T

he resort island of Bali has become a “fabricated” paradise, where the tourism industry has implanted numerous non-indigenous elements into the local culture for the sake of enhancing the island’s attractiveness and luring more visitors, a notable anthropologist stated.

“We are now living not in a paradise created, but  in a paradise fabricated,” anthropologist Jean Couteau said, referring to Bali: A Paradise Created, a critical book on the formation of images about Bali, written by Adrian Vickers,  professor of  Southeast Asian studies at the University of Sydney.

One example of that fabrication, the Sorbonne-educated scholar pointed out, is the elephant attractions offered by several zoos and animal parks in Bali.

“An increasing number of tourists now come to Bali to watch elephant attractions. Historically-speaking, the elephant has never been an endemic species of this island.

“However, for the sake of tourism, elephants were shipped into Bali, and the island’s image has been readjusted to fit into the Southeast Asian image as a region of elephants,” he said.

Another example is the “Indianization” of the local architecture, which is evident in many hotels in the island’s cultural mecca of Ubud.

“When we enter the hotels in Ubud, what we see is not Balinese culture. We see a lot of Buddha statues and Indian ornaments. This is the process of Indianization, in which the island is being readjusted to suit the hopes and aspirations of the fans of yoga, who are the prospective patrons for those hotels,” he stressed during a cultural discussion in Sanur.

This “fabrication” of images and representations, according to Couteau, is the price the island must pay as a tourist resort and destination.

Couteau admitted that the Indonesian government, Bali administration and a large number of Balinese still portrayed Bali as a destination for cultural tourism.

“The number of tourists visiting the island’s countryside, where the traditional culture of Bali is present in all its vivacity, has dropped significantly,” he argued.

During the last several years, the island’s tourism industry has refocused its marketing campaign from European to Asian markets. A large number of young travelers from China, Taiwan and Japan prefer to partake in adventure sports and visiting nightclubs, rather than reveling in Bali’s archaeological sites.