Editing Trance and Dance in Bali (section)

== Historical significance ==

[[File:Trance and Dance in Bali.webm|thumb|upright=1.35|thumbtime=33|''Trance and Dance in Bali'' (22 minutes) |alt=Historic short anthropology film]]

In 1999 the film was deemed "[[culturally significant]]" by the United States [[Library of Congress]] and selected for preservation in the [[National Film Registry]].<ref name="Library of Congress">{{cite web |title=Trance and Dance in Bali |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/mbrs02425201/ |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] |access-date=17 October 2018 |ref=Mavis identifier: 2425201}}</ref>

The film was "very influential for its time", according to the anthropologist Jordan Katherine Weynand. She states that it records [[Balinese people]] "dancing while going through violent [[trance]]s, stabbing themselves with daggers without injury. They are then restored to consciousness with holy water and incense."<ref>{{cite web |last=Weynand |first=Jordan Katherine |title=Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson |url=https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/visualanthropology/tag/trance-and-dance-in-bali/ |publisher=[[Emory University]] |access-date=17 October 2018 |date=8 September 2016 |archive-date=4 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210304064110/https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/visualanthropology/tag/trance-and-dance-in-bali/ |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The Indonesian American anthropologist Fatimah Tobing Rony argues that the "photogenic" violence and trance are untranslatable: anthropology can look at trance but never really penetrates its mystery. In her view, "the naughty voices of the girls and the vain chuckles of the old women, transcribed by the secretary, are never heard in the voiceover or soundtrack: the women become undifferentiated exotic trancers. And the spiritual depths of the older women are not considered."<ref name="Rony 2006">{{cite journal |last=Rony |first=Fatimah Tobing |title=The Photogenic Cannot Be Tamed: Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson's ''Trance and Dance in Bali'' |journal=Discourse |date=2006 |volume=28 |issue=1 |pages=5–27 |jstor=41389738|doi=10.1353/dis.2008.0006|s2cid=143757682 }}</ref> As for [[Objectivity (science)|objectivity]], Rony remarks that "The photogenic ''Trance and Dance in Bali'' is representative of a kind of anthropological [[imperialist]] blindness, ironic considering that these scientists believed [in] and promoted the idea of their own superior vision".<ref name="Rony 2006"/>

The anthropologist Hildred Geertz calls the film pioneering, writing that Bateson and Mead are more than pathbreakers: their films "remain in certain crucial respects exemplary achievements."<ref name="Geertz 1976">{{cite journal |last=Geertz |first=Hildred |title=Trance and Dance in Bali. Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead. ; Bathing Babies in Three Cultures. Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead. ; Karba's First Years. Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead. |journal=American Anthropologist |volume=78 |issue=3 |year=1976 |doi=10.1525/aa.1976.78.3.02a01160 |pages=725–726 |doi-access=free }}</ref> In her view, their films are sophisticated "even by today's standards in that they use film not as ethnographic illustration but as a powerful tool in systematic cultural research."<ref name="Geertz 1976"/> Geertz argues that ''Trance and Dance in Bali'' sets out a hypothesis about the interconnectedness of cultural experiences of childhood, ritual, and folk drama. The film is a "minute" sample of Mead's "incredibly large corpus of visual materials", now all archived and annotated. Geertz notes, too, that the film is "a highly dramatic and moving presentation of Balinese culture" that words alone could not achieve, even if the Witch-and-Dragon ritual dance had to be shot in daylight "rather than catching it in all its terrifying mystery" at night.<ref name="Geertz 1976"/>

The [[visual anthropologist]] Beverly Seckinger notes that the film created a visual record of one performance of the Kris Dance, with the minimum of written and voiced-over narration. She comments that the film was pioneering in focusing on one ritual, rather than attempting to show a whole "culture" (her quotation marks) in one film; and in limiting the amount of narration.<ref name="Seckinger 1991"/> She quotes Geertz's conclusion that "the
film remains an evocative and striking presentation of the way in which multiple
meanings are condensed within a centrally significant cultural form".<ref name="Geertz 1976"/> Seckinger remarks that all the same the film is "a product of its time", with not attempt to have the participants speak for themselves; she notes that without audio equipment, this would have been difficult. Further, the film treats the dancers as typical of Balinese culture, not as individuals, and there is no Balinese voice or quoted Balinese text. Instead, Mead's narration "inevitably takes on the character of 'scientific' authority".<ref name="Seckinger 1991"/>

The hypnotherapists [[Jay Haley]] and Madeleine Richeport-Haley describe the film as "a masterpiece of historical importance". They visited Bali around 50 years after Bateson and Mead, met some of the same people, and created a film with the title ''Dance and Trance of Balinese Children'', combining new footage with clips from ''Trance and Dance in Bali''.<ref name="Haley 2015">{{Cite journal |last1=Haley |first1=Jay |last2=Richeport-Haley |first2=Madeleine |year=2015 |title=Autohypnosis and Trance Dance in Bali |journal=International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis |volume=64 |issue=4 |pages=455–468 |doi=10.1080/00207144.2015.1062701 |pmid=26305133 |s2cid=41658040 }}</ref>

The scholar of film Trevor Ponech writes that by altering the customary conditions of performance, Bateson and Mead's objectivity is open to question, perhaps influenced by their "ethically questionable, lifeworld-distorting desires".<ref name="Ponech 2021">{{cite book |last=Ponech |first=Trevor |title=What is Non-Fiction Cinema? On the Very Idea of Motion Picture Communication |publisher=[[Routledge]] |publication-place=London |year=2021 |isbn=978-0-367-21341-1 |oclc=1285688409 |pages=11–14 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qShHEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT17|doi=10.4324/9780429267499}}</ref>