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Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali: Their Use of Photography and Film

Author(s): Ira JacknisSource: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 3, No. 2 (May, 1988), pp. 160-177Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656349

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Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson inBali:Their Use of Photography and FilmIra JacknisAfrican,Oceanic,and New WorldArtTheBrooklynMuseum

In 1939 GregoryBatesonand MargaretMead returned romthreeyears ofresearch n Bali andNew Guinea, wherethey had innovated n their use of pho-tographyandfilm as ethnographicmedia. A world at war soon drewthemawayto otherconcerns,but not beforethey hadproduceda photographic thnographyin 1942. Around1950 Mead returned o the material,assemblinganotherphoto-graphicstudyand a seriesof six films.Althoughin its time Bateson and Mead's Balinese work was greetedwithsomepuzzlement,by now these booksandfilms have achieved the statusof clas-sics. In many ways they began the field of visual anthropology,andto this daythere is little that can be compared o their work. Despite this landmark tatus,their project has been subjected to surprisinglylittle reconsideration Collier1967:5-6; de Brigard 1975:26-27; Heider 1976:27-30). As the first extendedtreatment f theiruse of photography ndfilm inBali, thisessayoffersahistoricaloverviewof theirproject,andthen turns o a consideration f one out of themanyrelevant theoreticalissues-the objectivity of their record.' Though involvedmainlywith a visualmedium,BatesonandMeadfaced the sameproblemsof rep-resentation s theircolleaguesrelying solely on words.Thus, thisessay will tracetheirprocess of turning"raw" field notes into finishedethnographies Cliffordand Marcus1986).Why Bali?

Whydid Batesonand Mead ever go to Bali in the firstplace, and what kindof problemsdid they bringwith them into the field?2 t seems clear that the pri-marymotivationwas theoretical.When Mead and Batesonmet in New Guinea n1933theycameupwith a schemaforcharacterizing ulturesby temperament ndgender.However, theyhadgeneratedone categoryfor whichthey had no knownexample.Onthebasisof some films she had seenof childtrance,MeadsuggestedBali as the missingtype. Backin New York, Meadwent over more Balinese ma-terial,includingfilmsproducedby a formerstudent,Jane Belo. It is not insignif-icant thatMead's earliestknowledgeof Bali was primarilyvisual.

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MEAD AND BATESONIN BALI 161

Mead's next fieldworkwas stimulatedby conversationsand inquiriesfrompsychologists.Thechairman f the Committee or theStudyof DementiaPraecox(schizophrenia,as it was thencalled) asked Mead to suggest a fieldexpedition nwhich to studytheproblem,andthe Balineseappeared o her to be anappropriatechoice. They seemed to have culturally nstitutionalizeddissociativeandtrance-like behavior,which in our culture s regardedas schizophrenic.The Committeesupportedmuch of the research and write-up, supplementedby funds from theAmericanMuseumof NaturalHistory,CambridgeUniversity,the Social ScienceResearchCouncil(SSRC), andpersonalresources.Continuingher interest in child development and its relation to culturalthemes, Mead also proposedto follow the growthof childrenover an extendedperiod.For this Bali was as good a place as any. An interest n new ethnographictechniqueswas a final motivation.In hergrant proposalto the SSRC,justifyingtheuse of photography n a massive scale, Meadcited the camera'simpervious-ness to progressive heoreticalsophisticationover the course of the fieldwork.3ApparentlyBatesonplayeda relativelyminorrole in theselection of the fieldsite. BetweenNew Guinea n 1933 andBali in 1936, thecouple spenttwo periodstogether: he summerof 1934 in Ireland and the springof 1935 in New York.While Bateson was in CambridgewritingNaven (1936), Mead was in New Yorkpreparingher monographon the Arapesh. In his own grantproposals, writtenduring he summerof 1935, Bateson stressedthe investigationof the relative in-fluencesof personalityandculture,extendinghis analysisof Naven.The availableevidencesuggeststhatMead hadthefirst nclination o go to Bali, andthathavingagreed o marryand worktogether,Bateson followed along.Injudgingthecompletedrecord,it is useful to note thecouple's contrastingresearchstyles. Despite a background n naturalhistory, Bateson was uncom-fortablewith anessentially empiricalapproach.Rather,he preferredust enoughobservation o supply a basis for his logical and theoretical nterests.Mead, onthe otherhand, had a passion for specific detail and intricatepattern.As Meadexplained o Bateson'smother,"Our minds arequitedifferent; do notmind themasses of concretedetail which boreGregoryand he introducesorderandmethodinto my ratheramorphous hinking." This contrast was broughtout vividly asthey learned Balinese: "Gregorydoesn't believe the languageis real until it isspokenand I don't believe it is real until it is writtendown."4 The Bali researcheffectively combined these talents;Mead was responsiblefor much of its sub-stantive ocus, as well as its vast scale and level of detail, while Bateson took allthe pictures,devised innovative forms of notes, and did most of the final pho-toanalysis.

