New Zealand Journal of Media Studies

New Zealand Journal of Media Studies Volume 10 no.2, December 2007

The New Zealand Journal of Media Studies is a fully refereed scholarly journal established in 1995 and now available online. The journal’s contributions reflect the development of media studies and related fields in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It is a space for the scholarly discussion of media research and literacy with regard to theoretical and representational questions and topics, history and policy at both local and global levels. Contributions address either New Zealand-specific topics, or deal more generally with the field of the media and the ways in which it intersects with and inflects other cultural fields. The Journal is hosted by the Media Studies Programme of the School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies, Victoria University, Wellington.

EDITOR: Tony Schirato

EDITORIAL PANEL:

2

Abel, S.

Victoria University of Wellington

Bennion-Nixon, L-J.


Brady, A


Beuttner, A


Cross, D.A.

Massey University

de Bruin, J.


Distefano, J.J.

Massey University

Dunleavy, T.


Groves, T.


Jutel, T.


Matheson, D.

University of Canterbury

McDonnell, B.

Massey University

Nicholls, B.

University of Otago

Opie, B.


Perry, N.

University of Auckland

Petrie, D.


Phelan, S.

Massey University

Ricketts, H.


Schirato, T.


Shuker, R.


Simmons, L


NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

Smith, J.


Stahl, G.


Swalwell, M.


Thornley, D

University of Otago

Tully, J.

University of Canterbury

Van Belle, D.


Weavers, L.


Webb, J.

University of Canberra

Zanker, R.

School of Broadcasting, Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology

Zuberi, N.


SUBMISSIONS : The New Zealand Journal of Media Studies is published two to three times a year in both hard and electronic form. Articles wishing to be considered for publication should be sent to in electronic form to the editor (currently Tony Schirato), and should be between 3,500 and 7,500 words words in length. Submitted articles should: (a) use in-text referencing and not make use of notes outside the text, and (b) supply a relevant bibliography. In-text references should provide the author’s name and the year of publication, and where applicable the relevant page number, as in: (Bourdieu 1998: 203) The bibliographical entries should supply the name and initial of the author, year of publication, name(s) of text(s), publisher, place of publication and where applicable the page numbers (for journal articles or book chapters) in that order, and only include punctuation where it is part of the name, date, number or address of a text. So: Bourdieu P 1998 The Social Structures of the Economy Polity Cambridge


3

4


New Zealand Journal of Media Studies Volume 10 no.2, December 2007

7

Editorial

15

He Wero – Towards a bicultural and multicultural discipline

Ian Stuart

31

He kōrero e pa ana ki te toa takitini

Alice Te Punga Somerville

37

Close encounters of the Māori kind – Talking interaction in the films of Taika Waititi

Ocean Mercier

53

Understanding Whangara: ‘Whale Rider’ as Simulacrum

Brendan Hokowhitu

71

Māori and community news constructions of Meningococcal B: The promotion of a

moral obligation to vaccinate

Shiloh Groot, Ronald Ngata, Darrin Hodgetts, Linda Waimarie Nikora,

Rolinda Karapu & Kerry Chamberlain

91

The interpretative resources of Aotearoa New Zealand journalists reporting on Māori

Donald Matheson

107

Selling Beats and Pacifications: Pacific music labels in Aotearoa/New Zealand/ Niu sila

Kirsten Zemke-White and Su’eina Sharon Televave

131

Australian Idol versus Cronulla: Whither the Postcolonising Nation?

Henk Huijser

145 NZJMS Bibliographies


5

6


EDITORIAL: This special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Media Studies focuses on issues of biculturalism, multiculturalism and indigeneity. The intentions of the editors, Sue Abel and Ian Stuart, were:

•

to indicate the importance of these issues in Media Studies

•

to provide an incentive and vehicle for new work in this area. Accordingly, the Call

for Papers was sent out to Māori Studies, Pacific Studies, and Asian Studies

programmes, as well as the usual Media Studies and Film Studies circuits. The issue opens (appropriately) with a challenge by Ian Stuart. Stuart sees Media

Studies as “a product of western cultures in its forms of communication, its theories, its explanations and interpretations”. His main challenge to the discipline is to first become more bicultural, then multicultural. While such an aim might be contested by those who argue that these two processes should occur contemporaneously, Stuart is not so much explicitly prioritising biculturalism as arguing that once biculturalism has been achieved, it is a small step to open the discipline to other cultural approaches. What will emerge, he suggests, is not a Media Studies partitioned off into a Māori section, a Pacific section, Asian sections and a Pākehā section, but rather a discipline in which these different strands together create one New Zealand Media Studies. The first step in this process is to decide the conventions of the debate. Stuart provides a potential model through his use of a whaikwrero format combined with elements of western-derived forms. We then, he argues, need to examine and change the current academic forms and methodologies, and from this new platform institute a New Zealand research programme using epistemologies and methodologies drawn from all cultures in Aotearoa New Zealand. Such a research programme would examine, among other things, the cultural interactions of our developing multicultural mass communication system. Stuart suggests some topics for such research. These include, for example: How does Pacific Island radio interact with New Zealand-living Pacific Island lifeworlds? Does Māori radio offer a site of resistance to the dominant New Zealand culture? How do our different culturally-contexted mass media systems interact with each other? Stuart acknowledges that scholarship done to date using European-derived theories and methodologies has produced useful information, analysis and perspectives – as he

Editorial – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

7

acknowledges, he himself has used such analysis and approaches to investigate Māori media. But he emphasises again that “a truly bicultural and multicultural discipline will only arise when other culturally-based approaches are used”. Stuart’s paper also raises other issues, and Alice Te Punga Somerville engages with some of these in relation to both content and form, while at the same time issuing her own challenge to Media Studies practitioners. Te Punga Somerville initially allows Media Studies some slack by recognising the possibility/probability that the wider institutions within which Media Studies is located are themselves always monocultural. But she goes on to insist that a discipline (and by implication Media Studies) is able to stay monocultural as long as it refuses to acknowledge the body of indigenous scholarship already produced and continually being produced. She writes: Our bibliographies … should be thick and fat with the names of Māori and other indigenous scholars, and if they do not currently brim in this way then it is our job to go out and hunt this work down and bring it into view… Scholars within Media Studies should be embarrassed by the range and depth of Māori, Pasifika and other Other scholarship, and then reflect on the extent to which they have participated in the marginalisation of these scholars, and the extent to which their own work has suffered from not engaging with this scholarship. Te Punga Somerville goes further than characterising disciplines/Media Studies as monocultural – she also charges that disciplines don’t mind being seen as monocultural, because then their sins are those of omission. If, however, the charge is that a discipline is “limited, blind, disengaged, restricted, out-of-date”, then the sins become those of commission such as the suppression of vital scholarship and scholars. Indigenous scholars within these disciplines and institutions, then, need to work against their own invisibilisation and, rather than referring predominantly to the Western tradition of scholarship and/or writing in a form that minimises citations and footnotes, should rigorously engage with existing scholarship by Māori and allied scholars in order to foreground it and make a statement about both its presence and its contribution to scholarly activity. Here Te Punga Somerville is also critiquing Stuart’s intervention into the monoculturalism of tertiary institutions in Aotearoa/New Zealand. She goes on to take issue with what she argues is a limited adoption of the whaikorero format, asking a range of critical questions about the stakes and parameters of the whaikōrero form, and how these might be incorporated in a written form.

8


These two opening salvos raise important, and huge, and difficult questions for many Media Studies academics. How do we engage with the arguments set out by, and between, Stuart and Te Punga Somerville if we have not acquired the necessary cultural capital? Te Punga’s response, cited in her paper, of ‘Do your reading’ does not enable many of us to replicate what has been learnt from years of lived experience in te ao Māori and indeed, of living in a minority culture. There are also serious issues for Pākehā academics researching in this area. I use my own experience as an example. My first research looked at how “mainstream” television news covered Waitangi Day and related issues, and demonstrated many ways in which it was monocultural. I was aware, however, that because I was not immersed in or deeply knowledgeable about te ao Māori and Māori tikanga, I was only skimming the surface of that monoculturalism. I relied to a considerable extent on information from Māori informants to enable me to see what had been omitted from the news, and the extent to which gatekeeping and framing marginalised and even positioned as deviant those taking an active stand for Māori rights. Aware of the argument about Western researchers who have utilised research on and about indigenous peoples to benefit their academic careers, I justified (and continue to justify) my position on the grounds that my work, in demonstrating how monculturalism is enscribed into much of the news, contributes to a movement for social justice. And yet challenges such as the one below leave me feeling uneasy: When working in collaborative ways and working with indigenous people to establish indigenous paradigms, non-indigenous professionals need to be careful not to engage in disempowering practices. Their well-intended help and theories are sometimes elevated as “The Indigenous Way”. Although it appears positive and supportive to the indigenous community, it may be a new form of assimilation whereby indigenous people serve as the vehicle for having the non-indigenous person’s intellectual, emotional and political needs fulfilled. (Glover et al, 2005) The remaining essays in this issue build on and extend existing scholarship on ‘race’, ethnicity and the media in Aotearoa/New Zealand (and, in one case, Australia). Two essays come from Māori scholars, and demonstrate how a critical engagement with media texts which is firmly grounded in te ao Māori not only offers non-Māori new ways of reading texts, but also offers insights into kawa and tikanga. Although neither Ocean Mercier nor Brendan Hokowhitu make reference to Barry Barclay’s important distinction between ‘talking in’ and ‘talking out’ in film (Barclay 1990), their essays in this issue suggest and discuss variations of this model for categorising and analysing film from Aotearoa New Zealand. Editorial – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

9

Ocean Mercier uses theories from Kaupapa Māori to create another important distinction, this time within a framework emphasising the importance of marae custom and practice. Within this ‘marae paradigm’ Mercier suggests two new interpretive frameworks. The Rongomatāne (or wharenui) category is similar to Barclay’s ‘talking in’ in that it describes “insider stories”, including “films made by Māori, about Māori, for Māori”. The Tūmataenga (or paepae) category, on the other hand, refers to the situation on the marae-ātea, where ritual encounters take place. Here Mercier groups “encounter situations in which a negotiation of a new relationship is a central theme of the film, for instance those between Māori and Pakeha, or different iwi, or any other group”. Such films emphasise the nature of interaction, rather than the ethnic or racial nature of character, cast or crew. Mercier’s categories, then, not only broaden the interpretation of what is generally known as ‘Māori film’, but can also be applied to other Aotearoa New Zealand films. Mercier demonstrates how the categories work through an analysis of Taika Waititi’s short films Two Cars, One Night (a Tūmatauenga (paepae) situation where primary encounter is negotiated) and Tama Tu (a Rongomatāne (wharenui) situation where “all have a voice”), before discussing briefly how the marae paradigm might be applied more widely to films such as Whale Rider, River Queen and Utu. Where Mercier looks at film in Aotearoa New Zealand from the inside, Brendan Hokowhitu is concerned with the problematics of indigenous films in an age of globalisation, and uses Whale Rider as his case study. Although many Māori have championed Whale Rider, the film has been critiqued by Barry Barclay (2003) and Kylie Message (2003) among others, and Hokowhitu here adds his own challenge. He sees Whale Rider as part of a transnational culture, arguing that it “did not come from an alternative world view (which would have been largely incomprehensible to the western viewer); it was not an indigenous culture, but rather a ‘third’ culture oriented beyond national boundaries and made instantly recognisable to a western audience”. Hokowhitu discusses the market logic which leads to an emphasis on transnational themes. This market logic, of course, affects other cultural products from Aotearoa New Zealand. What is distinct about cultural products such as Whale Rider, however, is that “the market logic described here demands production of humanistic films that simplify and misrepresent indigenous culture by reproducing a perverse version of the western Self with an exotic aroma”. Hokowhitu suggests that Whangara is an imagined landscape and community – a community which is represented as being oppressed by its own primitive traditions, rather than by colonial imperialism. He writes: “In this imagined community, a traditional Māori nation is reinvented and enlightened through a neo-colonial gaze, which serves to create a simulacrum that justifies continued suppression”.

10


Much of the first scholarship on issues of ethnicity, ‘race’ and the media in Aotearoa New Zealand focused on the analysis of “mainstream” news coverage (or lack of coverage) of te ao Māori. The research report Portrayal of Māori and Te Ao Māori in Broadcasting: the foreshore and seabed issue(2005) commissioned by the Broadcasting Standards Authority has an excellent literature review which lists and summarises this material. Two essays in this special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Media Studies are concerned with “mainstream” news coverage of Māori, but in different ways to previous research in this area. Shiloh Groot et al examine news coverage of the Meningococcal B vaccination campaign aimed at Māori, arguing that (in accordance with international trends) the coverage is biomedical in approach, placing emphasis on ‘individual biological processes’ rather than broader socioeconomic factors such as low household budgets and poor housing conditions, so that Māori are (yet again) divided into ‘good Māori’ (those who favour vaccination) and ‘bad Māori’ (those who do not comply with the advice of health professionals). But the essay is more than being a variation on the ‘standard story’ of news coverage of Māori. Groot et al have chosen to analyse two community newspapers which serve Māori communities, and the Māori Television Service’s television news – the first time that analysis of this news service has been analysed. Groot et al argue that while the good and bad Māori dichotomy is present in all three media in their study, more positive strategies were also employed to promote compliance with the vaccination campaign. They note that in The Gisborne Herald and Māori Television Service (MTS) news coverage, overt references were made to Māori world resources such as te reo Māori, Māori customary practices, kohanga reo and kura, and Māori entities such as marae and whanau. They suggest that the use of such Māori resources in framing news items is a positive sign of cultural change. On the other hand, traditional Māori perspectives on health invoke the need to address the broader socio-economics of health, and not merely the immediate response of vaccination. Yet proponents of the wider perspective were too often dismissed as ill-informed, while emphasis was placed on vaccination as the only logical response. Alternative explanations and responses to the threat posed by Meningococcal B were therefore dismissed. In the end, then, in this story at least, news outlets which are sympathetic to te ao Māori (The Gisborne Herald) or are operated by Māori in Māori for Māori (MTS) still rely “on distinctions between good Māori who comply with the dictates of Western expectations and bad Māori who dissent and offer alternative perspectives”.


11

Donald Matheson summarises the position established by previous research: “there is little evidence of biculturalism in news agendas, but rather a focus – consistent over time – in Māori as problems, criminal, radical, dangerous, exotic, deviant; that is, as a racialised ‘other’ in all the many manifestations of that status”. Matheson then moves beyond the textual analysis that this previous research is based on and interviews seven journalists who all showed some awareness of the shortcomings in their own reporting of what is usually known as ‘Māori affairs’ or ‘race relations’, asking them to reflect on their reporting of Māori. He describes the journalists interviewed as “on the whole, reflective, critical, concerned to be non-racist and dissatisfied”. We can come back again to the dichotomy of good/bad. There has been a tendency, internationally as well as in Aotearoa New Zealand, for news practitioners and news critics to dig themselves trenches from which to fire shots at each other. Matheson argues that his interviews with journalists suggest that the picture of inadequate reporting of Māori based on repertoires of prejudice is actually more complicated, and “the situation in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand is not quite one of unacknowledged pervasive racism”. Nevertheless, this research demonstrates that, despite the good will of the journalists, they draw on a limited range of interpretative resources both in talking about what is wrong with current coverage, and what might be done differently. Matheson sees one of the problems as that of a liberal journalism which acknowledges cultural difference, but sees the way to bridging this as largely a matter of increasing intercultural understanding through increasing other people’s knowledge of key Māori concepts and words. He argues that, however well meaning, the Pākehā journalists interviewed had little understanding of the power of the dominant culture (and its media) to favour some ways of knowing over others, and to define other cultures in terms of their difference to the west: “The notion that racialising assumptions appear not just in one story about a moko but throughout a journalism that speaks about a subordinated culture to a dominant culture, in that dominant culture’s language, using its interpretative resources, was not available to these respondents”. The last two papers move away from issues of biculturalism and indigeneity to focus on ‘multiculturalism’.

Kirsten Zemke-White and Su’eina Televave discuss “ethnic

entrepreneurship” as it manifests in the independent development and manufacture of Pacific ‘pop’ musics in Aotearoa/New Zealand/Niu sila. Taking Negus’s argument about the music industry that “industry produces culture and culture produces industry”, and

12


comparing the local music scene with that of African American music in the United States, they sift through the complex interplay of racism in the industry, issues of democracy in the industry, the politics of the music produced, questions of ‘authenticity’ and issues of identity that impact on and are in turn affected by independent Pacific music labels. For example, racism as expressed in the marginalisation of hip hop music has, they suggest, “arguably necessitated and fostered the development of specifically Pacific, or ethnically based, record labels to develop hip hop which was popular for Pacific and Māori youth”. The expansion of companies such as Dawn Raid (the name itself a reaction to state racism in the 1970s) and the proliferation of small record labels brings in not only more people, but also a more diverse range of wider range of ethnicities, into the industry, so making it more democratic. Henk Huijser, writing from Australia, considers the status of Australia as a postcolonising nation through a discussion and comparison of the reality TV show Australian Idol and the Cronulla ‘race riots’ in 2005. The point of similarity between these seemingly unrelated events is, he argues, that the same youth demographic which votes for the contestants on Australian Idol also took part in the Cronulla riots. Huijser suggests that Australian Idol with its diversity of contestants and foregrounding of their ethnic and/or cultural identity, might seem to indicate a generational shift in terms of attitudes towards ethnic diversity which is an important moment in the development of Australia as a postcolonising nation. However, there are important qualifications and disclaimers that need to be made if such an argument is to be accepted, such as the lack of any real challenge to structural relations of power on the part of Australian Idol, and the important distinction between the ‘consumption of difference’ and an engagement with difference in everyday contexts. In other words, “‘diversity as mediated entertainment’ is something quite distinct from ‘diversity in the workplace’” - or indeed on the beach, as ‘Cronulla’ appeared to indicate. Huijser concludes that because postcolonisation is a complex and often contradictory process, it is possible to argue (provisionally) that Australian Idol and ‘Cronulla’ represent opposite sides of the same postcolonising coin.


13

References Barclay Barry 2003 An Open Letter to John Barnett Onfilm February 2003 page 11 Barclay Barry 1990 Our Own Image Auckland Longman Paul Glover Marewa Dudgeon Pat and Huygens Ingrid (2005) Colonisation and Racism In Nelson, Geoffrey and Prilleltensky, Isaac (Eds) Community Psychology: in pursuit of liberation and well-being Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan Message Kylie 2003 Whale rider and the politics of location Metro Magazine 136 Spring 86 Negus K 1999 The Music Business and Rap: between the street and the executive suite Cultural Studies 13/3 488 – 508 Te Kawa a Maui Research Team 2005 Portrayal of Māori and Te Ao Māori in Broadcasting: the foreshore and seabed issue Wellington BSA

14


ARTICLE:

He Wero – Towards a bicultural and multicultural discipline Ian Stuart

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā kārangaranga maha, Tihei Mauriora. Taku mihi tuatahi ki te rangi, te timatanga, te mutunga o te ao katoa. Tēnā rā koutou. Taku mihi tuarua ki ngā motu o Aotearoa, ngā maunga, ngā awa, ngā wāhi tapu. Tēnei te mihi nui a tēnei, te uri o Te Ati Haunui a Paparangi. Tēnā rā koutou katoa. Taku mihi nui ki te marae o Te Whare Takiura o Kahungunu raua ko te whare Te Ara o Tāwhaki. He turangawaewae ki au. Tēnā kōrua. He mihi aroha anō hoki tēnei ki ngā tipuna whare maha e tū nei i ngā whare kura o Aotearoa. Ko koutou ngā pātaka o te mātauranga Māori, he taonga mō ngā iwi, he whakaruruhau anō hoki mō ngā kaiwhakaako me ngā tauira huri noa i te motu. E ngā tīpuna whare, tu mai rā koutou mō ake tonu atu. Ka mihi anō hoki ki a marae ātea, arā, ki a Papatuanuku. Tēnā koutou. Ka huri ahau ki te hunga mate. Ka mihi ki nga tīpuna, rātou rā i hīkoi nei i te ara o tēnei mātaurangi, arā, te mātauranga o te hunga pāpaho. E hika mā e, he taonga tuku iho rā ā koutou mahi, ā, koinei rā te pupū ake a roimata ki a koutou te matangarongaro. Engari, haere, haere, haere. Moe mai i roto i te rangimarie o tō koutou Atua. Ki a tātou te hunga ora, tēnā tātou, tēnā tātou, tēnā koutou katoa. Ki ōku hoa o Te Ara o Tawhaki, ōku pouwhirinaki, ōku poutautoko i ngā mahi o te mātauranga Māori, kei te mihi, kei te mihi. Kei ngā kōrero rā ka whai iho, ko ētahi tonu o ngā whakaaro i hua mai i a au e mahi ana i ō koutou taha. He mihi ki ōku kaiwhakaako. Koutou rā i kaha nei ki te āmai i ō koutou mōhiotanga ki a au. Ka mau kē tō koutou wehi! Tēnā koutou. Ka mihi ki a koutou e aro mai nei ki ēnei maramara korero. Ko te tūmanako o te kaituhi ka tahuri

Ian Stuart – He Wero – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

15

mai koutou ki te whakawaewae, ki te whakaringaringa i tēnei kaupapa. Nā reira, koutou rā e te hunga mātauranga, anei rā te wero. Tīkina mai te taki! Tēnā koutou. Anei rā te kōrero a Ihenga o Te Arawa, arā, ko Ihenga te mokopuna a Tama Te Kapua. ‘Kei muri i te awe kapara he tangata kē, mōna te ao, he mā.’ He whakatauāki tēnei, ā, ki a au nei, he kupu poropiti anō hoki tēnei nā Ihenga. Kua mārama nei tātou ki te wero a tērā kōrero rongonui a Ihenga, ko tā tātou i te rā tonu nei, he whakarerekē i te ao! Nā, kua takoto nei te taki, ka huri ahau ki te reo o Te Ao Mārama, arā, ki te reo o te tangata kei muri i te awe kapara. The whakatauāki I have used as a challenge to New Zealand’s Media Studies community says; Shadowed behind the tattooed face a stranger stands, he who owns the earth, and is white. It was said by Ihenga, the grandson of Tama Te Kapua of Te Arawa. In New Zealand in this time, it appears that the prophecy is true. The white races, (i.e. non-Māori or Pākehā) have control of the world. This is also largely true of academia, and of the discipline of Media Studies. It is a product of western cultures, in its forms of communication, its theories, its explanations and interpretations. As such, Media Studies is mono-cultural. My challenge to this discipline is simple: become bicultural and then multicultural. In this way I believe we will develop a New Zealand approach to Media Studies, and make a significant contribution to our understandings of the world in which we find ourselves, not only New Zealand, but globally. Currently we have a bicultural and multicultural media-scape in Aotearoa. There is a healthy Māori media operating in print, radio and television. There is Pacific Island radio and Chinese-language newspapers, as well as Pacific, Asian and Māori programming pepperpotted throughout what is generally regarded as the Mainstream Media. What we have in New Zealand is no longer a single cultural monolithic set of “consciousness industries” (Enzenberger 1962), it has become a bicultural and multicultural media-scape. But the academic discipline studying this diverse media-scape is mono-cultural. It is to this issue that I address this challenge. This challenge is to examine and change the academic forms – the western methodologies we all operate under - to become bicultural, and from that platform to institute a major New Zealand research programme, using epistemologies and methodologies drawn from all cultures in Aotearoa/New Zealand, which examine the cultural interactions of our developing multicultural mass communication system.

16


Fundamentally, I am problematizing New Zealand’s Media Studies by suggesting that every question has more than one possible answer; every situation has more than one possible explanation, drawing on explanations from more than one culture; every question, every critique, every criticism, rather than challenging validity, is a site for research, a departure point for new theorising. I am suggesting that instead of relying on our westernderived conventions for speaking and presenting information, the way forward is to listen to the different ways of discussing these issues, of answering questions and of doing research. It is in the exploration of the issues I raise that Media Studies in New Zealand will become bi- and multicultural. Therefore, this paper asks many questions, to raise issues which need discussion, debate and research, rather than supplying answers. It is a challenge – a wero - rather than a set of answers. I would argue that the answers can only be found by opening the discourse to other cultures; finding the answers in a bi- and multicultural discourse. Some approaches to the topic of biculturalism and multiculturalism have begun by defining these two terms. I will give a brief account shortly. However, I would argue that the nature and operation of biculturalism in any given context is to be discussed and negotiated amongst those people involved in each context. For one culture to define biculturalism, as has happened in several fora in Aotearoa/New Zealand, is the exercise of power over the other culture, and inherently mono-cultural. If biculturalism is to be discussed and negotiated within each context, then setting the conventions for such a discussion must be an exercise in biculturalism in itself. To only allow the conventions for speaking and presentation from one culture is to act mono-culturally. Therefore, the first step along the bicultural path is to decide the conventions of the debate – my first challenge to the western-derived academic culture we work under. Consequently, this piece has been deliberately constructed using a whaikōrero form and format. As I began to write this, I realised that my challenge to academia for being monocultural was framed as a discursive essay - an institutional form which is drawn from the mono-cultural western academic models. Because it draws on presentation forms from both Māori and New Zealand’s European-derived cultures, the English language section of this piece can be read as an essay. But it is predominantly written as a whaikōrero, and should be read as such. In that it does incorporate some western-derived forms, it is a (perhaps hesitant) attempt at a bicultural written form. As a whaikōrero, I have chosen the kawa known as tau utuutu, which means the first speaker in any situation comes from the Tangata whenua, the second from the manuhiri


17

side of the paepae, back to the tangata whenua, and so on, backwards and forwards across the domain of conflict, in controlled debate and discussion. This is a form close to a westernderived debating style, and therefore more accessible to everyone. And because it is close to a western debating style, it allows for people to enter the debate using their own culturallybased discussion forms. I want to begin by defining biculturalism as a concept of shared power. The statement “New Zealand is a bicultural country” is a political statement, about who has power in this country. The statement “New Zealand is a multicultural country”, is a sociological/anthropological descriptive statement. Both of these statements are valid, and, because they are from different contexts, they are not oppositional statements. Both demand responses, and becoming bicultural is the first step on the path to multiculturalism. Accepting biculturalism demands sharing power between Māori and Pākehā. Once biculturalism is achieved, it is a smaller step to multiculturalism, as it is an extension of biculturalism. Arguments for biculturalism are reasonably easy to formulate. Firstly, the free practice of one’s own culture, without undue influence or pressure, is a basic human right. That right has never been overruled by the influx of other peoples and other cultures into New Zealand. Immigrants were welcomed here by the tipuna, as long as they respected Māori culture. Māori hold this position today. Secondly, Article Two of the Treaty of Waitangi guarantees Māori total control over their taonga. Culture is considered a taonga, in fact it is taonga tuku iho, and therefore Māori have a guaranteed right to practice their own culture in New Zealand. If that right accrues to Māori then it also accrues to Pākehā, as Treaty partners, who consequently have the right to practice their culture in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The important point I want to stress is that the rights to the free practice of culture accrues to both Māori and Pākehā. This means we have two legitimate cultures in this country and, as biculturalism is a political statement, this means we have two legitimate forms of power, Māori forms and the currently dominant western-derived forms. Academia is an institution in which people exercise power. This is largely a social power, not economic or political power, though in many ways, in terms of acting and influencing people’s behaviour and exercising power, academia attempts the exercise of political and economic power. (Of course. dividing power into the forms political, economic and social is an analytical approach only, as the reality is that all three forms are interlocked and indivisible.)

