Bali Experience

In the wake of the tragic puputan massacres, the Dutch faced a serious public relations problem. Popular outcry at the horrific manner in which Bali's last kingdoms had fallen led many in Europe to protest what they saw as the brutality of Dutch colonialism. Seeking to renovate their image, the Dutch turned their efforts toward the two forces that would play the major role in molding Bali in the years to come: tradition and tourism. Dutch scholars and colonial bureaucrats began a program to collect information on Balinese culture, and to preserve those aspects of it that they saw as admirable. They gathered information on art, language, local politics, religion, and especially the Balinese caste system, which fascinated the Dutch in those days when the rights of Europe’s own royalty were being questioned. But this colonial scholarship was hardly disinterested learning for its own sake. By cataloguing culture the Dutch hoped to finally penetrate the Balinese mentality that had left them confused for so long, and by understanding something of Balinese social organization they expected to be better positioned to control it. 

In studying Bali, the Dutch tended to rely heavily on the interpretations of those they considered to be local experts: Brahmana priests and members of the royal families. The puzzle they were able to piece together of the island was thus quite partial, overlooking the experiences of the majority of Balinese, who lived the life of ordinary farmers, fishermen or traders. But whether or not the Dutch succeeded in getting to know the “real Bali” was of little importance compared with the tremendous value of the image they succeeded in creating. By turning Balinese culture into an object that could be enclosed in an academic text, the Dutch also were repackaging it as something that could be sold. By advertising Bali as a "paradise island," where happy peasants lived in quiet rural villages in harmony with nature, where a great Hindu civilization still respected its ancestors, its gods and its kings, and where wise, proud priests preserved ancient traditions against the onslaught of modernity, the Dutch were able to both erase their problematic part in shaping Bali’s history and increase their revenues by luring curious travellers to the colony. It was perhaps no accident that the first real tourist hotel, the Bali Hotel in Denpasar, was erected in 1928 on the very same spot where the royal family had met their bloody end at the hands of the Dutch army two decades before. 

The Dutch succeeded in literally building over a history of colonial control and violence, replacing it with a new façade. From now on, the Western image of Bali would be one not of bloodthirsty barbarians but of a noble, spiritual people, living in peace with their environment and each other, and, most importantly, extending a warm welcome to their foreign guests. Lured by this vision of a tropical paradise on earth, a new European and American colony began to invade Bali. 

By the 1920s, Bali was already hosting a steady stream of wandering Westerners who came searching not for the material wealth and power that their predecessors had hoped for, but sustenance of a different sort. These early expatriates were the world-weary elites of their homelands, who came to Bali to take refuge from the stresses and restrictions of the modern world. As artists, anthropologists, writers, musicians, or as simply seekers after an exotic island experience, this new tribe of travellers disembarked from their luxury ocean liners to begin their adventures in exotic Bali. Some hit the beaches of Sanur and Kuta, where they opened fabulous hotels that combined all the colorful charisma of tradition with all the comforts of home. Drawn to these enclaves of island opulence were the likes of Charlie Chaplin, the famous star of the silent silver screen, the renowned playwright Noel Coward, and the American heiress Barbara Hutton. During those days, a Westerner of even moderate financial means could live the life of visiting royalty in a gorgeous private villa, complete with a small army of gracious Balinese servants to attend to one’s every command. For these privileged guests, Bali was an endless festival, where one could feast on the rare and delicious bounty of the East and be feted by a dazzling display of its mystical, magical traditions.

Still other travellers, of a more intellectual and artistic bent, left the shimmering sea behind them and headed for the cool hills around Ubud to search for an insider’s view of Balinese society. Worrying that Bali was in danger of becoming overwhelmed by Westernization, these adventurers tried to distance themselves from other “typical” tourists and become not merely observers but participants in the ongoing activity of the island. Most influential among this new crowd of culture mavens was Walter Spies, the son of a German diplomat, whose deep passion for the East had been nurtured by a stint as a gamelan musician in the court of the Sultan of Yogyakarta, Java. With the permission of Ubud’s royalty, Spies built himself a beautiful house at the edge of the Campuan River - today the site of the luxurious Hotel Campuan - and began to immerse himself in the wonders of Bali. As a scholar, Spies diligently devoted himself to collecting Balinese folktales and traditional customs, and photographing the dazzling beauty of Bali’s landscape. As a painter, he created stunning images of the traditional Balinese social world, especially of those peasants whose simple, spiritual lifestyle he so admired. Working with the Dutch painter Rudolph Bonnet, Spies encouraged Balinese painters to explore new styles of artistic expression, which would lead to a revolution in the traditional arts of Bali. Spies and Bonnet also helped organize the artists of Ubud into an association to preserve and promote their paintings, called Pita Maha, and they founded the Bali Museum in Denpasar and the Puri Lukisan in Ubud to showcase the work of local talent. As a musician, Spies supported and recorded a number of Balinese groups, and introduced his friend, the American composer Colin McPhee, to the shimmering grace of the Balinese gamelan, which McPhee would later bring to the attention of the Western world through his books on Bali and his own Eastern-inspired compositions. Spies also left his mark on Bali’s musical map by helping the Balinese to create the kecak dance, a thrilling spectacle involving dozens of sarong-clad men chanting a hypnotic chorus of chak-ka-chak-ka-chak - the sound of a forest full of monkeys - dramatizing the story of the Indic epic Ramayana, where Prince Rama’s beautiful wife, Sita, is captured by the evil Ravana and rescued by Hanuman, the leader of the monkeys, and his proud band of primates. And, perhaps most importantly, as a gracious host with a formidable knowledge of his adopted homeland, Spies helped spread the word of Bali’s natural and cultural wealth to the world. He opened his doors to dozens of curious visitors and acted as an advisor to those who came seeking knowledge of Bali’s rich cultural heritage - including the organizers of the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris, where the famed surrealist Antonin Artaud became entranced with the bewitching allure of Bali, and the makers of the 1920s film Goona-Goona, which portrayed Bali as a land where love magic wove its spells and made Bali the hip new destination for American trendsetters. New York City became so swept up in the Bali craze that there was even a nightclub there called “The Sins of Bali,” that promised revelers the ultimate in exotic and erotic island entertainment.