Therewere few methodologicalmodels fortheirBali project,butboth of thepair'santhropologicalmentorswere pioneersin the use of film in anthropology.Bateson's teacher, Alfred C. Haddon, in 1898 shot what arebelieved to be theearliestethnographic ilmsmadein the field (de Brigard1975:16). Bateson's am-bitiousproposalfor a team expeditionto Bali (never funded), clearly based onHaddon's TorresStraitsExpeditionto New Guinea, included still and motionphotography.5 ilm was even moreprevalentamongMead's colleagues. In 1930


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162 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

FranzBoas recordedKwakiutl Indiancrafts, games, and dances with a 16 mmcamera Ruby 1980), andduring he thirtieshis studentsMelville HerskovitsandDavid Efronused the movie camera to captureethnographicdata. However, asRubyadmits(1980:11), thereis no evidence for Boas's direct involvement n theBali study,other than a suggestionto study gesture(Mead 1977:212).Parameters of the Fieldwork

Meadand Bateson arrived n Bali in March 1936for a two-yearstay.6By allaccounts t was the most successful periodof fieldworkfor eitherof them. Ba-linese culture was rich, complex, and beautiful. The recently marriedcouplefoundthat heir nterestsand skills wereperfectlybalanced,and so overtheirstaythey generateda prodigiousamount of data-including about25,000 stills and22,000 feet of film.Their first two months were spent in orientation,in the artists'colony ofOeboed.7Herethey workedon theirBalinese. Although they both used the lan-guage in the field, Bateson made a special study of classical Balinese. NeitherlearnedDutch, the principalscholarlylanguageof the region (Mead 1972:232).In fact, all of their researchevinces a markednonverbalbias (cf. Mead 1939),one quite amenable to a study of gesture and interpersonal elations, recordedphotographically.InJune of 1936 they moved to BajoengGede, a smallvillage in the moun-tains. Here, awayfromthe heavy Indicinfluenceof the southernplains, and in avillage slowed down by a widespreadgoitercondition,they made their most ex-tensive records. In this village they workedcontinuouslyfor a year, and inter-mittentlyfor anothereight months. In November 1936 they began to establishothercamps, wherefor shortstays they could review differentstrataof Balineselife. In Marchof 1938, feeling the need for comparativematerial,they returnedto Bateson's former ieldsiteamongthe latmulon theSepikRiver in New Guinea.Here over eight months they shot about 8,000 stills and 11,000 feet of film,searching or material hat could match theirBalinese data.Finally, in FebruaryandMarchof 1939, theyreturnedo Bali for six weeks, in order o fill in missingbehavioral ecordsandto continue heir ongitudinal ecordof childdevelopment.

The TeamThis researchwas very much a resultof collaborative, eam effort. Not onlydid Mead and Batesonworktogether,butthey were assistedby severalEuroam-

ericans and Balinese (Belo 1970; Boon 1986). Bali in the 1930s was a culturalparadisefor disenchantedWesterners,one especially attractiveto artists. Theleaderof this colony, with whom Mead and Bateson stayed for their first twomonths,was WalterSpies. Spies, a Germanpainterandmusician,was then writ-ing a book on Balinesedance and dramawith theEnglishwomanBerylde Zoete.His views of the culturebecame the foundation ortheunderstandings f BatesonandMead. As Boonpointsout(1977:186-189), while thiscrowd, includingBate-


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MEAD AND BATESON IN BALI 163

son andMead, felt they were witnessingthe swan song of a dying civilization,theirpresenceactually sparkeda culturalrevival.Mostimportanto Meadand Bateson wereJane Belo and her musicianhus-band,Colin McPhee. Belo, who had known Mead at ColumbiaUniversity,com-bined an interestin the artswith researchon Balinese culture and personality.McPhee, a modernistcomposer, did the definitiveresearchon Balinese music.Two otherswho assistedwere KatharaneMershonandClaire Holt. Mershon,adancer and stage directorfrom California,and her husbandJack, a dancerandphotographer,ived on the Balinese coast forthe decadeof the thirties.Holt, likemany of this community, was multitalented. Interested n both sculptureanddance, she had also done some archaeologyon Javaand Bali.Significantly,virtuallyevery memberof this communitywas a skilledpho-tographer,and both Belo and McPhee mademovies. In fact, photographywaslargely responsible ordrawingthese artiststo Bali. The lush images by the Ger-manGregorKrausehad attracted he painterMiguel Covarrubias,whose work,in turn,stimulatedmanyof the others.The core team consisted of Bateson and Mead, working mostly in theirmountainvillage, Belo living in a plains peasantvillage, andMershon,reportingon her coastal village. Each group worked closely with a Balinese interpreter-secretary.I MadeKalerprovedto be an especially valuableassistant o Bateson

and Mead. His language facility in Malay andEnglish, in additionto his nativeBalinese, was combined with sharpobservationalskills. Althougheach groupworkedmore or less independently,at times they wouldconvergeforthe record-ing of a special event, such as a largecremationor temple festival, plannedforweeks in advance.Field Methods and Recording

Perhapsmoresignificant han heirethnographic indingsper se were the newmethods of field recordingdevised by Bateson and Mead. These methodsweremadenecessary by the vast scale of their work. They had to find some way todocument housandsof still images, thousandsof feet of film, and a vast collec-tionof artifacts,with writtenrecordsextendingover two years.8Moreover,theyneeded a way to coordinate he work of many separate nvestigators.Drawingupon her experimentsamongthe Arapesh,Meadcame up with asystemof "runningfield notes," essentially a chronologicalnarrativeof obser-vations(fora sample, see Mead andMacgregor1951:195-197). The basicmodelwas a theatricalor film script,andin fact, the team soon came to call these notes"scenarios." Contextualinformation ncluded the day of observation(and ofwrite-up),a summary itle of the action, a complete list of Balinese present,thekindof photography sed(cineorstill, withidentifyingnumbers),andthegeneralcultural themes or behaviors exhibited. Then came the ethnographic recordproper.Along the left edge was a running ime note (measuredagainstsynchro-nizedwatches),andon therightthe actualdescriptions,withnotes on theinvolve-ment of theethnographer.Eachbit of photographywas notedin thisrecord,with