18


Our academic system traces its roots to the European university systems which have been adopted in our former British colony. Within this system we have learnt the conventions of our discipline. We can all cite the whakapapa of our ideas, and each of our individual whakapapa of ideas will be different. The basic outline of my own might look like; Marx, Gramsci, Adorno, Lazarsfeld, Habermas, Hall, Bourdieu, Said and Spivak. But in learning the concepts of Media Studies, we have adopted the epistemologies, the research methodologies, as well as the oral and written forms of presentation, of the western-derived academic systems. In such an adoption exists an exercise of power. This is the power to research, the power to critique, the power to write and publish, the power to comment and the power to teach. This power is granted only to those who know and use the acceptable forms and can cite an acceptable whakapapa of their ideas, in the acceptable form. Within our whare wananga we teach those institutional forms that we have learnt, giving top marks only to those who learn them best. Only those who have learnt to use the correct forms can publish in our journals. This is the editorial/peer review process, and the base values of these judgements lie in our Europeanderived academic culture. I would argue that this means those who have accumulated the appropriate symbolic capital, who know the codes of academia, (Bourdieu 1984, 1993) are allowed to participate, those who don’t know are excluded – an exercise of power. But that exercise of power privileges a few and disadvantages the many. It especially privileges those with the Pākehā cultural capital to enter our teaching institutions where academic capital can be easily added to existing cultural capital. Those who have only Māori or Pacific cultural capital have small chance of success in academia. For the Media Studies academy to become truly bi- and multicultural, the power to speak must be shared amongst other cultures. Here, the concept of a discussion about biculturalism in the New Zealand Media Studies context is important, because it is through the discussion that we not only learn what biculturalism means, but we also begin to practice biculturalism. This means the discipline must be open to culturally different ways of presenting information (hence the construction of this piece as a whaikōrero), as well as culturally different ways of conceiving and theorising social interactions and of explaining social systems, especially those around the mass media. Once we have changed the conventions of debate, and can allow for different ways of working within Media Studies, we need topics to approach from bicultural and multicultural perspectives, to which I now turn. Just as our academic system is the product of one particular culture, our mass communication technology and forms are also products of the same European-derived cultures. The mass media system has grown up with our mass society and The Structural Transformation of the


19

Public Sphere (Habermas 1962) presents one way of looking at the evolution of the mass news media intertwined with the evolution of our political processes. Now, other cultures are taking the mass media and using it to produce their own. However, the mass media is not culturally neutral; we are, in fact, studying a product which interacts with and changes the culture within which it is placed, and, by doing so, changes itself. This adoption of technology and forms into different cultures offers new and interesting cultural interactions, new sites for study, research and potentially new ways of theorizing social interactions around the mass media. It especially offers new opportunities for expanding theories outside the westernbased ways of conceptualizing used by our academic discipline; opportunities to seek theories drawn from, and based within, the different cultures in Aotearoa/New Zealand who are using the mass media. But, to frame this discussion, I want to call into question the objectivity of the academy grounded in one culture, studying the cultural products of another group, critiquing and theorizing about them as if they are the products of the academy’s own culture. During the 80s and 90s Friere’s concept of conscientization (Friere 1996 (1970)) was used extensively amongst groups working with indigenous people. However, to expect indigenous people to assume a Marxist perspective, which is what Friere’s conscientization implies, is in itself a coloniser’s expectation. To expect Maori to adopt a Marxist position is simply to colonise them with more Eurocentric ideas and analysis. I want to apply the same concept to the mass media technologies and systems, and argue that expecting indigenous people to use the mass media systems in the same way as the European-derived cultures is to make assumptions of assimilation at best, or colonizing at worst. As indigenous people adopt the mass media into their own culture, they should be allowed to do so on their own terms, according to their own needs and desires and in ways compatible with their own cultures. And to be free to explain that use, to theorize mass media, according to their own culturallybased understandings of social functions. Here I am arguing for an implementation of the implications of Said’s concept expressed in Culture and Imperialism. He states: Westerners have assumed the integrity and the inviolability of their cultural masterpieces, their scholarship, their worlds of discourse; the rest of the world stands petitioning for attention at our windowsill. (Said 1994: 259) Said argues that the radical position of stripping culture of its time, place and affiliations is incorrect, and that the correct study is of the interactions of the whole community and

20


the recognition of “interdependent histories”. It is this recognition of New Zealand’s social interdependences and interactions that presents the opportunity to create a bicultural and multicultural Media Studies in which different voices are free to speak in their own culturally appropriate ways, and from which will arise a truly New Zealand discipline of Media Studies, with a major contribution to make on the world stage. This will not be a Media Studies split into a Māori section, a Pacific section, a Pākehā section; rather it will draw on several different cultural strands to create a unified approach – a New Zealand Media Studies. Taking the academic discipline as exercising social power through its institutions, the academy attempts to force indigenous people into its own culturally-based ways of seeing and interacting with the world. Every time people view a cultural product from the mass media, whether it is print, film, radio, television and now digital information, it is read from a particular cultural perspective. For Media Studies academics this perspective is not necessarily as part of an intended audience with a preferred reading, but also as part of a Media Studies discourse, with its own academic reading. However, within that discourse we still bring our cultural biases, cultural judgements, value judgements and expectations. This means the academy does not stand apart from culture to criticise culture. It has no objectivity based on an extra-cultural position. It is an inherent part of any culture and is threaded with those cultural perspectives. Some of what I am challenging the Media Studies academy to do is already happening, as Media Studies examines the differing media products within a multicultural media-scape. However, that examination is still based within European-derived theories and methodologies, which, I acknowledge, produce useful information, analysis and perspectives. I have used such analysis and approaches myself to investigate the Māori media in particular. However, a truly bicultural and multicultural discipline will only arise when other culturally-based approaches are used. I would like to start part of my discussion by looking at the concept of humour. Humour is generally recognised as culturally based, and not all humour transfers from culture to culture. In the New Zealand mediascape, both The Kumars at No 42 (Evans and Brigstocke 2001). and its predecessor Goodness Gracious Me (Wood 1998) use humour which is very much appreciated by a New Zealand audience. However these programmes are products of a particular cultural context. They have been created by one small British group (largely British-born people of Indian descent) for a wider British audience. As with any humour of this nature, they contain social comment. Questions can be asked such as: What are these


21

cultural producers saying about themselves to the wider audience they are broadcasting to? What are they saying about themselves to their cultural and social contemporaries? What are they saying about British people amongst whom they live? In New Zealand this programme is also regarded as very funny - I appreciate it, as do many other people I know. But there are many other questions we can ask about the reception of this programme in Aotearoa/New Zealand, both in terms of the viewing audience and our own reception as academics. What is the reading that we give to the text in this programme in New Zealand? We are not part of the audience this programme was made for, so are we reading the text in the way the producers intended? We may well share an overall reading with the producers, but what of the subtleties? What of the connotations? What about the narratives on which these cultural products are based? Do we completely understand the narratives of Indian descendents born in Britain? Or are we reading this programme from our own narratives about Indian-descent people born in Britain? Do we have the cultural capital to even comment? All this means we bring a particular cultural reading to television programmes, whether it is as part of an appreciative audience or part of academia. If we then move that concept to the products of a different culture within New Zealand - Māori television, Māori radio – and apply this idea, there are many questions we can ask. I ask these questions as both a challenge to the western-derived knowledge system but also as potential research questions: What is the cultural knowledge we bring with us? Do we judge the products of Pacific Island radio based on our narratives about Pacific Islanders in New Zealand? Or do we judge them based on Pacific Island narratives of life in New Zealand? Can we view these programmes, critique and discuss them in their own cultural context? Do we have the necessary cultural understanding to appreciate the full context? Do we have the cultural capital to be a functioning part of groups other than our own? And if not, how do we critique and comment on them? What are these programme makers saying to the rest of us? What are they saying to themselves? What are they trying to say about the interactions between the different cultures that live in New Zealand? What kind of readings have they given these cultural products? We can watch programmes like bro-Town, laugh and think that we have got the preferred reading, but have we? Just because the apparent message that we read into these programmes is sympathetic rather than oppositional, is that the reading that the producers of these programmes actually want us to get? Or is there a different kind of reading of the text that these producers are trying to impart?

22


Moving to a wider view, Māori have established a network of radio stations across the country, and what appears to be a viable television channel. Both radio and television were established to promote te reo and tikanga Māori. The drivers behind these moves to establish a modern Māori media recognise that the mass media systems are cultural reproduction systems and Māori wished for their own, rather than relying on the western-derived and western-centres cultural reproduction systems. But will a Māori mass media system achieve Māori aspirations? Is it possible to do this? How does the mass media really interact with Maori culture? How do we take cultural products from one culture and interact with them in a different culture? What meanings do these products have in a different culture? We can begin to explore this issue by using a physical example - an artefact such as a pounamu pendant. Within Māori culture, pounamu is very highly regarded; it is the blood of the taniwha Poutini and all objects made from pounamu are considered taonga. Wearing these products made from pounamu holds significance for Māori and Pākehā. For Māori a pendant shaped like a mere may be a symbol of spiritual and temporal power. Tiki is an atua with an assigned role in the Māori pantheon and is worn as a symbol with specific meaning. These can also be family heirlooms. However, when a Pākehā wears a mereshaped pendant it can have no similar significance. A Pākehā has no spiritual or temporal power within te Ao Māori. Therefore the symbol in that sense is meaningless. However, the symbol has a different meaning for the Pākehā wearing it: pounamu jewellery has become a New Zealand icon, and a symbol of identity. Pounamu pieces worn by Pākehā have significance because it is pounamu - the shape may be purely aesthetic. This means that the products of one culture change meaning when taken into another culture. Now we can look at the media and say it creates cultural products. I would suggest that these cultural products also change meanings as they change culture, and this opens a site for research, with many questions surrounding the interaction between the mass media systems and the culture. Here is a site for new work and new theories of media/audience interactions. The products and interactions of other cultures’ adaptation of the mass media technologies and forms may well be open to critique and theory based in western approaches, as such analysis may tell us something valid and useful. However it might be more useful to look to different cultural explanations of media interactions, and therefore to new theories of the media and its interactions with societies. Can we develop a New Zealand Media Studies which draws together different threads and cultures to present new theories and concepts of media-


23

influenced social interactions? Now that we have a developing multicultural media-scape, with a multicultural audience, can we theorize the multiple possible cross-cultural interactions and inseminations amongst the audience? What is the effect on our New Zealand social imaginaries of such a variety of images, languages, interactions, music, story-telling and information? Our western-derived culture has theories and analysis to answer many of these questions, but what answers to these questions would Māori, New Zealand Samoan, New Zealand Chinese, New Zealand Tongans, New Zealand Fijians or New Zealand Thai give if they were asked to answer from within their own culture? In his concept of system and lifeworld Habermas (1987) offers a further site for bicultural and multicultural research. In broad-brush terms, Habermas argues that the “system” colonizes the “lifeworld” and the mass media is part of the “system”. Habermas’ concept is also related to the notion that the mass media functions as a cultural reproduction system, which is why Māori wanted their own media. However, this approach is firmly grounded in western approaches and theorizing, in which the mass media is part of the hegemonic processes of society. What needs to be addressed is the extent to which we can apply this characterisation to the developing multicultural media-scape in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Research can centre on questions such as: How does the Māori media interact with Māori lifeworlds? How does Pacific Island radio interact with New Zealand-living Pacific Island lifeworlds? (As Māori and Pacific Island radio offer sites of resistance to the dominant New Zealand culture it is unlikely they are sites of colonization by the system.) Or, if they are sites of colonization, in whose interests are they acting? Can we divide these groups (cultures/ ethnic groups) into civil and civic society? How do the concepts of private and public apply in these cultures? Are the interest groups exercising power directly involved in the media arenas, or do they exercise power from a distance? And how are all our different culturallycontexted mass media systems interacting with each other? How are they interacting with the various cultural groupings in New Zealand? What I am proposing is a research project in which every question, every critique and every criticism, rather than challenging validity or theory, becomes a departure point for research. For instance, one possible critique of this kōrero is that it takes an essentialist approach to culture. That is a valid criticism within western paradigms. I would want to defend my position a little and say that the theoretical base on which that critique is made is mono-cultural, but I do not wish to rely too heavily on that response. Rather, many Māori, especially those operating in cultural areas, have adopted an essentialist approach to their own culture in the face of the overwhelming in-coming dominant culture, and by their own

24


efforts to hold onto Māori culture. Pākehā too, are good at telling Māori what their culture is, – it is this, but it is not that - and in doing so form an essentialist position. This raises the question: What does this mean for the portrayal of Māori culture through radio and on television? One criticism I heard during the 1990s was that MaiFM was “not a real Māori radio station”. If that is the case, what does a “real Māori radio station” sound like apart from the compulsory percentage of te reo Māori? What culture must a “real Māori station” draw on or portray? Does Maori radio need to come from what has been called the marae-based culture? Can Māori radio reflect the realties of modern urban Māori culture? Is that acceptable to the marae-based Māori? The critique that an urban Māori-run radio station is not “real Māori” comes from an essentialist view of Māori culture and denies legitimacy to the urban cultures, an untenable position. The same people who previously criticised MaiFM as “not real Māori” also supported the foundation of our Māori television channel, which is not operating from an essentialist position, but offering a wide range of 21st century Māori broadcast products, and appealing to a Pākehā audience as well. Can this apparent contradiction be answered through western-derived approaches, or must it only be answered through Māori approaches? For several years now I have been considering this question in a number of different forums and arenas. Stripped to its basics, when someone is sitting on a couch watching television, whose culture is that person participating in? Does it matter what television programme they are watching? I have no predetermined answer to this question, rather I am still exploring the implications of the question. The actions of sitting on the couch watching television would seem to be participating in Pākehā culture. This is because the cultural context, rather than the action, appears to be Pākehā, especially as there is no historically-derived kawa covering that set of actions. The actions of sitting on the couch watching television are common to people of many cultures. The action is forced by the television itself, which demands attention. As television comes from Pākehā culture, so, perhaps, does the action of watching it? But if this is true, then attempts to promote Māori culture through television are immediately undermined. However this is not an answer that Māori want to give, even though it is the most obvious answer. If the answer is that people are participating in Māori culture, then the cultural context is dependent on the programme being watched, and therefore Māori culture itself is changing - it is becoming a mediated culture. As Māori have adapted many practices, manufactured objects, materials, food and


25

artefacts from European-derived cultures into their own, this is not an especially new situation. Each adoption has produced new kawa, such as the adoption of tables, with the accompanying kawa most New Zealanders are familiar with: do not sit on tables or change babies on food tables in a Māori environment. But adopting mass media technology and approaches into Māori culture is a new situation. (Māori operated newspapers in the 19th Century, but I would argue that the contemporary Māori media is a wholesale adoption into the culture which has never before been seen in Aotearoa/New Zealand.) This will force culture change because the mass media is not culturally neutral. Very few objects, institutions and practices are culturally neutral, but the mass media has a high degree of process/culture change attached to it. So here we have an excellent site of possible research, in (at least) two areas. Firstly, Māori television will force cultural change through interaction with the mass communication systems, a prime site for New Zealand Media Studies work.

Using

European-derived theories and approaches of academia for the research will produce valid and interesting results. But using other epistemologies and methodologies will produce different, and in many ways, new and more interesting results. But this will happen only if academia allows the natural expression of those epistemologies through different cultural ways of speaking. Secondly, Māori are starting to use mass media technologies in different ways. Many of my Pākehā friends and colleagues watch Māori television even when they do not fully understand what is being broadcast - “because I like the visuals” or “because it is more interesting”. Here we have another site for research: Do Māori mass media styles differ from other mass media styles? If so, in what ways? But rather than use exclusively Europeanderived critiques and approaches, what are Māori critiques and explanations of their styles? And further, what impact will the interaction with Māori media have on Pākehā who watch this television station? Listen to Maori radio? How will Māori television and radio impact on Pākehā lifeworlds? How will Māori television impact on Pacific Island lifeworlds? If it offers a site of resistance and cultural recognition/pride it must have some impact on our Pacific Island communities. What are the Māori and Pacific Island answers to these questions? In another area, I have been considering the impact of the news media on Māori decision making processes. Our European-derived news media has grown as part of our Europeanderived democracy (see, for instance, Habermas 1962) Our decision-making processes are intertwined with the news media, with reports of decisions made, with discussion about

26


possible decisions and issues involved in each decision. It is a group process opened to all by the news media. Some decisions may even be overturned by public pressure, such as by the use of petitions, further debate and public argument. Māori decisions, on the other hand, are made in hui, on marae, where those present participate in the decision-making process. What is given to people outside the hui is only the final decision. The arguments, discussion, and who was on which side of the argument are left within the hui. Opening such hui to the news media opens up the decision making process to public scrutiny, and to further public comment. This is not kawa, and is the reason why many Māori are uncomfortable with news reporters attending hui. The right to attend public meetings and for news gatherers to report fully on meetings is integral to the European-derived cultures, but is foreign to Māori and other cultures. This came to a head at Te Tii Marae, Waitangi, in February, 2005, when the mainstream news media was excluded from the proceedings, with attendant public comment and debate. My point is that here we have other sites for research – the interaction between Māori decision-making processes and western-derived news techniques, and the potential change in Māori decision-making processes because of interaction with the Māori news media. There is also the question: what kind of reporting processes are Māori developing within a culture which has different group decision-making processes? In answering the questions I pose, we have the work of people like Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) and Evelyn Stokes (1985) with the beginnings of Māori epistemologies and methodologies which we can apply to our discipline. These approaches are linked to Māori ways of speaking and presenting information, So we must allow these different ways of speaking to enter our forums, our journals, our discourses. In doing so we will become truly bicultural. Once we have become bicultural, and have allowed different voices to speak in different ways, with different theorizing, it is a small step to open the discipline to other cultural approaches – other Pacific voices and the range of Asian voices. When we come to the idea of the multicultural approaches, we have in New Zealand a real multicultural mediascape. We now need to create real multicultural academic landscape to match.

It will be in the reconception of New Zealand’s social interdependences and

interactions which are mediated by our mass media systems that the opportunity to create a bicultural and multicultural Media Studies exists. We must allow new voices and approaches to enter the whakapapa of Media Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Then we will have a bicultural and multicultural discipline with important offerings internationally. This would


27

make a significant contribution, I believe, to Media Studies in general, with our changing multicultural world and communication systems, without cultural boundaries. I want to end with Spivak’s words of hope for the future: What I would look for rather is a confrontational teaching of the Humanities that would question the students’ received disciplinary ideology (model of legitimate cultural explanations) even as it pushed into indefiniteness the most powerful ideology of the teaching of the Humanities; the unquestioned explicating power of the theorizing mind and class, the need for intelligibility and the rule of law. (Spivak 1988) It is usual to end a whaikōrero with a waiata, impossible in a written format. So I will conclude with this whakatauki. Nau te rourou, naku te rourou, ka ora te iwi. Nō reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa!

References

28


Bourdieu P (1984) Distinction; a social critique of the judgement of taste Harvard University Press Cambridge, Mass Bourdieu P (1993) The Field of Cultural Production Polity Press Enzensberger H M (1962) The Industrialization of the Mind The Consciousness Industry: On Literature, Politics and the Media New York Seabury 3-15 Evans, L. and D. Brigstocke (2001) The Kumars At No 42 BBC Hat Trick Productions Friere P (1996 [1970]) Pedagogy of the Oppressed Penguin London Habermas J (1962) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An enquiry into a category of bourgeois society MIT Press Cambridge, Mass Habermas J (1987) Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason Beacon Boston Said E (1994) Culture and Imperialism Random House New York Smith L T (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies University of Otago Press Dunedin Spivak G C (1988) In Other Worlds: Essays in cultural politics Routledge New York Stokes E (1985) Maori Research and Development University of Waikato Prepared for the Social Sciences Committee of the National Research Advisory Council Wood N (1998) Goodness Gracious Me BBC


29

30


ARTICLE:

He korero e pa ana ki te toa takitini Alice Te Punga Somerville

I want to love this piece “He wero: Towards a Bi-cultural and Multi-cultural Discipline.” I am sure Stuart and I would agree on a number of things, and any intervention into the monoculturalism of tertiary institutions in NZ has got my vote. At the same time, had I written the piece I sure would have done things differently. The point that ‘Media Studies’ as a discipline doesn’t exist outside of specific (tertiary) institutions may seem obvious but it reminds us that people don’t merely work in a neutral space called ‘Media Studies’ and then inflect it with their own monoculturalism. Maybe the very institutions within which Media Studies is located are always compromised, always monocultural. Maybe Media Studies maintains its monoculturalism when people with power in departments tend to hire people who look like themselves and/ or people who don’t have a sensitivity to New Zealand’s specific context. Maybe Māori and other non-Pākehā choose to work elsewhere in (and outside of) tertiary institutions for all kinds of reasons, some of which have to do with funding, teaching, research, student demographics, intellectual community and so on. Maybe it’s difficult to publish or hook into existing networks when one is working on locally-engaged research. While I do not find it difficult to believe Stuart’s observation that NZ-based Media Studies as a discipline is embarrassingly and limiting-ly “monocultural,” for me the significant point is that a “monocultural” discipline in NZ is able to stay monocultural as long as it refuses to recognise the extent of the energetic discourse produced by the Māori scholarly community. I would argue that a discipline is only like this because it feels it can be. Monoculturalism in this country, to be blunt, requires an unchecked assumption that NZ-sensitive biculturalism (and, Stuart keeps adding, multiculturalism) is critically uncharted territory. Ehara taku toa he toa takatahi… Our good friend Foucault reminds us that a system loves to have a grumpy person come along every once in a while just so it can tell that person off, taking the opportunity to reassert itself and thereby maintain the status quo. Media Studies wants – indeed it requires - to be called “monocultural” so everyone can rush about pointing to the use of

Alice Te Punga Somerville – He korero – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

31

words like “culture” and “Aotearoa” in course descriptions and feeling proud of having the occasional brown body wandering through their corridors and collections of essays, and then return to Business As Usual. The problem with Foucault’s conception of power, of course, has always been that it seems to foreclose the possibility of achieving change that the system genuinely doesn’t want. (Any system will allow for little bits of change on its own terms, for the sake of appearing flexible, which is exactly how it maintains its rigidity). So how might we productively challenge the way things are? How do we ensure our challenges are un-absorbable? Characterising a discipline as Western and singularly monocultural (that needs a bit of the not-Western or Other, in this case Māori) plays into the coloniser’s second-favourite way of thinking about the Indigene: the Narrative of First Encounter. (The absolute favourite, of course, is the Tragically Dead Indigene.) In the Narrative of First Encounter (NFE), the ‘West’ encounters the ‘Other’ with an assumption that the ‘Other’ has just crawled out of their grass hut and it’s time to negotiate for the first time a relationship between these two groups. The NFE is historically tied to ‘actual’ first encounters, but gets played out over and over in the contemporary moment, often appearing in the form of ‘civilising’ and ‘development’ narratives and fanatical celebrations of ‘firsts’ on the part of the Other group. (Strangely, or not, this NFE doesn’t go both ways: we make a fuss of the first Māori person to do just about anything that pertains to the ‘West’ but don’t make a parallel fuss about the ‘first’ non-Māori people to achieve things in the Māori world.) NFEs feel like explicit challenges to the West, because they say “hey! you! oi! over here!! look I’m over here!! you have to engage with me!,” but by arguing for a new inclusion they subtly agree that the West is accurate in its current understanding of itself as monolithic. Drawing on its colonial hey-day, the notion of the “West” is founded on an assumption of its own exhaustiveness and ubiquity (‘know the West and you know the world’): this is why people who have been to Melbourne, London, Paris and New York get to say they have been ‘all around the world’ whereas people who have been to Nuku’alofa, Taipei and Lagos do not. The NFE is a favourite way of thinking because it produces two monoliths (the West and the Other) and neatly evaporates any previous or ongoing relationships and connections between the two groups. Thereby NFEs not only make impossible the claim that Māori have ever participated in the West (and so we can’t look to earlier work, either by Māori scholars or indeed some pro-Māori work by non-Māori allies) but significantly they also let the West off the hook for not paying this any attention earlier (‘see? we couldn’t have done this before we encountered you in this way’).

32


I recall a scholar approaching me, wringing hands and looking tearful, after I had stood up at a conference about ‘Race Ethnicity and Indigeneity’ in the US that had disgracefully neglected the dimension of Indigeneity. “But Alice,” she wailed, “please don’t be too hard on us. We don’t know these things, we don’t have access to these things: we need you to come here and tell us these things.” My response? “Do your reading. How dare you assume this is not written, not published, not circulating… American Indians have been devouring Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s work for a good five years; what has stopped you going to the library?” Characterising a discipline as monocultural, then, may feel like an accurate description (speaking truth to power) but I’m not sure it opens up space for real change. The intervention becomes a blip on the much bigger radar, its NFE and appeals to disciplinary monolithicness having supplied the discipline with the very means by which it may be disregarded. The discipline can go about its business, having incorporated the intervention through its Cheshire-cat-style flexibility. Indeed, I would go further and argue that disciplines probably don’t mind being called monocultural: Media Studies has clearly flourished for years in its present state. If Media Studies is indeed thoroughly monocultural, then its only sins to date have been sins of omission. This is embarrassing, sure, but in a quite comfortable way. (“I’m so sorry. I had no idea. Do go on.”) What disciplines – and scholars - do mind being called, though, is limited, blind, disengaged, restricted, out-of-date. If it is pointed out that Media Studies mistakenly understands itself as monocultural, and that there is plenty of evidence to richly and certainly attest that it is not, the sins become sins of commission: the discipline has deliberately suppressed and obscured vital scholarship and scholars in order to maintain its own view of itself. The discipline doesn’t, indeed, know itself. And how can you continually assert something that you are no longer confident you even know? How can you return to Business As Usual if the parameters of your Business have collapsed and shifted? Rather than following Stuart by minimising citations and footnotes, then, I would have performed his intervention by doing the exact opposite. I believe that challenging a discipline requires solid and rigorous treatment of existing sources by Māori and allied scholars: Ehara taku toa te toa takatahi, engari te toa takitini.1 In an essay that makes the claims it does about the monoculturalism of the discipline I am intrigued to find only one Māori person

1 My strength is not the strength of one, but of many. Alice Te Punga Somerville – He korero – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

33

(and, as far as I am aware, a distinct minority of non-European people generally) listed in the bibliography. Foregrounding Māori participation in relevant scholarly activity has the effect of reminding us that these ‘things’ we (usefully) call ‘Māori’ and ‘Western’ do not circulate without previous entanglement or connection. In my view we, as Indigenous scholars within these institutions, need to be sure that we do not participate in our own invisibilisation: we must not only refuse to be dead but must also refuse to be the Natives standing on the beach in an NFE. We make these refusals when we insist upon the multiple and complex critical voices that always already populate this landscape of NZ-based Media Studies. A crucial dimension of the colonial gaze is the obsessive ‘emptying out’ of the landscape so that any space can be understood as ready to be occupied (which is why, of course, the simple fact of continued Māori existence is a powerful and anxiety-raising challenge to the colonising power). The extent to which we point to an empty landscape – including an empty critical landscape – is the extent to which we assent to our own removal from that landscape. Our bibliographies, then, should be thick and fat with the names of Māori and other Indigenous scholars, and if they do not currently brim in this way then it is our job to go out and hunt this work down and bring it into view. While much of this critical work may not be located explicitly within a Media Studies disciplinary context, or may be published in less valorised forms (journal articles, theses, dissertations, blogs) surely we can make arguments for including such work regardless. (Indeed, Stuart includes the theoretical work of Friere, Said, Smith and Spivak despite their locations in disciplines other than Media Studies.) Scholars within Media Studies should be embarrassed by the range and depth of Māori, Pasifika and other Other scholarship, and then reflect on the extent to which they have participated in the marginalisation of these scholars and the extent to which their own work has suffered from not engaging with this scholarship. Scholars in Media Studies need to scratch their heads, and recognise that for themselves and their own work, too, ehara taku toa te toa takatahi, engari te toa takitini. Stuart’s compelling formal intervention (which we might think about as a case of ‘form following function’) is of course his deliberate adoption of a particular expressive form in order to both emphasise and demonstrate the possibilities of Media Studies critical work that consciously resists monoculturalism. Perhaps we might think about this whaikōrerostyle essay as an extension of other interventions into the conventional Western linear written essay form that have been made by members of Indigenous (and, indeed, Feminist,

34


Queer, Pacific, Postcolonial and Minority) critical communities. Clearly the simple existence of Māori scholars and Māori scholarship does not automatically comprise a step away from monoculturalism: this, I would suggest, is the significance of Stuart’s decision to produce an argument that demonstrates not only Māori content but Māori form. Adding ‘Māori’ to something isn’t about adding on a new deck or sunroom to a house: it’s about calling in the team from Extreme Makeover Home Edition. In this case, it’s about sending a whaikōrero to a written journal. Stuart’s adoption of “a whaikōrero format” is somewhat limited, however, by its refusal to be as openly self-reflexive about its own parameters and specificities as it challenges Media Studies to be. Like the “discursive essay,” the whaikōrero form has particular stakes and parameters which deserve – indeed require – critical consideration. Most obviously, whaikōrero are tied into a highly complex structure of kawa and tikanga, which provide not only space but regulatory/ supportive context. Some consideration of kawa is observable in the decision to “[choose] the kawa known as tau utuutu” although there is no explanation for that choice (is this the appropriate kawa for the author’s own connections, or for his institutional location, or ?), or how indeed the kawa is framed as manipulable by the “[choice]” of an individual author. For me, as a wahine Māori, a significant dimension of the whaikōrero form is that it draws our attention to gender: how/ where might women participate in this structure? Given that in some places women participate in whaikōrero and in some places we participate in other parts of the pōwhiri, whose kawa do women follow here? Do older women participate differently to younger women? What about the karanga and waiata? Where do they fit? Can one claim something is a whaikōrero without these balancing elements? At the conclusion of the essay, the author writes that “it is usual to end a whaikōrero with a waiata, impossible in a written format,” but presumably a spoken form is as difficult (“impossible”) to write as a sung/ chanted form. What are the implications of introducing a whaikōrero but refusing a waiata? Who gets to decide whether a whaikōrero can be followed by a whakatauki instead of a waiata? Who doesn’t? …engari he toa takitini. Some of these issues could have been treated more explicitly in Stuart’s discussion, and in particular perhaps paying attention to gender might have opened up a further challenge to the disciplinary status quo in terms of form: does the use of whaikōrero invite, perhaps, a


35

different kind of writing exercise than that of an individual author? If a whaikōrero requires (indeed is dependent on) a karanga, should Stuart be required to work alongside a woman in order to produce his own work? Would her contribution be located above his writing, in plain type or bold or italics, on the margins, or off the page? If we’re prepared to contribute written whaikorero in place of written essays, are we also prepared to participate in a more collaborative form of writing practice at the level of conception and named authorship? A whaikōrero, after all, only makes sense within the context of a community: you can’t have a one-man2 pōwhiri. Producing a piece of scholarly writing and calling it a whaikōrero is interesting when it means a single scholar has done something a bit different. Producing a piece of scholarly writing and calling it a whaikōrero is radical when it foregrounds its own dependency on a broader community: women to karanga, other speakers, people to waiata, someone to put out the chairs for elders and kaikōrero, someone to vacuum the whare, a group of people bustling in the kitchen switching on the Zip and making cups of tea. Ehara taku toa te toa takatahi, engari te toa takitini.

2 Gender bias intended.

36


ARTICLE:

Close encounters of the Maori kind – Talking interaction in the films of Taika Waititi Ocean Mercier Introduction Aspects of encounters between people on the marae provide useful metaphors for exploring conventions apparent in Māori films, which, by virtue of being made by Māori, tend to be situated within a framework that encapsulates marae tikanga and protocols. Two main types of encounter are found during official ceremonies on the marae: the pōwhiri, or first encounter ritual, which is enacted in the domain of the atua Tūmatauenga, and a less ritualised exchange that takes place inside the wharenui, within the domain of the atua Rongomatāne. It is argued here that the two short films of Taika Waititi each embody one of these two modes of interaction. In Two Cars, One Night, three children meet each other for the first time, and enact an hilarious and semi-ritualised form of encounter that parallels aspects of the pōwhiri. In Tama Tū, a group of young soldiers who are already acquainted enact an exchange of their own, one that follows the less formalised guidelines that govern interaction inside the wharenui. These modes of interaction, defining relationships between people from a Te Ao Māori perspective, also serve as an appropriate starting point for understanding and categorising films made on Aotearoa soil, on the tūrangawaewae of tangata whenua.

