“Wing-beating, head-thrusting, leg-kicking explosion, of animal fury so pure, so absolute, and in its own way so beautiful, as to be almost abstract, a platonic concept of hate” (236). This is a Balinese contact zone--cockfight.
According to Mary Pratt, the author of the “Arts of the Contact Zone,” the most favorable outcome for the participants in the contact zone is a “safe house.” Pratt uses the term “safe house” to refer to “social and intellectual spaces where groups can constitute themselves as horizontal homogenous, sovereign communities with high degrees of trust, shared understandings, temporary protection from legacies of oppression” (541). Despite the untrammeled rage that prevails on the cock ring, or wantilan, cockfighting constitutes the Balinese way for achieving the “safe house.”
As Geertz says in his “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight, “[t]he cockfight is a means of expression. Its function is neither to assuage social passions nor to heighten them, in a medium of feathers, blood, crowds, to display them” (250).
Geertz defines what cockfight displays as “disquietfuietfulness” in the group. The concept of the “safe house,” as introduced by Pratt, requires such a temporary confrontation in the cockfighters. Therefore, if to evaluate this transient event as a “short-run” explosion of uncontrollable fury on the way to the “safe house,” the hidden disquietfulness of the cockfight becomes obvious. As Geertz says, “[t]he disquietfulness arises out of a conjunction of three attributes of fight: its immediate dramatic shape; its metaphoric content; and its social context” (250). According to Geertz, “joining pride to selfhood, selfhood to cocks, and cocks to destruction” are factors that determine the almost tangible tension of the cockfight.
The confrontation that is necessary for the “safe house” makes cockfight a collective action. Unmistakably, the cockfight is not only the fight between cocks, but also a temporary conflict of two groups. Roosters are not only the reason for confrontation but also have an inestimable influence on Balinese edification to such an extent that they are viewed as “detachable, self-operating penises, ambulant genitals with a life of their own” (232). Although the cocks are surrogates for their owner’s personalities, the cockfight is “a simulation of the social matrix, the involved system of crosscutting, overlapping, highly corporate groups--villages, kingroups, ‘castes’--in which its devotees live” (244). The tradition to bet on, to support the cock that represents a bettor’s village is a good example of cockfight being collective action. In the apogee of the cockfight participants are divided into two opposite groups. They understand that they are betting on short-run esteem, honor, dignity, respect.
As Pratt states, shared understanding is one of the keys to achieving the “safe house.” Cockfighting means shared values, understanding. Practically, these rules and shared values, together with the developed lore of cocks and cockfighting which accompanies them, are written down in palm-leaf manuscripts and passed from generation to generation. These values constitute the general cultural customs of the village:
[C]ocks are kept in wicker cages, moved frequently about so as to maintain the optimum balance of sun and shade. They are fed a special diet, ... [maize is] sifted for impurities with far more care than it is when mere humans are going to eat it and offered to the animal kernel by kernel. Red pepper is stuffed down their beaks and up their anuses to give them spirit. They are bathed in the same ceremonial preparation of tepid water, medicinal herbs, flowers, and onions in which infants are bathed, and for a prize cock just about as often. Their combs are cropped, their plumage dressed, their spurs trimmed, their legs massaged and they are inspected for flaws with the squinted concentration of a diamond merchant. (233)
Unmistakably, these procedures show that roosters play an inestimable role in the shared values in Bali. It is even possible to suppose that these procedures constitute the shared values of Bali’s population. The importance of the lores about the cockfight is their symbolical power of comprehensive habits. As a result, this power makes its own contribution to the homogeneity of the participants in the cockfight.
Cockfight is also a temporary protection from the legacies of Javanese oppression. According to the Encyclopedia Americana, Bali fell under the influence of East Java about 1000 A.D. and in the late 13th century, it came under the complete domination of the East Javanese Singosri-Majapahit empire. It might be possible that for the Javanese rulers of the past and for the contemporary Javanese officials the symbolic representation of the cockfight is associated with a kind of hostile element that encourages the rise of Balinese nationalism. As Geertz states, the Javanese elite sees the cockfight as “primitive, backward, unprogressive” (229). The result of such an attitude towards cockfight is the abolition of this activity by Javanese government. Such conditions make the Balinese engage in the cockfight even more passionately and actively in the face of law’s revenge. This turns cockfight into the tool for achieving, in this case, national identification--“safe house.”
In order to acquire the “safe house” the group must be homogenous. Thus, the precondition for the “safe house” is that no one is humiliated, or at least the members of the group are humiliated equally, as in the case of the Javanese oppression. Despite the fact that the cockfight is a significant event involving winners and losers, its goal is not to test the social mobility in Bali. As Geertz puts it, “[n]o one’s status changes” (249). The participants cannot ascend the status ladder by winning cockfights; no one can descend it. They can “enjoy and savor, or suffer and withstand; the concocted sensation of drastic and momentary, [short-run] movement along an aesthetic semblance of that ladder” (249). After the match there is an “embarrassed passing of money” (250). The loser is not consoled. As Geertz mentions, “[p]eople drift away from him, look through him, leave him to assimilate his momentary descent into nonbeing, reset his face, and return scarless and intact to the fray” (251). Nor are winners congratulated, or events rehashed. Once a match is ended, the crowd’s whole attention turns to the next one. This is an important implication. The concept of the “safe house” implies that the group must be horizontal and homogenous. The group can be homogenous only when no one is humiliated and all of its participants are in the same condition for a period when the roosters are on the ring. The participants in a cockfight drift from one fight to another. After the outbreak of passions during the fight, the cockfighters become satisfied with the comprehensive identification of the participants as a group. As Pratt says, ”[the ‘safe house’ is] to construct shared understandings and knowledge [--lores on the cockfight--culture for future generations], claims on the world that [the participants] can then bring into the contact zone” (541). When the preconditions for the “safe house” are satisfied, the Balinese gain a better understanding of themselves and then bring it to the next cockfight. As Clifford Geertz puts it, “In the cockfight, then, the Balinese forms and discovers his temperament and his society’s temper at the same time” (255).
Forside
