Trance and in Bali husband the composer Colin McPhee, the German artist Walter Spies, and many By Kate Pourshariati others who were taken with the elaborate and intricate cultural expression of the Watching the Trance and Dance in Bali Balinese. Belo in particular had learned again, I was struck anew with the odd much spoken Balinese, and had befriended disconnect between the corpus of visual many in the town of Pagoetan [Pagutan]. by Mead and her writings, or According to Belo, Spies was directly perhaps, the intended research and the responsible for the promotion of Pagutan as actual outcome. What you can see in the a place for Europeans to go and see trance final film is essentially Mead’s voice-over performance; this is one example of his narration, calmly explaining one day’s curation which had the effect of performance of Balinese classical molding the locally by favoring theater . It is only by reading the opening certain groups of artists and their styles. It credits that one might learn that the needs to be noted that this all took place in research was funded by an organization the oppressive Dutch colonial period, dedicated to research on schizophrenia. It is something which is not presented as therefore possible to be familiar with the context in the body of the work. The film without perceiving any of the question of agency on the part of the controversial aspects of the research that peoples studied and filmed is contentious in led to its creation. critical views of the project. Here are the bare bones facts about the Mead and Bateson’s field work was funded film Trance and Dance in Bali (1952) and the mostly by the Committee for Research in original field work, photography and Dementia Praecox, based on their research filming, which took place between 1936- proposal that posited that trance in Bali was 1939 by Margaret Mead and Gregory essentially an expression of schizophrenia. Bateson. Their innovative plan of work was In her book on Trance in Bali, Jane Belo to do the fieldwork chiefly with film and shows disagreement with the basic photography, using note-taking to premises of the research. Belo’s document these recordings, in the end understanding was more aligned with the presenting a huge body of work to be understanding of trance as a religious integrated and poured over later. phenomenon, rather than laying a (Presciently, or against ordinary practice, theoretical framework on what she Mead notes that the team showed the observed, or what we could call a footage to the participants for feedback, in pathologizing of religious practice. She 1939 in Bali). No project of its scale was relied upon Balinese friends and local taken up again for at least 50 years. When experts to give her deeper understanding of Mead and Bateson arrived as newlyweds in the , arts and culture of the place. Bali in 1936, they joined a group of expatriates including Jane Belo, her To satisfy her own thinking, she notes that The track (added in 1952) which was she brought in a European psychiatrist with recorded by Colin McPhee on other experience in mental hospitals to observe occasions is of course non-synchronous, ordinary Balinese people at work and in and the matching of the music to the dance religious trance, and he affirmed that the is spotty in places according to people he observed and tested were in no ethnomusicologist Andy McGraw and the way schizophrenic. It is admirable that Balinese music scholar Ida Bagus Made Mead wrote the introduction to Belo’s Widnyana. They note that the music for the book, despite Belo’s clear critique of the primary section was possibly recorded in project. the village of Binoh, rather than Pagutan. At 18:22 there is music associated with a As an accurate representation, it is well temple procession, not heard in this form of documented, initially by Mead and Bateson, dance, and there are other mismatches. that Trance and Dance itself is flawed. We Though to general western audiences these know that the footage is of a staged dance dissonances might pass unnoticed, to a performance of the Calonarang, featuring Balinese audience it would be significant. the Rangda witch, her sisya assistants, the We can see that some of the issues were Barong dragon and his kris dancers. This technological (no sync sound recording, no performance, commissioned by Bateson for lights or way to film at night), and other Mead’s 36th birthday, December 16, 1937, is issues were partially an outcome of the set in daytime rather than at night, as it was filming in a town in which Mead and normally enacted, to make filming possible. Bateson were not living or working. The rest Belo notes that the young women in the of the edited Bali are quite different in film who perform the kris dance were that they depict child development issues specifically asked to do so by the research and are made in Bajoeng Gede [Bajoeng team, though it had never been done in Bali Gd], where they lived. by women before. In the comments recorded by Belo from the Balinese before Outside of issues of verisimilitude, why is the performance, we can see that the Trance and Dance in Bali and the entire younger women who are about to perform Mead Bateson corpus from Bali still sought are nervous, this was their very first after today, and why is it on the National performance of the kris dance and ngoerek, Film Registry? To begin, Trance and Dance a self-attack with these kris knives, had innovative aspects which made it which were known to not cut the skin in a appealing to artists and others across person actually in trance. Sequences of disciplines. It was likely the first many dance and ritual were filmed by Bateson, people had a chance to see people enter a but the trance sequences were all taken by trance state on film, particularly in a non- Belo. Bateson was not involved with the fiction format. The use of slow motion in editing of any of the produced films, many editing is particularly compelling, giving a years later. dreamy and yet still working well with the slightly blurry gamelan track. For this we can thank Mead herself and her that the camera if mounted on a tripod, set editor Josef Bohmer, who created the to a wide angle view, and left to run, was a produced films in 1952, together with her scientific device, which Bateson (at least in narration and addition of the 1976) found absurd. During this famous aforementioned music tracks. Second, the conversation, Bateson is clearly voice of Mead as a narrator is likely one of exasperated with Mead’s position and the first female narrators of a documentary makes it clear that he no longer has any film. In this documentary, unlike many illusion that anything scientific or objective others that she narrated, Mead uses a calm, can be gleaned from such experiments. firm and slightly softer tone. Mead was of Trance and Dance was one of seven films course a lightning rod for all sorts of made out of the footage that was taken at criticism, and as such her voice of authority the time, in both Bali and Papua New at makes one think of the glass ceiling Guinea, which made up a series called she was acutely aware of, at the American Character Formation in Different . Museum of Natural History and for women Other than these seven short films edited at the time in general. by Mead and Bohmer in the 1950s, no other films have been made out of this footage, The grander project of Mead and Bateson, nor has the footage been released or seen with their innovative note taking system in any substantive way. Given such a huge and incredible degree of photographic body of work, it is tantalizing to imagine documentation also is cause for great creative and documentary uses if the interest. The 25,000 photographs and footage could be shared back with the 30,000 plus feet of 16mm film taken is people of Bajoeng Gd and Pagutan, as well cause for wistful sighs among scholars; and as the Iatmul people filmed in Tambunam regrets by Mead and Bateson when they Village, PNG, none of whom have seen the were alive. The intention to be able to link unedited footage in 80 years. If Faye the notes with the pictures and film is now Ginsburg is correct in her assessment that more doable than it ever has been in the Mead (the futurist) anticipated such past; the photos are now all scanned, the reworking of the archive with pleasure, she films soon could be too, and the notes have would be delighted as well with such a been scanned (with OCR). Because of the project, enhancing the project’s legacy by interruption of War II and then their technological means even she may have subsequent separation, these works were been amazed to see. never united, and we will not have a thorough understanding of what Mead and Bateson recorded until they are.