Marae and Māori film – Rongomatāne (wharenui) and Tūmatauenga (paepae)

“Māori film” is a problematic label on several counts. First, it is difficult to define what constitutes a Māori film: is the quantum of Māori in cast and/or crew, the presence of Māori in the most influential crew positions or the nature of the story the greatest determinant? Second, the term “Māori” is a post-colonial construct which frames the indigenous people of Aotearoa in relation to the coloniser. In Kaupapa Māori terms, “Māori” is an identifier that homogenises the individuality and uniqueness of tangata whenua as, first and foremost, descendants from waka, members of iwi and aligned to hapū. Additionally, the early “Māori” films were made in reaction to Pākehā ignorance and misconceptions about Māori as seen on the screen. It has been argued that Māori film be characterised as re-voicing Māori people (Mita 1992). While film as a medium does this

Ocean Mercier – Close Encounters– NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

37

for whoever controls the boom mic, so to speak, there is a danger of too narrowly defining “Māori film” as a reactionary medium, removing the mana marae of those voices. Nonetheless, the existence of a genre known as Māori film, as opposed to Ngāti Porou, or Whānau-ā-Apanui film say, speaks to the collectivised nature of Māori film-making, that many times roots itself in the relationship between Pākehā and Māori. Merata Mita points out a fundamental difference in theme between Māori and Pākehā film, affirming that “...Māori films are driven by identity, resolution and survival” (Mita 1992:17). This dichotomisation between “Māori” and “New Zealand” films tends to force our cinematic work into one kete or the other. In seeking to resituate films within a Rongo(matāne) or Tū(matauenga) framework, I hope to present a less divisive categorisation. And yet the term “Māori film” and the label “Māori filmmaker” survive. Taika Waititi recently confessed discomfort with the latter: “Let’s just say I’m a filmmaker who is Maori and some of my films are going to have a lot of Maori content and some aren’t. Why can’t I just be a guy who writes stories and puts them in a film? Why can’t I be a tall filmmaker? Or a black-haired filmmaker?” (White 2005:76). Asked recently what constitutes a Māori film, Barry Barclay replied in a similarly disenchanted note “Māori have always just said we make it as Māori and if you are in the Māori world act within the Māori world.” (Reid 2001:B6) We can say that a principal feature of “Māori film” concerns the central characters and goals. In contrast to the classical Hollywood narrative, and more in line with Asian cinema, Māori films (eg Ngāti, Mauri) have tended to eschew the individual’s journey, and preferred to follow a communal narrative to a form of resolution that is satisfying on the hapū or whānau level. This typifies the tikanga during a hui at a marae, in which all are encouraged to contribute to the broader development of the hui’s narrative. Barclay, reflecting on his direction of documentaries for the Tangata Whenua series and The Neglected Miracle, refers to this as “a marae approach” (Barclay 1992:119). He sought to have all opinions heard, and for all voices to speak for themselves. This is a principle that presides over hui in the wharenui on the marae, said to be under the domain of Rongomatāne. On a marae, there is opportunity for all to speak, be it on the paepae, through song in the dining room, or late at night in the whare nui. Mana is recognised, of course, but over the days of a hui, the little person, the ‘nobody’, is given room too. Those who are over-bold are pulled down a touch, and those who are timid are supported. It

38


matters little whether you happen to be a city lawyer or a breaker of horses. All have a voice. (Barclay 1992:119) Those who have opted to participate are expected to contribute, no matter how young. This idea, being deeply rooted within Māori philosophy in general, not just on the marae, naturally spills into the medium of Māori film, and can be seen in the films of Barclay, Taika Waititi, Merata Mita and Lee Tamahori, four of the most prominent Māori film directors. By contrast with the orderly karanga and whaikōrero during the pōwhiri, the dialogue within the wharenui is more exploratory, experimental even. It seeks to advance the collective knowledge and wellbeing of the community involved, by valuing the opinion of each individual in the community. Within Kaupapa Māori Research the marae has been mined for Māori models of health, politics and education, to name a few disciplines. One example particularly relevant to this discussion is the 2-house (Ngā Whare e Rua) model of post-colonial partnership between Māori and Pākehā (Jackson and Poananga 2001). This describes the brokering of relationships between the Māori house (wharenui) and the Crown house (government). Also pertinent here is Mason Durie’s theorising of a Māori psychology informed by marae practice (Durie 1998). The approach in this paper is to argue for a broader interpretation of the category generally known as “Māori film” under the mantle of two new interpretive frameworks that have wider application: the Rongomatāne (or wharenui) category and the Tūmatauenga (or paepae) category. The Rongo framework, reminding us of the domain within the wharenui or meeting house on the marae, speaks to films that describe insider stories; and included within this grouping are the films made by Māori, about Māori, for Māori. The Tū (paepae) framework makes reference to the situation of Tūmatauenga on the marae-ātea, who is awakened when a pōwhiri, or ritual encounter is about to take place on the marae. This grouping describes encounter situations in which a negotiation of a new relationship is a central theme in the film, for instance those between Māori and Pākehā, or different iwi, or any other groups. By following this convention, the nature of interaction is emphasised rather than the ethnic or racial nature of character, cast or crew. The inferred egality of encounters on the marae in the domain of Rongomatāne then is similar to the typical presentation of characters in the canon of Māori film. While some have little to say, there is a sense in which Māori characters are not put on the screen for tokenistic purposes. This is often seen in Hollywood style films, to the extreme that some characters are on screen merely to be killed off. In Māori film of the here-defined Rongo


39

category, each has a character and significance to the wider narrative, examples in point being Ngāti, Mauri and Tūrangawaewae. Equal time and prominence is similarly given to all characters in both of Waititi’s short films, which are considered in depth here. The two short films of Taika Waititi, Two Cars, One Night and Tama Tū, illustrate the features of each category. Tama Tū observes the non-verbal exchanges between members of 28 Battalion, holed up in a ruined building in Italy, WWII. In detailing established relationships between the soldiers, this film represents characteristics of the Rongo category. In Two Cars, One Night, a primary encounter situation is negotiated between prepubescent youngsters. The progression of their relationship throughout the film is reminiscent of encounter conventions seen on the marae-ātea during a pōwhiri, enabling this film to be analysed within a Tū framework. Although Waititi’s characters all happen to be Māori, being Māori is not the criteria for distinguishing Tū and Rongo films. Waititi’s films are set on canvasses primered with the coloniser’s landscape, historical backdrops that Māori are all too familiar with, and yet the voice given to his characters is distinctly Māori. This paper discusses aspects of each of the two short films, then concludes by discussing other Māori and Aotearoa New Zealand films within the context of these new categorisations.

A Primary Encounter negotiated - Tūmatauenga (paepae) – Two Cars, One Night Individuals or groups mark the occasion of a first meeting and set each other at ease by performing some mutually acceptable ritual. The exact rituals differ depending on the cultural background, age, gender and number of the people involved, with personality playing a role in the choice and interpretation of the appropriate rituals. In Western cultures, for example, a first meeting may be marked with a hand shake. Amongst Māori, the hongi and the kihi are accepted and popular, the former generally favoured between kaumatua and men, the latter more likely to be used between younger people and women. For bringing together large groups of people, the pōwhiri carried out on the marae is an elaborate ritual form of encounter designed to remove barriers and build relationships between people on a large scale. When an ope arrives on a marae, generally by invitation, they are identified as the manuhiri. As guests they are obliged to follow the meeting rituals of the haukainga (lit. home breaths), who are kaitiaki of the marae. During the powhiri, the marae-ātea, or space in front of the wharenui, becomes tapu, or in a state of potential danger. Tūmatauenga, the god of war and humankind, is said to be awakened at this time, heightening the importance of the meeting groups carrying out the proper rituals correctly from their respective space or paepae (seating area on either

40


side of the marae-ātea). This state is maintained until the others’ intentions are established and accepted, and the parties move to cement their new relationship as whanaunga. The short film Two Cars, One Night examines a first meeting, a Tūmatauenga situation, between three children of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui on the East Cape. While their encounter does not take place on a marae, parallels can be drawn between the rituals of encounter encompassed in the pōwhiri, and those demonstrated between the characters of this film. There is a universality about the encounter rituals displayed amongst Māori, whether they be between groups or individuals, on the marae or at the pub. This is not surprising, as in any first encounter, there is whakapapa to be established, and physical, spiritual and emotional barriers to be overcome before deeper relationships may form. The five aspects of the marae encounter that will be considered here are space, time, karanga, whaikōrero and koha. A scene near the film’s beginning shows a car pulling in to the Te Kaha pub carpark, and parking a distinct and deliberate distance from one other car there. This physical distance, emphasised in the wide shot and the choice of black and white cinematography, represents the physical distance between strangers and can be seen as having the same purpose as the space on the marae-ātea between manuhiri and haukainga. Mason Durie (1999) recognises the importance of maintaining an appropriate physical distance between strangers and calls this the domain of space. Durie discusses the importance of conceptualising a Māori whakaaro centred around marae rituals, terming the theory, which touches on nine aspects related to marae protocols, a “marae psychology”. Aspects of his theory can be usefully applied as an interpretive framework within which to re-examine relationships within Māori films. The two boys waiting in the first car, Romeo and Ed (brothers of 9 and about 7 years respectively), are on uncomfortable ground, their parents having left them to wait while they drink at the pub. However, Romeo and Ed being in the territory of the car-park before Polly (12 years), naturally claim this space as their own, their temporary stomping ground. This is also evidenced in Romeo’s use of the space, particularly later in the film when he crosses it to talk to Polly, his comfort with it at least signifying a belief in his “ownership” of it. This invites us to consider Polly as playing the role of the manuhiri and Romeo and Ed the role of haukainga. It is worth noting also, that it was the parents parking the cars who defined the space, this marae-ātea, by parking their cars in their particular juxtaposition. Through inexperience and youth, the three children are unable to move beyond the spatial confines of the two cars. This serves to suggest the influence of ngā tūpuna on our practices related to the marae. These tikanga are predefined, and the rituals are similar, but our interpretation of them as individuals, and groups of individuals, is in a sense free.


41

Durie invites us to consider that Māori time, or the marae domain of time, rather than a frank disregard for time, adheres to a more fundamental time sequence (1999). Time is different in Māori thinking, reflecting the need for a closer analysis of the use and meaning of time in Māori film. Time is manipulated in two main ways during Two Cars, One Night. Black and white cinematography superficially conveys a bygone era, as does the appearance of 1950s and 1960s model vehicles. However, the reference to Johnny Depp, smoking outside the pub and the verbal jibes, “Egg” and “Having a good jack?” for instance, centres it in present days. Removing colour entices us to reflect on the basics of light and shade - in a black and white world, the world of the central child characters, life is simpler, less complicated by the issues of adult life. However, the director challenges this notion almost as immediately as he suggests it. Life as a child is often about reaching for the complexities of adulthood, he reveals: “I thought of ... how children perceive the world and how they take on some adult themes sometimes and the way they translate that in their conversations with each other” (Cardy 2004). The complexity of children playing predefined adult roles is poignantly backlit by a situation in which they have been left in positions of responsibility, sometimes self-appointed (“I’m gonna drive us home...cos our olds will be wasted.”), while their parents indulge in so-called adult activities. In Polly and Romeo’s interactions, they have not yet built up the boundaries adults must overcome in encountering each other. Shots in the film that deal with events external to the centre stage, the two cars, are fast paced. For instance, the over-cranked opening scene of speeding cloud and incoming traffic, and the flaming cigarette ends of smokers, contrast with a carefully measured pacing of events and dialogue on the main stage. Although this mainly serves to accentuate the length of time that the children have been left outside while the parents drink in the hotel pub, it also reminds us that on the marae, time is seen as an elastic, rather than linear, concept (Durie 1999). The slow pace of the film at the end, showing Romeo and Polly’s final gaze at each other, serves to further highlight the denouement moment of the film. Initial interest in the boys and the expectation to engage is first shown by Polly, whose furtive glances over at the occupants of the boys’ car invite interaction. This reminds us that on the marae, the first call to engage, whether through the welcome of the haukainga or reply of the manuhiri, is always made between women representatives, the kaikaranga. In this case, Polly is the more mature of the trio, and interactions may have begun more civilly if played according to her rules. However, the rules of engagement are about to be set by Romeo.

42


When Ed first remarks “that girl’s looking at us”, Romeo challenges her gaze, by pulling a face. He follows his taunts “Hey, ugly, uuugly”, with the upraised finger once he has regained her attention. Polly replies in kind with a counter-challenge of her own, a mixture of verbal “hey dick, I mean hey boy” and gestural (two middle fingers upraised) communication. While no common interest is yet apparent, these exchanges are necessary enactments of authority. Significantly, their exchange occurs from the safe space of their cars, and with a safe distance between them. Jibes and digs thrown back and forth remind us of the whaikōrero, performed between speakers on opposite sides of the marae-ātea. The nature of orations performed across the space at a powhiri can be contentious indeed, and are undertaken under the restrictions of tapu and in the domain of Tūmatauenga. These speeches probe towards common understanding, however, so it is less the nature of individual comments than engagement in the exchange that matters for forging a relationship. When Romeo closes the space-gap, his conversation likewise seeks to bridge the ground between them. While posturing is still a feature of his side of the exchange in particular (“bet you don’t know any boy gays like me”), he acknowledges her (seniority “12 [years]? Jees neat alright girl.”) and gives due attention to her words, seeking to involve Ed in the conversation as well. A segue to a later scene shows Romeo in the car, then sitting shoulder to shoulder with Polly. Having effected the appropriate rituals, they are now “on the same wavelength”, and can share a mutual wharenui-like space as one people. Near the end of the film, Polly gives a “diamond” ring to Romeo with the express caveat that “it doesn’t mean we’re married”. The gift, symbolically given by the manuhiri in an enactment of koha, plays with Western notions of ring-giving in consummation of advanced relationships, which is almost exclusively initiated by the male of the heterosexual relationship. In Māori society, gender roles may traditionally (and even now) have been rigidly demarcated, however the difference between male and female gendered behaviour is much less clearly defined. The koha given at the pōwhiri, while nowadays typically monetary, should be something that is precious, and in times past included taonga that were unique to the area the manuhiri came from. When Romeo claims that he wouldn’t sell the ring, he reveals it symbolises far more to him than the money it may be worth (though they both know it is merely plastic), reminding us as Māori of those things, such as aroha, whānau and whenua, that should not be commodified. Other ritualised encounters feature in the movie. Romeo and the man adorned with tā moko raise eyebrows at each other. This is seen as a typically Māori greeting, even featuring


43

as the punch-line in the racist joke “How do Māori answer the telephone?” The old man greets the boys with “Tēna kōrua”, and they respond to him with raised eyebrows. The central situation of the children being left in a car park while their parents drink in the pub is symptomatic, in the same way that Once Were Warriors (or Reina Webster’s The Little Things) was, of the neglect and problems that arise through a shift in values, typically depicted through alcohol dependence. In Apirana Taylor’s poem Sad Joke on a Marae, the narrator, Tu, recites his whakapapa: “Ngati DB is my tribe, the pub is my marae, my fist is my taiaha, jail is my home” (Taylor 1979:15). Using Māori norms of identification with a tribe and a marae, Tu introduces himself to the carved ancestors in the wharenui. Tu’s separation from a traditional Māori worldview is painfully self-evident, however. His identification of the pub as his marae, in a sort of confession to the “tekoteko and the ghosts” (Taylor 1979:15), is an admission of his removal from the world of his ancestors. Perhaps not implied in the poem or this film, but certainly understood, is that feeling closer to the pub than to the marae is one of the flow-on impacts of colonisation and subsequent urbanisation of Māori. Waititi’s suggestion, however, is that alcohol dependence in some need not commit their children to the same path. Two Cars, One Night, centres on a positive interaction between the youngsters, providing a hopeful scenario of a people overcoming the effects of colonisation on their society. Also implied is a global unification of the struggles of young indigenous peoples against colonial powers. Ed is reading The Fetterman Massacre by Dee Brown, an account of the 1866 battle of Little Bighorn told principally through the surviving writings of white American militia men. Ed’s re-centralisation of the Lakota leader known as “Crazy Horse” - though scarcely mentioned in the book - as being its subject, shows a clear identification with the young native American warrior. Ed’s struggle, as a potential leader, is one of taking on Western tools of education to teach himself about the coloniser. Both of Waititi’s films depict the continued survival of Ngāi Māori within a colonial state. This survival is managed through humour and the solidarity gained through meeting and consolidating with each other. While many Aotearoa/New Zealand films have concerned themselves with biculturalism and Māori-Pākehā relationships, Two Cars, One Night and Tama Tū centre on a Māori interaction placed within a society reflecting a colonial past and heritage. The prevalent New Zealand film ideology is still one of decentralising, descreening, or assimilating “the other”, that is, Māori. Waititi’s films reverse this, by centralising, screening and inhabiting Te Ao Māori. In both short films, his Pākehā are in fact not “the other” but become “the absent”.

44


“All Have a Voice”, Rongomatāne (wharenui) – Tama Tū It is ironic to assert that “all have a voice” (Barclay 1992:119) in Taika Waititi’s 2004 short film Tama Tū, in which the only voice heard occurs just before the final credits roll. And yet this film, in which equal importance is given to every character, and insider camaraderie and reinforcement of collective identity is thematic, exemplifies the Rongomatāne (wharenui) film. The film’s title carries a double meaning. The press kit translates Tama Tū as “Sons of Tū(matauenga)”, meaning soldiers for the atua of war and man. Yet viewers also familiar with the whakataukī “Tama Tū, tama ora, tama noho, tama mate” will note the ironic play on the title. The proverb is literally translated as “He who stands up, lives; he who lies around, suffers for it.” Tama Tū (he who stands) satisfies some of the conventions of the war genre. It is certainly not, however, an action film, and for the most part chronicles a group of soldiers sitting around. The boredom of this lull is filled by the roguish behaviour of six members of the 28 Māori Battalion. The interaction keeps these soldiers alert and poised for action, waiting for nightfall whilst hidden in a ruined building in World War II Italy. The brooding danger of the unseen enemy muzzles them into a non-verbal form of communication with each other. While soldiers’ voices were often muted by the war surrounding them, members of the Māori battalion were willing to fight this war in order to gain recognition for the one fought at home. Theirs was not simply a fight for the overthrow of a distant dictator, but a fight for equality (Keenan 2005) and recognition of Article 3 of the Treaty of Waitangi, that Māori be treated as equal citizens under Crown rule, and sovereign over their own whenua. They bear the words “New Zealand” on their epaulettes, branded by a society that had given them but limited power to speak, yet sought to own their courage and willingness to sacrifice. In this, a film by Māori, about Māori, it is significant that a soldier is never seen to show patriotism or loyalty to any flag or nation. The only loyalties here are those to each other. This is a whānau of a different character, an iwi-based consolidation of kaha and kotahitanga. Significantly, none of the soldiers are named in the movie or in its credits (though the press kit assigns names and profiles to each character). Their collective identity is more important, both from a Māori and a military perspective. The suppression of the individual and objectification of the soldier as a dispensable unit is evident. Not only are the soldiers silenced, but their individual stamps of identity are only revealed through their personality traits.


45

Just as Waititi’s earlier work featured pre-pubescent children, so the characters in Tama Tū are young, with most of the soldiers depicted probably in their early 20s. This is reflected in the juvenile and sometimes puerile prankery they engage each other in, for instance the wetting of a sleeping lad’s groin area, and the “pull my finger” flatulence gag. While audiences respond with hilarity, the comedic nature of the soldiers’ interaction only serves to heighten our sense of their situation. As in Two Cars, humour holds its characters and backdrop in stark relief. Audiences observe knowing the extent to which men were lost in World War II, and the likely fate of these six. Tama Tū speaks in insider language, yet with a universality and deft hand of observation that requires no translation. The viewer, Māori or non-Māori, becomes an insider by virtue of being treated as an insider, and this no-holds-barred speak is conducted as though these audiences find themselves within the marae domain of Rongo. As mentioned, equal importance is given to all actors within this domain. We recognise the principle of having equal communication rights, applied during discourse within the wharenui, at work in the exchanges in Tama Tū. At the beginning, the wordless exchange of bullets and cartridges through elaborate hand gestures and hand signals are classic motifs of small military units. The teamwork of a well-oiled unit is evident here, when the core business of the unit is to ensure all are adequately armed to subdue the enemy. The non-verbal “eyebrows up” greeting also evident in Two Cars, One Night, while used in a humourous way here, also serves to acknowledge other members of the unit and provide moral support and solidarity. Even the use of Te Reo Māori in the karakia at the end, in its juxtaposition with the imagery of a circle of six heads bowed over in collective recitation, clearly conveys the strength, protection and even eternality of the bond these soldiers have with each other. The key event book-ending the movement in the film is the appearance of a crow. Māori associate the piwaiwaka with death, and its song recalls Māui’s failed attempt to secure immortality for humankind. When the crow flies into the same space as the soldiers, their mirth quickly subsides, and all understand the tohu that death is close by. There is practical significance behind its appearance too – is the crow there to give their position away, is it an agent for another power? Following the appearance of the tohu, a karakia, the only spoken dialogue in the film, emphasises the special group dynamic and the power derived from the spoken word. Even to a non-Māori speaking audience these words are imbued with significance through their quiet resonance in the open air, through the previous absence of audible voices, through

46


the use of Te Reo Māori and through the collective utterance, at the conclusion, of their affirmation; “Haumi e, Hui e, Tāiki e”. It is significant that the end of this karakia is supported by a waiata, which in both the Tūmatauenga and Rongo domains on the marae are used to whakanoa the person speaking with the atua, whether through karakia or giving a whaikōrero. The song Au, E Ihu (Here Am I, Lord), performed by the 28 Māori Battalion and recorded in 1943, resonates with the modern day affirmation of the voices of actor Cliff Curtis, and musicians Riki Gooch and Rio Hemopo. The tin soldier, standing on a mound of rubble, represents the ‘Tama Tū’ who left him there. He stands because his kaitiaki, represented by the carved manaia, stands behind him. He is at once fully soldier, and fully Māori, representing the traditions and ways of the ancestors in culture and in war. These will last beyond the waste of the city, beyond even his own demise. A significant feature of the placement of the manaia next to the tin soldier is the communal effort represented. While Boy was earlier seen to enact a mock dust attack against the figure, it was Paki who carved the manaia and Boy who left them together as a token of the protection they seek for themselves. That these soldiers sought and found solidarity through interaction with each other as whanaunga, as a special unit reliant upon the other and stronger together than apart, exemplifies the wairua of Rongo. May they rest in peace and remain ever with us. The Wider Picture - Rongo and Tū films in Aotearoa If Māori film is to be defined as being made “by Māori about Māori for Māori” (Mita 1992:16), where does that leave the significant body of film that includes the work of Māori, and draws upon Māori resources but is not directed or produced by Māori? The marae paradigm, in describing two types of encounter between people, re-centres our interpretation of films involving Māori, from within Te Ao Māori. It seeks to rethink the defining question of “how much Māori involvement was there?” This Māori worldview distinguishes between types of encounter, and defines and reaffirms who we are as individuals within communities, possessed of a whakapapa and sharing Aotearoa, Māori and Pākehā together. As such it is able to cast a wider net across all cinema produced on Aotearoa soil. Tama Tū and Two Cars, One Night conveniently illustrate the Rongo and Tū situational contrasts. Two Cars even displays significant parallels to the pōwhiri ritual of encounter, by highlighting the role of space, time and reciprocation in a newly brokered relationship. The name of the movie is a reference to the dimensions of space and time and the synchronicity


47

of a friendship born when occupants of two cars interact during the course of one night. An interesting aspect of the Tū category is that, reflecting pōwhiri tikanga, only certain voices are chosen to be heard, through the karanga and the whaikōrero, to represent the group. In a Tū film, some characters’ voices may be subsumed into those chosen to represent them. Ed makes it clear he would prefer to read, though he interjects in the discussion between Romeo and Polly when correction and affirmation are required. River Queen and Utu are not generally thought of as Māori films, though they feature Māori prominently, and display intercultural conflicts that are resolved through the resolution of the relationship between key Māori and Pākehā protagonists. However, both of these films can be described as Tūmatauenga, or paepae films, focussing as they do on the negotiation of encounters between colonists and tangata whenua. The 2-House model can be invoked for these films. They feature involvement from those in the wharenui, but the rules and mode of presentation are dictated by being in the “Master’s house”, the stories being told from Pākehā perspectives. Overall what is seen is an encounter situation on the “Master’s” paepae. Whale Rider is also generally thought of as a Māori film. However it would fall outside Barclay and Mita’s understanding of one. Directed by Niki Caro, a Pākehā woman, it was also adapted by her from the Witi Ihimaera novel to follow a more traditional Hollywood narrative (complete with unambiguous happy ending) and a Western political narrative (women’s equal rights). In the 2-House model, we can think of Whale Rider as being made on the Master’s estate, but as describing a Rongo situation, in which existing relationships are renegotiated, wharenui style. Classical Hollywood narrative tends to work in opposition to a Māori whakaaro of allowing dialogue to evolve and all to have a say. As a further example, the feature film Ngāti can be seen as displaying both Tū and Rongo characteristics. Its negotiation of new and existing relationships reaches across the paepae into the wharenui. The marae is also physically central to significant plot developments in Ngāti. My suggestion here is that all films in Aotearoa can be thought about in terms of a marae framework in concert with the 2-House model, as they have all been filmed within a society which, acknowledged or not, is underpinned by tangata whenua notions of tūtaki tangata (people meeting). Conclusions This paper has sought to provide an understanding of Māori films within a framework that emphasises the importance of marae custom and practice. Using theories from Kaupapa Māori ideology allows a more natural and appropriate interpretation of films made

48


in Aotearoa with the involvement of Māori. Rather than being simply a “Māori film” or a “Pākehā film”, within this interpretation Aotearoa films exemplify Rongomatāne (wharenui) or Tūmatauenga (marae-ātea) characteristics in either the Master’s house or the Wharenui, from the 2-House model of Kaupapa Māori research. These categorisations centre the key types of interaction between characters, in much the same way that the genre labels of drama and comedy stimulate expectations of a certain mode of interaction and dialogue. In addition, they are seen as pertaining particularly to Māori films, and provide a specificity of information that eludes the classification of “Māori film”. Furthermore, by viewing all films that involve Māori within this framework, the dichotomy of “Pākehā film” and “Māori film”, and the subsequent divisions over ownership, are more appropriately dealt with. Acknowledgments I am very grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft of this paper, whose comments greatly improved both my thinking on this topic, and the paper that eventuated. Glossary Aroha

Love

Atua

Primal god

Hapū

Sub-tribe

Haukāinga

Hosts, home people of the marae

Hui

Meeting

Iwi

Tribe

Kaikaranga

Woman performing call of welcome

Kaitiaki

Guardian, spiritual overseer

Karakia

Prayer, incantation

Karanga

Call of welcome or response during pōwhiri

Kaumatua

Elder person, one possessing wisdom

Kete

Basket, usually woven of flax

Koha

Gift

Manaia

Carved figure representing spiritual guardianship

Manuhiri

Visitors, guests

Marae

Meeting place, with central focus the meeting house

Marae-ātea

Space in front of meeting house

Paepae

Threshold of the meeting house, a tapu place during pōwhir


49

50

Pōwhiri

Welcome ceremony for visitors to marae

Rongo(matāne)

The god of peace and cultivated foods

Tangata whenua

People of the land

Taonga

Item of great value

Tapu

Under ritual restriction, sacred

Tēnā kōrua

A formal greeting to two people

Tikanga

Customs, protocols

Tohu

Omen, sign

Tū(matauenga)

The god of war and humankind

Tūpuna

Ancestors

Tūrangawaewae

Place of origin, lit. standing place for feet

Waiata

Song

Wairua

Spirit

Waka

Ocean craft that brought Māori ancestors from Polynesia

Whaikōrero

Speech performed during the pōwhiri

Whakaaro

Thought, idea, philosophy

Whakanoa

Process of removing tapu, and making something noa

Whakapapa

Genealogy

Whakataukī

Proverb, ancient saying

Whānau/Whanaunga

Family/Family member or kin

Wharenui

Meeting house on marae

Whenua

Land


References Barclay Barry 1992 Amongst Landscapes in Jonathan Dennis and Jan Bieringa (eds) Film in Aotearoa New Zealand Wellington Victoria University Press Brown Dee 1972 The Fetterman Massacre London Barrie and Jenkins Cardy Tom 2004 Spreading His Wings Dominion Post May 7 Durie Mason 1999 Marae and Implications for a Modern Māori Psychology Journal of the Polynesian Society 108 351-356 Jackson Moana and Poananga Atareta 2001 Nga Whare e Rua 2-House Model Wellington Keenan Danny 2005 MAOR123 Lecture Module Wellington Te Kawa a Māui Mita Merata 1992 The Soul and the Image in Jonathan Dennis and Jan Bieringa (eds) Film in Aotearoa New Zealand Wellington Victoria University Press Reid Grahame 2001 Present tense, future perfect New Zealand Herald B6 10 December Salmond Anne 1975 Hui Wellington A H & A W Reed Tama Tū Presskit 2005 Available internet http://www.tamatu.co.nz/ Accessed June 5th Taylor Apirana 1979 Sad Joke on a Marae in Eyes of the Ruru Wellington Voice Press Waititi Taika 2003 Two Cars, One Night Defender Films Ltd Waititi Taika 2004 Tama Tū Defender Films Ltd White Mike 2005 No End of Stories North and South 234:72-76


51

52


ARTICLE:

Understanding Whangara: Whale Rider as Simulacrum Brendan Hokowhitu

For those with neither pen nor sword, the movie camera has proven a mighty instrument. For centuries, colonized aboriginal people depended upon oral tradition to preserve their language and creation stories – the pith and marrow of every culture – but with the advent of the 20th century and documentary films like Robert Flaherty’s ‘Nanook of the North’ and ‘Moana’, a new medium emerged to champion their cause. Now filmmakers are turning from the documentary depiction of these indigenous cultures to their languages and creation myths, furthering a cinematic tradition and exploring an entirely new genre (Garcia 2003a: 16)

Ulrich Koch’s 1998 film The Saltmen of Tibet, which ethnographically chronicled the spiritual journey re-enacted each year by Tibetan nomads “marked a turning point” (Garcia 2003a: 16) in film production because of its anthropological intent. That is, the film attempted to explain in a text understandable to a western audience, the complexities, mores and customs of an-‘other’ culture. Many films with similar ethnographic underpinnings followed, such as Zacharias Kunuk’s (2001) Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), Phillip Noyce’s (2002) Rabbit Proof Fence and Niki Caro’s (2003) Whale Rider, to the extent that these films and others of the same ilk have clustered to form an increasingly popular genre. The growing attention and curiosity of the global film audience with the indigenous subject is, thus, a phenomenon worthy of investigation. Often indigenous films are referred to as sites of resistance, where indigenous groups are able to maintain their autonomy in the age of globalisation. To some degree, this reasoning explains why many Māori champion films such as Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors, for at least they give recognition to their social existence and consciousness against a modernity and colonial era that has denied them a historical and political presence. It is possible, then, that the indigenous film denies the meta-narratives of the Enlightenment and interrupts modernity’s secularisation and progress, allowing for other ways of knowing the world and alternative forms of culture to be foregrounded and legitimated. Yet, the mere centring of indigenous and alternative subjectivities does not guarantee a subaltern voice. We should not merely accept Whale Rider, described by one film-reviewer as “a gorgeous fable from New Zealand about the balance between the old and new worlds, tradition and

Brendan Hokowhitu – Understanding Whangara – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

53

progress, superstition and faith”, on face-value (Cline 2003). Conversely, I would align with Mäori filmmaker Barry Barclay’s assessment of the film as an “indigenous film for beginners” (cited in Calder 2003: A2), meaning that Whale Rider lacked both the depth and complexity needed to examine an alternative knowledge system and, basically, presented an immature text that will ultimately be more harmful to Māori culture than good. There is also the unnerving possibility that the popular consumption of indigenous culture through film reflects a hark back to the nineteenth century when popular European culture included the gradual emergence of “exhibitions of exotic people… as spectacles on a mass scale for mass audiences, and the financing of exhibitions became a question of selling tickets in their thousands rather than seeking funding from a single monarch” (Andreassen 2003: 4).Today, rather than seeking funding from the government to produce a low-budget, obscure arthouse indigenous film produced for small interested audiences, ‘exotic’ cultures on the Hollywood screen have again become marketable for mass-consumption. Is the popularity of Whale Rider, then, due to the film enabling the global audience to comfortably transform into cultural anthropologists for two hours, to view societies apparently less civilised than their own? Following the success of Whale Rider, New Zealand Listener columnist Phillip Matthews describes the recipe for the success of the pseudo-indigenous film: The art circuit need not mean small business. ‘Whale Rider’ could expect to be a moderate hit of the scale of the Australian film ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’: it’s indigenous yet accessible, exotic yet in English, arthouse yet conventionally told… The theory is that, just as tourists look for unspoilt and the far flung in a crowded and homogeneous world, so the indigenous story is a respite from an increasingly cautious Hollywood (Matthews 2003: 24).

