Trobriand Cricket
Encyclopedia
Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism is an anthropological
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 about the people of the Trobriand Islands
Trobriand Islands
The Trobriand Islands are a 450 km² archipelago of coral atolls off the eastern coast of New Guinea. They are situated in Milne Bay Province in Papua New Guinea. Most of the population of 12,000 indigenous inhabitants live on the main island of Kiriwina, which is also the location of the...

 and their unique innovations
Trobriand Cricket
Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism is an anthropological documentary about the people of the Trobriand Islands and their unique innovations to the game of cricket....

 to the game of cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

.

In an interview published in the Spring 1978 issue of Film Quarterly
Film Quarterly
Film Quarterly is a film journal published by University of California Press, in Berkeley, California, United States. It was first published in 1945 as Hollywood Quarterly, was renamed The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television in 1951, and received its current title in 1958...

, Jean Rouch
Jean Rouch
Jean Rouch was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.He is considered to be one of the founders of the cinéma vérité in France, which shared the aesthetics of the direct cinema spearheaded by Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert and David Maysles...

, arguably the most famous and most respected ethnographic filmmaker, is quoted as saying about Trobriand Cricket: “It's a wonderful film, perhaps one of the greatest anthropological films of recent time.”

One of the features of older, classic ethnographies like Argonauts in the Western Pacific that piques a reader's curiosity is how the subjects of these monographs live today. This documentary offers a glimpse of Trobriand life which is not so traditional, a life that has been lived through global history after Malinowski had left. The filmmakers found a convenient subject to show this in a short film.

Cricket was introduced to Trobriand by a British missionary, Reverend Gilmour, in the early 20th century, to replace violent tribal warfare with gentlemanly sportsmanship. Although Arjun Appadurai recently classified cricket as a 'hard cultural form,' resistant to structural change, cricket in Trobriand underwent a huge transformation. Not only have the details of the sport such as the number of players, balls, bats, rules, and uniforms changed, but the meanings and manner of play have changed so much that it can hardly be called as a sport any more. In fact, one gets the impression from this film that the cricket in Trobriand is in fact another form of ritualized warfare (although some people might want to say the same thing for World Cup!).

As hinted by the subtitle—"an ingenious response to colonialism"—the film focuses on the local syncretism, contrasting scenes of the original, staid game played in on proper pitches in England with the Trobriand version, full of colors, sounds, music and dance. It is instructive to compare this with the fates of cricket in other world regions such as India, South Africa, and the Caribbean. Viewers may wish to discuss cricket's various fates under colonialism and to debate whether the Trobriand case fits Bhabha's notion of "mimicry." The more interesting feature of this film, to me, however, is the presence at the match of the Trobriand "reporter" who sought to find the meaning and origin of their 'own' culture, by interviewing senior members of the community and by observing – not participating – the actual cricket game/ritual.

In fact, this film was done of a reconstruction of cricket match "specifically enacted for the camera team by the members of a local political movement, who at the time of filming (1973) were seeking an ascendant role in the Trobriand politics" (Weiner, 1977:506). Weiner (1978) also claims that this Kabisawali Association movement, led by John Kasaipwalova (or John K, as Kiriwina people called him) caused "intense sociopolitical factionalism that generated hatred, violence and confusion" and that John K was convicted by the Papua New Guinea government for embezzlement of government funds (754). Weiner also notes that during that period and after, cricket was not being played in Kiriwina.

Thus the Trobriand cricket in this film was a well orchestrated and heavily edited version of something of which Trobrianders had recent memory. Perhaps we can find in this film not only an indigenized sport but also indigenized practices of exhibition, objectification, and journalism, which recalls Appadurai's point in Modernity at Large that: indigenization is often a product of collective and spectacular experiments with modernity and not necessarily of the subsurface affinity of new cultural forms with existing patterns in the cultural repertoire.

Trobriand Cricket satisfies the multiple qualifications to be considered an ethnographic film as established by Aufderheide. “The use of film in anthropology generally fails to develop its full potential,” according to Sally Ann Ness, although film is the “most appropriate” medium for the study of cultural performance. Thus, Trobriand Cricket is historically significant because it is a model for future filmmakers seeking to take on an ethnographic project.
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