Description: |
One of the more recent masks to come into the topeng repertoire, this type of mask was first used to portray the Dutch generals in dramatizations of the 1906 puputan of the Badung Court, in which the entire royal retinue shocked the advancing Dutch army by publicly committing suicide with their ancestral swords (kris). Now this mask is more commonly used to represent a bumbling Western tourist who unwittingly stumbles into the nexus of past and present that provides the locus for topeng, Another version, recently made popular by Ida Bagus Anom, features a haughty, upturned nose. |