom the film's narrator Deane Dickason
notes in the first scene 'bathe their
shamelessly nude bronze bodies'."
"Under the looser version of the Hays code
that existed up to 1934, nudity involving
'civilised' (i.e. white) women was banned,
but permitted with 'uncivilised' (i.e. all
non-white women), a loophole that was
exploited by the producers of Virgins of
Bali."
"The film, which mostly consisted of
scenes of topless Balinese women was a
great success in 1932, and almost
single-handedly made Bali into a popular
spot for tourists."
This film is up on youtube (age restricted,
which I didn't realize youtube could do,
but to get past that they want you to login
with your google account, which means improving
their tracking of you, so of course):
[link]
But then, I see there are some
other similar films up, like
this silent from 1910:
[link]
Perhaps Thomas Doherty has exaggerated the
influence of the 1932 film: it seems that
it was essentially another entry in an
existing genre.
By the time the 1932 film came out, the
public might've been primed for it by
the popularity of the Pita Maha scene
among the in-crowd:
PITA_MAHA
The wikipedia page for Miguel Covarrubias
has an unsourced claim about the influence
of the book "Island of Bali" (1937):
"The book and particularly the marketing
for months surrounding its release,
contributed to the 1930s Bali craze in New
York."
SPECIAL_ISLAND
[link]
"Island of Bali" is available at the
Internet Archive:
[link]
I was surprised to see that it's
essentially a work of amateur
anthropology-- illustrated with many
sketches and diagrams, without much
focus on Covarrubias' paintings.
In Bali, there was eventually a change in morés
to bring them more in line with the Western
world-- I imagine it was getting old being
treated as a pervert's paradise-- but this
didn't happen easily.
Adrian Vickers, "Bali: A Paradise Created" (1989)
attributes the change to a period of political
turmoil from 1950 to 1965:
"... Anak Agung Bagus Suteja, the leftist leader who
went on to become Governor of Bali, the man who covered
up Balinese bare breasts. ... Like many revolutionaries
he was driven by a puritanical zeal. The decision to
cover women's breasts in public was not made easily,
consdering that the Dutch authorities had tried and
failed, and in the 1930s Balinese involved with the
nationalist movement had also advocated a
cover-up. ... Suteja's decision was a direct challenge
to the sensationalist tourism of an earliet age, a
sensationalism which western writers wanted to contine,
but which Indonesians considered would not do their
claims to be a modern, progressive country any good."
So, to borrow a phrase from Samuel R. Delany,
the breast went from "seen to obscene"...
But then: while the present-day version of
Balinese female ceremonial dress has the
woman's legs mostly covered with a sarong,
breasts are only covered after a fashion:
deep necklines are common, and shoulders
are typically bared through translucent
lace. The rule is followed, but it does
not seem to be terribly deeply rooted.
But Dangerbaby makes the
point that a Balinese woman
would not go walking around
wearing a bikini top-- that's
clueless tourist behavior.
According to Vickers, in "Bali: A Paradise Created" (1989):
"One of the first of van der Tuuk's visitors to write
extensively about south Bali was a medical doctor,
Julius Jacobs, the man who discovered the Balinese
female breast."
He arrived in 1881 and published a book (in Dutch) in 1883.
Julius Jacobs 1883 Book about Bali, in Dutch
Gauguin in Tahiti: 1891-1903
1901 Gauguin's travelog, "Noa Noa"
1910 Bali Documentary
WWI 1914-1918
Covarrubias in Bali: 1930,1933
1931 "Tabu: A Story of the South Seas",
directed by Murnau ("Nosferatu")
1932 Film, "Virgins of Bali"
1937 Covarrubias' book "Island of Bali"
WWII 1939-1945
1947 Michener, "Tales of the South Pacific"
1949 Musical, "South Pacific"
Suteja vs the breast 1950-1965
1951 Mead/Bateson film "Trance and
Dance in Bali" (filmed ~1937)
--------
[NEXT - EXPAT_PATHOS]