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its place in the ongoing social action, as well as the photographer's elativepo-sition.The running ield notes were supplementedwith a daily diaryin which wererecordedall the differentkinds of activities in the field:photography,events ob-served, birthsanddeaths, illnesses, letters andvisits, etc. Althoughpartsof thissystemof recordkeepingwerepresent rom thestart, t was not until 12May 1936thatthe scenariomethod was begun, andnot all thesecategorieswere noted in allnotes.Bateson took the principalphotographic ecord,9bothstill and motion(sup-plementedby Belo's pictures), while Mead kept verbal records which docu-mented hem. In fact Mead actedas a kind of director,alertingBatesonto partic-

ularly nterestingbehaviorto be filmed, behaviorwhichhe tendedto lose tractofwith his eye to the viewfinder. Integratedwith this were the records of I MadeKaler: ranscriptions f the Balinese conversationsand othernative texts andlistsof kinrelationsbetween theparticipantsFigure1). Native visualdocuments-inthe form of paintingsand carvings-were also viewed as essential partsof theethnographic ecord.Native perspectiveswere even applieddirectlyto the photographic ecord.Anticipatingcurrentlypopularreflexive methodologies, they used a hand-pow-eredprojector o show films to theirsubjects.The Balineseviewing thefilmswere

Figure 1An Ethnographic Interview. Bateson and Mead's Balinese secretary, I Made Kaler,takes notes during Mead's talk with Nang Karma and his son, I Gata. Bajoeng Gede,Bali; 1937; Gregory Bateson, photographer.


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MEAD AND BATESON IN BALI 165

able to commenton "whetheror not they believed that a trance dancerwas 'intrance' " (Mead 1975:8, cf. Belo 1960:vi, 192), and in July 1936 they filmedseveral carverswatchingfilms of themselves. This use of what has been calledthe "film elicitation" technique(Krebs 1975) supplemented heirpredominantlynonverbalmethods.Selectivity and the Photographic Record

Bateson and Mead were not the firstanthropologistso use the camera n thefield. In fact, each had takenpictureson earliertrips. But their Bali work wasamongthe firstuses of photography n anthropologyas a primaryrecordingde-vice, andnot merelyas illustration.One afternoonearly in theirresearch,after a normal45-minute session ofrecordingparent-childnteraction, hey realized thatthey hadtaken three of theseventy-fiverolls of filmmeantto last for two years (Figure2). Decidingthat theresults ustifiedthe expansionfrom theiralreadyheavy use of photography, heysent for morefilm andequipment Mead 1972:234).InwritingabouttheirprojectMead and Batesonwere sensitive to chargesofsubjectivity.As Bateson claimed: "We tried to shoot what happenednormallyandspontaneously,rather han to decide uponthe norms andthenget Balinese togo through hese behaviors n suitable ighting.We treated hecameras n the fieldas recording nstruments,not as devices for illustratingourtheses" (BatesonandMead1942:49).A numberof procedureswere used to lessen the intrusionof the camera innaturalbehavior.First,withthe vastquantityof shots takenandfootageexposed,theyclaimed that it was very hardfor theirsubjectsto remaincamera-consciousafterthe firstdozen or so shots. Second, they "never asked to takepictures,butjust tookthem as a matterof routine,wearingor carrying he two camerasday inandday out, so that the photographerhimself ceased to be cameraconscious."Third,they "habituallydirectedattention o [their]photographing f babies, andthe parentsoverlooked the fact thatthey were included in the pictures." And fi-nally, they "occasionallyused an angularview finderfor shots whenthe subjectmightbe expectedto dislikebeingphotographed tthatparticularime" (BatesonandMead 1942:49).In his field notebook Batesondevised a system of abbreviations ndicatingthe state of the subject: f the photographer id or did notpose the subject(somepictureswere posed, as Bateson admitted[1942:491), if the subjectwas or wasnot conscious that his photo was being taken, and if the subjectwas or was notconscious of the moment of the takingitself. Therewere also notations for thescale orprobabledistanceof subject rom thecamera,as well asof thepublishablequalityof the image.However, in manycases they did create the contextin which the notes andphotoswere taken.Mead often askedforchildren o act in a certainway--crawl,for example(MeadandMacgregor1951:197), and in several of the films (e.g.,ChildhoodRivalry)childrencan be seen playingwith dolls andothertoys intro-


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166 CULTURAL NTHROPOLOGY

Figure 2A Girl's Tantrum. "This picture, in 1936, gave us the first clue for the formulationthat the Balinese mother avoids adequate response to the climaxes of her child's angerand love" (Bateson and Mead 1942:163). Men Karma and her daughter, I Gati; Ba-joeng Gede, Bali; 31 July 1936; Gregory Bateson, photographer. Balinese Character:plate 54, fig. 2.


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duced in order o provokea reaction. The most notable instanceof this "arrange-ment" was fortheirfilm of trancedances, usually performedat night, butstagedduring he day for the camera.The bulkof the footage that went into TranceandDance was filmed at a commissionedperformance n 16December1937, Mead's36thbirthday cf. Belo 1960:159-169; Figure3). BatesonandMead ustifiedtheirpayment or suchperformancesby citing the normalBalinesepracticeof culturalpatronage.