In one of their last interviews together, Bateson and Mead had a fundamental disagreement on whether it was possible to have any objectivity at all in the making of such a film. Essentially, Mead maintained The views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Library of Congress.

Kate Pourshariati is a film/media archivist See also: specializing in visual anthropology and

ethnographic archival materials. She has Belo, Jane. Trance in Bali worked at the Penn Museum (University of Belo, Jane. Traditional Balinese Culture Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and

Anthropology) since 2006, and made a Brand, Stewart "For 's Sake, Margaret" shordetour in 2016 to process the Margaret Co-evolution Quarterly June 1976, 10 (21) Mead and Gregory Bateson film collections

at the Library of Congress as a project Ginsburg, Faye "'Now Watch this Very archivist. Carefully . . .'" The Ironies and Afterlife of

Margaret Mead's Visual Anthropology,"

Barnard College, 2003. Special thanks for their contributions to: Dr. Andrew McGraw, University of Margaret Mead papers and South Pacific Richmond Ethnographic Archives, Ida Bagus Made Widnyana. Alessandro Pezzati Margaret Mead Audiovisual Collections, Fatimah Tobing Rony Library of Congress

South Pacific Ethnographic Collections, Library of Congress

Tobing Rony, Fatimah The photogenic cannot be tamed. Margaret Mead and Greg Bateson’s Trance and Dance in Bali. Discourse, 28:1, Winter 2006 pp.5-27.