This description is disturbing because it reminds me of the way early anthropologists simplified indigenous cultures to align with their hierarchical notions of civilisation. The market logic described here demands production of humanistic films that simplify and misrepresent indigenous culture by reproducing a perverse version of the western Self with an exotic aroma. Therefore, although the market logic encourages the production of ‘indigenous’ films for mass-consumption and, rationally, an alterity of thought, ironically such films further subjugate different ways of viewing the world. The market logic also privileges the western gaze as the perspective that has to be satiated. Consequently, not content to just accept Whale Rider as a site of indigenous empowerment, as it has so often been described, this article examines popular discourses to provide a critical reading of the film as a producer

54


of ‘local’ knowledge within a globalised film industry that accommodates popularised transnational concepts through ‘authentic’ indigenous settings such as the ‘fantasyland’ that is Whangara, and ‘bona fide’ indigenous communities and cultures. Understanding Whale Rider’s Popularity

Given the inherent dangers of representing indigenous cultures in a mode that is understandable to and fashionable with a western audience, how are we to critically understand the popularity of Whale Rider? Although unsubstantiated, it appears that Whale Rider was driven by to satisfy the consumption of a global audience and, even if this is not true, it did. The culture Whale Rider portrayed did not come from an alternative worldview (which would have been largely incomprehensible to the western viewer); it was not local indigenous culture, but rather a ‘third culture’ oriented beyond national boundaries and made instantly recognisable to a western audience. Hence, Whale Rider is a transnational film because its central theme of a subservient subject overcoming insurmountable odds and cultural oppression, crosses and transgresses national boundaries. This is similar to the case where global commodities, such as McDonalds, are no longer identified with a single place of origin, rather they become ‘localised’. Using the commodity analogy, a third culture is developed or controlled by market demand and the ‘factories’ are indigenous localities that reproduce it for consumption. John Barnett, the producer of Whale Rider and head of South Pacific Pictures, confirms how in the film the local was produced for the global: What it encourages you to do is make a product that people want to go and see. Some people will say that New Zealand films are too specific to New Zealand, but I think we’ve proved with ‘Whale Rider’ that you can make it as specific as you want and people will go and see it anywhere (cited Welch 2003: 23-4)

Or, in other words, “unlike more traditional conquerors, we are not content merely to subdue others: We insist that they be like us” (Watson 1997: 223). The third culture described here comes in the form of a young heroine triumphing over adversity, as one film critic pertinently describes the triumph of Paikea, the central character, over supposed traditional Māori patriarchy: Grrl Power, Kiwi style: A sweet-smart new film that’s been dazzling hard-to-please festival crowds with an age-old underdog tale… like most crowd-pleasers and sleeper


55

hits, from ‘Rocky’ to ‘Bend It Like Beckham’, [‘Whale Rider’ is] the story of an underdog overcoming apparently insurmountable odds (Ansen 2003: 59).

This example of ‘Grrl Power, Kiwi style’ is highlighted when the Mäori patriarch, Koro, finally realises the leadership potential of the young heroine when she rides the head of a pod of beached whales to safety, emulating the feat of her eponymous ancestor. As one reviewer explains: “By the time Koro bows down to the young ‘elder’, you’ll be wiping away the tears from your eyes feeling vindicated” (Aoun 2005: 173). Producer John Barnett further clarifies that there were a number of transnational themes manufactured within a local setting to satisfy a global audience: This is a universal story, that these themes of inherited power and the clash between the contemporary and the traditional, the familial love and the obligations that Koro the chief has that get in his way of exercising that familial love, the role of a woman in society – those were things that it didn’t matter where you came from in the world, you were familiar with these things. I really saw it as a story that people would understand wherever they were (cited Welch 2003: 21). Whale Rider then, according to the dominant discourse, is a ‘coming of age’ film, not only for both Paikea and Koro, but also more importantly for a localised ‘primitive’ culture not yet liberalised into globally enlightened norms. For the western audience, Whale Rider provides a nostalgic revisit to the pre-enlightenment period. The people of Whangara represent images of the primitive Self going through the process of enlightenment; or the process of arriving out of pre-historical conditions and into modernity. If we define the enlightenment as being underpinned by the political demand for the right to question everything, where enlightenment thinkers dared to imagine a better world and made practical proposals for its accomplishment, Whale Rider then describes supposed traditional Māori culture as unenlightened. Thus, the film’s attractiveness to western audiences in part stems from their recognition of a third culture in the form of the omnipresent modernist theme of overcoming adult cultural constrictions through the persistence of childlike innocence. It is the claim of this paper then, that Whale Rider satisfied the global audience, not because of its depiction of an alternative indigenous culture, but rather because it bastardised Māori culture to resemble the universal language of a transnational third culture, complicit with the ‘deterritorialisation’ of popular culture (Watson 1997: 226). Through its unique landscape,

56


indigenous mythology and brown people, Whale Rider gives the appearance of being a foreign indigenous film, but in reality its themes merely rehash western clichés. Such a representation is more about producing the local as a site of neo-colonialism as opposed to liberation; a site where alternative knowledges are homogenised to reflect western conventions with an exotic flavour. In contrast to the empowering rhetoric that director Niki Caro effortlessly fell into following the film’s release, the local as represented within the global film industry in general, and Whale Rider in particular, is a place from which an indigenous subject will struggle to find a voice that does not have to be understandable to a western audience, does not have to speak to a universal human nature, and/or does not come off looking like an indigenous picture postcard. Whangara Disneyland On a bright summer Sunday in 1901, more than 18,000 people visited Denmark’s Copenhagen Zoo. They had not come to view the animals, but to see a group of ‘brown exotic’ people who had just arrived from India. Twenty-five Indians - men, women and children - were on display together with exotic animals like elephants, snakes and performing bears. The Indians’ daily life was shown, and they performed as themselves by cooking food, taking care of their children, doing artisan work and other activities in a so-called Indian village, which consisted of huts made out of palm tree leaves, constructed in the middle of the zoo. This Indian village marked the culmination of exhibitions of ‘exotic’ people in Denmark (Andreassen 2003: 1).

Whangara is an actual town located in the tribal area of Ngäti Porou (North Island, middle east coast) but, in accordance with the transnational third culture and ethnographic intent described above, the Whangara in Whale Rider is an imagined borderland where the ‘sea’ of homogenised western culture approaches the ‘shores’ of a fictional local traditional Māori village. Whangara is an imagined landscape, a primitive fantasyland, consciously or inadvertently created by director Caro to avoid the colonial reality. Whale Rider provides the illusion of spatial isolation allowing the viewer, like the anthropologist, to focus upon the rich particularity of local traditions, and to escape into a world where images of themselves are not present. The isolation of Whangara also serves to signify it as a borderland, a place at the margins of the global world, just as the community is on the margins between the primitive and modern. Its unenlightened characters are as “restless as the sea… the beach is its iconic point of entry and departure, a place where people are abandoned or disappear forever, a place where things wash up” (Morris 2003: 18). The film’s setting on the beach


57

connotes the vastness of the world as represented by the sea which lays beyond Whangara, and the insular nature of the small community hemmed in by landscape and tradition. The terra nullius construct, conceptualised by John Locke, suggested that if land was inactive, that is, not under human control (i.e., not cultivated or employed for profit) then it was ‘empty’ or uninhabited and, therefore, free to be usurped. The emptiness and simplicity of Whangara’s physical and social landscape enables the neo-colonial gaze to consume the passive Other. The many wide-angled shots that define the beautiful emptiness of the landscape that embraces the Whangara community, coupled with signs of physical and social stagnancy, such as decrepit buildings, rusting cars, alcoholism and drug dependency, enables the neo-colonial gaze to marvel at the beauty of the New Zealand landscape, yet also sneer at the torpid ignorance of the Māori community oblivious to the splendour and potential that surrounds them. The Whangara community is portrayed as dysfunctionally organic and insular. Whangara assumes many of the Disneyland characteristics – a frozen, childlike world, free from the hegemony of the powerful adult (i.e., free of the colonist), but also ignorant of adult potentiality. Importantly, to paraphrase Benedict Anderson, it is not the falsity/genuineness of communities that should be distinguished, but rather the style in which they are imagined (1981: 6). The notion of a small, insular and self-determining Māori community coming to terms with the suppression of their people by their own primitive traditions, serves to mask the actual oppressor: colonial imperialism. In this imagined community, a traditional Māori nation is reinvented and enlightened through a neo-colonial gaze, which serves to create a simulacrum that justifies continued suppression. The notion of ‘simulacra’ stems from the work of Jean Baudrillard, who saw no differentiation between reality and simulation in the post-modern world. Baudrillard makes specific reference to Disneyland and television pointing out that, rather than merely simulating a version of reality, they had become reality. In this sense, Whale Rider as an ethnographic text, rather than just being a film that simulates Māori culture, has the power to socially construct Māori cultural reality. The causation of signs of stagnation and depression by the tradition of Mäori culture itself, suggests “that such signs refer to something real and solid outside the system, this is an illusion. What is being generated is a ‘simulacrum’, which, although the product of the system, also acts as the external referent by which it justifies its function” (Sim 2001: 358). As one film reviewer explains, “Whangara is a community frozen in time, waiting to be saved…Whale Rider gives us clear-eyed glimpses of rural Māori society, from the old women smoking and playing cards, to the local kids in their American-branded T-shirts, kicking their heels until they’re old

58


enough to leave” (Morris 2003: 18). The most disturbing aspect of this analysis is the notion of witnessing a community ‘frozen in time’. Similar to how early anthropologists interpreted indigenous cultures as pre-modern versions of the Self, fixed in time by their encumbering traditions, this reviewer picks up on how the film oppresses the dynamic nature of Māori culture. The following reviewer also describes the film ethnographically, demonstrating how audiences can misinterpret the film as an authentic reflection of Māori village life: “Director Niki Caro… shows a genuine sympathy for the traditions of the conservative patriarchal society her film describes… we come to appreciate the rhythms of village life” (Cunneen 2003: 19). Whangara as a locale, then, takes the shape of an authentic indigenous site, complete with a rigid culture and, in particular, a suppressive patriarchy. Here, ‘local’ aligns with the “notion of a particular bounded space with its set of close-knit social relationships based upon strong kinship ties and length of residence… which turns the location of their day-today interactions from a physical space into a ‘place.’” (Featherstone1996: 47). The physical and cultural space Whale Rider depicts contains signifiers which inform global audiences that they are, indeed, interpreting an authentic primitive place. As Kuper argues: The most primitive societies were ordered on the basis of kinship relations… based on descent groups… Like extinct species, these primeval institutions were preserved in fossil form, ceremonies and kinship terminologies bearing witness to long-dead practices including totemism where certain species of animals or plants were sacred to particular social groups (Kuper 1988: 7, 234-5).

Commensurate with Kuper’s inventory of a primitive society, it is made clear to Whale Rider’s western audience that they are viewing a pre-modern culture. Whales are adopted by the Whangara community as symbols of hope and prosperity. The importance of genealogy is illustrated through Koro’s obsession with finding a leader from the eldest male-line, while Paikea is a direct descendent of the tribe’s founding forefather and bears his name. Whangara is an imagined nation bonded through shared myths, memories and traditions accompanied by empirical and cultural referents such as the marae, backward traditions and the whales themselves. The familial social constructions in Whale Rider then, manifest Whangara as a primitive place; establishing its reality and authenticity for the western audience. In the quote below, Caro parallels Whangara the fantasyland with the actual Whangara community, adding credence to the argument that the simulacrum is reality: “There are


59

many Maori communities there [on the East Coast], and it’s like going back to the 1950s and 1960s sometimes. Children are still going to school on horses. It’s wonderful” (cited in Garcia 2003a: 17). The reading by Caro of a non-fictional Māori community as somehow enabling her to go backward in time to visit an idealistic generation where ‘children still went to school on horses’ speaks volumes of how she intended to portray the Whangara community in her film: as antiquated and preserved. The amalgamation of the real Whangara community with the imagined enunciates how Caro’s simplistic notions of the reality of a Māori community authenticates that reality so that, eventually, her narration becomes truth. Moreover, the acceptance by western audiences of the imagined Whangara as an authentic place speaks to the naturalisation of myths surrounding indigenous cultures and ignores the vested interests of the producers of such myths. Caro’s Whangara is established as inherently typical of an indigenous community and, as an oppressive simulacrum, is consistent with the exhibitions of indigenous people in the nineteenth century: Exhibiting exotic people contributed to maintaining and preserving a European white world order. The presentation of ‘exotic’ people in ‘primitive’ villages, carrying out simple chores, confirmed the stereotypes of non-whites as backward, living in a state of nature and less civilised than the European audience, whose superiority the exhibitions thus confirmed (Andreassen 2003: 4).

Yet, the film does not simply align with the notion of western superiority. Allegorically, Whale Rider acknowledges what modernity has forsaken (i.e., a connection with the spiritual and natural world). Thus, the imagined Whangara engenders ambivalence in the western audience because it enables a nostalgic return to a simplistic life prior to the callousness of industrialisation, whilst its backwardness, depression, dysfunction and despotic patriarchy is abhorrent. Importantly, the ambivalence of the western audience towards the primitive culture who are moving from a state of pre-modernity to modernity is accentuated by the film’s nostalgic amnesia. That is, the film encourages the audience to believe that the history of Māori oppression occurred without Pākehā influence; the film portrays the results of colonisation without engendering colonial guilt in the audience. The presence of Pākehā in the film would have disrupted the idea that what the audience was witnessing was Māoridom in an authentic traditional sense. As in nineteenth century savage exhibitions, “the demand for

60


authenticity directly influenced the choice of people who were being exhibited” (Andreassen 2003: 18). Like a colonial painter, Caro rids the backdrop of the colonial reality and, in so doing, she purges Pākehā and other westerners of any responsibility for the oppression of indigenous peoples. To add complexity and to avoid this suppressive function, Caro could have inserted a political backdrop that at least acknowledges the contestations currently occurring between Māori and Pākehā, so that Māori oppression was not insulated as a Māori problem alone, but she does not. The production of Whangara as a simulacrum persuades the western audience to recognise a ubiquitous culture within an exotic locale, but it does so in such a way as to conceal the colonial process that produced the subjugation of Māori in the first place. This idea is highlighted in the scene where Porourangi (Paikea’s father and Koro’s son, who leaves the community because of his overbearing traditionalist father) attempts to show his family slides of his artwork. An old sheet is draped on the wall in the confined and dark space of the traditional homestead, as the whānau huddles around to watch the show, the light from the slide projector interrupting the darkness of the room. The show turns into a debacle when Koro admonishes the avant-garde nature of his son’s work as inauthentic. Here the enlightened modernity of a global world is contrasted against the dank, insulated dark space of the traditional pre-modern world, and accordingly, the teleology of Māori depression is located in their superstitious traditions, irregardless of 150 years of colonial oppression. The lack of Pākehā in the film also suggests that the self-determination of Māori is entirely within their own grasp. That is, regardless of colonial encumbrances, by finding an enlightened leader the tribe will then be able to paddle off into an enlightened state. In truth, the violent cultural disrupt caused by colonisation has had profound effects on the selfdetermination and social consciousness of Māori. Pākehā presence in the film would have at least made the western audience self-conscious of their own presence in the dysfunctional space. The natural question, thus, is would Whale Rider have been such a success if it forced the western audience to consider their role in the oppression of Māori people or other indigenous groups? I would suggest not because, as Nandy argues: It is easy to leave other cultures to their own devices in the name of cultural relativism, particularly if the visions of these other cultures have already been cannibalized by the worldview of one’s own. It is less easy to live with an alien culture’s estimate of oneself, to integrate it within one’s selfhood and to live with that self-induced tension. It is even more difficult to live with the inner dialogue within one’s own culture, which is triggered off by the dialogue with other cultures because, then, the carefully built


61

cultural defences against disturbing dialogues – and against the threatening insights emerging from the dialogues – begin to crumble (Nandy 1987: 16-19)

From the above analysis it is unsurprising that Pākehā took ownership of this movie because it reinforces their colonial privilege based on a mythic history of the paternal nurturing of a savage culture. Caro admits the film’s appeal to Pākehā: “They’re [Pākehā] going to the film in droves and they’re coming away saying, ‘That’s us. That’s who we are. That’s what we’re proud of’” (cited Garcia 2003a: 18). For Māori, Whale Rider reaffirms that we are ‘lucky’ to be enlightened through colonisation; for those Pākehā complicit with the suppression of Māori rights, the movie realises their tokenistic bicultural fantasies. As writer Paula Morris uncompromisingly asserts: “Maoritanga is like the British royal family: it has sentimental appeal, but it’s more a tourist draw than a potent social force” (Morris 2003:18); for both groups the film serves to placate ongoing tensions and points to a bicultural future premised on falsehoods. The quote below, also from Morris, suggests that the film enables an ignorant Pākehā public to understand the visions of Māori culture they often see but do not fully understand. In actuality, Whale Rider is more concerned with viewing that abets further misunderstanding; the dots being joined further enmesh colonial misinterpretations of Māori culture: When Koro explains the motivation for a warrior’s bulging eyes and unfurled tongue to his class of sullen adolescents, it’s not just a sop to a wide-eyed foreign market: he’s joining the dots for generations of New Zealanders familiar with the sight but ignorant of the symbolism… It issues a challenge to all New Zealanders, for whom history begins with Abel Tasman or Captain Cook, to find inspiration in the precolonial past and, implicitly, a way forward as a distinctive nation. ‘Whale Rider’ asks New Zealanders to embrace what is theirs alone (Morris 2003:18) Enlightening Whangara: Lineage, Patriarchy and Feminism

The imagined ‘primitive nation’ has been key to narrating justifications for usurpation. Incorporated into this narration was the notion of primitive society being ruled by a despotic patriarchy based on genealogy. Henry Maine’s Ancient Law (1863), embellished a classic notion of the original human condition… assum[ing] that man was originally a member of a corporate family group ruled by a despotic patriarchy. Later, patriarchal power provided the basis for larger associations… Ultimately,

62


societies based on kinship were replaced by societies based upon the state (Kuper 1988: 5).

Whale Rider’s alignment with these myths of primitive society privileges a certain brand of knowledge by misrepresenting Māori culture as patriarchal, sexist, and based on encumbering traditions. In so doing, it serves to reinforce the myth that colonisation was an ‘enlightenment’ project. The readiness of the western audience to accept these misrepresentations is not surprising, given the falsifications are consistent with a dominant discourse surrounding Māori culture and indigenous cultures in general. Film reviewers seemed keen to affirm the myths: Whale Rider immediately places us within a family of chieftains at the end of its tether. We quickly learn that the fate of a disintegrating community rides on the question of succession and ancestry… The Ngāti Konohi line is traditionally the preserve of patrimony, and extends as far back into the time when forefather Paikea was saved (and resettled) by a whale on a sea journey (Aoun 2005: 173). The stylised figure of Koro aligns with the western misperception that primitive societies were ruled by despotic patriarchy. Koro is the pre-modern or pre-historical leader who is largely a symptom of the collective/tribal definition. For example, the tribe’s obedience to Koro’s obsession with male hierarchical leadership, manifest through ‘traditional’ schools and manhood rites, and the exclusion of Paikea from those schools of knowledge, not only determines Koro as pre-modern but also the society that he heads. For Cline, Koro “blatantly (and traditionally) prefers boys to girls” and is “blinded” by “traditional sexism” (webpage 2003). Likewise Stukin proposes, “the movie reveals a sexist Maori culture in which knowledge and lineage are passed down only along the male line” (2003: 46). And clearly, Caro herself believes that Māori patriarchy is endemic: “This young girl is fighting over a 1000 years of patriarchal tradition” (cited E-News Extra – Entertainment Channel 2003). Paikea is the modern subject, innocently free of the encumbering notions of tradition and a symbol of critical modernism. In her prize winning recital, Paikea urges, “If the knowledge is given to everyone, then we can have lots of leaders and soon everyone can be strong, not just the ones who have been chosen.” Through centralising the pre-pubescent Paikea, Caro symbolises the transcendence of a primitive culture to an enlightened one. Kylie Message suggests “the preadolescent girl is a paradoxical character because despite being young,


63

she is wiser and more knowing than the adult characters who share her screen-space” (Message 2003: 91-92). Paikea, as the modern subject, is inherently more sagacious than her pre-modern ancestors. As Caro herself outlines: Pai is suffering tremendous opposition from her grandfather who she loves the most, and she’s the one person in the film who won’t criticise him. She looks for other ways to love him and make him see. She empowers everybody around her. She gets so deeply hurt but never loses sight of who she is. That is real leadership, the kind of leadership that is appropriate for our time (Garcia 2003:a 19).

Paikea’s hybridity, however, locates her in a boundary space, both geographically and physiologically, as a member of the tribe and as a prepubescent character fluctuating between childhood and adulthood. Only the wise innocence of the preadolescent enables the leap of faith needed to enter into the enlightened adult world: “Pai’s actions are those of an enlightened being, of a person who knows her place in the world. For Pai, power is a thing to be shared. She smashes hierarchies, just as she shatters the classic notions of leadership” (Garcia 2003: 45). Without Paikea and without liberalised western norms, Māori culture, like the unfinished waka, remains dormant. The depiction of Other cultures as in possession of a male hegemony that needs to be ‘smashed’ by the righteous west confirms the misdeeds of the west against Other cultures and, in particular, Islamic societies. Male hegemony is a common contemporary signifier that an-Other culture is unevolved or, at least, unenlightened. Yet, the liberal western discourse surrounding gender is a ruse that enables the white male to retain power, for it buffers the notion that the western structure, as opposed to other systems of governance, allows women an equal chance to succeed. The western mainstream media’s attack on the oppression of Islamic women in Arab countries, for example, is less about the fate of Islamic women, and more about the depiction of Arab nations as dysfunctional. Indeed, in talking of the film, Witi Ihimaera regrettably makes this very connection: “It matters and it doesn’t matter that it’s in a Maori setting. I would love to be in an audience of Arabic women wearing their fabulous masked gear watching that movie, and hoping that they find some sense of liberation in it” (cited Matthews 2003: 21). Hyperreality is used by Jean Baudrillard to indicate the “loss of the real, where distinctions between surface and depth, the real and the imaginary no longer exist. The world of the hyperreal is where image and reality implode” (Sim 2001: 281). Similarly, the image of primitive patriarchy in Whale Rider implodes with the hybridised form of Māori patriarchy to create the hyperreal notion of traditional Māori patriarchy, which

64


exists to mask the fact that western society itself is still patriarchal, “just as prisons exist to mask the fact that society itself is one” (Sim 2001: 281). Māori patriarchy in the film placates the western audience by reasserting that, allegorically speaking, their system of morality (including western feminism) is supreme. Accordingly, Whale Rider and its director have gained kudos for bridging “the ancient world of Maori myth and the contemporary world of gender politics” (Ansen 2003: 59). Caro has been hailed as the creator of an emancipatory film: “Confident, perspicuous and unflappable, Caro talks easily about how the subtext of her film – the rise of a new consciousness, of a peculiarly feminine perspective – is supremely important to her as an artist” (Garcia 2003a: 19). Caro “has put feminist inspiration into the movie showing the girls and boys what leadership is made of” (Stukin 2003: 46). Besides the continuance of a false discourse, such interpretations clearly fail to notice that what Caro has created is not a western feminist film at all. I would go as far as to say that Whale Rider is an anti-western feminist construction, given the premises of western feminism, which maintain that men do not have a monopoly on power simply because they were born men. Yet, the film inadvertently defends this position by privileging Paikea’s right to leadership, irrespective of gender, through her being a direct descendant of her forefather and namesake Paikea, thus suggesting leadership can be genetically predetermined. Inherently, this position undermines the underpinnings of western feminism. Paikea seemingly does not even possess her own empowerment let alone acting as an agent who symbolises female determination; she is purely answering a larger spiritual and genealogical calling and, thus, her will is not her own. Bicultural Theatre

Whale Rider has also been hailed as an important emancipatory film for Māori to realise and overcome their supposed traditional genealogical patriarchy. In this emancipatory rhetoric, Caro is portrayed as the liberating mouthpiece: “Whale Rider, a film by Niki Caro, a white New Zealander, represents a fledgling reclamation of [Māori] heritage, a chance for the Ngāti Kanohi and other indigenous New Zealanders to speak in their own voices” (Garcia 2003: 43). Again, as an oppressive simulacrum, the film provides the illusion that Māori self-determination is being asserted on screen, and that it is an authentic Māori voice portrayed. The quote below also subscribes to the idea that the film is emancipatory in that it points to a way forward for Māori to realise the constraints of their own backward culture in overcoming their depression. However, as far as I can see, the only emancipation occurring here is the freeing of Pākehā from their colonial guilt:


65

‘Whale Rider’ contains a lesson. It shows how drastic action is necessary to achieve social change, how the responsibility lies with both the individual and the community. Just as Pai is delivered back to her family by the sea, Maori society needs to be reborn – fresh-faced, determined, and informed… Its final scene, in which Porourangi’s waka strikes out to sea, Pai and Koro sitting side by side, suggests the beginning of a journey as great as the Pacific voyages of old. The purpose this time isn’t to find new land, but to create a new world in the place where they live (Morris 2003:18).

Coterminous with the emancipatory rhetoric espoused by both the film makers and film critics, Whale Rider is framed as bicultural theatre and as residual of bicultural negotiations. It is true that local Māori were consulted, as Caro readily points out: “They gave the work their blessing and the production was very collaborative… Maori have responded overwhelmingly to Whale Rider, and they have really taken ownership of it. They say they are strong and proud like the Maori in the film” (Garcia 2003a: 17, 18). For that reason and “because of this attention to local community and resourcing, Whale Rider embodies a new wave of national New Zealand cinema… that is regarded as being both bicultural and significant in both local and international contexts” (Message 2003: 88). Witi Ihimaera agrees: “Why I say that Whale Rider is a Maori film is that it comes from a specific, regional myth. It deals with a specific people who are in a specific location, in such a way that it can only be a Whangara film. If the director happens to be blue-eyed, then so are a lot of Maori. The people of Ngāti Konohi [the local iwi] are the arbiters and they have owned it” (cited Matthews 2003: 23). Riding the new wave of political correctness that veils neo-colonisation, Caro has been heaped with plaudits: “Writer-director Caro lived with and respects the beliefs of the Maori Ngäti Kanohi people” (cited in New Internationalist 2003: 31, author unknown); “Caro is a liberal pakeha, a white New Zealander sympathetic to the Maori cause, and reaction to her film from the native community has been unequivocal” (Garcia 2003a: 18). While I acknowledge a collaborative process did occur, I would suggest Whale Rider is hardly bicultural. Biculturalism demands equal decision making capability at all levels of production and direction. The biculturalism espoused above is typical of the manner that many Pākehā conceive of this notion. That is, as an extension of generosity to the trembling hands of the native, who is eager for any morsel of recognition. I wonder if there is such a thing as a ‘bicultural bank balance’? That is, who benefits from the reproduction of the Whangara community culture? What did the Whangara community receive for the representation of their culture and place? I would suggest that, similar to the pilfering of African American blues music by white ‘rock-n-roll’ musicians, the Whangara community has received very little for the commodification of their

66


cultural icons: “Elvis made a bundle, while we remained poor… while we remain poor” (MC Lyte, ‘Jammin’1999 [audio recording]). Conclusion: Consuming the Local

In Whale Rider, the reproduction of Europe’s evolution from the pre-modern to the modern is allegorically depicted through a non-western culture, signifying the stagnation of ‘primitive’ non-western local cultures and, as a result, the illusion of western liberality and freedom from gender-based discrimination. It is one thing to consider another’s perspective (if one ever can) through film, it is subversive, however, to reproduce one’s own culture and then portray it as another’s. Indeed, Whale Rider continues the western tradition of understanding oneself through the Other. This New Zealand Listener columnist recognises that as a “heroic quest story” Whale Rider is “ flexible enough for all to see their own lives reflected in the central story of triumph over adversity – it’s a feast of analogy and metaphor” (Matthews 2003: 23). As the analysis above has demonstrated, Whale Rider had such an immense impact on the global western audience because it re-imagined the process of European enlightenment through the medium of a pre-modern culture. However, the film also points out what has been forsaken in becoming ‘modern’, that is, the loss of a sense of community, place, spirituality and mythology through a connection with the natural world. The film, then, leads to a sense of nostalgic ambivalence for a modernity project partially gone wrong. The mix of the modern and nostalgia for the pre-modern leads to a post-modern sense of ambiguity and ambivalence. Indeed, the film begins with simultaneous birth and death. Nostalgia for a lost simplistic communal life is a potent sentiment in the post-modern world, where pining for the familial ties of one’s childhood has become a powerful transnational third culture for a disenfranchised western audience. The post-industrial audience enter the fictional Māori community through a retrospective gaze, aching for the simplicity and naivety of the pre-industrial state, whilst celebrating their modern subjectivity. In the penultimate sequence, in particular, where the whales become stranded and the leadership qualities of Paikea are finally realised, the communal myths of belonging, warmth and togetherness and the security of a childhood long relinquished is intermixed with the symbolic death of childhood and the coming of age of a culture. Unsurprisingly, in the clear light of day, the final sequence depicts Māori culture paddling ‘forward’ and away from Whangara into the sea of global cultural homogenisation. As a local site, Whangara represents an unenlightened, socially diseased and anti-progressive place that must sooner or later implode upon itself to realise the natural collapse of primitive cultures


67

and the uptake of liberal western norms. In this way, Whale Rider justifies the suppression of local Māori culture in the name of the general and universal. Porourangi’s return home in the film is symbiotic with the homogenisation of culture. That is, he will only return home if Māori culture changes to enlightened globalised norms. Whilst the prepubescent child, Paikea, can claim martyrdom status in the name of the modernity project, it is clear that the tribe’s post-modern fate lies with the hybrid baby lying in its German mother’s womb. Menacingly, the hybrid child symbolises the tribe’s sealed destiny of becoming an indigenous flavoured component of global culture; of becoming merely a stroke within the pastiche of global theatre. The baby’s blurred genealogical lines symbolise the post-industrial transnational agenda of blurring national and cultural boundaries: “Think globally, act locally. The terms capture cogently the simultaneous homogenisation and fragmentation that is at work in the world economy” (Dirlik 1996: 31).

