Week 2 Reading

Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight

Thesis:
From a outside anthropologist perspective, at first glance, the Balinese cockfight reveals the
Balinese men as being rather violent/aggressive. But in reality, they are shy in engaging in open
conflict or violent encounters. Instead, the cocks are a metaphysical projection of their own
penises and is used to portray themselves through these cockfights.
Evidence:
The cocks are groomed and treated like an extension of themselves. The men interject their pride
into the cocks and vice-versa. They are placed in a ring with another cock and a sharp spur as
attached on their legs. The result of the fight is utter loss (despair) or utter triumph but there is no
congratulations for the victor or consolations for the losers. Instead, the result helps the winner
rise higher in status than the loser but the hierarchy is only an illusion and nothing is truly
gained. The cockfight expresses the characteristic of their owners in bursts and showcases pride,
rage and loss. It is a metaphor of how significant life events occur in such bursts and the
cockfights express this in short but explosive bursts of emotions. The cockfights are just an
example of the Balinese culture and without knowing the reasons for the cockfights, one may
think it is a sport for entertainment.
Tools/concepts:
Sabung is the Balinese word for cock, has numerous other meanings and is used metaphorically
to mean hero, warrior, champion, political candidate, bachelor, dandy, lady-killer or tough guy.
Geertz concludes that the Balinese cockfight is a text filled with meaning about status. Status
being about the ranking of people vis-à-vis one another.
Balinese cockfights are public events – cocks are released in the center of the ring and fly at each
other, fighting until one kills the other.
Balinese place odds on cockfights, there are strict social conventions that dictate wagering.
For Geertz, the cockfight is like any art form; it takes a highly abstract and difficult concept -
status - and depicts it in a way that makes it comprehensible to the participants.
Key Quotes:
“In the cockfights, then, the Balinese forms and discovers his temperament and his society’s
temper at the same time” (Geertz, 85)
“What the cockfight says it says in a vocabulary of sentiment – the thrill of risk, the despair of
loss, the pleasure of triumph. Yet what it says is not merely that risk is exciting, loss depressing,
or triumph gratifying, banal tautologies of affect, but that it is these emotions thus exampled, that
society is built and individuals put together” (Geertz, 83)