terminal on a tropical island, at 4:30 in the morning, I was treated to a most persuasive treatise on the two kinds of woman, the soft and the hard, as epitomized—so my versatile lecturer told me—by Olivia Hussey and Grace Jones.
Of all America’s ambassadors to the archipelago, however, the most popular seemed to be its athletes. When first I arrived in Kuta, I found the proprietress of my
losmen
and her husband staring intensely at a TV screen. I looked closer and found that the object of their attention was a college basketball game between Lamar and Villanova. In the same Balinese village, I heard, for the first time ever, a rap song celebrating the skills of Julius Erving. Two teenage Indonesian friends hotly debated the strengths and weaknesses of American soccer. (“Look at the mighty Cosmos,” said one. “But recall,” parried the other, “that all their stars were imported.”) And the household god of the entire nation while I was there was an eighteen-year-old super flyweight whose admiration for “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler ran so deep that he had actually shaven his head and changed his name to Yoni Hagler.
Foreign names, in fact, seemed the most precious currency of exchange in Indonesia, magical coins to be traded with every emissary from abroad. Often, my initial conversation with young Indonesians consisted merely of a recitation of familiar names—Michael Jackson, Rambo, Larry Holmes, Madonna—delivered in much the same spirit in which two people, newly introduced, might fish for an acquaintance in common. Once, as I sat drinking tea and watching the sun come up over the rice paddies of Ubud, a local boy strolled up to me, smiled and sat down at my feet, as for a weekly tutorial.
“Michael Jackson,” he began tentatively. “He African?”
“No. He’s a Negro, an American black.”
Nioman took this in. A few moments passed.
“Same with Lionel Richie?”
“Yup.”
“Him Negro?”
“Uh-huh.”
This, too, was digested in time.
“And Marvin Hagler Negro?”
“Yes.”
“And Michael Spinks?”
“Yes.”
By now we were gaining momentum. Nioman looked thrilled with his new discovery.
“And Muhammad Ali Negro?”
“Right.”
“And Larry Holmes?”
“Yes.”
“And Ronald Reagan?”
I paused for a moment, and Nioman looked alarmed. I tried to explain that though many a star of stage and song and sports arena was black, the President of the Union was white. Nioman looked incredulous at first, then crestfallen. I began to wish I had voted for Jesse Jackson.
DEVELOPMENT, IN SHORT , had come to Bali as crookedly as it had to many another such place, and most of the boys I met, having dropped out of school because their parents could not afford the fees of $3 a month, were unable to read or write in their own language, yet were fluent in English. By now, therefore, it had become a commonplace to portray the Western presence in Bali as a snake in a tropical Eden. Even in my small-town California home, a local library carried a tome entitled
Cultural Involution: Tourists, Balinese and the Process of Modernization in the Anthropological Perspective.
And when I consulted
Bima Wasata
, a pamphlet put out by the village of Ubud to explain its culture to foreigners, I found
Buta
, or the force of evil, defined as follows: “Evil power can be many things. It might be too much money from tourism, or the imbalance number between locals and visitors, or the local people who think about moneymaking work.” All three kinds of evil, one could not help but notice, arose from tourism.
And the image of the virgin violated was all the more tempting in Bali precisely because the great distinction of Bali lay precisely in its purity, its innocence of suggestiveness, at its best, the island had the springtime grace of a virgin who does not need to understand the beauty or the weight she carries. Indeed, it was innocence, above all else, that the Balinese (like Prospero)deemed holy: children
Of all America’s ambassadors to the archipelago, however, the most popular seemed to be its athletes. When first I arrived in Kuta, I found the proprietress of my
losmen
and her husband staring intensely at a TV screen. I looked closer and found that the object of their attention was a college basketball game between Lamar and Villanova. In the same Balinese village, I heard, for the first time ever, a rap song celebrating the skills of Julius Erving. Two teenage Indonesian friends hotly debated the strengths and weaknesses of American soccer. (“Look at the mighty Cosmos,” said one. “But recall,” parried the other, “that all their stars were imported.”) And the household god of the entire nation while I was there was an eighteen-year-old super flyweight whose admiration for “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler ran so deep that he had actually shaven his head and changed his name to Yoni Hagler.
Foreign names, in fact, seemed the most precious currency of exchange in Indonesia, magical coins to be traded with every emissary from abroad. Often, my initial conversation with young Indonesians consisted merely of a recitation of familiar names—Michael Jackson, Rambo, Larry Holmes, Madonna—delivered in much the same spirit in which two people, newly introduced, might fish for an acquaintance in common. Once, as I sat drinking tea and watching the sun come up over the rice paddies of Ubud, a local boy strolled up to me, smiled and sat down at my feet, as for a weekly tutorial.
“Michael Jackson,” he began tentatively. “He African?”
“No. He’s a Negro, an American black.”
Nioman took this in. A few moments passed.
“Same with Lionel Richie?”
“Yup.”
“Him Negro?”
“Uh-huh.”
This, too, was digested in time.
“And Marvin Hagler Negro?”
“Yes.”
“And Michael Spinks?”
“Yes.”
By now we were gaining momentum. Nioman looked thrilled with his new discovery.
“And Muhammad Ali Negro?”
“Right.”
“And Larry Holmes?”
“Yes.”
“And Ronald Reagan?”
I paused for a moment, and Nioman looked alarmed. I tried to explain that though many a star of stage and song and sports arena was black, the President of the Union was white. Nioman looked incredulous at first, then crestfallen. I began to wish I had voted for Jesse Jackson.
DEVELOPMENT, IN SHORT , had come to Bali as crookedly as it had to many another such place, and most of the boys I met, having dropped out of school because their parents could not afford the fees of $3 a month, were unable to read or write in their own language, yet were fluent in English. By now, therefore, it had become a commonplace to portray the Western presence in Bali as a snake in a tropical Eden. Even in my small-town California home, a local library carried a tome entitled
Cultural Involution: Tourists, Balinese and the Process of Modernization in the Anthropological Perspective.
And when I consulted
Bima Wasata
, a pamphlet put out by the village of Ubud to explain its culture to foreigners, I found
Buta
, or the force of evil, defined as follows: “Evil power can be many things. It might be too much money from tourism, or the imbalance number between locals and visitors, or the local people who think about moneymaking work.” All three kinds of evil, one could not help but notice, arose from tourism.
And the image of the virgin violated was all the more tempting in Bali precisely because the great distinction of Bali lay precisely in its purity, its innocence of suggestiveness, at its best, the island had the springtime grace of a virgin who does not need to understand the beauty or the weight she carries. Indeed, it was innocence, above all else, that the Balinese (like Prospero)deemed holy: children
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