References Anderson Benedict (1981) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism Verso New York Andreassen Rikke (2003) The “Exotic” as Mass Entertainment: Denmark 1878-1909 Race and Class 45 (2) 1-39 Ansen David (2003) Grrl Power, Kiwi Style: A Sweet-Smart New Film that’s been Dazzling Hard-to-please Festival Crowds with an Age-old Underdog Tale. Whale Rider Movie Review Newsweek (9th of June) 59 Aoun Steven (2005) Whale Rider Video Recording Review Metro Magazine 143 (Winter) 173 Baudrillard Jean (1981) For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. Translated by Charles Levin Telos Press St. Louis Calder Peter (2003) Riding High on ‘Whale’ Tale World report: New Zealand Success of Whale Rider Promotes New Zealand Film Industry Variety 393 (5) A2 Caro Niki (2003) Whale Rider [video recording] South Pacific Pictures

68


Cline Rich (2003) Whale Rider Movie Review http://www.shadowsonthewall.co.uk/03/ whalride.htm Cunneen Joseph (2003) Youthful Tales: Maori Girl, Animated Fish Enliven Summer National Catholic Reporter 39 (34) 18 Dirlik Arif (1996) The Global in the Local In Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake (eds) Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary Duke University Press Durham 21-45 E-News Extra (2003) Whale Rider Movie Review Sky Entertainment Channel. Featherstone Mike (1996) Localism, Globalism and Cultural Identity. In Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake (eds) Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary edited by 46-77 Duke University Press Durham Garcia Maria (2003) Whale Rider Buying & Booking Guide Movie Review Film Journal International 106 (6) 43 Garcia Marcia (2003a) Whale tale: New Zealand’s Niki Caro brings Maori legend to life. Film Journal International 106 (6) 16 Koch Ulrich (1998) The Saltmen of Tibet [videorecording] Zeitgeist Films Ltd Kunuk Zacharias (2001) Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner [videorecording] Optimum Releasing Kuper Adam (1988) The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion Routledge London Lyte MC (1999) Jammin’ (audio recording) Bob Marley Chant Down Babylon (CD) The Island Def Jam Music Group Maine Henry (1863) Ancient Law: It’s Connection with the Early History of Society, and it’s Relation to Modern Ideas J Murray London Matthews Phillip (2003) Myth Making New Zealand Listener 187 (no’ 3273) 18-24


69

Message Kylie (2003) Whale Rider and the politics of location Metro Magazine 136 (Spring) 86 Morris Paula (2003) Whale Rider Movie Review Cineaste 29 (1) 18 Nandy Ashis (1987) Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness Oxford University Press Delhi New Internationalist (2003) Whale Rider Movie Review New Internationalist 359 (August) 31 Noyce Phillip, Garimara Doris & Doyle Christopher (2002) Rabbit Proof Fence [videorecording] Australian Film Finance Corporation Sim Stuart (2001) The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism Routledge London Stukin Stacie (2003) Niki Caro Ms. Magazine 13 (4) 46 Watson James (1997) Transnationalism, Localization, and Fast Foods in East Asia. In James Watson (ed) Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia Stanford University Press Stanford Welch Denis (2003) The Producer New Zealand Listener 189 (no. 3295) 20-24 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism and Kevin Fisher for reading an earlier draft of this piece.

70


ARTICLE:

Maori and community news constructions of Meningococcal B: The promotion of a moral obligation to vaccinate Shiloh Groot, Ronald Ngata, Darrin Hodgetts, Linda Waimarie Nikora, Rolinda Karapu & Kerry Chamberlain News media communicate various risks of disease, showcase medical breakthroughs and disseminate texts that both reflect and renegotiate shared cultural understandings of health and illness (Seale 2004). Coverage is predominantly biomedical in focus, promoting the wonders of modern medicine and showcasing the biomedical arsenal for combating specific diseases (Hodgetts & Chamberlain 2006). Supporting these assertions, researchers have documented trends in the cultural framing of specific disease epidemics from HIV/AIDS (Gwyn 2002) to SARS (Wallis & Nerlich 2005) through news coverage. Such studies reveal a militaristic framing that focuses on the consequences of ‘evil killer bugs’ or ‘insurgents overwhelming the body’s defenses’. Diseases are personified as ruthless and somewhat indiscriminate killers to be feared, and at the same time emphasis is placed on the moral obligation to fight the spread of disease. Reports regularly draw on notions of shame and guilt to encourage compliance with biomedical technologies (cf. Clarke & Everest 2006). Here coverage reflects the merging of a biomedical emphasis on responding to or curing disease with an individual lifestyle approach to prevention, which emphasizes the moral obligation of individual consumers to ensure their own health, while neglecting wider societal or structural considerations (Hodgetts Bolam & Stephens 2005). Some time ago, Karpf (1988) proposed that the stress on specific diseases and biomedical responses to invading germs in media representations displaces and contributes to the neglect of broader social issues pertaining to political, social, and economic causes of illness (Bambra Fox & Scott-Samuel 2005). Health coverage tends to obscure, or when evident dismiss, wider social determinants of health, including crime and relative deprivation, as politically motivated distractions (Hodgetts Masters & Robertson 2004). Thus, news media effectively depoliticise health by emphasising individual responsibility and biomedical responses to specific diseases (Hodgetts & Chamberlain 2006). This occurs in Aotearoa despite the direct relevance of such broader considerations, including

Groot et al – Meningococcal B – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

71

low household budgets and poor housing conditions, social stigma and marginalisation, and power inequities for Māori who face significantly shorter life expectancies and higher rates of illness than Pakeha (Hodgetts et al 2004; Nairn et al 2006; Reid & Cram 2005). Māori have endured over 200 years of contact with the Western World – reacting and adapting to its presence, integrating and adopting Western beliefs, ways of life and technologies into the Māori world and everyday living. Just as motor vehicles, the internet, electric stoves, modern housing and cities have become part of our lives, so too have Western biomedical advances. Although achieved through processes of colonisation, these latter systems, their institutions and agents are now a familiar and ordinary part of the Māori world. In many instances Western frameworks run in parallel with traditional ways of knowing and doing (Reid & Cram, 2005). After all, with change and resilience come transformations. The Māori world is always in a state of ‘becoming’. Te Ao Tawhito, that is, traditional or customary ideas and ways of doing and knowing, move through Te Ao Hurihuri (a period of transition), to emerge in a transformed state in Te Ao Hou (the new world). Framed in this way, we can be constructively critical of the complexities of cultural change. By referring to the diverse resources used by Māori, whether in their traditional form, evolving, or newly-incorporated from Western culture, as ‘Māori world resources’, we are better able to engage with the totality of conceptual resources available to Māori in constructing and responding to health concerns. For instance, the conceptual framing of Māori health as holistic emerged into mainstream literature and consciousness in the 1980s (Durie 1984; Pere 1982). This broader perspective included consideration of socioeconomic, relational, spiritual, and situational features in health at individual, community and population levels (cf Bambra et al 2005). With this perspective, the operationalisation of Māori cultural concepts, such as whānau – extended family, hinengaro – cognitions, whatumanawa – emotions, tapu – prohibited, noa – safety, along with the role of tohunga (healers), and kaumātua (elders) had a two-fold effect. It reasserted the parallel existence of a Māori perspective on health, and influenced Western practitioners and policy makers to also revisit traditional Western holistic models and policies. Reflecting such models Wilkinson and Marmont (2003) propose that through contextual interventions such as graduated tax systems, housing programmes, community development, and access to education and health care we can have a major impact on the health of a society through mechanisms of social inclusion and justice. Māori and community news media outlets provide opportunities for exploring the interweaving of Māori cultural concepts with dominant discourses such as biomedicine (cf

72


Husband 2005). Such outlets can facilitate the public circulation of understandings of health and illness and promote community dialogues (cf Silverstone & Georgiou 2005). They provide sites within which traditions and knowledge can be both maintained and revised in response to the demands of contemporary life. In fact, Māori media have been used for over 100 years to maintain Te Reo Māori and Māori cultural practices and knowledge (Curnow et al 2002). In this paper we document the use of Maori world resources to frame Meningococcal B by Māori and community media outlets (Barnes et al 2004). Our primary focus is on the range of Māori world resources in use, the broad domains these resources fall into, and the common or regular ways in which they are used to promote healthy Māori futures. Among the traditional resources, rooted in Te Ao Tawhito, we expected to find the use of te reo Māori (Māori language), references to customary practices that prevent the spread of infection and maintain health, appeals to whanau relationships (kaumatuamokopuna – elder-grandchild), the use of Māori world motifs, imagery, and health activities. In this context it is important to note that the term ‘whānau’ is often simply translated as ‘extended family’. In this paper, we use this term deliberately to highlight the importance of healthy relationships and reciprocal obligations within kinship networks. We also expected the exploration of rongoā Māori (Māori medicine) as a complementary strategy to vaccination, and the use of contemporary community institutions, such as Te Kohanga Reo (Māori language nests), as settings for coverage. The present study

This article draws on 12 months of Māori Television Service (MTS) news and two years of community newspaper coverage of Meningococcal B. Coverage is used to explore how Māori world resources are applied, modified, and operationalised to convey and promote positive health in Māori communities responding to the Meningococcal B epidemic. It was essential to explore Māori Television because of its high profile as a national Māori news broadcaster. Community newspapers were examined because they are easily accessible by Māori. Ministry of Health print resources, including posters, were also obtained from Māori health providers because these resources were reproduced in news coverage. In the absence of an accessible archive at the MTS, news items were obtained from recordings made by the University of Waikato’s Psychology workshop. This collection contained six episodes of Te Kāea news, presenting reports specifically on the Meningococcal B vaccination campaign. Considering the variety of health-related issues covered in MTS news, a high proportion of time was dedicated to Meningococcal B. These items were


73

broadcast between November and December 2004, and May and July 2005. A search of two community newspapers selected because they were published in areas with high Māori populations using keywords such as Māori, Meningitis, Meningococcal, immunisation, and vaccination revealed 31 news reports published between January 2004 and December 2005. Twenty items came from The Rotorua Daily Post and eleven from The Gisborne Herald. Reflecting the findings of Barnes and colleagues (2005) we found that the Gisborne Herald made more use of pre-contact Māori world resources. Like other minority groups internationally, Māori consume both general and Māori media texts (cf Barnes, Gregory, McCreanor, Pega, & Rankine 2004). Therefore, the selection of news outlets reflects the importance of exploring outlets targeting both a local audience in general and national Māori audiences. We employed a ‘text and context’ approach to media analysis (Hodgetts et al 2004) to move beyond a simple description of coverage to an examination of the socio-cultural and political processes that underlie news constructions of Meningococcal B (cf Flick 2006). The analysis reflects our assertion that news outlets are storytelling institutions that identify and link issues and groups into meaningful plotlines for public consumption. News tries out explanations, creates narratives and characterisations, makes intelligible, and speculates about, causes, consequences and solutions to health concerns (Hodgetts Cullen & Radley 2005). Audiences are provided with an ongoing narrative exploration within which various concerns are shaped and reframed, and groups positioned socially. Coverage is constructed within the context of contemporary anxieties about health (cf Silverstone 1999). By approaching news coverage as a serial narrative made up of regular installments, rather than a series of distinct reports, we are able to develop a richer understanding of the storying of the Meningococcal B vaccination programme and Māori health. Due to the serial nature of news, core elements of the vaccination story can be taken from items across the evolving narrative rather than being fully captured in any one news item or media outlet (Hodgetts et al 2004). It was necessary to look across print and television forms because different media contribute to the construction and circulation of public understandings of Meningococcal B. Specifically, each author reviewed the news reports and identified emerging themes. Discussions of the emerging news patterns between members of the research team were subsequently held and additional literature sought to inform the developing analyses, and to assist in the development of an overall interpretation (cf Loto et al 2006). The resulting analysis documents the prominence of a biomedical news frame in coverage across print and television reports, and how coverage integrates Māori world resources in a manner that promotes a moral imperative to vaccinate children.

74


News constructions of Meningococcal B

There is a clear moral dimension to news framing of the Meningococcal B vaccination programme, which relies on constructions of an obligation for whānau to immunise. Vaccination is positioned as common sense and the only option for whānau who wish to be responsible and responsive to children’s needs. The combination of testimony from medical practitioners and families who have suffered infection works to position whānau experiential knowledge as warranting biomedical intervention in order to combat this killer disease. Conversely, those questioning vaccination are positioned in impersonal terms as detached from the lived experiences of whānau and as undermining the efforts of diligent medical officials and other whānau to eradicate Meningococcal B. In a war against such a serious disease there is no place for dissenters. Those who oppose vaccination or attempt to invoke wider socio-structural orientated responses, such as improving poverty rates among Māori and poor housing stocks, are positioned as disruptive and are ridiculed and dismissed as irresponsible. Their position is constructed as untenable, dangerous, and politically motivated. Our exploration of this framing is presented in two sections. The first section documents the construction of negative characterisations of Māori who are not participating in the vaccination campaign in contrast to positive depictions of pro-vaccination Māori. Here we explore constructions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Māori in the community newspapers. We focus on base elements in the characterisation of whānau within MTS coverage. This specialist Māori media outlet exhibits greater overt use of traditional Māori world resources than community newspapers. Section two primarily explores the operationalisation of Māori world resources to promote vaccination to whānau, paying particular attention to the dismissal of alternatives to vaccination that focus on socio-structural factors, and which emerged as the story evolved. Warranting a need for whānau participation in a vaccination programme

Stories establishing the need for the vaccination programme worked to construct Meningococcal B as a “frightening disease” that “kills fast”, and presented the programme as necessary to ensure children are “protected from the disease” (“Immunisation of young a huge, complex operation” The Gisborne Herald January 21 2005). Given the seriousness of the threat posed by the disease, it was expected that several articles would focus specifically on low Māori uptake rates for vaccination and how illogical it was for whānau to not protect their children by having them vaccinated. This framing is exemplified in the article “Māori slow to have children immunised” (The Rotorua Daily Post September 11 2004). The article


75

identifies a lack of transport and “poverty issues” as justifications to explain the low uptake rates amongst Māori. The article highlights how the government allocated $200 million to support the vaccination programme. The director of the vaccine programme is quoted as being “disappointed” that less than half of all whānau under five had “taken up the offer of free immunisation”. Subsequently, the article uses a fear appeal to remind whānau of the consequences of not vaccinating. The following extract refers to cited testimony given by Baby Charlotte’s father at a national conference on the vaccination programme: He described in detail how the disease ravaged her limbs just hours after she was diagnosed with meningitis. Surgeons had to amputate both her arms and legs to save her life. An advocate for the vaccine, Mr Bisman said he was angered by anti-immunisation campaigners who argued better nutrition and reducing overcrowding were ways the public could avoid contracting the illness. “We don’t live in an over-crowded, damp home and nutrition has never been a problem. “[Charlotte] has never fitted the stereotype at-risk group that fits this disease but she still got it”.

This extract documents the use of references to the well publicised case of baby Charlotte, a six month old featured in Ministry of Health posters and whose limbs had been amputated as a result of contracting Meningococcal B. The use of a father’s testimony also presents the disease as a constant danger that strikes indiscriminately and poses a threat to all children unless immunised. Central to such print items was the mainstream New Zealand media tendency to construct Māori as passive recipients of state welfare, rather than as active participants in decision making processes and responses to health concerns (Hodgetts et al 2004). One might expect that in newspapers published in areas with high Māori populations and covering Māori health concerns that there would be some direct engagement with whānau who have opted not to have their children vaccinated. There was no such direct engagement with whānau or attempt to communicate their reasons or concerns. Non-compliance was simply associated with apathy and irresponsibility, thus supporting the continuation of standard news practices of blaming Māori for their own misfortunes (Nairn et al 2006). With the progression of the vaccination story through subsequent articles, coverage began to note the involvement of Māori health providers in fostering increased vaccination

76


rates. This development constituted some input by local Māori into the framing of coverage in these newspapers in the form of health providers speaking on behalf of local people. This inclusion constituted a shift in coverage from the blaming of stereotypical apathetic Māori to more diverse characterisations of Māori and the promotion of participation through positively focused community initiatives. An article titled “Health group takes immunisation to the people” (The Rotorua Daily Post News November 30 2004) profiles the involvement of Māori health provider Korowai Aroha in the implementation of the vaccination programme with Māori. Accompanying the written text is an image of four women from Korowai Aroha which also contains the superimposed image of a Ministry of Health poster. The text begins by describing an outreach clinic set up by Korowai Aroha in an area of Rotorua for whānau who had difficulty getting into town. This point is extended with the recurrent theme of Māori being “slow to get immunised”. The article continues with another source, this time from a medical officer of health, to illustrate Māori reluctance towards vaccination as being an avoidance tactic for having personal information recorded on the National Immunisation Register. The primary reason offered in such articles for a lack of participation in the vaccination programme is Māori supposedly being anxious about having to provide personal details that could result in their being traced and caught for “various offences” such as tax avoidance and fraud in terms of child support payment: Health officials say a database used to record the immunisation status of children will not be used by government agencies to track down tax evaders or parents who avoid paying child support. The assurance comes amid fears being expressed by some Rotorua families that information disclosed to nurses when they immunise their child will be given to agencies like Inland Revenue and Work and Income.

Such items rely on the juxtaposing of good Māori health providers and bad Māori who are unresponsive to their children’s needs. Research has shown that the good and bad Māori dichotomy is often central to the generic patterning of Pākeha talk about Māori (see McCreanor 2005). In the case of The Rotorua Daily Post item this framing undermines the positive depictions of proactive Māori also presented. Although the tensions and stigma created between these two characterisations were a recurrent feature of coverage, it would be misleading to assert that the story relied solely on such stigmatising depictions as the means for promoting compliance with vaccination efforts. More positive strategies were also employed.


77

On a more favourable note, the article “Room for optimism despite poor Māori health statistics” (The Gisborne Herald 15 July 2005) places more emphasis on how successful services operated by Māori for Māori have been in increasing rates of whānau participation. This item begins by profiling the efforts and successes of Ngāti Porou Hauora (NPH), a Māori health provider, in addressing a number of health concerns facing Māori in the Tairāwhiti (East Coast region), where Meningococcal B was presented as a particularly prominent concern. Māori world resources like Te Kohanga Reo, Kura, rongoā and broader Māori community entities like marae were referred to as vehicles through which NPH has successfully gained access to whānau to carry out vaccination activities. Quoting a Ms Gibson the article reads: “They have achieved far higher gains in some areas, like immunisation, than main stream health providers because they are in touch with whānau.” The NPH rate for fully immunised two-year-olds sits at around 90 percent. “The meningococcal rate currently being achieved by NPH is closer to 100 percent thanks to a very dedicated team of nurses and kaiawhina working closely with whanau, kohanga, kura and the community,” said Ms Gibson.

Reference is subsequently made to high rates of bilingualism as a source of community cohesion and “enormous pride” and the need to foster and build upon this capacity as a collective self-pride and confidence measure to promote positive mental health and wellbeing: So let’s build on that. It was a key development towards improving mental health and wellbeing at an inter-generational level.

NPH actively targets the importance of whānau relationships and the efficacy of parents modelling healthy behaviour to children. This article is framed against a negative backdrop of illness. It exemplifies the use of positive characterisations of Māori and illustrations of self-determination to encourage health through vaccination. The item signals the forging of a direct association between cultural competency and participation and a healthy whānau with vaccination. It is whānau with strong cultural links who are depicted as healthy and participating responsibly in the vaccination programme. Support for this analytic point comes from Barnes and colleagues (2005) who found that The Gisborne Herald presented positively orientated reports on Māori issues and clearly attempted to use Māori world resources in the framing of items.

78


The primacy given to Māori world resources is reflected in the promotion of traditional Māori perspectives of health that invoke the need to address both the immediate risks of infection through vaccination and the broader socio-economic determinants of health. Despite the inclusion of aspects of such a perspective in our data sources, such as in The Gisborne Herald, even in items invoking wider social determinants of health, vaccination is promoted as the primary and often only viable solution for whānau to protect their children. For instance, an editorial “Meningitis Vaccine a life-saver” (The Rotorua Daily Post July 13 2004) emphasised that while Māori and Pacific Islanders were the hardest hit, due to poor housing and lower socio-economic status, the disease knows “no racial boundaries” and the vaccine is presented as the only solution. The article goes on to discredit arguments of over-crowding and poverty as “short-sighted” because addressing such determinants of health through structural reforms would take too long: Those who say the money would be better spent addressing problems such as overcrowding and poor living standards are being short-sighted. Although necessary, they would take years to be effectively implemented. One quick jab and a youngster will be given a life-saving shot in the arm.

The medicalization of this poverty-related disease occurs through the emphasis placed on the need for immediate action to eradicate this ‘killer disease’. Thus, coverage acknowledges that poverty can contribute to disease rates, while emphasising solutions that respond immediately to risks of biological contamination by vaccinating. This framing essentially depoliticises the disease by requiring action at the individual or biological, rather situational and social level (Bambra et al 2005; Hodgetts & Chamberlain, 2006). Māori world resources and the promotion of biomedical technology

Consistent across print articles and MTS reports is the use of imagery that drew on the importance of whānau, cultural participation, and education in order to associate the preservation of Māori ways of life with vaccination. For example, Kohanga Reo classrooms were used as backdrops in two of the six television items, where accompanying dialogue explained that the children in Kohanga Reo were also participating in the vaccination programme. Particular prominence in MTS was given to depictions of whānau with parents holding their children while they received injections. Some children were shown crying from the pain of the injection. These children were subsequently depicted as healthy, energetic


79

and safe from the infectious disease thanks to vaccination. Their parents were characterised as good, morally responsible Māori because they had their children undergo a brief and painful inconvenience (vaccination) to ensure their well-being. The primary message here was that a little short-term pain is warranted by the long-term gain. The remainder of this section will explore the use of specific Māori world resources, relationships and cultural locations to promote the vaccination programme as the only culturally appropriate response to the disease. We then illustrate how the context orientation of Māori health perspectives is reduced to concerns regarding individual bodies, and how the dismissal of socio-structural considerations works to depoliticise the disease as a Māori health concern. Reflecting coverage in The Gisborne Herald, MTS items contained overt references to Māori world resources, including te reo Māori, Māori customary practices, and whānau relationships. They drew directly on the same resources promoted in Ministry of Health campaign materials. Figure 1 presents one example of materials provided by the Ministry of Health, which had a direct bearing on news framing.

Figure 1: Ministry of Health campaign poster depicting a Kuia with mokopuna engaging in a customary practice (raranga - weaving) and using te reo Māori (reprinted in compliance with Ministry of Health copyright guidelines) Source: http://www.immunise.moh. govt.nz/documents/PosterMaori.pdf

80


This poster draws directly on a foundational cultural relationship between grandparent and grandchild. This relationship is fundamental to healthy whānau and the intergenerational preservation and transmission of knowledge, identity and practices. The poster is also a demonstration of how Maori world resources can and are operationalised to promote health messages through the simple construction of a direct association of vaccination with the preservation of Māori cultural relationships. Such operationalisations are particularly evident across the MTS items. For instance, analysis of MTS news revealed the consistent use of linguistic resources such as “wero” and “pā” (and their passive forms, “werohia” and “pāngia”) to promote vaccination. The Williams (1992) dictionary defines “wero” as “pierce,” “spear,” or “sting of an insect,” and thus its passive form “werohia” means “pierced” or “speared”. The wero conjures up images of the marae and the ritual encounter of the challenge that is offered to visitors. The term “wero” does not usually refer to injections, immunisations, or vaccinations. However, in the context of news coverage of Meningococcal B, “wero” is used to mean “injection”. This relatively new use of the word “wero” is an example of how Māori linguistic resources are evolving and collecting added meaning in contemporary contexts. For example: Ka werohia te tekau mā tahi mano o ngā tamariki rangatahi Māori o te Whanganui-aTara. Ko te manako ka whakawhiwhia ngā tamariki ā rātou wero e toru i roto ngā marama e whitu e haere ake nei (9 May 2005) Eleven thousand Wellington Māori children and youth will be vaccinated. The intention is for children to receive their three vaccinations within the next seven months (our translation). Kua werohia katoa ngā tamariki i roto i tēnei Kohanga Reo kei Te Oreore marae (10 June 2005). All the children in this Kohanga Reo at Te Oreore marae have been vaccinated (Our translation).

The terms “pā” and “pāngia” were also used frequently. The Williams (1992) dictionary defines “pā” as “touch” or “strike,” and thus its passive form, “pāngia,” means “touched”, “stricken” or “afflicted”. For example: Tokorua ngā ākonga o te kura tuarua o Rāhui Pōkeka kua pāngia e te mate kiriuhi ua kakā. (16 June 2005) Two students of Rāhui Pōkeka secondary school have been stricken/afflicted by Meningitis (Our translation).


81

Here we see the use of Māori world resources to invoke the consequences of meningococcal B infection and to promote vaccination. Traditional Māori world resources are interwoven with biomedical concepts to transmit a positive public health message regarding vaccination. In terms of a wider context for the use of specific terms, traditional Māori perspectives on illness rely on constructions of disease as an affliction caused by elements, events, situations or relationships external to an individual’s body. A return to health is dependent upon righting one’s relationship with the considered sources of illness. In this context vaccination, presented as providing a means of establishing an ongoing protection against meningitis, is not out of the question as a strategy. However, neither is the strategy of addressing socio-economic concerns because these bear directly on relationships that whānau have with each other and their broader world. In coverage this broader prescription for action is negated by the emphasis placed on vaccination as the only logical response. As is evident internationally, the dominance of the biomedical framework in part reflects the pragmatic realities of news production and the routine workings of media organizations, including tight deadlines and the emphasis on entertaining in order to attract audience for advertisers (Petersen, 1994). Biomedical catch-phrases and imagery are readily available and already a part of media vocabularies for framing disease (cf Kitzinger 2000). Conversely, it is very difficult to locate catch-phrases and imagery symbolising socio-economic and political explanations for illness that are not yet part of this biomedical media vocabulary (Hodgetts & Chamberlain 2006). Similarly Abel (1997) points out that due to a long history of non-exposure, alternative explanations are not positioned as common sense and proponents are unable to assume the taken-for-grantedness of their position and thus economise on their explanations due to audience familiarity. “Those who are putting an alternative view need to explain underlying assumptions as well as the point they are trying to make” (96-97). In the case of Meningococcal B, the dominance of an existing biomedical vocabulary in news coverage (Hodgetts & Chamberlain 2006) constitutes a barrier to wider public deliberations regarding the causes of this disease and a range of appropriate solutions. However, there is an opportunity here, in that proponents of a biomedical strategy seem willing to operationalise Māori world resources such as the term ‘werohia’ to promote their solutions. Māori could adopt similar strategies when promoting additional options to address material and situational determinants of health.

82


When we explored media use of broader and alternative explanations for Meningococcal B, we found that proponents of such explanations were often presented as somewhat illinformed and simply a distraction. For instance, following trends in community newspaper coverage the MTS reported Māori Party MP Tariana Turia as proposing that Meningococcal B was associated with overcrowding, and that the $200 million of Government money would be spent more effectively in addressing such situational considerations. Print news reports presented this assertion in a negative light. The article titled “Turia is ’grandstanding,’ says Mita” (Opinion The Rotorua Daily Post 12 July 2005) begins by outlining the negative response to Turia from Health Minister Annette King and Labour MP for Waiariki Mita Ririnui who accuse Turia of using the meningococcal vaccination campaign “to score political points”. Turia is subsequently criticised for not having her mokopuna (grandchildren) vaccinated. Mita Ririnui, for example, is quoted as proposing that the disease kills and maims children and therefore Turia is “endangering her own whānau members to make a political point”. Ririnui and Annette King are presented as being “incredibly disappointed” with Turia’s stance because it undermines efforts to encourage Māori to vaccinate. This framing of alternative strategies, including those raised by Turia and the Greens political party, were also evident in MTS coverage: Announcer: Hē katoa ana ngā whakahau a te tō rangapu Kākāriki me wētahi atu hunga whakahē i wēnei rongoā. Koirā te urupare atu a ngā Āpiha Hauora ki ngā amuamu mo te kaupapa wero mō te mate kiriuhi ua kakā.... Health Officer commenting: Ko te mea nui ki te matua, ki ngā mātua, te whai i tētahi huarahi pai, huarahi whakaora i tōna ōna tamariki (10 June 2005). Translation: Announcer: The comments of the Greens political party and other objecting groups to this vaccination are wrong. That is the response of health officers to the complaints about the injection campaign for the Meningococcal B disease.... Health Officer commenting: The important thing for parents is to have a good pathway for ensuring the health of their children.

