Geertz deep play

Vanessa Militano
9/5/03
Clifford Geertz

In Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” cockfighting has a theme of masculinity, death, pride, probable chance, and addiction. Outrage of any kind is not accepted or permitted for losers both in the ring and not. Losing and winning becomes a thing of the past too quickly, almost as if the cockfight never existed.
There are many parts of Geertz’s essay that I could not understand, but one passage stood out to be strong; however, I lacked full understanding so I will improvise.
“ It puts a construction on them meaningful-visible, tangible, graspable- “real,” in an ideational sense. An image, fiction, a model, a metaphor, the cockfight is a means of expression; its function is neither to assuage social passions nor heig...