Late afternoon in Bali, the cockfights will go on for three, four hours until sunset. Nine to ten matches, arranged impromptu, are held in a ring of 50 feet square. Once a match is made, the cocks are affixed with their spurs, which are razor sharp, pointed steel swords of five inches long, by winding a length of string around the foot of the spur and the leg of the cock.
The two cocks are then placed by their handlers to face each other in the center of the ring. A coconut pierced with a small hole is placed in a pail of water, in which it takes 21 seconds to sink, a period known as a tjeng, marked at beginning and end by the beating of a slit gong. During this time the handlers are not permitted to touch their roosters. If, as sometimes happens, the animals have not fought during this period, they are picked up, fluffed, pulled, prodded, and otherwise insulted, and put back in the center of the ring to restart the process. But most of the time, the cocks fly almost immediately at one another in a wing-beating, head-thrusting, leg-kicking explosion of animal fury. Within moments one or the other drives home a solid blow with his spur, and the handler whose cock has delivered the blow immediately picks it up so that it will not get a return blow. With the birds again in the hands of their handlers, the coconut will be sunk three times after which the cock which has landed the blow must be set down to show that he is firm. During this interval, the handler of the wounded cock blows in its mouth, putting the whole chicken head in his own mouth and sucking and blowing, fluffs it, stuffs its wounds with various sorts of medicines in an attempt to revive it. Once the chicken can wander idly around the rink for a coconut sink, the coconut is then sunk twice more and the fight must recommence.
As deeply bound the American identity to the ball park is the Balinese’s to the cock ring. The double entendre of the word “cock” works in exactly the same way in Balinese as it does in English to make jokes, puns, and obscenities. In line with the Balinese conception of the body as a set of separately animated parts, cocks are viewed as detachable, self-operating penises, ambulant genitals with a life of their own. Sabung, the word for cock, is used metaphorically to mean hero, warrior, champion, man of parts, political candidate, bachelor, dandy, lady-killer, or tough guy. A pompous man is compared to a tailless cock who struts about as though he had a large, spectacular one. A desperate man is likened to a dying cock who makes one final lunge at his tormentor. A stingy man who promises much and gives little is compared to a cock which, held by the tail, leaps at another without actually engaging him. An inexperienced marriageable young man is called “a fighting cock caged for the first time.” Court trials, wars, political contests, inheritance disputes, and street arguments are compared to cockfights. Bali itself is a small, proud cock, poised, neck extended, back taut, tail raised, in eternal challenge to the large, feckless, shapeless Java.
Balinese men spend an enormous amount of time with their favorite cocks, grooming them, feeding them, discussing them, trying them out against one another, or just gazing at them. They hold the cock between their thighs, bouncing it gently up and down to strengthen its legs, ruffling its feathers, pushing it out against a neighbor’s rooster to rouse its spirit, withdrawing it toward his loins to calm it again. Now and then, to get a feel for another bird, a man will fiddle this way with another’s cock for a while, but usually by moving around to squat in place behind it, rather than just having it passed across to him as though it were merely an animal. In the houseyard, fighting cocks are kept in wicker cages, moved frequently so as to maintain the optimum balance of sun and shade. They are fed kernel by kernel of maize, which is pre-sifted for impurities. Red pepper is stuffed down their beaks and up their anuses to give them spirit. They are bathed in the same ceremonial preparation of tepid water, medicinal herbs, flowers, and onions in which infants are bathed, and for a prize cock just about as often. Their combs are cropped, their plumage dressed, their spurs trimmed, their legs massaged, and they are inspected for flaws with the squinted concentration of a diamond merchant.
As the saying goes, “we’re all cock crazy,” to the Balinese, cocks are the expressions of direct inversion of human status, that is animality. Their revulsion against animal-like behaviors can hardly be overstressed. The punishment for incest is being forced to live like animal, but that for bestiality is death by drowning. In sculpture, dance, ritual, and myth, demons are most always represented in some real or fantastic animal form. In identifying with his cock, the Balinese man identifies not just with his ideal self, or even his penis, but also with what he most fears, hates, and is fascinated by the Powers of Darkness. The connection of cocks and cockfighting with such Powers is explicit. Before a cockfight begins, a blood sacrifice must be offered, with the appropriate chants and oblations, to the demons in order to pacify their ravenous hunger. When a cockfight ends, the owner of the winning cock takes the carcass of the loser, often torn limb from limb by its enraged owner, home to eat.
Bibliography
Clifford Geertz, Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.
hardlyplaying.blog 