Such extracts reflect the almost universal dismissal of alternative explanations for and responses to the threat posed by Meningococcal B. Coverage closed off, rather than opened up, public deliberations regarding appropriate response strategies. As Abel (1997) points out, “…when dissenters do speak it is not only from a position of defense, it is also in isolated fragments” (96). Extracts from the accounts of dissenters were presented out


83

of context in a manner that discounted their concerns without their being allocated space to outline their concerns or respond to accusations raised by pro-vaccination sources. The MTS item warranted the dismissal of those proposing alternative strategies to vaccination through the use of stock images of children at Kohanga Reo receiving their vaccinations and as a result being able to play happily. A voiceover explains that all the children in this classroom have been vaccinated and the combination of words and images portrays vaccination as the catalyst for children’s happiness and health. The item finishes with images of what can happen if a child is not immunised, displaying a disturbing picture of an infant ravaged by meningitis. Thus the item exemplifies the narrative positioning of whānau obligations to have their children vaccinated if they wish to avoid such disfiguring and horrible consequences. Conclusion

Little is known about the role of Māori and community news media in the social negotiation of health and illness in Aotearoa. To address this gap in the literature, this paper reports findings from a study of news reporting on Meningococcal B by the Māori Television Service and two community newspapers serving Māori communities. We do not take a stance regarding the merits of the Meningococcal B vaccination programme. Rather, we have highlighted limitations in and opportunities for expanding coverage of such diseases, which might extend options for meeting the diverse needs of Māori. Particular attention was given to the use of biomedical understandings and Māori cultural metaphors in framing the Meningococcal B vaccination campaign. Findings document how news works to position vaccination as a ‘common sense’ practice that whānau have a moral obligation to undergo. Neglected are wider socio-structural considerations that impact the prevalence of illness among Māori. This paper foregrounds the evolving use of Māori world resources in the news framing of contemporary responses to the Meningococcal B epidemic. We have documented the role of both Māori and community news media in processes of cultural change, and illustrated how news invokes risks of disease through the creative interweaving of Māori and Western world resources. The analysis illustrates how attention to the contemporary use of such diverse resources can further academic understandings of Maori world resources available to Māori for constructing and responding to this disease. A prominent limitation in coverage was the focus on individual biological processes at the expense of an adequate consideration of socio-economic, relational and situational features of health at individual, community

84


and population levels (Bambra et al 2005). Echoing trends in media portrayals of health internationally (Gwyn 2002; Seale 2004; Wallis & Nerlich 2005), the resulting moral tale showcases vaccination as the only effective weapon in the fight against Meningococcal B, and stigmatises those who do not comply with the advice of health professionals as irresponsible individuals (Hodgetts Bolam & Stephens 2005). The story offered by news media can be conceptualised as a media template (Kitzinger 2000). Media templates serve as a kind of rhetorical shorthand that is cultivated among journalists and audiences over time and is used to make sense of and communicate emerging events, including new cases of infection or vaccination initiatives, in relation to an existing story frame. The prominence of the biomedical template is enhanced by the simplicity of a plotline that presents a clear passage from causes and consequences of Meningococcal B to solutions and health, and the associated use of basic propaganda techniques. In fact, officials in New Zealand have openly advocated the use of such persuasive strategies. Mansoor (1997) produced a report designed to improve uptake of childhood immunisations in New Zealand that recommends that parents be exposed to consistent and simple messages, supported by testimony from medical professionals and community leaders in order to enhance vaccination uptake. News items present simple and frequent messages that define the disease in biomedical terms and prescribe a limited array of legitimate courses of action (Pratkanis & Aronson 1992). Correspondingly, alternative explanations for this disease emphasising situational influences and solutions are dismissed as ill-informed and inappropriate because accommodating such criticisms would serve to dilute the simple message required to encourage Māori compliance with vaccination. These findings mirror those of broader investigations into media depictions of Māori (Abel 1997; McCreanor 2005). Research reveals a tendency to rely on a standard negative story promoting Māori assimilation into Pākeha society. This story relies on distinctions between good Māori who comply with the dictates of Western expectations and bad Māori who dissent and offer alternative perspectives. Emphasis is placed on the importance of Pākeha actions to assist Māori as passive objects of care and support (Nairn et al 2005) rather than as creative agents with mastery over their own futures (Hodgetts et al 2004). Findings from this study highlight the need for media and health researchers to support journalists in expanding coverage and public deliberations by promoting broader ways of constructing such health concerns. This can be achieved by establishing collaborative relationships between researchers working from a critical public health perspective and journalists reporting health. If such collaboration is not created, the biomedical template will


85

continue to dominate news coverage, while socio-political determinants of illness will remain largely unaddressed (Hodgetts et al 2004). It is important that media and health scholars engage with media regarding the framing of such important issues and disease and illness because media provide many of the spaces through which citizens can engage with and revise shared myths in society. Media provide a space for negotiating our similarities and differences and issues of social justice as basic as our right to protect ourselves from the features of contemporary life that pose risks to our heath. References Abel S (1997) Shaping the news Waitangi Day on television Auckland Auckland University Press Bambra C Fox D & Scott-Samuel A (2005). Towards a politics of health Health Promotion International 20 187-193 Barnes A Gregory M McCreanor T Pega F & Rankine J (2004) Media & Te Tiriti O Waitangi Kupu Taea: Media and Te Tiriti Project. http://www.trc.org.nz/resources /media.htm Clarke J & Everest M (2006) Cancer in the mass print media: Fear uncertainty and the medical model Social Science & Medicine 62 2591-2600 Curnow J Hopa N & McRae J (2002) Rere tu, taku manu! Discovering history language and politics in the Māori-language newspapers Auckland Auckland University Press Durie M (1984) “Te taha hinengaro”: An integrated approach to mental health Community Mental Health in New Zealand 1 4-11 Flick U (2006) Introduction to Qualitative Research London Sage Gwyn R (2002) Communicating health and illness London Sage Hodgetts D Barnett A Duirs A Henry J & Schwanen A (2005) Maori media production civic journalism and the foreshore and seabed controversy in Aotearoa Pacific Journalism Review 11 191-208

86


Hodgetts D Bolam B & Stephens S (2005) Mediation and the construction of contemporary understandings of health and lifestyle Journal of Health Psychology 10 (1) 125-138 Hodgetts D & Chamberlain K (2006) Developing a critical media research agenda for health psychology Journal of Health Psychology 11 317-327 Hodgetts D Cullen A & Radley A (2005) Television Characterizations of Homeless People in the United Kingdom Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 5 29-48. Hodgetts D Masters B & Robertson N (2004) Media coverage of ‘Decades of Disparity’ in ethnic mortality trends in Aotearoa Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 14 1-18 Husband C (2005) Minority ethnic media as communities of practice: Professionalism and identity politics in interaction Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31 461-479. Karpf A (1988) Doctoring the media London: Routledge Kitzinger J (2000) Media templates: Patterns of association and the (re)construction of meaning over time Media Culture & Society 22 61-84 Loto R Hodgetts D Chamberlain K Nikora L Karapu, R & Barnett A (2006) Pasifika in the news: The portrayal of Pacific peoples in the News Journal of Community & Applied Psychology 16 1-19 Mansoor O (1997) Improving uptake of childhood immunisations Midland Regional Health Authority Māori Language Commission/Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (1996) Te Matatiki: Contemporary Māori words Victoria: Oxford University Press McCreanor T (2005) ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones…’: Talking Pakeha identities in J Lui et al (Eds.) New Zealand identities: departures and destinations Wellington Victoria University Press Nairn R Pega F McCreanor T Rankine J & Barnes A (2006) Media, racism and public health psychology Journal of Health Psychology 11 183-196 Groot et al – Meningococcal B – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

87

Pere R (1982) Ako concepts and learning in the Maori tradition Hamilton Department of Sociology University of Waikato Petersen A (1994) Governing images: media constructions of the ‘normal’, ‘healthy’ subject Media information Australia 72 32-40 Pratkanis A & Aronson E (1992) Age of propaganda: The everyday use and abuse of persuasion New York W H Freeman and Co Reid P & Cram F (2005) Connecting health people and country in Aotearoa New Zealand In K Dew and P Davis (Eds) Health and Society in Aotearoa New Zealand (2nd ed) (pp 33-48) Auckland: Oxford University Press Seale C (2004) Health and media: An overview In C Seale (Ed) Health and the Media United Kingdom Blackwell Publishing Silverstone R & Georgiou M (2005) Editorial introduction: Media and minorities in multicultural Europe Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31 433-441 Wallis P & Nerlich B (2005) Disease metaphors in news epidemics: the UK media framing of the 2003 SARS epidemic Social Science & Medicine 60 2629-2639 Williams H (1992) Dictionary of the Maori language Wellington GP Publications Wilkinson R & Marmont M (2003) Social determinants of health The Solid Facts (2nd Ed) World Health Organization

88


Glossary of Maori terms Hā a koro mā a kui mā: The breath of life from our forebears (cultural heritage) Hinengaro:

The mind, cognition

Karakia:

Prayer, Oral ritual

Kuia:

Elderly woman

Mana ake:

The uniqueness of each individual and family

Mauri:

Life force

Mokopuna:

Grandchildren

Rangatiratanga:

Self-determination, self-management, and leadership

Raranga:

Weaving with flax

Rongoā:

Natural/herbal remedies

Tapu:

Sacred, holy, or unclean.

Te reo Māori:

Maori language

Taha tinana:

Physical wellbeing

Te taha whānau:

Family

Tikanga Māori:

Maori Customs/traditional practices

Toi Māori:

Maori arts and crafts

Tohunga:

Spiritual advisor

Waiora:

Total wellbeing for the individual and family

Wairuatanga:

Spirituality

Whanaungatanga:

Family-like social cohesions, extended family, kinship, social

roles and bonds

Whānau:

Family

Whatumanawa:

The open and healthy expression of emotion


89

90


ARTICLE:

The interpretative resources of Aotearoa New Zealand journalists reporting on Maori Donald Matheson This paper explores the interpretative resources which news and features journalists in Aotearoa New Zealand draw on in making sense of their reporting on Māori people and themes. As many commentators and scholars have noted, often in blunt terms, the news media in Aotearoa New Zealand fail, by a range of criteria of good journalism, in their reporting of Māori individuals, society and culture. In particular, a very limited range of themes and topoi is drawn upon in their coverage. That limited range is, moreover, one familiar to scholars of ethnic prejudice in many western cultures. I detail some of those criticisms shortly, but the paper builds on rather than details existing findings. Based on detailed interviews with seven newspaper and magazine journalists, its argument is instead that, while the journalists were sometimes aware of limitations and shortcomings in their reporting of what is usually called ‘Māori affairs’ or ‘race relations’, they drew on a limited repertoire in talking about what was wrong with the coverage or what might be done differently. Their interpretative resources to reflect on that reporting were tightly circumscribed. The paper concludes with some thoughts on the implications of its argument for journalism education. Context The interviews carried out for this paper took place in the particular place and time of Aotearoa New Zealand in early 2005. That context needs some discussion, as it shaped both the interviews and the analysis undertaken below. The year 2004 saw matters of land, ethnicity and nationhood actively and deliberately politicised in what could be described as a backlash against the decolonisation process in Aotearoa New Zealand. Iwi or regional Māori institutions have been expanding steadily since the 1980s, particularly in education, broadcasting and health. Some iwi have also been growing richer, as land, fishing rights and other resources are given in partial recompense for historical injustices. In January 2004, National Party leader, and leader of the opposition, Don Brash called for an end to what he called ‘racial separatism’ in the country’s administration, which he argued treated Māori differently in such areas as health and education and had led to a ‘culture

Donald Matheson – Reporting on Māori – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

91

of grievance’ among Māori (Brash 2004). His personal poll ratings and his party’s ratings soared in the speech’s wake and, in a knee-jerk response, the Labour-led Government appointed a review unit to weed out any such ‘special treatment’ in its programmes. The speech led also to heated debate in the news media over the extent of special treatment. Soon after, and in the eyes of some commentators (for example, Johansson 2004), part of the same political moment, the Government pursued with renewed vigour legislation that clarified ownership of the country’s foreshore and its in-shore seabed, vesting it primarily in the Crown and denying traditional customary – in practical effect, iwi – rights. It rejected arguments from the Māori Land Court, the Waitangi Tribunal and iwi themselves that land rights should be left to the courts to decide, and contributed to a climate of prejudiced argument that Māori were seeking to deny New Zealanders their birth-right of access to beaches (Butt 2004). As a direct result of that legislation passing in April 2004, a significant number of Māori politicians sought new routes of action through the founding of the Māori Party and a hikoi on Parliament, one of the largest protest marches the country has seen since the Depression. These events had an impact upon journalism as well. They led to a slew of news coverage in which the understanding of Māori as a dependent and secondary culture within New Zealand could no longer remain simply an unstated but shared resource for making sense of the news. It was instead explicitly stated by Brash and by voices raised in his support, and was therefore open to challenge by others. At the same time, a radical Māori politics of difference and self-determination became visible within, rather than entirely outside, the legitimated political institutions. This historical moment thus thrust journalism to the forefront of debates over land, identity and culture, a position for which, critical media scholars tend to agree, it was not well prepared. Aotearoa New Zealand’s news media have struggled to reflect – let alone lead – the longer term political and cultural changes of which the Orewa speech, the Foreshore and Seabed Bill and the formation of the Māori Party were part. In a major study of the main television station’s news programmes from 1984 to 1995, researchers found that 62 percent of the sources for news thematised around Māori were Pākehā, and only 13 per cent Māori (McGregor and Comrie 1995), suggesting a news media speaking about Māori to a dominant culture in which Māori have little stake. A recent update to the study largely confirms the figures (Comrie and Fountaine 2005). Wilson (1990) accuses journalists of handling Māori news worse than any other aspect of reporting, because they did not understand Māori perspectives. Saunders (1996: 167), a journalist reflecting on his colleagues’ reporting of Māori affairs, accuses the media of failing to counter a sense of division between Māori and

92


Pākehā: ‘Journalists possess the power and have a unique opportunity to improve the mood and tenor of race relations, but have failed.’ Rankine and McCreanor (2004: 23) trace the differential treatment given to Pākehā and Māori leaders of a health project, in which joint work between a whanau and a Pākehā-led medical team to study the genetics of illness was represented as white doctors saving sick indigenous people. They conclude: ‘This is colonial coverage – it functions to reinforce and reproduce the subordinate position of Māori and their position of “other” to the norm of modern Pākehā society.’ There is little evidence of biculturalism in news agendas, but rather a focus – consistent over time – on Māori as problems, criminal, radical, dangerous, exotic, deviant; that is, as a racialised ‘other’ in all the many manifestations of that status. The media’s repertoires of prejudice One major approach in this critique of Aotearoa New Zealand’s racialised reporting has been discourse analysis, much of it building on Wetherell and Potter’s (1992) major study of discourses of racism in this country. I too follow their argument that race and racism can be usefully understood as a set of interpretative resources embedded in particular speech situations. Racism is thought of less in terms of a field of meaning (Hall 1997), in which binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘civilised’ and ‘primitive’, ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’, and the like, line up in ideological structures so as to produce subjectivities and knowledges. They propose instead that racist discourse, including such binaries but also many other rhetorical practices, is much more elastic, deployed within various modes of talking and thinking to establish dominance and to make sense of existing social structures. The theoretical distinction is important for analysis, as it directs study towards everyday, situated talk as sites of racism as much as towards the grand discourse and actions of the powerful. Wetherell and Potter focus on a number of ‘interpretative repertoires’ that they find regularly deployed in Pākehā talk about others (Wetherell and Potter 1992: 115). A key repertoire comprises language categorising people in ethnic terms such as ‘Māori’ or ‘Pākehā’, and placing them differently with respect to other categories such as being part of the nation or being different. Another repertoire positions the dominant Pākehā society as having ‘normal’, ‘rational’, ‘scientific’ influence, and positions different perspectives as correspondingly exotic or abnormal, and sometimes radical, activist irritants. Another involves tools of argument or topoi which have the power to account for or dismiss historic Māori grievances over land. These include:


93

Nobody should be compelled. Everybody should be treated equally. You cannot turn the clock back. Present generations cannot be blamed for the mistakes of past generations. Such readily available and socially accepted discursive moves are, importantly, ‘rhetorically self-sufficient’. That is, they close down argument by holding the status of ‘what we all know’. In doing so, they both deny racism and invert the accusation of prejudice onto the critic who raises the racialising nature of the talk (see also van Dijk 1999). Together these and related repertoires empower Pakeha in relation to racialised others, including Māori. Talking to journalists about this This paper reports on in-depth semi-structured interviews with six Aotearoa New Zealand journalists, and a brief interview with a seventh, all practising news or features reporters in the print media who wrote regularly about Māori individuals, groups and issues. Unfortunately, practical difficulties and some journalists’ unwillingness meant no political reporters were interviewed, although they reported often on the most dramatic parts of the debates in 2004 over Brash’s Orewa speech, the seabed and foreshore legislation and the birth of the Māori Party. The interviews were conducted between December 2004 and June 2005. The questions asked the journalists to reflect on their reporting of Māori in the political context noted above. Talking to journalists about their role in the coverage makes the picture described above of inadequate reporting based in repertoires of prejudice become more complicated. Almost all were aware of inadequacies in news coverage of Māori and were aware of the politicised nature of reporting which did things differently. Indeed, they saw their reporting as an important intervention in public debate, placing, for example, Brash’s January 2004 statements about the need to end ‘special treatment’ for Māori under considerable scrutiny. One of my respondents went as far as to say that he thought ‘the Aotearoa New Zealand media covered themselves in glory’ in the months after Brash’s speech (resp.3) because they asked – for a time – quite probing questions. Most of my respondents also described themselves as unhappy with much coverage of ‘race relations’. They almost all described themselves as ‘liberal’ or ‘left-leaning’. They used self-descriptions such as ‘feeling frustrated’ about the difficulty in exploring the complex cultural differences within journalistic constraints. One ‘agonised over which way to angle’ a story on Tariana Turia,

94


a Māori politician whom readers would only know from the news as one of the ‘radical irritants’ that Potter and Wetherell (1992) describe (resp. 2). The phrase ‘I was conscious’ is common in the interviews, suggesting that, even before my interview, they spent some time in a discourse of critical reflection. The only journalist interviewed who identified partly as Māori spoke of her colleagues’ support against editorial prejudice towards her. A number also spoke of the power of journalism among people with little immediate contact with minorities. They were, on the whole, reflective, critical, concerned to be non-racist and dissatisfied. There is some evidence here, then, that dominant journalistic constructions of ‘Māori affairs’ are replicated in spite of the attitude of a number of the key journalists involved in that coverage. The problem with news coverage is not simply that journalism is ‘structured in dominance’ (Hall 1980), allowing debate only within a dominant consensus among authorised voices and so tending ‘faithfully and impartially to reproduce symbolically the existing structure of power in society’s institutional order’ (Hall et al. 1978: 58). Thus Henry and Tator’s (2002: 225-6) critique of 1990s Canadian journalism, to take one recent analysis, does not quite apply. Henry and Tator found that the problems of a racialised coverage are unacknowledged and invisible: ‘racialised discourse works silently within the cognitive make-up of individual journalists and editors, and within the collective culture and professional norms and values of media organizations’ (225-6). The situation in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand is not quite one of unacknowledged pervasive racism. What, then, is going on here? There are two points to be made at the outset. Firstly, this paper reports on interviews with seven journalists who cover ‘Māori affairs’ regularly. Other journalists might of course say other things, and those other reporters, subeditors and editors may have quite an effect on the final published texts. Secondly, the interview context I constructed, asking respondents to think critically and justify themselves to a no doubt left-wing academic, will have had some effect. But I would argue more is going on here than that. It is certainly a mistake to regard journalists as non-reflexive, as simply practitioners of a tacit and situated ‘knowing-how’, with little theorizing ‘knowing-that’. As scholars of journalism’s culture have noted, its practitioners build interpretative frameworks around what they do (Zelizer 1993). They are thus reflexive, in Giddens’ (1991: 54) sense of sorting events in their professional practice into ‘an ongoing “story” about the self’ of the journalist. Journalism certainly relies upon much tacit knowledge about such matters as newsworthiness and good writing (see, for example, Adam 1989), and is certainly thin


95

on explicit explanatory accounts of its practices. But there is, nonetheless, a rich vein of talk within the practice about what journalism is, what its role in society is and what makes for good journalism, discussions in which these journalists are participating through their talk. I therefore want to explore here the nature of that reflexivity, to tease out how Aotearoa New Zealand journalists who focus on matters of ethnicity and minorities draw upon collective resources to reflect on their work. This argument presumes that there are enough commonalities in their statements to talk about the journalists’ responses as by and large shared. I will also argue that there is evidence that this collective interpretative repertoire is narrow and circumscribed, so much so, in fact, that Aotearoa New Zealand journalists find it difficult to see beyond dissatisfaction towards other ways of reporting. The analysis of journalistic self-understanding engages with the ‘story about the self’ which journalists construct. In doing so, it provides an avenue for critique to contribute to growth in the practice. Cultural difference and liberal journalism All the journalists, even the one who made no claim to be liberal or left-leaning, were concerned that Māori perspectives could not be adequately understood by a journalism situated entirely within the dominant culture. They thus recognized, at a fundamental level, cultural difference. They spoke about the need to educate their readers, to ‘cue them in’ to different ways of thinking (resp. 2), to explain Māori concepts and words and to challenge negative images of Māori individuals. One spoke of the problems in a story about a man who made use of state funding to get a moko for himself: ‘That [story] was quite offensive because we didn’t explain how valued getting a full body tattoo is to that culture’ (resp. 6). The journalists acknowledged, then, that there were significant cultural differences; they accepted that it was part of their job to foster cross-cultural understanding within the country; and they commented that Aotearoa New Zealand journalism did not do a good job in fostering such inter-cultural understanding. They were also sometimes quite politicised in the way they discussed this. The respondent who critiqued the moko story called her organisation’s use of the plural form ‘Māoris’ rather than ‘Māori’, against the advice of scholars of the Māori language, ‘bad’ and a recent reversal of that style decision as a sign that ‘they improved during the year’. Another called her employer’s agreement to use Māori language terms in a story ‘momentous’ because it was acknowledgement that all New Zealanders should have or should gain some knowledge of Māori culture: ‘they were saying, “If you live in New Zealand and you don’t know what a marae is, you should, so get your dictionary out”.’ (resp. 5)

96


Bridging cultural difference, however, was formulated largely as a matter of increasing people’s knowledge of key concepts and words. It was thus made compatible with liberal ideals of journalism as providing the public with factual information, and compatible too with journalistic notions of objectivity that displace responsibility for meaning onto the sources and onto audiences. In other words, the power of language to construct versions of the world and to call people into understanding themselves in line with those versions was not thought through in any clarity. The role of culture in shaping self and understanding of others was not made explicit. Consequently, reality remained a self-evident matter, a matter of facts speaking for themselves (Glasser 1996). Thus the respondents’ understanding of cultural difference was rather thin. Within journalism, called by some ‘the strongest bastion of positivism’ remaining within western culture (Gans 1979), this is understandable – it allows the tensions between the identity politics which underpin the idea that knowledge differs across cultural groups and the positivism which underpins the key journalistic ideas that the world can be described objectively to be elided away. In this discursive move, understanding the history of Aotearoa New Zealand, for example, is a simple matter of facts. Thus one journalist said that ‘one training I think any journalist expecting to work in New Zealand should make sure they have is a damn good understanding of New Zealand history’ (resp. 3). When it was pointed out that debates over ‘special treatment’ for Māori and over the foreshore and seabed debate involved competing histories of colonization (and much else), he replied: Yes, that’s an issue. On the one hand I want editors to take a stand and say it’s pretty clear that we can put that one to rest [that the Treaty of Waitangi has not been honoured and needs to be] but I’ve a feeling that we did that but realised that a lot of our readers weren’t ready to give up that argument yet. (resp. 3) What appears to me fairly clearly as a matter of ideology, the differently distributed, and contested, power of groups to define reality, is phrased here as a matter of giving readers the resources to catch up with the journalist’s thinking. As a result, the journalist himself is only tangentially implicated in the cultural politics he is writing about, and can stand outside the space of debate, establishing facts and reporting the arguments. It thus made sense to this same journalist to see a very critical story about Brash’s claims – one that struck me as motivated by an alternative version of history – as ‘trying to be detached but asking a challenging question’.


97

Consequently, all but one respondent assumed that they as journalists and their audiences could negotiate cultural differences with relative ease. Only respondent 5 (who identified as part-Māori) was able to speak in any depth about the cultural situatedness of the reporter. At one point she said: There are a lot of people who still don’t understand the very Māori concepts behind the foreshore and seabed debate and even my boyfriend, who is very liberal, well travelled, and extremely bright, has said to me: ‘I just don’t understand what they want the beaches for?’ This is right at the core of it all, a lot of people who are writing about these things, where it is up to you to inform the public about what this is about, don’t understand it themselves, because it is a concept that doesn’t translate into English or into the European way of life. (resp. 5) She spoke also about her personal experience of racism, including at work. Her interview stood out from the others because of her lived, deeply felt, understanding of prejudice as limited knowledge of how others think and as the power of some ways of thinking over others. The other respondents recognised that they spoke from a particular culture, but saw that as no more serious than other problems of knowledge that they negotiated daily. One drew on the common journalistic trope that a lack of specialist knowledge was sometimes an asset because ‘I wasn’t assuming that the audience knew.’ The potential problem was not great, and was described as a matter of being ‘on the back foot’ in interviewing Māori: I just tried to be true to their…not distort what they were telling me so I kept close to their intended meaning […] It’s the same if I’m doing something about a business field I know nothing about. (resp. 2) Another said that ‘you just have to be willing to listen’ and that ‘if you’re polite and listen – both those things are quite a universal language’ (resp. 3). Journalism, in other words, needs to be little more than balanced and sensitive. The notion that racialising assumptions appear not just in one story about a moko but throughout a journalism that speaks about a subordinated culture to a dominant culture, in that dominant culture’s language, using its interpretative resources, was not available to these respondents. The news was on the whole ‘quite measured’, said one, pointing as evidence to a case where the racist comments of ‘a crazy farmer’ had been edited out by senior colleagues (resp. 6). Although there was

98


criticism of the news, none (leaving aside the journalist who identified as Māori) saw their and their colleagues’ position within one culture as a significant aspect of their stories of self. Although dealt with in these ways, a sense of dissatisfaction persists in the interview responses, suggesting that the tension between a recognition of cultural difference and an acceptance that journalism should report facts and opinions in an objective fashion is not resolved. Respondent 6 speaks almost in two voices: We’ve run perspective pieces for and against [Māori claims on] the foreshore and seabed, and they let me do a big feature explaining it. It wasn’t sympathetic but I didn’t write it like a lot of stories were, about Māori wanting to take the beaches. So they gave it a really good run. I think they were pretty good. I found it difficult more because of my own individual feelings about the whole thing. I did feel we were focusing on some things that we wouldn’t have if it weren’t [name of iwi]. (resp. 6) On the one hand she accepts the journalism she was involved in producing was fair – neither sympathetic nor prejudiced – but on the other she feels different criteria held for Māori stories. In the face of apparently fair coverage she appears not to be able to articulate concerns about the racialised coverage. She is, it should be emphasised, quite critical, concluding that the outlet is as balanced as one could expect of one aimed at a white readership, but she lacks ways of talking about this, or lacks ways that have the power of journalism’s liberal discourse. She falls back on her personal sense of identity – ‘my own personal feelings about the whole thing’ – rather than her identity as a journalist as the site of her concern. ‘I’m very conscious’…: Talking about their lack of knowledge This reflection within parts of journalism cannot be seen in isolation. The statements discussed above are also statements made to an academic researcher within a society where identity has become political. Thus the statements can, at the same time as they are discussed as accountable in terms of journalistic culture, also be discussed as accountable in terms of wider debates. In particular a fear of doing things wrongly in a ‘politically correct’ society is discernible in some of the responses, and is prominent at times to a worrying degree. The respondents reveal a self-monitoring that is perhaps more about avoiding the opprobrium that comes with the accusation of being prejudiced than about finding ways to


99

make connections between cultures that have different ways of perceiving the world. For one respondent, this worry was a major point: I would say that most of our newsroom, and myself included, are generally – what’s the word – overly cautious because there is that fear of offence. Yeah, I think so, I’m especially conscious [of that]. (resp. 4) She talks of her lack of knowledge about Māori language, society and culture and of some minor reporting mistakes she has made as a result of those gaps in knowledge. She suggests some training in Māori practices and words as a solution to this ‘slight paranoia’ that she feels. Others talk similarly, remarking on their limited personal experience of the country’s other cultures, particularly Māori. What is striking, and what makes this way of talking particularly problematic, is that these comments arise in the context of the daily practicalities of dealing with sources, focusing on negotiating with a prickly iwi kaiwhakahaere or getting a quotation right. ‘I was conscious of how politically fraught it was’, says one (resp. 2). This discomfort is not, I would argue, separable from the recognition that European-based cultures have great power to define other cultures in terms of their difference to the west, but the discomfort is quite strongly expressed at times in terms of an external force. The discourse provides no tools to think about whether the perceived offence is valid, and indeed can easily become a sense of embattlement in the face of the external pressure, even censorship. Thus this kind of reflection, although it is intertwined with reflections on journalism’s inadequacies, emphasises getting by in what one called ‘such a politically correct’ country. Matters such as power inequities in society or the whiteness of what’s called ‘public debate’ remain opaque. Criticising newsroom culture Only one respondent, a senior figure in his organisation, directly criticised the whiteness of the workplace in explaining the limitations of news on non-white ethnic groups. For him, the news agenda and the quality of reporting would not change until a prejudiced group of older male journalists left (resp. 7). The others, apart from the one respondent who did not describe herself as left-leaning or liberal, all placed some distance between themselves and their colleagues in relation to this topic, talking rarely of ‘we’ and speaking of ‘the newsroom’ in the third person. But they did not emphasise the workplace’s role in perpetuating ethnic prejudice and most felt able to write around any constraints it placed on them. Respondent 2, for example, described her outlet and its readership as conservative, but said:

100Donald Matheson – Reporting on Māori – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

With feature articles we all acknowledge that certain kinds of political value judgements come through, and I would probably be on the more liberal end of the range at [name of publication], but I’ve never felt restricted. I’m conscious that I’m not going to be preaching to the converted. I might be able to change some thinking […] If you say it in the [publication] style you can do that. (resp. 2) She gave as an example of her ability to change people’s thinking her deliberate use of ‘conservative’ Māori voices, who would be more convincing to her editors and readers, to make a positive comment about the ‘radical’ Māori Tariana Turia. She therefore thinks of the constraints provided on public debate by the dominant culture’s constructions of Māori (and she is conscious of this) as something she can write around. She thinks in terms of the individual instance of reporting, and interprets her room to manoeuvre as freedom. Others also criticised their colleagues, but in quite limited (and arguably overly generous) terms. One talked of how a senior colleague removed background paragraphs from stories which explained aspects in which the Māori worldview differed from the Pākehā, but described that firstly as something done only to Māori affairs stories and later something that had occasionally been done to background paragraphs in her stories on non-Māori topics as well (resp. 6). Another described how a series of articles she proposed on what it means to be Māori today was cut down by colleagues into a single article on racism against all ethnicities in the city. Although she was angry, she talked of the decision as a practical one, of her editors’ concern at losing her for a number of months while she wrote the series and of the space it would take up, and to an extent as a lack of vision (resp. 5). She pulled up short of making criticism that being Māori is not simply a subset of a larger category of nonwhites suffering racism. The journalists’ interpretative repertoire to account for newsroom decisions focuses on the practical – the lack of resources to cover issues in depth, the range of audience interests they need to meet, and the lack of time. Again, underlying issues to do with the position of the newsroom within one culture are left unspoken. It is, I think, significant, that respondent 5 then went on to talk in more personal terms about her experience of racism later in the interview. Revisiting the editorial decision in that context, she was able to reinterpret it in terms of race. She referred also to a conversation she had had with a Māori bureaucrat who said that only people from non-white ethnicities could ever understand what it felt like to have a police car slow down and follow them as they walked along the street. ‘And that really resonated with me, and I guess that is what I felt I was up against’ (resp. 5). It was at a moment of thinking about her life experience,


when she stepped outside a journalistic identity, that the structural and pervasive nature of racism in the workplace was something she could articulate. At other times pragmatic accounts that are not about ethnicity are drawn on. Conclusion I would not want to be critical of these journalists. Given the pressures on them, particularly of time, their reflections show depth of insight, concern to produce good journalism and a sense of the political implications of their work. But that reflection appears to take them only so far in rethinking the racialised coverage. They are able to ask critical questions of the speeches of a right-wing politician, but less able to see their own practices as part of white dominance. What I have sought to show is that the interpretative resources which these journalists have available to them are not developed enough to do much about Aotearoa New Zealand journalism’s failures in covering Māori politics and culture. How, then, might these matters be addressed? I do not think it is a matter of awareness raising about biculturalism or demands for greater sensitivity. Although one respondent said she had not thought about these matters much and was grateful for the opportunity the interview gave her, she and others were already quite aware of the limitations of the coverage of Māori and others labeled as non-white. Where they lacked critical tools was in thinking through the tension between the powerful ‘God-terms’ of journalism such as facts and objectivity (Zelizer 2004) and the task of bridging across cultural differences. They tended also to focus on the particular case and lacked the bigger picture of prejudice as embedded in relations between cultural groups that are rooted in colonialism. The respondents were not able to talk – or were not comfortable with talking – about prejudice as a matter of dominance and power. And, apart from one journalist who identified partly as Māori, they had little sense of how deeply embedded white privilege is in everyday life and basic cultural assumptions. More Māori journalists might help address these problems (although see Stuart 2002), as would a greater emphasis from news companies on meeting the needs of their nonwhite readers. The rise of Māori-run media perhaps provides an impetus for progress in both those areas. In concluding this paper, however, I wish to emphasise the importance of journalism education in providing journalists with the tools to analyse the representations they produce, so they can develop more complex ideas about criteria such as fairness and balance, think more deeply about the frameworks of understanding that a news story

