Quote:
Margaret Mead narrates an elaborate ritual performance. The ritual is reenacting a local mythological story, which is briefly described before the film. The basic story is that a king denies to marry a witch’s daughter, thereby unleashing the witch’s wrath. She and her disciples spread plague across the land. The king sends an emissary, who the witch transforms into a dragon. This becomes a cosmic battle between life (dragon) and death (witch).
The ritual is performed outside a temple within a large rectangular yard surrounded by a large audience. An orchestra of xylophones and drums play trance music for the entirety of the performance, with very little variation.
The witch is played by an adult male. The costume consists of draping cloths and jewelry, furry legs, and long fingernails resembling claws. Later, the witch wears a monstrous mask, which transforms her into a supernatural form. It provides power and magic. It evokes fear.
At the beginning, small children participate up until the end of the plague. The children act as victims for the witch to terrorize, as they flee about the open space. In one scene, a pregnant woman played by a man has her baby (doll) delivered by a group of children. The witch kills the baby, and we see the mother and the children mourn.
Toward the end of the ritual, an army of the dragon’s disciples advance upon the witch, but only when her eyes are averted. They fall when she looks back at them.
At the end, the yard is filled with men and women alike as they enter into trance. They hold krisses (a wavy blade representing the dragon/snake) against their chests during their convulsions. If a convulsion is too violent, a group with disarm the individual. Nobody is hurt. If they were, it is believed that the trance wasn’t real.
Afterwards, they enter the adjacent courtyard in order to bring everyone out of their deep trances. Incense and holy water is used to wake them. Some have trouble coming back to consciousness. Small food sacrifices are made, with the presence of a priest, in order to aid the process.
I have no training in anthropology. My loose summary is not a replacement for the film. I have left out several details as I am simply noting the most important beats of the performance. Nonetheless, every smallest detail of a religious ritual is of significant and should not be ignored in a more formal writing setting.
Quote:
Records a performance of the Balinese ceremonial kris (dagger) dance-drama, which depicts the never-ending struggle between witch (death-dealing) and dragon (life-protecting), as it was given in the village of Pagoetan in the late 1930s. The dancers experience violent trance seizures, turn their krises against their breasts without injury, and are restored to consciousness with incense and holy water. Narrated by Margaret Mead against a background of Balinese music. From the Character Formation in Different Cultures series. Produced by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. 1952
Trance and Dance in Bali (1952, Gregory Bateson & Margaret Mead) [WEB 576p].mkv
General
Container: Matroska
Runtime: 21 min 22 s
Size: 447 MiB
Video
Codec: x264
Resolution: 816x576
Aspect ratio: 1.417
Frame rate: 24.000 fps
Bit rate: 2 793 kb/s
BPP: 0.248
Audio
#1: English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 128 kb/s
Language(s):English
Subtitles:None
The post Gregory Bateson & Margaret Mead – Trance and Dance in Bali (1952) first appeared on Cinema of the World.