Following in the footsteps of these early travellers came another breed of culture-hunters. These were the pioneers of a new academic discipline called anthropology, which sought to replace stereotypical images of exotic otherness with a more informed understanding of culture. Forgoing the luxury hotels and the glittering nightlife, these more serious-minded scholars set up shop in the villages of Bali and began the daunting task of learning the difficult local language and immersing themselves in everyday life. Foremost among these intellectuals were the American anthropologist Margaret Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson, a scholar trained in the elite atmosphere of Cambridge, England. Mead, who would later become the most famous anthropologist of the 20th century, preaching a message of tolerance and cross-cultural understanding to the American masses, was one of the few visitors to Bali who was not entirely seduced by its charms. For Mead, Bali was an example of a culture that had overregulated life. The endless rituals and the complicated rules of etiquette and language and hierarchy all worked, she felt, to repress the Balinese personality under the weight of social order. In her autobiography, Mead would later write that she and Bateson often felt Bali to be quite similar to Bateson’s England, stuffy and controlling. Mead sought to escape this aspect of Bali by turning away from the high culture of priests and princes that earlier travellers and scholars had fetishized, and focusing her attentions on village life, especially its wilder side. Mead was fascinated by the black magic that haunted the midnight crossroads and the deserted graveyards, and the social conflicts that threatened to burst out from underneath a veneer of social harmony. She was especially interested in the drama of Calonarang, the story of the evil witch Rangda whose dark powers send the followers of the benevolent Barong into a crazed trance, causing them to turn their keris daggers on themselves in fits of uncontrollable anger. Mead and Bateson’s work showed a side of Bali that the tour brochures, with their extravagant descriptions of island allure, often overlooked, placing Bali high on the list of the world’s most spellbindingly complex cultures.

But with World War II looming on the horizon, the party suddenly came to an end. Germans like Walter Spies were considered enemies of the Dutch and were arrested. The few foreigners who remained on the island were placed in concentration camps when the Japanese occupied the East Indies in 1942. And those who dared to return after the war was over found Bali a changed place. The Japanese occupation and the struggle for independence from colonial rule had depleted the island’s resources. And Bali was now part of the new nation of Indonesia, which had at its helm the charismatic, controversial President Sukarno. Sukarno, the son of a Javanese father and a Balinese mother, had a special place in his heart for Balinese culture. He was an active promoter of the Balinese arts, and even built himself a luxurious palace at Tampak Siring, near the Tirta Empul temple, whose spring water was believed to be a holy gift from the gods. As a notorious womanizer, Sukarno was bewitched by the beauty of Balinese women, and invited many a young dancer to entertain him in his island abode. Sukarno was also eager to show off Bali to the wider world as the prize jewel in Indonesia’s many-colored crown, and he invited hosts of foreign journalists and dignitaries to visit, including India’s Prime Minister Nehru, who bestowed upon the island the memorable title of “the morning of the world.” Sukarno also planted the seeds of tourism development in Bali by using Japanese war reparations funds to build the Bali Beach Hotel in Sanur, the island’s first high rise hotel. But despite his love of Bali, Sukarno was not always perceived as welcoming to its Western guests. His fanatical nationalism, combined with a good dose of sympathy for a growing communist movement, kept many would-be tourists away from Bali, which was, in any case, itself experiencing tremendous social tensions at the time. Conflicts over issues of caste, wealth, political allegiance and the role of traditional elites in the modern nation grew more tense during the 1950s and 60s, and finally exploded in 1965, leading to the deaths of thousands of Balinese. It was not until the New Order government of Suharto took control of Indonesia and began vigorously promoting tourism as the cure for Bali’s troubles that the West renewed its love affair with Bali.