102


invokes and understand the link between being able to talk in certain ways and wielding power. This is perhaps not such a tall order, for the journalists I spoke to seemed sometimes close to such concepts but just not able to articulate them. The situation is not, then, akin to that in Australia, where polemical voices from cultural studies and an untheorised journalism studies (primarily represented by John Hartley and Keith Windschuttle respectively) have polarized debate. Journalism training at the top polytechnic and university schools already, I understand, takes journalism students part-way down such a track. This is an avenue for further research. I would also argue that journalism education could learn much from nursing education which, under the slightly unwieldy label of ‘cultural safety’, focuses on students’ own cultural identity. For it is striking that the only respondent with a rich sense of cultural difference and of the structural prejudice in journalism culture was the one who had to negotiate both Māori and Pākehā culture. As Wepa (2003) puts it, cultural safety asks the professional to do the job from a position of having reflected on her or his own cultural identity and the impact that has on her or his practice. The relationship of the nurse with the patient is of course quite different to that of the journalist with her or his multiple stakeholders, the source, the audience and public debate. The balance of power is much more complex. Moreover, this is not something academics can or should seek to provide journalists, both because journalism’s independence is precious and because professional practices are not easily changed from the outside. What critique can perhaps provide journalists, though, is some tools to assist in developing more reporting that is able to participate more fully in contemporary cultural politics. References Adam G S 1989 Journalism knowledge and journalism practice: The problems of curriculum and research in university schools of journalism Canadian Journal of Communication 14 (2) 70-80 Brash D 2004 Orewa speech: Nationhood National Party of New Zealand 27 January available at http://www.national.org.nz/speech_article.aspx?ArticleID=1614 [accessed 10 Sept 2006] Butt D 2004 The 5-minute foreshore and seabed: A Pakeha perspective and summary Dannybutt.net 4 May available at: http://www.dannybutt.net/foreshore.html [accessed 11 Sept 2006]


103

Comrie M and Fountaine S 2005 Who is making the news? Paper presented at ANZCA 2005 conference 4-7 July Christchurch NZ Glasser T L 1996 “Journalism’s glassy essence”. Preface to a special section on “The language of news” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 73 784-86 Giddens A 1991 Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age Cambridge Polity Hall S 1980 Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance In Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism Paris UNESCO Hall S 1997 The work of representation In S Hall (ed) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices London Sage Hall S Critcher C Jefferson T Clarke J and Roberts B 1978 Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order London Macmillan Henry F and Tator C 2002 Discourses of Domination: Racial Bias in the Canadian English Canadian Press Toronto University of Toronto Press Johansson J 2004 Orewa and the Rhetoric of Illusion Political Science 56 (2) 101-19 McGregor J and Comrie M 1995 Balance and Fairness in Broadcast News Wellington Broadcasting Standards Authority and New Zealand on Air Wetherell M and Potter J 1992 Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation New York Columbia University Press Rankine J and McCreanor T 2004 Colonial coverage: media reporting of a bicultural health research partnership Journalism 5 (1) 5-29 Saunders J 1996 Skin deep: The news media’s failure to cover Maori politics In J McGregor (ed) Dangerous Democracy: News Media Politics in New Zealand pp166-80 Palmerston North Dunmore Press

104


Stuart I 2002 Maori and mainstream: Towards bicultural reporting Pacific Journalism Review 8 42-58 van Dijk T 1999 ‘Discourse and the denial of racism’ in A Jaworski and N Coupland (eds) The Discourse Reader pp 541-58 London Routledge Wepa D 2003 An exploration of the experiences of cultural safety educators in New Zealand: An action research approach Journal of Transcultural Nursing 14 (4) 339-48 Wilson G 1990 New Zealand journalists: Only partly professional In P Spoonley and W Hirsh (eds) Between the Lines: Racism and the New Zealand Media Auckland Heinemann Reed Zelizer Barbie 1993 Journalists as interpretive communities Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10 (2) 219-37


105

106


ARTICLE:

Selling Beats and Pacifications: Pacific music labels in Aotearoa/New Zealand/Niu sila Kirsten Zemke-White and Su’eina Sharon Televave

When looking at rap music in the United States, Basu and Werbner (2001) point out that while there is much written on the aesthetic and cultural aspects of rap music, there is little on what they call ‘ethnic entrepreneurship’. This study focuses on the production of Pacific hip hop and pop in Aotearoa, through dedicated ‘Pacific’ and/ or ‘Māori’ record labels and distribution houses, in order to gain a better understanding of New Zealand hip hop and Pacific pop as cultural products. Like other small popular music independent record labels, most of the companies examined in this study specialized in a particular type of music genre (for instance hip hop, soul or reggae), while some centered on the ethnicity of the artists (i.e. Pacific Music, Māori music) with varied genre. While we primarily investigated Pacific focused labels, we also refer to Māori dedicated labels and distributors. Many of the Pacific focused music companies in New Zealand produce specifically hip hop (rap) and r ‘n’ b music. This parallels hip hop labels in the U.S. which are not only music production companies but also examples of ‘ethnic entrepreneurship’ (Basu and Werbner 2001). Māori artists and so-called ‘second generation’ Pacific artists have had commercial success in New Zealand with a local strain of hip hop which regularly appears on the local sales charts and appeals to the wider New Zealand population. Negus (1999) argues that the involvement of record companies in musical production must be considered. He posits that the flow of influence runs both ways: “industry produces culture and culture produces industry” (Negus 1999: 490) concluding that to comprehend any music culturally, the economic production mechanisms must also be examined: Production does not take place simply ‘within’ a corporate environment created according to the requirements of capitalist production or organizational formulae but in relation to broader cultural formations and practices that may not be directly within the control or comprehension of the company. (Negus 1999: 490)

K. Zemke-White & S. Televave – Selling Beats – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

107

Negus argues that cultural explanations are not enough to understand the cultural force that is (in particular) rap music, because besides being an aesthetic practice and cultural form, rap is also a “self-conscious business activity” (Negus 1999: 489). In support of this Negus highlights how rap magazines not only talk about the music and culture, but also feature articles about management and career planning. This aspect of production is significant in Aotearoa where dedicated Pacific and Māori labels and music distributors: a) participate in community and political events, b) highlight Pacific and Māori ethnicity in their mission statements and promotion material, c) build a catalogue of artists based on ethnicity, and d) maintain community connections as a business. Many of the label names themselves immediately call attention to their ethnicity/identity focus. Ironically, while popular music is primarily circulated via the mainstream media and capitalist production, many music connoisseurs maintain an aesthetic that ‘good’ popular music is produced in opposition to mainstream values and systems. Corporate control of pop musics is believed to produce a homogenous mainstream aesthetic, devoid of oppositional politics. According to Hesmondhalgh, Indie culture (and we would argue any so-called ‘underground’ pop music cultures like punk and hip hop) see aesthetics (that is the actual quality and sound of the music produced) as an “inevitable outcome of certain institutional and political positions” (Hesmondhalgh 1999: 36). This translates into dominant control by major record corporations limiting creative and political freedom, creating an ‘inferior’ music product. Maintaining institutional separation from major labels is believed by supporters and fans of independent labels to ensure aesthetic diversity and authenticity. ‘Indie’ music enthusiasts insist that institutional arrangements have traceable aesthetic outcomes (i.e. ‘mainstream music is awful’, ‘independent music is real music’). This may or may not be the case musicologically but the emergence of ethnically driven record labels is believed by those who initiate and participate in these Pacific branded companies to produce a diverse, community related, culturally oppositional music product. While many of the labels we examined here may have formed because of lack of attention or interest in their product from major labels, these companies’ distance from the larger capitalist ‘machine’ is then read by themselves and the music fan community as likely to generate a more ‘authentic’ and community connected product, a more ‘honest’ reflection of the stories and feelings of Pacific and Maori young people. Signing with a ‘major’ record label would supposedly limit the creative freedom of an artist as their goal is solely to generate radio play and commercial success, whereas these ethnic oriented local labels often define their motive as to develop Pacific and Māori young talent. This reiterates the notion of Negus’s “self-conscious business

108


activity” but a consciousness which is less ‘self’, and more ‘community’. This paper explores a number of Pacific oriented music labels and distribution houses in New Zealand showing how they reinforce notions of aesthetic diversity, political independence and democracy commonly assumed to be present in the formation and product of independent music labels. However in this case, there is also an added cultural component, showing how identity formations and strategies operate at all levels of music creation. Culture and identity can be read not just in the end aesthetic product, but notions of an urban Pacific contemporary identity shape the very instigation, motivation, and production of the music. These companies may have formed in response to neglect by corporate powers, but this ‘independence’ has now fostered the utilization of ethnic-based production, creation and marketing strategies. This phenomenon not only caters to a particular audience, but has developed a specific strain of talent and music, which ultimately reaches a mainstream audience, all the while maintaining a cohesive branded ethnic identity. Background We examined a number of Pacific branded music companies:

•

D1 Entertainment – based on the talents of producer/musician Dominic Leauga. D1

has released one compilation album (primarily r ‘n’ b and hip hop styles) and have a

number of Pacific artists they are developing further.

•

DawnRaid Entertainment – a South Auckland based hip hop and r ‘n’ b label with

a number of successful commercial and chart appearing releases (including rappers

Savage and Mareko and singers Adeaze and Aaradhna). All their artists are of Pacific

descent. The company has a name significant to the Pacific community.

•

King Music – not ‘Pacific’ owned, but dedicated to the distribution of both local

and overseas Pacific musics. This independent music distribution company exports

New Zealand created Pacific music as well as distributes both independent and

major label Pacific artists locally. They have also branched into production creating

now two ‘Supafresh’ Pacific pop music compilation CDs which feature artists like Che Fu (from major label Sony), D Kamali (independent), Adeaze (from DawnRaid),

Pacific Soul (from Pacific Dream Records) and Peta & the Immigrantz (from D1

Entertainment).


109

•

Maorimusic.com – not a company per se, but a website that highlights and sells

Māori music artists. The site itself can be seen to be ‘defining’ a notion of Māori

music, i.e. from a range of relevant genres like reggae, hip hop, and Māori language

music. The music promoted is all from Māori artists, and most of it has Māori imagery

and themes. They also feature a rare few Pacific artists (like Te Vaka) and artists of

both Pacific and Maori descent (like Che Fu). They have a ‘World Music’ section

which features ‘new age’ and dance mix sounding Māori and Pacific musics which

appeal to an international (European and U. S.) ‘world music’ market.

•

Oyster Entertainment – a live entertainment company finding live Pacific acts for

venues (from a range of styles from ‘traditional’ Pacific to cabaret, to hip hop). Their

name Oyster reflects the owners’ Cook Island Heritage. They have a variety of

Pacific musicians and groups including Pacific Pop group Fou Nature and

•

Pacific Dream Records – formed initially to release the successful Samoan pop

sensation Jamoa Jam, they also developed the girl group Pacific Soul and some solo

acts (all artists are of Pacific ethnicity).

•

Urban Pacifika Records – the first dedicated Pacific pop label in New Zealand. It

released its inaugural groundbreaking compilation in 1996 (suitably named

‘Pioneers of a Pacifikan Frontier’) featuring Pacific hip hop and r ‘n’ b acts like Moizna,

Dei Hamo, a.k.a Brown and The Lost Tribe. They have branched now into

Māori music with a sub label called Gifted and Māori.

•

Vaimutu Records – an Auckland based company that makes Cook Islands music

(e.g. Brother Love, Chuck Upu and The Kabin Bread Boyz) and distributes it locally,

to the Cook Islands and around the Pacific. Many of their acts are managed into their

live work by Oyster.

The field work consisted of interviews with artists and company owners during the course of Televave’s Master’s dissertation (2004), and long term friendships, relationships and observation by Zemke-White. Over a period of years we examined the progress, releases, web sites and media interaction of the companies, and have studied many of their music releases.

110


For political background, the Māori are the indigenous caretakers of the land of Aotearoa. Colonized by the British in the 1800s, they are still struggling today to maintain their language, lands, tikanga (ways) and self-esteem in the face of racism, and poor social statistics. The migrations of their Polynesian cousins from various Pacific islands to New Zealand began in earnest in the 1940s escalating in the 1970s. The Pacific population in New Zealand continues to grow today. There are six main Pacific Island groups in New Zealand: Samoan, Cook Island, Tongan, Niuean, Tokelau and Fijian. But now there is a group of ‘New Zealandborn’ Pacific young people, who may have a whole new set of complex values and world view to their immigrant parents (Macpherson 2001). These record labels and their musical outputs offer a valuable text for understanding this cultural phenomenon. One important point of note is that ‘Pacific Islander’ and now ‘Pacific’ are terms used in New Zealand to identify people from a number of different Pacific Island countries (and their New Zealand-born descendants). However, the use of this ‘blanket’ term can conceal and undermine the historical, social, political and cultural uniqueness of each Pacific Islands society. An irony of this possible blurring is that Pacific record companies themselves and their branch of young artists often reinforce and perpetuate this notion of being generally ‘Pacific’. While Māori and Pacific are often linked together (biologically as Polynesians; socially as marginalized peoples in New Zealand society) they have distinctive colonial histories in relation to New Zealand and these record labels highlight the parallels, but current identity distinctiveness of these two groups. Phil Fuemana’s Urban Pacifika Records (UPR) focuses primarily on ethnically Pacific artists (with genre like r ‘n’ b, hip hop and gospel) but to reflect his Maori heritage Fuemana formed a separate label called Gifted and Māori (www.giftedandmaori.com). He did this in part to take advantage of specific government funding initiatives aimed at specifically Māori music (Fuemana pers. comm.) but this separation is also reflected in the wider community, e.g. separate Māori and Pacific Music Awards. Independent labels The production of popular music is characterized by a particular economic approach comprised of the interaction between a very small number of so-called major record labels (and their many subsidiaries, some with different company names) and thousands of much smaller labels (often known as ‘independent’), many of these localized. The global industry has seen recent mergers which have resulted in just three major global record companies. BMG and Sony merged in 2004 becoming SonyBMG. EMI and Warner merged the same


111

year and PolyGram and Universal had already become one in 1998 (PolyGram was the result of a previous merge between Polydor and Phonogram). The sales charts in the U. S. A., Britain or New Zealand show that the domination of these three labels is often over 90% of the main pop charts in any given week (pers. obs.). In 1975 Petersen and Berger found evidence that hegemony of music companies decreased the amount of creativity and diversity in popular music, but the recent mergers may perhaps present an even more dire possibility for diversity. Independent labels and the so-called ‘majors’ have been in a symbiotic relationship over the last four decades, interacting to produce what we call the body of popular music. Negus (1999) warns that this situation is too complex to be collapsed into a simple economic model of corporate control and he shows how major record companies purposely have rap and other sub-genre produced by linked independent companies and production units. The smaller labels are autonomous and separate, usually asserting a distinctive aesthetic, politics or local creativity. But this relationship is also used to veil the monopoly of the major labels, especially for genre of pop music which are seen as being outside corporate control (e.g. alternative or punk). Banks (1998) shows how almost all the affiliations and linked business related to music distribution (like radio and MTV) merely reinforce the significant power imbalance between major and independent labels. While most artists would like to have their music heard widely and to make a good living from their music, it is generally known that musicians are not treated equitably by the music industry. Many artists barely break even, even those with seemingly successful sales (McLeod 2005). The term ‘mainstream’ is problematic, as it can indicate success in the music business with critical and chart success, but can also be used to denigrate music deemed to be ‘inauthentic’ because it is ‘manufactured’ (i.e. by a company, rather than an ‘artist’). Bennet (1999) and Thornton (1995) state that, despite its widespread use, the term ‘mainstream’ is impossible to quantify. The term is even more complex when applied to rap music which is ‘mainstream’ in its commercial success, had and has ‘underground’ or street based roots, and is still often marginalized in terms of race and power (Negus 1999). Independent labels maintaining business links with the major labels is seen by many musicians and record store owners as a “means of reconciling the commercial nature of pop with the goal of artistic autonomy for musicians” (Hesmondhalgh 1999: 35). In the

112


case of New Zealand, having specific Pacific and Māori dedicated independent record labels not only guarantees some musical diversity in the musi-cultural milieu, but also cultural diversity in the actual ethnicity of the artists. This major/independent production/ distribution relationship has as yet not been the case with these Pacific labels, as most are still operating completely on their own. The exception is South Auckland based hip hop label DawnRaid who have signed with Universal Music for distribution in New Zealand and with Warner Music Group for distribution in Australia (posted as news on their website www. dawnraid.co.nz 30.05.2005). The bigger record companies have in some cases been supportive of local artists and marginalized musical sub-genre (e.g. hip hop artists Che Fu and King Kapisi), yet for the most part the major labels’ offices in New Zealand exist to promote overseas acts, especially from the U.S. and Britian. In relation to independent record labels, there are significant discourses around the concepts of racism, democracy, politics, authenticity, and identity which we applied to the Pacific music labels considered here. Despite marginalization, independent labels can offer authenticity to a music and often “assume[s] an ideological orientation against what are perceived as the exploitative practices of major record labels and big business more generally”(Harrison 2006: 290). Racism Basu and Werbner (2001) assert that in the United States there has been a continued racism from the dominant music corporations which we argue has been paralleled in New Zealand. Hip hop in particular was only genuinely recognised as New Zealand music in the last few years. Borrowed forms such as rock and pop were given classic status as New Zealand music (in particular Split Enz and the ‘so-called ‘Dunedin Sound’ of the 1980’s) but hip hop artists usually had to defend their choice of copying an American music. This suggests a racism not only in the music industry but also the music and general media. Using Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital, Basu and Werbner (2001) claim that racism has not only forced many groups to struggle to find their own ways into the economy, but their marginalization has given them something ‘different’ to sell:


113

Increasingly, design impacts on all commodities. In the face of racism and discrimination, resourceful ethnic groups with no capital have been able to gain access or even invent cultural capital, that is, the knowledge of how to package and sell a particular form of culture” (Basu and Werbner 2001: 241) The music industry may, in many ways, try to snub rap music and other non-white musics but at the same time they desire the appropriation and commodification of these genre (Basu and Werbner 2001). Various local rap artists have released hip hop songs with some success since 1988. Despite number one chart successes for local rap songs, rap was not recognized in local music awards until 1997 when “Chains” (DLT featuring Che Fu 1997) won the award for best single (decided by public vote). In the same year rapper/ singer Che Fu won best male vocalist, rapper Danny Haimona of Dam Native took most promising male vocalist and rap group Dam Native won ‘Most Promising Group’. A rap song won an Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) Silver Scroll Award (for songwriting) in 1999 (King Kapisi ‘Reverse Resistance’). While of course there is no explicit ‘proof’ of racism, there was much accusation in the music industry of rap and hip hop being an ‘American’ genre (with local hip hop artists merely practicing mimicry) whereas rock, pop and Alternative rock were recognized exclusively up until that time as genuine ‘Kiwi’ music. One location where this bias is apparent is APRA’s (Australasian Performing Rights Association) 2001 list “30 Best Songs Composed by New Zealanders” which despite a flourishing hip hop subculture since the late 1980’s featured only one rap song (“Chains”). The rest were primarily rock, pop and alternative rock. Major labels’ delay in recognizing the saleability and authenticity of hip hop and rap music in New Zealand could be attributed to a racially derived Eurocentrism widespread in the local music industry. This lack of faith arguably necessitated and fostered the development of specifically Pacific, or ethnicity based, record labels to develop hip hop which was popular for Pacific and Maori youth. This negligence arguably has prompted a greater musical diversity, local ownership, and ethnic assertiveness. It was racism that inspired the name of rap label DawnRaid. The term ‘dawn raid’ refers to an infamous phenomenon in Pacific immigrant history. In the 1970s an economic downturn in New Zealand saw Pacific Islanders blamed for the country’s economic woes. The immigration department undertook ‘dawn raids’ on Pacific Island dwellings to look for ‘overstayers’ (temporary Pacific workers in New Zealand on expired working. Label co-owner Brotha D explains:

114


Yeah like our company name, DawnRaid, that relates to back in the seventies the police used to come and hunt down our people because they stayed in this country too long. They used to kick in our doors early hours of the morning before dawn, before everybody got out of bed. Then they’d grab the overstays, and lock ‘em up, put ‘em back on the plane, fuckin chuck them back to the islands in hand cuff and shit. If that’s not a form of slavery, I don’t know what the fuck is. (Brotha D 2001 interviewed in Murdadog 8/4; 82 accessed at www.dawnraid.co.nz May 2006) Just like U.S. hip hop labels using titles like ‘Death Row Records’, Dawnraid Entertainment utilizes and transposes this negative phrase. It now signifies one of New Zealand’s premier hip hop labels, and a prominent and successful independent record company. Established by Danny Leaosavaii (Brotha D) and Andy Murnane (YDNA), DawnRaid emerged in 1999 with a vision to cultivate the ‘hidden talents’ of hip hop artists in South Auckland (www. dawnraid.co.nz). Leaosavaii and Murnane felt that the major record companies were not catering for the needs of Pacific artists and especially hip hop. Leaosavaii had already had some success with his group Lost Tribe and wanted to try keeping some of the money for himself. DawnRaid now has expanded to include a range of connected businesses including a hairdresser (Klasscuts), a clothing line, DawnRaid Promo Print, DawnRaid Graphix, and a recording studio. A classic example of ‘ethnic entrepreneurship’, this links to the concepts of independent music labels seeing a greater number of persons (and groups) being involved in the music industry. Democracy The democratic reality of having independent music labels has allowed marginalized people to have a greater part in the music industry than the monopoly of the big three labels would otherwise allow. Hesmondhalgh (1999) showed that part of the punk ethic was the democratization of the music industry, meaning basically, more people were involved. Basu and Werbner assert that the commodification of black culture placed substantial subcultural capital in the hands of young black men and women: Hip hop culture, and more particularly rap music, has generated economic opportunities for those with cultural capital beyond the few highly publicized success stories. (Basu and Werbner 2001: 247).


115

These few ‘highly publicized’ success stories that are referred to in the rap world are people like Suge Knight, Sean Combs (P Diddy), Russell Simmons, even Queen Latifah, and Jay Z. This has been matched, on a much smaller scale, by DawnRaid entertainment, whose co-founder Brotha D made his name into the Listener magazine’s 2005 ‘power list’ (Watkin 2005) underscored with: “The Listener’s list of the most powerful people in the country contains some new names and undermines plenty of popular assumptions”. Brotha D is listed there, the article says, as someone politicians ‘want to take their picture with’, an ‘arbiter of cool’, who has the ‘pulse of the streets’. Negus (1999) would find this typical and ironic, as he found that ‘the street’ was constructed similar to this in the U. S. where rap is negotiated in the ‘suite’ (in the executive suite of a large corporation’) but has to look as if it has come from ‘the street’. Brotha D defies this by actually keeping his business located in his lower socio-economic home suburb in South Auckland (the ‘street’) and maintaining obvious connections with his surrounding community and ethnic networks, rather than moving his company to a higher end respected business district, more distanced from the Pacific community (i.e. the ‘suite’). The ‘democracy of independents’ has seen the rise of hundreds of small record labels in New Zealand, many dedicated to a particular region, city or music genre (e.g. dub, house, punk etc). This democratic ‘space’ has engendered a number of ethnic centered music labels. While Hesmondhalgh asserted that independent labels allowed for more ‘people’ being involved in music making, the New Zealand situation shows that independent labels can result in more ‘kinds’ of peoples involved, i.e. ‘ethnicities’ finding a space in the music industry, in New Zealand. For example Vaimutu Records produces Cook Islands language and style musics; and Pacific Dream Records makes and internationally distributes Pacific pop musics. An interesting case is the local chart-topping mixed Pacific hip hop/pop group Nesian Mystik which is signed to a medium sized independent label not specifically connected with Pacific music. The group members have started their own music label, Arch Dynasty, to advance Pacific hip hop talent. Nesian Mystik obviously feel that they have knowledge and experience that they can offer to other bands and see the benefits of starting their own label. Their website states: Arch Dynasty is the platform for New Zealand’s (Aotearoa) finest music. More than just a label, Arch Dynasty is THE sound. From a dream to reality, artists Nesian Mystik created a positive platform for artists to produce innovative music, and deliver it to the world. (www.archdynasty.com )

116


So rather than helping new artists to sign to a major label, or even the label they themselves are signed to, Nesian Mystik insist that having their own company can offer ‘innovative music’ and they can create a specialized ‘sound’. Bell (1998) argues that inferiority and isolation (he was talking about a geographical isolation, in the case of Grunge music) can translate into artistic freedom. So, in our case, being excluded from major labels has liberated Pacific artists and in particular hip hop music, from corporate mediation (and possible standardization). This distance from the corporate system can also give a music, an artist or a record label the aura of ‘authenticity’ which for some pop musics (in particular hip hop) is crucial to the aesthetic. Authenticity It is understandable that musicians and record companies should want their music to matter, to be consumed and battled over on the largest stages (Hesmondhalgh 1999: 53). The recurring invocation of authenticity is not isolated to hip hop culture. They also take place in other cultures that, like hip hop, are threatened with assimilation by a larger, mainstream culture (McLeod 1999:134). There is always a necessary compromise for independent labels, and particularly pop musics which derive their authenticity from their distance from the ‘mainstream’ music industry, to rely sometimes on major labels. While ‘independent’ and/or marginalized musics and styles are predicated on their distance from the ‘taint’ of capitalism, usually the ultimate goal of a music (especially if the music is attached to an overt politics) is to get one’s art/ music ‘out there’ and their message ‘known’, and to become famous music stars. Of course independent musics and companies do have sales as a goal (they need to ‘make ends meet’), but there is a notion that there are other factors equally as important such as politics, or a distinctive authenticity derived from ‘the streets’, or ‘marginalization’ or ‘anti-capitalism’. Pacific pop music labels advocate music and culture as priorities, with sales less imperative (but most likely still a very welcome outcome). Vela Manusaute of the entertainment group ‘Kila Kokonut Krew’ (who produce music, theatre and television) explains this notion on their web page:


117

Rolling out from the south side of Auckland, the largest Polynesian city in the world, Kila Kokonut Krew brings you the new flavour of real raw entertainment. Kila Kokonut Krew will not stand for this. We rise against the mainstream manipulation of New Zealand media, not out of hate for anyone, but out of love for our Pacific people. It is the Pacific Media Renaissance. We Pacific Islanders have a right to be seen on television and have our stories and struggles be told to our children. We battle against rubbish television our children are force fed. We cannot relate to most of the rubbish on television. We, the Kila Kokonut Krew, are Pacific Islanders and it is for Pacific Islanders we exist for. WE REPRESENT OUR PACIFIC COMMUNITY, a community no mainstream media want to represent. (www.kilakokonutkrew.com/history.htm May 06) The marketing of rap and other African American musics has seen the converting of the salience of ‘blackness’ into capital. This may be said to be similar to the selling of ‘Pacificness’, especially a Pacific hip hop in New Zealand. By celebrating Pacific-ness with an aesthetic and community motive, this in turn generates an authenticity that may be a salable commodity. Hip hop in Aotearoa has come to be dominated by Pacific and Māori artists and is even represented on Pacific television and at festivals as authentic contemporary Pacific culture (Zemke-White 2005). D1 Entertainment has artists of primarily Samoan and Tongan descent. Rappers The Immigrantz from this music label celebrate Pacific culture with humour on their rap single, making fun of a perceived cultural propensity for being late: You can run, you can hide But there’s no escaping From the Immigration clique We got the new flavour in the air Now we hope you understand, because my stylin’, typical Fresh, like my timin’, I can’t help it Cause my blood is from the islands…… We keep it real This is how we do it island style (“Island timin’” on Various 2004a)

118


The Immigrantz capitalize on their ‘marginalization’ and celebrate their ‘difference’. Their cultural (even racial) point of alterity is celebrated as both their selling (on the label) and identity position. Snapper (2004) would argue that being on an independent label is the only way The Immigrantz and other acts can maintain their ‘authentic difference’, as artists with major labels are trapped in a ‘fixed exchange’ with their listeners and their output is supported by an industry only interested in attracting ‘buyers’, not looking for intellectual or cultural exchange and community. Others investigating popular music and independent labels assert that sometimes even the crudeness of technology available to independent labels can become an aesthetic in itself (Harrison 2006). The ultimate authenticity derives, however, mostly from the ability for those distanced from the ‘mainstream’ and/or major labels to critique the capitalist system itself; ‘independence’ offers a space for oppositional politics. Politics Oppositional politics are often a key feature and motivation of independent music labels. Independent labels are possibly more free to produce music with more oppositional politics (i.e. anti-capitalist or anti-mainstream sentiments) as these messages may be more likely to be suppressed by corporate major labels, as has happened, for example, with punk (Hesmondhalgh 1999). However, Hesmondhalgh (1999) warns that just because a record label is independent this does not mean that its product has radical politics. Is a record label that is set up to specifically promote and sell to a particular ethnicity inherently politically oppositional? Is it, regardless of product, automatically asserting political difference? It has been argued that hip hop and any ‘black’ music is always political, regardless of textual subject matter (Rose 1994). This could also apply to any Pacific or Māori music in New Zealand which is subjected to a range of institutional and media practices that suppress their arts. Basu and Werbner (2001: 247) say black musics have an inherent ‘politics of style’ as there is no simple way of defining where the political in music begins. We argue that these Pacific companies, regardless of the textual subject matter of any of their product, also offer political statements about identity, ethnicity and style. Even names like The Immigrantz


119

or Savage hearken to a racist colonial past. These companies have chosen to, or had to, bypass the mainstream music industry. While they are operating in a pattern with great precedent (independent music labels), independent Pacific oriented music labels offer something unique to the market, maintain aesthetic control, and reap their own profits. Their existence and consciousness inserts a missing cultural, racial and musical dimension into the mainstream music industry and social milieu. Pacific and Māori rap artists have used hip hop to offer oppositional racial and political messages through their lyrics. Rappers like Che Fu, King Kapisi, Dean Hapeta, Nesian Mystik, Footsouljahs, and Feelstyle have all critiqued colonization and white racism in their texts. Ironically, Che Fu is now on the major label SonyBMG, and King Kapisi is on Festival/ Mushroom, a subsidiary of Warner Music Australia. This highlights the fact that hip hop music, whether on major or independent labels, has been able to offer oppositional critiques, supporting Boyd’s (1995) assertion in relation to rap music that: The commodifying impulses of the music industry have opened a space for selling cultural products, which in their very construction undermine the structure distributing them (297). Hip Hop The Pacific record companies we came across all deal with rap music in some way. Rap music and culture can be linked with race, ethnicity and identity issues, and, while incredibly successful commercially, are still marginalised in many ways. Rap is inherently political. McLeod (1999) calls hip hop a “self-identified, resistive subculture” (146). He argues that hip hop has mitigated mainstream success with a ‘carefully constructed authenticity’. Hip hop is grounded in its original New York roots, but has also become a global phenomenon with local appropriations in Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. In Aotearoa, hip hop has shown particular relevance for young people of Pacific and Māori descent who have made it their own by fusing specific and global influences and identities (Zemke-White 2001). Aotearoa hip hop culture and rap music have seen tremendous commercial and cultural success for individual artists, but there has also been a matching development of dedicated record labels and companies, many of whose goal is to develop and market specifically Pacific artists who do hip hop and other pop forms.

