In late 1926 William Douglas Burden, an American explorer, returned from South-East Asia with two of the rarest animals in the world. They were Komodo dragons, and their presence in the Bronx Zoo created a sensation throughout New York City, meriting coverage in the leading newspapers of the day. However, the stir they created only lasted a few months. The two animals died – one in October, the other in November of that year – as the zoological park did not have the proper facilities to house large reptiles in a climate that was transitioning from autumn into winter. The two lizards were quickly presented to the American Museum of Natural History, where they were stuffed and put on display in a glass case that created a facsimile of their original environment (Barnard 2011: 2, 97–8). Visitors could now view them up close, and can still do so today: static reminders of an earlier era. Alongside the display the museum ran never-released film footage taken on the expedition that led to the capture of the dragons to provide a vivid depiction of their original environment. The film provided a more active viewing experience, taking the viewer into the exotic world of South-East Asian fauna.

The footage is twelve minutes in length and focuses on Burden and his wife Katherine and their time on the remote Indonesian island of Komodo. Following a series of establishing shots – of the museum, the Komodo display, a variety of animals on the actual island and the construction of the expedition camp – in the first five minutes of the film, three scenes make up the rest of the footage. The first depicts the shooting of a water buffalo, which will serve as food for the camp as well as bait for lizards. The second extended scene features a series of quick clips that begins with Katherine shooting a Komodo dragon that was feasting on the water buffalo carcass. This quickly transitions into the construction of a trap, the shooting and placement of a deer in the trap, and then the capture of a lizard lured into it. The final scene focuses on two dragons ripping and tearing apart the carcass of an animal.

When reading various hand-wringing essays on the state of Southeast Asian studies, it is common for the authors to offer a survey of how the field of area studies has developed. These surveys often involve the role of post- World War II politics and the distribution of governmental funds to ensure a knowledge of the region in the face of the Cold War, in the case of the United States, or the complex process of decolonization in which the former colonial nation-state fitfully tries to understand its relationship with its former colonies, which is common in the often nation-specific Southeast Asian programmes in Europe. Thus, that Cornell University has had a complex relationship with governmental funding agencies due to the presence of scholars who question American policy in Southeast Asia, or that the study of Indonesia at Leiden University barely kept afloat in the 1950s and then witnessed uncomfortable moments in the Dutch-Indonesian relationship, such as the fiftieth anniversary of Indonesian Independence, come as no surprise. 1 At the core of most of these studies is an uncertainty over the role of Southeast Asian studies in academia. While some scholars argue that there are basic cultural and geographic unities that reflect a certain regional unity over time, others emphasize how the regional designation only became prevalent after World War II. 2 This has resulted in many scholars of the region being doubtful of any contribution they can make toward larger academia, with the end result being a series of navel-gazing volumes – this one included – in which the basis for Southeast Asian studies is questioned.

Beyond the field of university administration and the need for government departments to create boundaries to compartmentalize studies, the disciplines of anthropology and history are usually the most successful in defending Southeast Asia as a region. Cultural similarities ranging from the preference for fermented fish paste to the traditional ubiquity of the pole house are placed alongside the high rates of female autonomy – when compared with “East” and “South” Asia (once again regional groupings) – and held up as proof of a certain common Southeast Asian culture.