Figure 3The Witch Dances. A scene from the Tjalonarang, or Rangda and Barong play, pre-sented in Trance and Dance in Bali. Pagoetan, Bali; 16 December 1937; GregoryBate-son, photographer. Balinese Character:plate 55, fig. 5.


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Althoughone may findimportant lues in theirfieldnotes, nowhere n theirpublicationsdid they considerthe effect of the artistsandtouristson what theywererecording Kirshenblatt-Gimblettnd Bruner1985). Again, the most inter-estingexampleconcernstheirfilmof trance. Theparticular itual hey filmed wasnot an ancientform, but had been createdduringthe periodof their fieldwork(Belo 1960:97-98). In 1936 a group of Balinese had combined the RangdaorWitchplay (Tjalonarang)with the Barongandkris-danceplay, which was thenpopularizedwith tourists hrough heefforts of WalterSpies and his friends(Belo1960:124-125).Evenmoreinterestingwas the influenceof the anthropologists.As reportedby Bateson,

Wehadseenwomendancewithkrisses ttempleestivals tnightandhadobservedthat heirdancing,hough ominallyhesameas thatof themen,wasfundamentallydifferentcf.P1.57).We wantedogetamotion-pictureecord f thewomen's anc-ing,and hereforeuggestedo thedancinglubofPagoetan,n1937, hathey houldincluden theirperformanceome womenwithkrisses.Thistheydidwithout nyhesitation,utby1939 hewomenwereanestablishedart f theperformance.Bate-sonandMead1942:167;f. Belo1960:103,155-159;Figure ]"There was also selection on a technicalbasis. Because movie film was lim-

itedandexpensivethepair"reservedthemotion-picture amera or the more ac-tive andinterestingmoments," intending heircompletevisual record o be madeup of bothtypes of image (Batesonand Mead 1942:50). Consequently he bookof still photographswas not fully representative f theirobservations.Finally,therewere, of course, selectionsfrom all possibleethnographic ub-jects. Theyacknowledgedan interest n familialrelationships ndceremonialism,but within this they tried to be as inclusive and randomas possible (1942:50).Moreover,Mead andBatesonintended heirworkto be coordinatedwith thatofothers n theirteam. As Meadadmitted n a letterto Belo, "We always supinelycountedon the existence of thatfilm [on Daily Life] you know instead of doingdaily life for ourselves. 12

The Finished Product: Books and FilmsWhatever he selective statusof theirfield recording,therecan be no ques-tion that heir inalresults-two books, sevenfilms, andseveralessays-certainlywere. UpontheirreturnBatesonandMeadworked ntensivelyattheanalysisandpublication f theirdata.13 Justas theirresearchhadbeencooperative,so wastheir

analysis;many psychiatrists,sociologists, andothersexaminedtheirvisual ma-terials,offeringtheoretical nsights.The outbreakof the SecondWorldWarpre-ventedthem from fully workingup theirmaterial,but Bateson and Mead wereable to publish in 1942 Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis."Selection of data mustoccur in any scientificrecordingandexposition,"wrote Bateson, "but it is important hat the principlesof selection be stated"(1942:50). And Batesonproceededto describehow they went aboutcomposing


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Figure 4Women Enter With Krisses. By the time this scene from Trance andDance in Bali wasphotographed in 1939, women were an accepted part in this village's presentations ofthe dance, though the custom had been first suggested by Bateson and Mead in 1937.Pagoetan, Bali; 8 February 1939; Gregory Bateson, photographer. Balinese Charac-ter:plate 56, fig. 8.

theirmonograph.With the helpof ClaireHolt andothers,they viewed all 25,000photos in order to select the final 759, which were groupedinto 100 plates. Astime was limited they ended up takingmost of their final illustrations rom thefirstthree-quartersf theircorpus,with laterones selected to makespecial pointsnotpresent n the earliergroup.Followinganessay on "Balinese Character"by Mead, and Bateson's noteson the selection of photos, come the 100 plates, each containingfrom four totwelvepicturesandeachfacingapageof captions,credited o Bateson. Theplateswere grouped into ten sections: Introductory,Spatial Orientationand Levels,Learning,IntegrationandDisintegrationof the Body, Orificesof the Body, Au-tocosmicPlay, ParentsandChildren,Siblings, Stagesof ChildDevelopment,andRites dePassage. The culture-and-personalityocus should be apparent.Mead and Bateson intended an interplaybetween the photographsand thetext. "Each single photographmay be regardedas almost purelyobjective, but


