According to Scott’s writings on the arts of resistance, the subordinates’ arts of resistance should not be public, open or direct because their authority relations are not portrayed in the common lines of the subordinates. For example, despite prisoners being oppressed and brutally exploited in prison institutions by the oppressive government, prisoners are considered as the subordinates to the officers and could not resist their orders publicly or openly. Therefore, Scott states that prisoners are supposed to measure the words they utter publicly and conduct themselves carefully before the dominant prisoners who are close to the officials. Subordinates should not portray their arts of resistance publicly or openly because they fear the rules and regulations they make when coming up with the resistance arts as the powers generated among the subordinates is produced as a countervailing authority to the behavior of their supervisors. For example, tenants in Malaysia had developed a strong culture which condemned any tenant who may secure priority on the landlord by giving him high rent than what the other current local tenant was offering.
The arts of resistance of the subordinates is not portrayed publicly or openly because of the sanction penalties given in the rules and regulations governing the resistance arts. The punishment of the resistance relies on the subordinates’ cohesiveness, and how they seem threatened by a defection of this sanction, hence subordinates respect their rules and cannot display them openly and publicly to the supervisors. For example, in Malaysia when a tenant broke the rules of boycotting payment of rents and paid the landlord his rent, he faced a punishment of having his cow killed by the other tenants. The subordinates do not show their resistance arts direct because of the pressures implemented to monitor and control those who deviate from their resistance rules, and the practice of domination among the subordinates creates the hidden transcript of the resistance arts.
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When the above script is rigid, and the effects of the mistakes made by the subordinates are significant, the subordinates may think that conformity and changing of their culture is the only manipulative way to be used. This attitude of changing their culture strategy requires them to evaluate oneself and the performance of the other subordinate members and then come up with a meaningful explanation of how to conform to the culture. Therefore, subordinate groups should uphold their strategies and carry out the needs of the dominant culture without changing this culture. The group should protect changes on the dominant culture and perform on it through handling the tactical side of this culture. This can be done through tactfully disguising and hiding their real intentions and aims at their norms from the social groups to avoid encouragement of falsehood about their mission which could lead to failure of their plans which causes the need for changing the dominant culture.
The subordinates should aim at visualize their performance faking smiles to use this as a manipulation tool to flatter their masters that the end will be met. For example, slaves who strengthened their master’s stereotyped opinion to be unproductive and shiftless led to lowering of the work culture the master expected from them, and this led to changing the culture to increase their performance. If the slaves had emphasized on making artful songs and praises on their masters their life would have been better as they could have acquired clothing allowances and increase in food rations. The subordinates should cooperate to develop a theatre piece which serves the master’s opinion of the condition while maintaining the piece on their interest without altering the dominant culture of their resistance arts.
