Thanks for that, Jason -- what a wonderful description! For a folklorist/ anthropologist, the private Balinese performance you describe is a gem: I loved the clown with a cell phone! This perfectly illustrates how traditions are living, changing processes that incorporate elements from the surrounding cultural context. One effect of adapting traditions for display to outsiders is that they can become frozen in time, excluding new developments and nuances (such as bawdiness and irreverence) that are integral to the tradition, but not meant to be displayed to an out-group.
As to what performers get out of performances engineered for outsiders, this varies: in some cases there are monetary recompenses. But in others, the answer is "not much." In those cases, communities often find a way to stage parallel events that are for insiders only. I have written about this in Sardinia, but countless other ethnologists have documented this process around the world -- see, for starters, the work by Nelson Graeburn on tourism, and the edited volume by Valene Smith called _Hosts and Guests: the Anthropology of Tourism_. LOTS more out there on tourism, too, under the rubric of globalization: Jonathan Friedman, Jan Pietersen and others.
BB,
Sabina
---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:10:22 -0800
>From: jason winslade <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Folklore
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Not to send this off on another tangent, but I used
> the Balinese example from my own tourist experience.
> When my wife and I attended 'tourist' performances,
> things seemed much more formal and 'ritualistic.'
> Western audiences expect a certain kind of
> 'authenticity.'
>
> But when I was lucky enough to attend a temple
> festival, things were different. I befriended a
> family who worked where we were staying and they
> took us, providing us with traditional dress. I must
> have looked awfully silly being a tall white guy in
> traditional Balinese dress. Most of the
> locals seemed bemused and curious about my presence
> there, I only sensed annoyance from a few...
>
> Anyway, the point is when they were performing for
> their own communities, the performances seemed much
> more informal, bawdy and seemingly improvisational.
> For instance, a clown character was using a cell
> phone - something you'd never see for tourists. </D!
> IV>
>
> Now, of course, this is all major assumption, since
> I was truly a tourist and not there for research
> purposes and didn't know the language or really even
> the context for that particular performance (then
> again, neither did Artaud), but I was surmising
> based on a cursory knowledge of Balinese performance
> forms and a sense of gestures and audience response.
> Balinese performance is such an interesting topic in
> this area, since many of the so-called 'traditional
> dances' were indeed created specifically for
> tourism, and in some cases, Western anthropologists
> even had a hand in creating them. But the question
> remains - what do the performers get out of them?
>
> sorry, tangent over.
> jlw
>
> Sabina Magliocco <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I just want to c! larify a couple of things in
> this conversation.
>
> On "fakelore:" this concept was developed by
> American folklorist Richard Dorson in the 1960s.
> To Dorson, distinguishing between "genunine"
> folklore and "inauthentic" imitations was part of
> the scholarly enterprise of folklore study, which
> he struggled to make into a respectable academic
> discipline. A parallel concept in European
> folklore study is "folklorismus," by which
> post-WWII German scholars such as Hans Moser
> attempted to distinguish the real thing from
> material manipulated for political (3rd Reich) or
> economic (e.g. tourism) purposes.
>
> During the 1980s, these apparati for
> distinguishing the real from the fake, authentic
> from inauthentic began to disintegrate, as
> scholars became more aware of the process of
> tradition (rather than tradition as an object) and
> the inevitably constructed nature of all
> traditions, and indeed, of the idea of
> authenticity itself. [For more on this, see Regina
> Bendix, _In Search of Authentic! ity_ (U Wisconsin
> Press, 1996).]
>
> Thus, at least in the US and in Germany, academics
> now essentially agree with Jason, who wrote:
>
> >Perhaps the 'idea' of the
> > hobby-horse as a fertility symbol (accurate or
> not)
> > is more important and the participants are
> achieving
> > important spiritual insights and communal and/or
> > divine connections from the rite.
>
> These days, it is the process of creating
> authenticity that becomes the object of study
> among academic folklorists. All traditions are
> authentic; the historicity or accuracy of a
> practice is not relevant to its efficacy for
> practitioners. Still, scholars like to trace the
> history of traditions and ideas.
>
> This brings me to Jason's very good question:
>
> >is a Balinese dance done
> > mainly for tourists 'authentic'? Does it still
> have
> > the same efficacy if it is done for an audience
> of
> > non-Balinese?
>
> It depends what one means by "efficacy." What is
> its! intended effect when it's performed for
> tourists, as opposed to when it is an in-group
> thing? How do the performers and indigenous
> audience members feel about the changed context of
> the performance, and how does the performance
> change as a result of the new and different
> context? These are the questions folklorists deal
> with today.
>
> If, as Pitch proposed, an author were to write a
> musical called "Oss Oss Wee Oss," or turn the May
> Song into a new musical composition, those
> products would no longer be considered folklore by
> folklorists, but part of the realms of popular
> and/or academic/ elite cultures (recall my earlier
> posting on these categories).
>
> Best,
> Sabina
> Sabina Magliocco
> Associate Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> California State University
> 18111 Nordhoff St.
> Northridge, CA 91330-8244
>
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Photos
> Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add
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Sabina Magliocco
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
California State University
18111 Nordhoff St.
Northridge, CA 91330-8244
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