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juxtapositionof two differentorcontrastingphotographss alreadya steptowardscientific generalization. . . . The introductory statement on each plate provides,in manycases, an extreme of generality,whereasthe detailedcaptionscontain ablendingof objectivedescriptionandscientificgeneralization" 1942:53).Whileacknowledging hatthey were using thephotosto illustratea generaltheoretical nterpretationf Bali,'4 BatesonandMead stroveto allow alternativeviewpoints:Therewouldbe somephotographs aking nehalfof apsychologicaleneralization,andothersmaking converse robverse oint. nthese ases,we have riedoarrangethephotographso thatmostof theplate s occupiedwiththemost ypicalaspect,while a statement f theobverse s given by one or two photographst the bot-tom ... of the plate. ... In othercases, it has seemed worth-whileto devote twoplateso thecontrastingspects f the samegeneralization.. [1942:51]'5Mead andBateson each workedon theirown presentations f theirBalinesedata. Duringhis time at the Museum of ModernArt Batesonpreparedan exhi-bitionon Bali (employingtheircarvings,paintings,stillphotos,as well as a short,generalfilm), whichopenedat the Museumin 1943, traveling o othermuseumsover the next year. In 1947 Mead returned o the Balinese research n a groupanalysisof childdevelopment,coauthoredwith FrancesC. Macgregorandfinally

publishedin 1951 as Growthand Culture:A PhotographicStudyof BalineseChildhood.Batesonand Mead began to order and analyze their films as soon as theyreturnedo New York. Within a year they hadselected certainfootage as partic-ularlyillustrativeof the theoreticalpoints they wished to make. Throughout he1940s they used these informallyedited versions in lectures to studentsandthegeneralpublic, resulting n precursors or the final films.16AlthoughBateson hadused these films in his teachingat Harvard1947-48), by 1950, whenMeadbeganeditingthe films forpublicdistribution,he had lost interest.Mead workedwith film editor Josef Bohmerin the finalpreparation f six10- to 20-minutefilms made from their field footage. Forminga series called"Character ormation n DifferentCultures,"'heywere:BathingBabies inThreeCultures,Karba'sFirst Years,FirstDays in theLifeof a New GuineaBaby, andTranceand Dance in Bali (all released in late 1951), A Balinese Family (late1952), andChildhoodRivalry n Bali andNew Guinea(early1953). Althoughallsix were photographedby Bateson, Mead was the editor, scriptwriter,and nar-rator orthesefilms, as well as fora seventh released n 1979:LearningtoDancein Bali.17UnfortunatelyMead left few indicationsof theprinciplesof selectionbehindtheeditedfilms. Quiteawareof the distinctionbetweenresearch ieldfootageandedited films forpublicpresentation, he felt eachhad its place. All the films wereedited to portraya definite theoretical nterpretation f the material,perhaps hefirst films in anthropology o do so. Two of the Bali films are chronologicallyordered-Trance and Dance andKarba's First Years(by event andby life his-tory,respectively),while the othersare all comparativen some way. Theimages


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might have served to illustratea numberof theoreticalpoints, but Mead (withBatesonin the 1940s) chose to arrange hem accordingto issues of cultureandpersonality.Though Mead intendedtheir publicationsto supplementthese films, sheneverprepared detailedfilmguideexplaininghow andwhythe films weremade.As it is not apparentromthe finalproduct,a viewercould not know that Tranceand Dance was composed of footage from two separateevents, similartrancesfromthe village of Pagoetanshot on 16 December 1937 and 8 February1939.The film also includes footage shot by Belo, particularly hat in slow motion.'8This practice,called "editing for continuity," is quitecommonin ethnographicfilm(Heider1976:66-68), butmust be bornein mind when attempting o use thefilm as a documentof native behavior. Moreover, one must remember hatthis20-minute ilmis only a selectionfrom aceremonythatusuallylasts severalhours(the performancecommissioned by Bateson and Mead lasted three-and-a-halfhours).It is easy to slip intothe belief thatthe film is the ritual.In the latterdecades of theirlives Mead and Bateson continuedto build ontheir Bali experiences. Meadencouragedcolleagues and studentssuch as Theo-doreSchwartz,PaulByers, Ken Heyman,Asen Balikci, Alan Lomax, and Alli-son Jablonko o use visual mediain ethnography.She spreadher views on visualanthropology hrough eachingat Columbiaand in severalprogrammatic rticles.Unlike his formerpartner,Batesonwas less inclined to propagandize or the useof photography n anthropology.However, he continuedto use film in his re-search in psychiatryand animal communication(Lipset 1982). Though bothlooked back at their Balineseworkwithspecialregard,MeadandBateson,atoneof their last meetings, expresseddivergentopinionson the role of the camera nanthropology Batesonand Mead 1976).

Conclusion: "From Intuition to Analysis"The recentcontroversyover Mead's firstfieldwork n Samoa has served to

raise againthe problemof objectivity in ethnography.Both Bateson and Meadopposed what they saw as an overly positivistic conception of anthropologicalscience.Like thatof her mentor,FranzBoas, Mead's anthropologywas predicatedupon the race to recordunique culturalmaterial, subject to inevitablechange.Camerasand otherrecordingdevices areso valuable becausethey can "provideus withmaterial hatcan be repeatedlyreanalyzedwith finertools anddevelopingtheories" (1975:10). Like all recordedfield material,the photographcould besharedamong researchers,as Mead did in writingher book on Balinese child-hood, achievingan intersubjective tatus, if not an objectiveone.Both Bateson and Mead advocated what their daughter, Mary CatherineBateson, has called "disciplined subjectivity" (1984:163). Researchinvolvinghumansubjectsattainsobjectivitynotby ignoringtherole of theobserver,butbyexplicitly considering t as partof the investigation.In Naven Batesoncontinuallycalledattention o how andwhy he thoughtwhathe didabout he Iatmul.As Meadvividly putthe matter,


