Done Bali
SBS Television
8.30 p.m. (8 Adelaide) November 30
Reviewed by Ignatius Kim
Bali is to Australia what Acapulco is to the US: an escape for Western suburbanites that's seedy for some, exotic for others.
Like Acapulco, Bali features in the refrain of at least one popular song. In fact, as the common saying "done Bali" suggests, this Indonesian island has become a part of the Australian cultural diet.
However, whether it's the Viva Holiday package or the backpacking adventure, many Westerners take with them a romanticised view of Bali in which "every child is a dancer, every farmer a painter".
This illuminating episode of The Cutting Edge looks at the social and historical context of the "paradise myth".
"When I was living in Bali, I was also sold on the fact that it was a paradise because I was a Westerner living in the better parts of Bali and also with Western money", says the documentary's producer, writer and director, Kerry Negara.
"Through my voracious reading on Bali I started to realise that it had actually been a very traumatic century for the Balinese, full of tension, poverty, crises."
Done Bali describes the final subjugation of Bali in 1908 by the Dutch. This was at the cost of the Puputan, the mass ritual suicide of a large section of the Balinese aristocracy.
Prior to that, Bali was seen as a savage, dangerous place. After 1908, the colonialist view swung in the opposite direction, and Bali became an enchanting paradise full of happy, meek natives.
In the '20s and '30s, the island became a haven for Western writers and artists. Living as privileged colonialists, they had their romantic preconceptions reinforced. They also reproduced and embellished this myth through their work.
The most influential of these was German artist Walter Spies. Through the images in his paintings and articles, people like Noel Coward, Charlie Chaplin and H.G. Wells were attracted to Bali. It became a self-perpetuating process.
Influenced by Spies, the anthropologist Margaret Mead attributed the quiet unresponsiveness of Balinese children to "cultural characteristics". In fact, they were suffering from malnutrition, worms and respiratory diseases.
"In the Netherlands they have all sorts of monuments in their libraries and universities to Spies and how he influenced Balinese art, as if Balinese art wasn't capable of receiving its own influences", says Negara.
After conquering Bali, the Dutch exploited and deepened divisions between the castes. Lower aristocrats could rise in status by cooperating with the colonial administration. Many upper nobles cast off by this process recouped some of their wealth by opening their palaces to Western tourists. It was in this setting that Walter Spies found his muse.
The paradise myth depicts the Balinese as passive victims. "Bali has a wonderful culture ... but people keep making these cultural films and books as if the Balinese have no political life. In fact they were heavily involved in the nationalist movement in the '40s", Negara explains.
Moreover, as the documentary highlights, more people were killed in Bali than in any other province in the 1965 anticommunist massacre carried out by the Indonesian military. About 100,000 Balinese were murdered out of a population of 2.5 million.
Today, the same false perception stems from the domination of Bali by the tourist industry — a colonialism of a different type.
While some Balinese have benefited from industrialisation, notably those living in tourist areas, the majority in rural areas still have no running water or electricity.
As the film points out, Balinese farmers annually lose 1000 hectares of cultivable land to five-star hotels. The lands they still have are declining in productivity because of sinking water tables and salination problems caused by tourist facilities. The average tourist uses 15 times more water than a Balinese.
On the other hand, Negara believes there has been much progress and that it will continue. "Although many people in Australia don't think so, the Indonesian government is very receptive to criticism. In fact, I received a lot of assistance from the government in making this documentary."
Despite the vacillations and ambiguities, Done Bali is highly illuminating.