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172 CULTURALNTHROPOLOGYThere s no suchthingas an unbiasedreportuponanysocial situation. . . . It is com-parableo a color-blindmanreportingna sunset.All of ourrecent ndeavorsn thesocialscienceshavebeento removebias,to make herecordingo impersonalndtherebymeaninglesshatneither motionnorscientific ignificanceemained.Ac-tuallynmattersf ethos,thesurest ndmostperfectnstrumentf understandingsour ownemotional esponse,providedhat we can makea disciplined se of it.[1968:15-16]Despitethesebasicattitudes,which now find resonance n contemporary n-thropology cf. Marcusand Fischer1986), both maintained pposingambiguitiesin theirthought.Both had strong inclinations towardobjective data. In NavenBatesonrooted his study in observablebehavior, avoiding native intentions asderived fromtestimonyandtexts (cf. Marcus1985). Towardthe end of her lifeMead often maintained hat the cameracould be used to avoid observer bias-

essentiallyby taking ong, middle-distance hots, presentedwithminimalediting(cf. Mead1975:9-10). While Batesongradually etreatedromempiricism,Meadseems to have accentuatedher faith n it, thoughneitherresolvedthese intellectualtensions beforethey died.In a lectureon Mead's work in Bali, HildredGeertz(1983) called attentionto the moment when Mead and Batesonfelt thatthey had "got the culture." Itwas thatafternoonwhentheyusedupso manyrolls of film, andhypothesized hatamongthe Balinese arousal s followed by frustration, esulting n a gradual ackof emotionalclimax. They spent the rest of their time tryingto document thisinsight.This momentcame on 31 July 1936, four months aftertheirarrival,andafter ust two monthsof living in their mountainvillage.BothBateson and Meadapproached ulturaldatathrougha focus on pattern,discernibleeven in a small sample (Lipset 1985). Hoping to find in Bali theirhypothesized ourthpsychological type, they were alertedto certainpatternsbySpies and Belo. Feeling they had discoveredsuch structures, hey spentthe restof their fieldworkdocumentingtheir perceptions. Even at the time they wereawareof the problemof selectivity, makingstrenuouseffortsto obtain as wide asampleof Balinese cultureas they could.'9MaryCatherineBatesonhas characterizedhis sequencefrominsightto doc-umentation cf. Mead 1969) as "one in which subsequentattentionhas beenshapedby a momentof recognition.It is justifiedby the convictionfinallycarriedby the evidence collected," but she adds, "anotherfieldworkermight focus at-tentionat some otherpointand come up with a differentemphasis" (1984:166).Indeedthey might. Since Mead andBateson, Cliffordand HildredGeertz,JamesBoon, J. StephenLansing, andotheranthropologistshave seen Balineseculture n a different ight. This should not surpriseus. What is noteworthyaboutthe Bateson-Mead orpuson Bali is not that it is biased, but thatthe biasesare sowell recorded.Onthepage illustratinghepivotal photographsplate54, pictures1 and 2) the authorsstate the significanceof these picturesin developing theirapproach.Batesonand Mead both knew thattheir finished books and films ad-vocated a particular nterpretation.20 onsequently, they always intended thattheirvoluminous field materialswould one day be accessible (as they now are)


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MEADANDBATESONN BALI 173

for future researchers to examine, to form the basis for alternative interpreta-tions.2'As Sol Worth wrote in an essay considering Mead's place in visual anthro-

pology, "Film is not a copy of the world out there but someone's statement aboutthe world" (1980:20). What he had learned from Mead was that anthropologists'images were also statements about and not copies of the world. The reason thephotographs and films of Bateson and Mead are usable ethnographic records, hethought, is that "they were taken in ways which allowed them to be analyzed soas to illuminate patterns observed by scientists who knew what they were lookingfor" (1980:17). Of course, those who know what they are looking for usually findit, but Worth's point was that it is naive to assume that "ethnographic truth"could come without a critical analysis, or, in other words, a disciplined subjectiv-ity. In their Balinese research Bateson and Mead worked on a large scale. It wasmassive (extending over two years, with thousands of pictures and feet of film),collaborative (Mead and Bateson, as well as their team), comparative (intra-Bali,among several regions and castes, and extra-Bali, including New Guinea), andintermedia (verbal and visual, still and motion picture, plus a range of native ar-tifacts and texts). Bateson and Mead's work was ahead of its time, but circum-stances left much analysis undone or unpublished. The fact that neither was a full-time teacher undoubtedly blunted the recognition their work demanded. The Ba-linese work of Bateson and Mead was like a vividly colored view of a sunset. Wecan know the sunset all the better because, from their records, we know the acuityof their vision and the distortion of their lenses.

NotesAcknowledgments.This essay originated n a paper prepared n 1976. A revised versionwas presented n May 1985 at the Conferenceon VisualCommunication,held at the An-nenbergSchool of Communications,Universityof Pennsylvania.I would like to thank hefollowing for informationand comments thathave been incorporatedn this and earlierversions:MaryCatherineBateson,JamesBoon, EdwardBruner,HildredGeertz,BarbaraKirshenblatt-Gimblett, atrickLoughney, Jay Ruby, ShariSegel, Wendy Shay, GeorgeStocking,MaryWolfskill. I also wish to acknowledge heDepartment f AnthropologyofNew YorkUniversityfor theirassistancein screeningthe films. All manuscriptmaterialand still photographs eproducedare from the MargaretMead Papersand South PacificEthnographicArchives, held in the ManuscriptDivision of the Libraryof Congress.Theoriginalfilm footage is preserved n the Motion Picture Division of the Library.I wouldlike to thank he Instituteof Intercultural tudies forallowingme to consultandreproducethismaterial.All references omanuscriptmaterial ite the box locationusedbytheLibraryof Congress.'Other opics that could be profitablyexploredare the substantiverelation of their visualrecord o theirBalineseethnography,or theiractivityin andattitudes owarda visual an-thropology,both beforeand after Bali.2Thissection is based on several of Mead's accounts(cf. note 6) andthe prefieldfiles (N5 and6).


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174 CULTURALNTHROPOLOGY

3M.Mead,Application o SSRC, 13January1936. Pre-FieldPreparations,N 6.4M.Meadto Mrs. BeatriceBateson, 6 April 1936. Balinese Field Trip, GeneralCorre-spondence,N 5.5G.Bateson, [Proposal orRockefellerFoundation],20 September1935. PreparationsortheBali Trip,N 6.6For eviews of theirBalinesefieldwork,cf. Mead 1972:223-240, 1977:153-238; Howard1984:180-210;Lipset 1982:149-159, as well as theiractualethnographies-Bateson andMead1942 andMead andMacgregor1951.7FollowingMead's ownpolicy, forpurposesof historicalconsistencyBalinese nameshavebeengiven herein theirformer,Dutchorthography, ather hantheircurrent,Indonesian,forms.8Foran excellent andindispensablereview of theirfielddocumentation,cf. the statementprepared y Meadupontheirdeparturerom Bali for New Guinea,enclosed withthe letterto ClarkWissler,22 March 1938. Bali FieldTrip,GeneralCorrespondence,N 5.9Noteon thetechnicalaspects:All of their mageswere inblack andwhite-the stills takenwith a 35 mm Leica camera,mostly with a 50 mm lens, supplementedwith 35, 73, and200 mmlenses, and the films made with a 16 mmMovikon, with a hand-winder.Most ofthe film appears o have been shot at 16 framesper second. There was no means for re-cordingsound. Bateson developed the stills himself, while the films were processed inJava.'?Roll22, in theLibraryof Congress."This was a situationof mutualculturalcreativity.Meadclaims that it was the Balineseimpresariopossiblyout of a desire topleasetheEuropeans)whosubstituted"youngbeau-tifulwomenfor thewitheredold women" who usually performedat night(1972:231).'2M.Meadto J. Belo, 3 October 1941. Teaching-Sarah Lawrence,Correspondence,J52.'3In he fall of 1941 Meadoffered an innovativecourse at SarahLawrenceCollege, dedi-catedto the "demonstrationof the use of visual materials"in the studyof culture andpersonality.In this methodologicalcourse she considered he variousways in whichpho-tographs, ilms, nativeart,and texts differed n theirabilityto presentethnographicnfor-mation J 52).'4Respondingo the review of Lois Murphyand GardnerMurphy 1943), Batesonwrote:"It's difficult o define theedge between "records"and "illustrations."Thephotographshereshown are in generalnot the evidence on which the analysiswas based. They are aselection from ourrecordsof which thephotograph ollection is only a part. . . . None ofthismaterial s of a sort to handlestatistically-but it is the evidence on which theanalysisis based." G. Bateson to L. and G. Murphy, 16 May 1943. Balinese Character,Corre-spondence,I 22.'5For xamplesof plateswithcontradictorymaterialBateson istspls. 22, 27, and45; whileforcontrastingplateshe gives pls. 6 and7, 45 and98.'6In act, for her 1941 course Mead had alreadyselected materialthat would later formTranceandDance, BathingBabies, andKarba's First Years.


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'7TheNew YorkUniversityFilmLibrarydistributesall seven films.'8The dentification n the scrollingtitle is quite ambiguous.Meadwrites there that"thisstory, which has manyversions, was given this way in the village of Pagoetan n 1937-1939." Onecouldeasily assume that his wasthegeneralkindof performance iven duringthe term of theirfieldwork,not that the footage was shot over this span. Neither BatesonorMeadcalled much attention o this use of multipleevents, buttheydid discuss it clearlywhen combiningimages of these two trance dances in Balinese Character(1942:164).Mead ateracknowledged,thoughonly in a briefcaption,the combinededitingin the film(1970:pl. VI). Contrary o Lipset's statement 1982:151), echoed by Howard(1984:191,194), noneof the footage used in Trance andDance was shotduring heir first monthsinOeboed,despitethe fact thatthey did film the Rangda-Barong nd krisdancesduringthistime.9Cf. Batesonand Mead(1942:xiii-xv) and Mead's summaryof their Balinese documen-tation,cited in note 8.20However,s M. C. Batesonadmits,Mead's workcould sometimeshave "benefited romanotherayerof self-consciousnessand self-criticism"(1984:172). Boon (1985) also callsattention o Mead'stendencyto deductivenessandpremature losure. In herdefense, onecould acknowledgethat if she herself was not as self-aware as she mighthave been, herbiases areamplyrecorded n her field notes andpublications.2'Among hose who used theirBalinese visual materialsduringtheir lifetime were A. Ge-sell, F. Ilg, M. Deren in the 1940s, and R. Birdwhistell,P. Ekman,B. ThompsonandO.Werner n the 1960s. All were interestedprimarily n psychology andnonverbalcommu-nication.Unfortunately, t should be noted that all this studyhas left much of the materialwithgaps and misattributionsP. Loughney, personalcommunication).As Sorenson hasnoted(1967:445), despiteher interests n preservation,Mead, too, was "plaguedwith thelack of adequatearchivingfacilities anda research ilm method which wouldpreserveheroriginalfilm fromthe disorganizationwhich results fromthe use of professionalfilm lab-oratories,editors, andequipment or the productionof the neededdemonstrativeor doc-umentary ilm."

References CitedBateson,Gregory1936 Naven:A Surveyof the ProblemsSuggested by a CompositePictureof the Cul-ture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawnfrom Three Points of View. Cambridge:Cam-bridgeUniversityPress.Bateson,Gregory,andMargaretMead1942 BalineseCharacter:A PhotographicAnalysis. New York: New YorkAcademyof Sciences.1976 "ForGod's Sake, Margaret."CoEvolutionQuarterly10(21):32-44. [Excerptsreprintedas MargaretMead andGregoryBateson on the Use of the Camera n An-thropology.Studies in the Anthropologyof Visual Communication,1977, 4(2):78-80].Bateson,MaryCatherine1984 With aDaughter'sEye:A Memoirof MargaretMead andGregoryBateson. NewYork:William Morrow.Belo, Jane1960 Trance n Bali. New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress.


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1970 Introduction.n TraditionalBalineseCulture.JaneBelo, ed. Pp. xi-xxvii. NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress.Boon, JamesA.1977 The AnthropologicalRomance of Bali, 1597-1972. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.1985 Mead's Mediations:Some Semiotics from the Sepik, by way of Bateson, on toBali. In Semiotic Mediation.E. Mertz and R. Parmentier, ds. Pp. 333-357. NewYork:Academic Press.

1986 Between-the-WarsBali:Rereading heRelics. In Malinowski, Rivers, BenedictandOthers:Essayson CultureandPersonality.Historyof Anthropology,Volume 4.GeorgeW. Stocking,Jr., ed. Pp. 218-247. Madison:Universityof Wisconsin.Clifford,James,andGeorgeE. Marcus,eds.1986 WritingCulture:The Poetics and Politicsof Ethnography.Berkeley: Universityof CaliforniaPress.

Collier,JohnC., Jr.1967 Visual Anthropology:Photographyas a Research Method. New York: Holt,Rinehartand Winston.de Brigard,Emilie1975 The Historyof EthnographicFilm. In Principlesof Visual Anthropology.PaulHockings,ed. Pp. 13-43. The Hague:Mouton.Geertz,Hildred

1983 [Mead'sBalineseResearch].Lectureatsymposiumon "MargaretMead andAn-thropology:An Evaluation." BarnardCollege, New York. 8 April 1983.Heider,KarlG.1976 EthnographicFilm. Austin:Universityof Texas Press.Howard,Jane1984 MargaretMead: A Life. New York:Simonand Schuster.Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,arbara,and EdwardM. Bruner1985 Tourist Productionsand the Semiotics of Authenticity.Paper presentedat themeetingsof the AmericanFolkloreSociety.Krebs,Stephanie

1975 The Film ElicitationTechnique. In Principlesof Visual Anthropology. PaulHockings,ed. Pp. 283-301. The Hague:Mouton.Lipset,David1982 GregoryBateson:The Legacyof a Scientist. Boston: Beacon Press.1985 An EfficientSampleof One: MargaretMead Leaves the Sepik (1938). Historyof AnthropologyNewsletter12(1):6-13.Marcus,GeorgeE.1985 A Timely Readingof Naven: GregoryBateson as OracularEssayist. Represen-tations 12:66-82.Marcus,GeorgeE., and MichaelM. J. Fischer

1986 Anthropologyas CulturalCritique:An ExperimentalMoment n the HumanSci-ences. Chicago: Universityof ChicagoPress.Mead,Margaret1939 NativeLanguagesas Field-WorkTools. AmericanAnthropologist41:189-205.1968 The MountainArapesh, I. The Recordof Unabelin with RorschachAnalysis.GardenCity:NaturalHistoryPress.1969 From Intuition o Analysis in CommunicationResearch.Semiotica 1:13-25.


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1970 The ArtandTechnologyof Field Work.In A Handbookof Methodin CulturalAnthropology.Raoul Naroll and Ronald Cohen, eds. Pp. 246-265. GardenCity,N.Y.: NaturalHistoryPress.1972 BlackberryWinter:My EarlierYears. New York:William Morrow.1975 VisualAnthropology n a Discipline of Words. In Principlesof Visual Anthro-pology. PaulHockings, ed. Pp. 3-10. The Hague:Mouton.1977 LettersFrom the Field, 1925-1977 New York:HarperandRow.Mead,Margaret,and FrancisCooke Macgregor1951 Growthand Culture:A PhotographicStudyof Balinese Childhood.New York:G. P. Putnam'sSons.

Murphy,Lois, andGardnerMurphy1943 Reviewof Balinese Character,by GregoryBatesonandMargaretMead. Amer-icanAnthropologist 5:615-619.Ruby, Jay1980 FranzBoas andEarlyCameraStudyof Behavior. KinesisReport3(1):6-11, 16.Sorenson,E. Richard1967 A ResearchFilmProgramn the Studyof ChangingMan.CurrentAnthropology8(5):443-469.Worth,Sol1980 MargaretMead and the Shift from "Visual Anthropology"to the "Anthropol-ogy of VisualCommunication."Studies in VisualCommunication (1):15-22.

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