120


Rap’s connection to marginalized ethnicities, its basis in the ‘street’ and its offerings of cultural pride have seen it come to represent, and be represented by, Pacific artists. Hip hop and its African American sister art, r ‘n’ b, have become a facet of a distinct ‘urban’ Pacific aesthetic as seen in magazines (Spasifik) and films (Sione’s Wedding). American rapper Kanye West eloquently explores the complex commercial/social relationship of selling black music to white people in the U. S.. On his 2005 album Late Registration, West refers to a ‘dark diction’ (rap music) which has become ‘America’s addiction’ and parallels this with drug trafficking: That’s that crack music nigga That real black music nigga That’s that crack music, crack music That real black music, black music Our father, give us this day, our daily bread Before the feds give us these days and take our daily bread See I done did all this ol’ bullshit And to atone, I throw a lil’ somethin somethin on the pulpit We took that shit, measured it and then cooked that shit And what we gave back, was crack, music And now we ooze it, through they nooks and crannies So our mommas ain’t got to be they, cooks and nannies And we gon’ repo everything they ever took from granny Now the former slaves trade hooks, for Grammy’s This dark diction, has become America’s addiction Those who ain’t even black use it We gon’ keep baggin up this here, crack music (“Crack Music” Kanye West featuring The Game, 2005) The explosion of hip hop as an irrepressible market force has seen huge esteem and commercial success for many African Americans. Rap culture provides economic incentives and artistic goals which for some may open escape routes from the deprivation of the inner cities (Basu and Werbner 2001: 256) Having dedicated rap labels in the U.S. has facilitated the ability of young black artist and entrepreneurs to have greater control of their intellectual property (Basu and Werbner 2001: K. Zemke-White & S. Televave – Selling Beats – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

121

249), and the development of Pacific record companies in New Zealand has had the same outcome. Rap’s feature of personal stories and auto-biographical narratives has seen the marketing of Pacific rap artists not just as selling a music and emerging potentially from poverty, but also as projecting a ‘style of self’ into the world (Dyson on U. S. hip hop culture, 1993:15) contesting ‘the powers of despair and economic depression’. Dyson (1993: 15) argues that rap music (in the U. S.) “generates forms of cultural resistance and transforms the ugly terrain of the ghetto existence into a searing portrait of life as it must be lived by millions of voiceless people”. By cultivating and releasing hip hop music, then, these Pacific music labels are telling important stories that would normally go unheard. Besides hip hop, these record labels also produce various forms of reggae, r ‘n’ b, and gospel. These genre are also grounded in African American cultures, religion and history. So while it may look like mere mimicry of American pop musics, these genre choices on ethnic labels signal racial, political and social alliances and synchronies. These music styles, like hip hop, are also less accepted by the mainstream (white rock dominated) New Zealand music community. Like hip hop, these musics have been subject to racist structures and bias necessitating the development of independent labels to express these music preferences and connections. This lyric from Urban Pasifika’s Gospel compilation expresses community, ethics, identity, ancestry, and history from a distinctive Pacific Diaspora perspective, one most often not catered for by major labels: When I really thought about it then it dawned on me I got so many cultures in my own family Maori, Cook Island, Aboriginal Irish, Scottish, Tone Tokelau We all different but we all family They got my back when I got me a catastrophe (“Red & Yellow, Black & White” James Holland on Various 2005) Networking A distinctive feature of ‘ethnic entrepreneurship’ is networks. As Basu and Werbner point out:

122


Within the rap industry an entrepreneurial elite has achieved outstanding success. But this elite, we demonstrate, has risen from the ranks of micro-enterprises, building on the networks and expertise that these have generated collectively. (Basu and Werbner 2001: 239) The emergent culture of entrepreneurship is embedded in locally forged networks of kin as well as cultural know-how, but expands to more mainstream connections within the cultural industries a large kinship, neighbourhood, ethnic and friendship ties gain access, information and contacts through these ties. (Basu and Werbner 2001: 253) This is particularly evident in New Zealand with Pacific and Māori focused record companies. In order to build up an audience (or market) most Pacific acts, rather than only playing bars and clubs, also perform at Pacific community events such as Pacific festivals, fundraisers, health awareness events, Pacific markets and Pacific Fashion shows. Many performers also have family and church networks, as family and religion are core Pacific values (Anae 2002). The Pacific community, as a large minority group in the New Zealand cultural milieu, has developed a small number of Pacific focused television and radio spaces. Pacific focused Radio stations such as Niu Fm (“the beat of the Pacific” www.niufm.com), Radio Samoa (www.radiosamoa.co.nz) and 531 PI (“Bringing Pacific People Together” www.531pi.co.nz) play many of the artists and albums from these Pacific labels. Niu Fm broadcasts on 12 frequencies nationally with a stated urban adult contemporary format aimed at 18 to 39 year old New Zealand born Pacific Islanders. Radio Samoa and 531PI are Auckland only. There are specific Maori radio stations (www.tmp.govt.nz/radio/radiomap.html and www.ruiamai. co.nz/iwi.html) which support music from Maori dedicated music companies. Music from these Pacific and Maori oriented labels appears often on Pacific Television programmes such as Tangata Pasifika (tvnz.co.nz), on the Maori Television channel (www.maoritelevision. com) and on Triangle Television (www.tritv.co.nz). The existence of local ties invigorates claims to authenticity, especially for hip hop artists and entrepreneurs. For hip hop, authenticity is gained by an artist maintaining close links to their neighborhood, often via their record label. Music videos from artists on these Pacific labels often feature rappers against the background of their ‘hood’ (neighborhood, suburb), references are made in raps to local cultural landmarks or events, and friends and family are often featured on videos (for instance D1’s “Koko Luv” and Savage’s “If you love Savage”),


123

highlighting the Pacific and hip hop aesthetic and practice of community. DawnRaid, as previously mentioned, have kept their office based in the humble neighborhood of Papatoetoe despite their commercial success as a music company. In addition, they started a community trust in 2001 to educate young people about the music business (http://www. dawnraid.co.nz/communitytrust/ ). ‘Ethnic networking’ has also seen the utilization of international Pacific diaspora networks, particularly in Australia and the U. S. Groups from Pacific Dream records have toured in the United States and DawnRaid artists have been actively gigging in Australia. Both companies are seeking to reach the Pacific diaspora communities in these locations. Australia even has its own Pacific radio show, the ‘Cher Bro Show’, in Melbourne, playing primarily New Zealand produced Pacific pop music aimed at the Pacific diaspora community (www.cherbroshow. com). This is consistent with Stokes (2004) who found that major recording corporations are no longer considered the only site of agency in the global circulation of music styles. Conclusions Authenticity claims and their contestations are a part of a highly charged dialogic conversation that struggles to renegotiate what it means to be a participant in a culture threatened with assimilation (McLeod 1999: 147) Popular music, perhaps more than many other media, has been particularly receptive to social and ethnic diversity (Lipschitz 1999). This is evidenced in New Zealand through the range of Pacific and Māori artists in the mainstream charts and on radio. The term ‘Pacifications’, used in the title of an independent Pacific distributor’s Pacific pop music compilation, refers to a Pacific aesthetic - a style; a behavior; a set of themes and semiotic strategies - developed by Pacific and Māori music artists who localize pop music styles to express unique Pacific explorations. This aesthetic has been supported in the New Zealand music industry primarily by a number of dedicated ethnicity-centered independent music labels. In a study of music in Los Angeles and Miami, Lipschitz (1999) found that: The grass-roots realities of everyday life for residents of global cities like Miami and Los Angeles rarely find expression in public pronouncements by politicians or in the public relations-oriented journalism of commercial, electronic, and print media. The

124


ways in which people make meaning for themselves in the context of dramatic social change can be discerned, however, through critical interpretation of the links between changes in popular music and the demographic and social life of the city. (Lipschitz 1999, 213) Lipschitz argues that popular music serves as a sensitive register of changes in black and Latino communities and that the development of hip hop and other localized pop musics reflects new trends in commercial culture and new emerging identities. Music has been one way to celebrate culture and identity and negotiate new identities based on contemporary locations. The growth of the Pacific population in New Zealand has led to the birth of Pacific record companies, an increase in Pacific artists, and a proliferation of Pacific musics. Pacific dedicated record companies play a vital role in the promotion and recognition of Pacific artists and Pacific pop in New Zealand. They highlight that ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ are essential to the production point of music creation. ‘Pacific identity’ is then used by these companies as a tool to promote the music, artists and companies. This consequently helps to source a Pacific audience (especially via Pacific media like radio, print and community events) and markets a potentially saleable contemporary Pacific identity to the wider New Zealand public. Hip hop and r ‘n’ b musics form a part of a distinctive Pacific pop identity in New Zealand, and artists such as Adeaze, Savage, Jamoa Jam and Peta are cultivated and distributed by Pacific independent record labels. These companies offer a democratic alternative, allowing marginalized cultures, ethnicities and music sub-genre to flourish both inside and outside the mainstream. While it is important to consider the complex notions of Pacific identity via contemporary Pacific music artists and lyrics, this study has shown that negotiation of ethnic identity also operates at the level of music production and economy. While a monopolistic music industry may produce homogenization, independent labels may act to ensure that the industry is comprised in part by diverse cultures. In the case of New Zealand, Pacific entrepreneurship is producing Pacific industry, and producing a contemporary, branded, Pacific culture. This press release paragraph from King Music distribution house (which focuses on Pacific artists) sells Pacific culture as a particular pop music sound, a thriving sub-culture, a market success and an inexorable movement:


125

We are proud to present the next selection of the best in NZ Hip-Hop and R&B… Urban Pacific music is now truly established as its own developed sound. The rich and diverse musical wealth and pure talent of its artists has created a momentum which is now unstoppable, as proven by the increased volume of radio play and chart success accomplished by Pacific Hip Hop, R&B and Soul artists… (Promotional paragraph from King Music’s second compilation album accessed 31 May 06 from http://www.kingmusic.co.nz/item_detail.lasso?id=81583)

References Anae M 2002 Papalagi redefined: Toward a New Zealand born Samoan identity In Spickard P J L Rondilla and D H Wright (eds) Pacific Diaspora: Island Peoples in the United States and Across the Pacific University of Hawai’i Press Honolulu 150-168 Banks J 1998 Video in The Machine: The Incorporation of Music Video into The Recording Industry Popular Music 16/3 293-309 Basu D and P Werbner 2001 Bootstrap Capitalism and the culture industries: a critique of invidious comparisons in the study of ethnic entrepreneurship Ethnic and Racial Studies 24/2 236-262 Bennet A 1999 Subcultures or neo-tribes? Rethinking the relationship between youth, style and musical taste Sociology 33/3 599- 617 Bell T L 1998 Why Seattle? An Examination of an Alternative Rock Culture. In Journal of Cultural Geography18/1 35 - 48 Boyd T 1995 Check Yo Self, Before You Wreck Yo Self: Variations on a Political Theme in Rap Music and Popular Culture In The Black Public Sphere [:] A Public Culture Boo. The Black Public Sphere Collective (Ed.) Chicago University of Chicago Press 289-312 Dyson M E 1993 Reflecting Black: African-American Cultural Criticism. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press.

126


Harrison A K 2006 ‘Cheaper than a CD, plus we really mean it’: Bay Area underground hip hop tapes as subcultural artifacts In Popular Music 25/2 283-301 Hesmondhalgh D 1999 Indie: the institutional politics and aesthetics of a popular music genre In Cultural Studies 13/1 34-61 Lipchsitz G 1999 World Cities and World Beat: Low-Wage Labor and Transnational Culture In Pacific Historical Review 68/2 213-31 Macpherson C 2001 One trunk sends out many branches: Pacific cultures and cultural identities In Macpherson C Paul Spoonley and Melani Anae (eds) Tangata O Te Moana Nui(:) The Evolving Identities of Pacific Peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand Dunmore Press Palmerston North 66-80 McLeod K 1999 Authenticity within hip hop and other cultures threatened with assimilation. In Journal of Communication 49/4 134-150 McLeod K 2005 MP3s are killing home taping: the rise of internet distribution and its challenge to the major label monopoly In Popular Music and Society 28/4 521-531 Negus K 1999 The Music Business and Rap: between the street and the executive suite in Cultural Studies 13/3 488-508 Peterson R A and D G Berger 1975 Cycles in Symbol Production: The Case of Popular Music In American Sociological Review 40 158-73 Rose T 1994 Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover Wesleyan University Press Snapper J 2004 Scratching the surface: Spinning time and identity in hip hop turntablism In European Journal of Cultural Studies 7/1 9-25 Stokes M 2004 Music and the Global Order In Annual Review of Anthropology 33 47- 72 Televave S S 2006 Ua fuifui fa’atasi, ’ae vao eseese: Popular music amongst the Samoan diaspora community in Niusilaa Thesis (MA Music) University of Auckland.


127

Thornton S 1995 Club Culture: Music, Media and Subcultural capital Cambridge Polity Watkin T 2005 2005 Power list In Listener November 12-18 201/3418 Zemke-White K 2001 Rap music and Pacific identity in Aotearoa: popular music and the politics of oppression In Macpherson C Paul Spoonley and Melani Anae (eds) Tangata O Te Moana Nui : The Evolving Identities of Pacific Peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand Dunmore Press Palmerston North 228-242 Zemke-White K M 2005 ‘R ‘n’ B Sites Nesian Styles (re)present R ‘n’ B: The appropriation, transformation and realization of contemporary r’n’b with hip hop by urban Pasifika groups in Aotearoa’ In Sites 2/1 94 – 123 Zemke-White K M 2005b How many dudes you know roll like this?: the re-presentation of hip hop tropes in New Zealand rap music In Image & Narrative : Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative ISSN 1780-678X Special Issue ‘Visualization of subliminal strategies in World Music’ http://www.imageandnarrative.be/ http://www.imageandnarrative.be/worldmusica/ kirstenzemkewhite.htm Websites www.531pi.co.nz www.archdynasty.com www.cherbroshow.com www.d1entertainment.com www.dawnraid.co.nz www.giftedandmaori.com www.kilakokonutkrew.com www.kingmusic.co.nz www.kingmusic.co.nz/kiwi/detail.lasso?cat=Vaimutu%20Records www.maori-in-oz.com www.maorimusic.com www.maoritelevision.com www.niufm.com www.oysterentertainment.com www.radiosamoa.co.nz www.ruiamai.co.nz/iwi.html www.samoanz.com www.tmp.govt.nz/radio/radiomap.html www.urbanpacifika.com

128


Discography Aaradhna 2006 I love you DawnRaid Adeaze 2004 Always & for Real DawnRaid Alphrisk 2005 The Best Kept Secret DawnRaid Che Fu 1998 2b S.Pacific BMG Che Fu 2001 Navigator Sony Deceptikonz 2002 Elimination Dawn Raid Feelstyle 2004 Break it to Pieces Can’t Stop Footsouljahs 2002 Stylez Deliveriez Flowz 2Much Records Ill Semantics 2002 Theory of Meaning DawnRaid Jamoa Jam 2000a Samoana Soul Pacific Dream Records Jamoa Jam 2000b The Future Pacific Dream Records Jamoa Jam 2001 Tama Mai Le Pasifika Pacific Dream Records Kanye West 2005 Late Registration Roc-a-Fella King Kapisi 2000 Savage Thoughts Festival Mushroom Lole 2000 Samoana Sista Records Mareko 2003 White Sunday DawnRaid Marina Marina the album Pacific Dream Records (year unstated) Nesian Mystik 2002 Polysaturated Bounce Records Pacific Soul 2002 Pacific Soul Pacific Dream Records Savage 2005 Moonshine DawnRaid Various 1999a Pioneers of a Pacifikan Frontier BMG/UPR Various 1999b Southside Story Dawn Raid Entertainment Various 2001 Southside Story 2: International Dawn Raid Entertainment Various 2003 Gifted and Maori Vol 1 Gifted and Maori Various 2003c Wahine Vol 1 Gifted and Maori Various 2004a D’Luscious DI Entertainment Various 2004b Gifted and Maori Vol 2 Gifted and Maori Various 2004C Supa Fresh: Beats and Pacifications King Music Ltd Various 2005 Urban Gospel Vol 1 Urban Pasifika Various 2006a Sione’s Wedding Soundtrack DawnRaid Various 2006b Supa Fresh: Beaz hot off the grill King Music Ltd


129

130


ARTICLE:

Australian Idol versus Cronulla: Whither the Postcolonising Nation? Henk Huijser Introduction This paper is an exploration of ‘where Australia is at’ as a postcolonising nation. This will be set up by comparing two apparently unrelated events and their implications: firstly, the popularity of the reality TV show Australian Idol over the last three years, particularly its popularity within the youth demographic; and secondly the Cronulla ‘race riots’ in December 2005. With regards to Australian Idol, the focus will be on the ethnic diversity of its winners and the fact that these winners were decided upon by the popular votes of the show’s audience. The question here is whether this is a reflection of a generational shift in postcolonial engagement with diversity, and therefore an important moment in Australia as a postcolonising nation. This idea however is severely tested by the Cronulla riots, hence the comparison. Clearly, there is a wide variety of factors that contributed to ‘Cronulla’, but a significant number of the rioters (or at least the ones singled out by television cameras and journalists) were members of a young generation of Australians who also appear to fit the audience profile of Australian Idol. So the second question is: do the Cronulla riots represent a setback in the postcolonising process? A more general question then becomes: do mediated versions of diversity (like Australian Idol) accelerate the appearance of postcoloniality, where ‘real’ events (albeit highly mediated in a different sense) paint a more sobering picture? To answer these questions this paper will test whether a framework of postcolonial theory or postcolonial studies can be usefully applied. From an Indigenous perspective, Aileen Moreton-Robinson has usefully coined the term postcolonising, rather than the more final ‘postcolonial nation’, ‘to signify the active, the current and the continuing nature of the colonising relationship that positions us as belonging but not belonging’ (2003: 38). This is attractive because ‘postcoloniality’ is seen here as a continuing process, in which different subjects occupy very different positions, particularly in Indigenous/white settler societies such as Australia and New Zealand. As Aileen Moreton-Robinson says of Australia, ‘In Australia

Henk Huijser – Australian Idol vs Cronulla – NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

131

the colonials did not go home and ‘postcolonial’ remains based on whiteness’ (2003: 30; Smith 1999). The position of non-white settlers in Australia complicates this process even further, but at the same time draws attention to the dynamic nature of the postcolonising nation, for whiteness is not a static category and access to it changes over time and in different contexts. For Moreton-Robinson however, ‘Indigenous people cannot forget the nature of migrancy and we position all non-Indigenous people as migrants and diasporic. (…) the inalienable nature of our relation to land, marks a radical, indeed incommensurable, difference between us and the non-Indigenous’ (2003: 31; Collins-Gearing 2005). The term ‘postcolonising’ then, allows for the important recognition that ‘Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are situated in relation to (post)colonisation in radically different ways- ways that cannot be made into sameness’ (2003: 30), nor should they be, because resisting the impulse to create sameness (as opposed to equity) can help illuminate the powerful forces that try to do precisely that, as part of a restricting but politically dominant form of nation building. If used in Moreton-Robinson’s conceptualisation, the term ‘postcolonising’ inherently resists unifying discourses that sometimes underlie the term ‘postcolonial’. Moreover, it actually allows us to see difference as part of an ongoing, dynamic, and potentially productive field of power relations, rather than something that signifies a lack and therefore needs to be erased. However, it is at the same time open to misappropriation, in which case ‘postcolonising’ would be seen as part of a process towards a postcolonial nation that would in turn be based on an assumption of linear progression, which in itself is of course deeply embedded in colonial discourses and implicated in colonial practices. This draws attention to some of the critiques levelled at postcolonial studies and postcolonial theory in general, and I will begin by addressing some of these first. Postcolonial Theory Postcolonial theory is only one part of a larger field which is variously described as ‘postcoloniality’, a ‘postcolonial condition’, a ‘postcolonial position’, and so on. It seems at once to be characterising a particular historical moment (that which comes after colonisation), a body of intellectual work, a subject position and a moral standpoint. Jane Roscoe points out that ‘As with many of the other “post” terms, it has taken on the status of an accepted and unproblematic term, used widely, and frequently without explanation’ (1999: 20); in other words, it has become close to being an empty signifier. As Brydon notes, ‘the very breadth of postcolonialism’s reach has aroused concerns that the concept may prove unduly homogenising, overly ambitious, ahistorical, and thus complicit with the

132


very relations of inequality that it ostensibly seeks to protest against’ (2000: 7-8). For my purposes here, I want to address two of these concerns in particular: firstly the idea that the concept is homogenising; and secondly the concern about the institutionalisation of the term itself and of the field of studies. The concerns about homogenising impulses relate to the way in which postcolonial studies tend to approach colonisation as an overall discursive project, and Said’s Orientalism (1978) is often singled out in this respect. Stuart Hall for example has argued that, ‘Australia and Canada, on the one hand, Nigeria, India and Jamaica on the other, are certainly not ‘postcolonial’ in the same way, but this does not mean that they are not ‘post-colonial’ in any way’ (1996: 246). But although this complicates colonisation as different in different contexts, it does not essentially upset the binary of coloniser/ colonised, which is highly complex in settler nations like Australia and Aotearoa/ New Zealand. Sneja Gunew notes that, ‘Too often in postcolonial critiques, European immigrant groups are homogenised and made synonymous with a naturalised ‘whiteness’, or various imperialisms’ (2005: 9). Her point is that often in postcolonial studies, ‘Europe’ is equated with colonisation in an unproblematic way, without recognising the complexities of colonisation within Europe, which in turn have shaped and continue to shape migration processes. In an Australian context for example, some migrants may be both victims and beneficiaries of colonisation at the same time. In addition, some of the theoretical concepts associated with postcolonial theory have been critiqued for being potentially homogenising, for example the concept of the Other, and in particular Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity. Stuart Ward for example quotes Arif Dirlik as saying: “So we are all hybrids- so what?” (2003: 48). This is not as simplistic as it sounds, because it draws attention to the need to be more specific about different degrees of hybridity. In other words, while all of us are culturally hybrid to some extent, the context in which this hybridity is played out, and particularly its relation to power, must be carefully analysed. This is particularly important at a time when the forces of homogenisation are growing in strength, as they are in the Australian context. The second concern about postcolonial theory and postcolonial studies relates to their apparent institutionalisation in university contexts. This is primarily a concern about the institutionalisation of postcolonial studies, in that through this institutionalisation the critical edge is perceived to have been lost. In other words, the concern is that this critical edge has been incorporated into dominant structures and thereby ‘domesticated’, making it ‘benign’ and perhaps ‘cutely’ subversive, rather than a real threat to established discourses. This


133

has led to a sense that postcolonialism has run its course, and is thus not relevant anymore. However, one of the major strengths of postcolonial studies is, in my view, that the term ‘postcolonial’ itself is continually questioned within the field, as part of questioning established structures and practices. Also, postcolonial theory has such a wide reach across different disciplines that it is difficult to contain under an umbrella term. This provides very attractive opportunities, and I agree provisionally with Brydon when she argues that ‘the strengths of postcolonialism derive from its ability to cast the familiar in a fresh light, to encourage crossdisciplinary dialogue, and to provoke the rethinking of traditionally accepted disciplinary boundaries’ (2000: 7). This seems an extremely important project in the current Australian social climate, with its strong homogenising currents. If applied with care then, postcolonial theory allows us to continually deconstruct inflexible categories such as ‘nation’, ‘culture’, ‘race’, ‘immigrant’, ‘refugee’, ‘whiteness’, ‘Indigenous’ and so on. This is a project that is never finished, which is an important part of its strength. Despite the frequent charge that postcolonialism is ‘backward looking’, I agree with Ashcroft who argues that ‘in the end, the transformative energy of post-colonial societies tells us about the present because it is overwhelmingly concerned with the future’ (2001: 17). To use the term ‘postcolonising’ rather than ‘postcolonial’ is thus very useful, as it foregrounds this concern with the present and future. In a recent book called Postcolonialism meets Economics, the editors Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela aim for what they call ‘a critical approach and an attitude of continuous revision and reflection, rather than a single theory’ (2004: 7). If this attitude is adopted in postcolonial studies, it will remain a field of study with a continuous relevance and the critical ability to counteract the forces of homogenisation. Australian Idol So how can this be applied to Australian Idol?. As a specific type of Reality TV show with a strong competition element, based on a British formula, Australian Idol has been a major ratings success for the past three years, targeting primarily a young generation of Australians on Channel 10, the ‘youth network’. In shows like this (and Big Brother is another one, although with more control on the producers’ part), both contestants and the viewers have a direct influence over the outcome of the show: the contestants through their skills or appeal, and viewers through their mobile voting power. Given the ethnic diversity of its participants and the fact that this diversity is primarily driven by audience votes (mostly via SMS), a case could be made that this is a reflection of a new generation’s engagement with diversity, and thus an important moment in the postcolonising nation.The winners of Australian Idol

134


(for example Guy Sebastian, Shannon Noll and Paulini Curuenavuli in season one; Casey Donovan and Anthony Callea in season two; and Kate DeAraugo and Emily Williams in season three) are ethnically very diverse, which may suggest that ethnic diversity is an increasingly ‘natural’ part of a young generation’s social and cultural environment. In other words, you could argue that we may be witnessing a generational shift in terms of attitudes towards ethnic diversity. This is supported by the ways in which participants in the show can be seen to have a considerable degree of agency in terms of how they perform their identity. The longer they are in the competition, the more we (as an audience) get to learn about their lives and backgrounds. This does not just apply to their song choices, but is also reinforced by little clips that show aspects of their personal and family lives and the presence of family members in the live audience. What has come across strongly during the last three seasons is that there appears to be very little ‘silencing’ or ‘erasing’ of ethnic, class and gender identities; instead, there seems to be a confident foregrounding of these differences. Moreover, this is an important aspect of the contestants’ popularity. One example of this confidence, and an example of what we might call ‘everyday hybridity’, was Anthony Callea’s defining moment when he performed ‘The Prayer’ in Italian. He had already established the importance of his Italian heritage by this time through frequent little vignettes that are pre-recorded and inserted into the show to introduce the contestants. Tompkins argues that ‘second-generation subjects are burdened by cultural baggage from the fatherland, baggage that they did not pack, but for which they are nevertheless responsible’ (2001: 349). However, Callea’s performance of his identity is not so much characterised by a ‘burden’, but rather by a productive energy which draws strength from cultural heritage, and can therefore be seen as part of a continuous ‘contestation of what it means to be Australian’ (Ahluwalia 2005: 500). To see this as a ‘burden’ privileges the white Anglo-settler subject and restricts the possibility of a hybrid Australian subject, by keeping it on the margins. Furthermore, it keeps the binary between ‘immigrants’ and the ‘Australian way of life’ firmly in place. Similarly, and part of the same impulse, is the idea that migrants necessarily have a ‘longing for the homeland’. Although this certainly applies to many migrants, it should be seen as a matter of degree, rather than a defining characteristic, because it essentialises and restricts the possibilities for migrant subjectivities. Thus, this impulse should be resisted as part of what Rey Chow calls ‘the battle against the ideology embedded in the rhetoric of universals’ (2005: 591). Identity should not be prescriptive, and cannot be. Drawing on the culture of the ‘homeland’, whether real or imagined, is a hybrid complex practice, and highly glocalised.


135

Like Callea, Emily Williams, during 2005’s season of Australian Idol, confidently and proudly foregrounded her Pacific and migratory background with family connections in Otara. She is a young mother living in the Brisbane suburb of Inala, which has a similar reputation to Otara in Auckland. But this background was never ‘silenced’ or ‘erased’: rather, it was appropriated as a symbol of pride and an important aspect of her identity performance. As with Callea, this is not an essentialised identity, but a complexly hybrid and glocalised one which combines elements of place with elements of family and global cultural influences. A prime example of the latter can be seen in her song choices and her appropriated use of African American slang: her most personal choice of a song was Lauryn Hill’s ‘To Zion’, which reflects both personal and socio-cultural issues that have clear links to Williams’ life. Ashcroft argues that ‘while globalisation is often understood in terms of large-scale phenomena, its homogenising tendencies are effected in a heterogeneous array of local situations. (…) Globalisation obtains its energy from its very diffusion, global culture making itself at home in motion rather than in a place, quite unlike the energy of imperial control’ (2001: 213). This appropriation of culture in motion, rather than place, can be clearly seen in the examples of Callea’s and William’s identity performances, in that they both draw on an eclectic mix of cultural influences, which necessarily includes ‘place’. But perhaps ‘it is when place is least spatial, that it becomes most identifying’ (2001: 125). This applies to 2004 winner, 16 year old Casey Donovan, to some extent as well, albeit more problematically so. Unlike other contestants like Callea, Williams, Kate DeAraugo and Shannon Noll, she neither emphasised where she was from (beyond the four walls of her bedroom in her parental home) nor her Indigenous background, but focused instead on her musical subcultural influences. Again though, her Indigenous background was never ‘silenced’ and she appeared to have considerable agency in terms of the performance of her identity. Her main influences were American punk rock bands like Nirvana and Incubus, and this informed her dress style as well. This fits comfortably with the appeal of these bands to teenage angst and rebellion. We could leave it at that, and see it as an example of what Hartley and McKee (2000) suggest in relation to the Indigenous public sphere: that Indigenous people are not underrepresented in the media, but rather too narrowly represented, which has a constraining effect on the potential subject positions open to them. Following their argument, Donovan’s identity performance can be seen to subvert these narrow boundaries to some extent, as she confidently steers clear of limited but hegemonic expectations of Indigeneity. However, when applying a ‘traditional’ postcolonial framework, Donovan’s lack of appeal to place in her identity performance is inevitably linked to colonial dispossession. As Moreton-Robinson argues, ‘Indigenous people’s sense of

136


home and place are configured differently to that of migrants. There is no other homeland that provides a point of origin, or place for multiple identities’ (2003: 37). This is the basis for her argument about the incommensurability between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia, and it renders Indigenous people effectively ‘homeless’, if only in a legal sense. She explains that ‘The legal regime of the nation state places Indigenous people in a state of homelessness because our ontological relationship to the land, which is the way we hold title, is incommensurable with its own exclusive claims of sovereignty’ (2003: 37). Interestingly, it was only after being crowned Australian Idol that Donovan began to align herself more closely with her Indigenous identity through the media. This was perhaps in reaction to the ‘make-over’ she underwent during the show’s season. She went from baggy trousers and dreadlocks to highly stylised makeup and ball gowns, and it clearly made her uncomfortable. This illustrates that while Australian Idol affords its contestants a certain amount of agency, there are definite limits to this which run along an axis of race and ethnicity, as well as gender and class, and are ultimately influenced by perceptions of what the ‘mainstream’ audience wants. The examples of identity performance outlined above do not happen on the margins of society (in the form of so-called ‘ethnic theatre’ for example, or specifically marked as ‘ethnic’ on SBS), but they appear on prime time, mainstream commercial television. This is significant because ‘ethnic theatre’ addresses a middle class educated audience, and thus can be seen as having a ‘preaching to the converted’ element to it. Similarly, SBS targets specific ethnic groups in its programming strategies, as well as the educated middle classes, who like to ‘sample’ diversity as part of their ‘cosmopolitan identity’. But these instances of engagement with diversity do not essentially upset the status quo; they are played out on the relative margins of society and do not shift the balance of power. Australian Idol on the other hand occupies a firmly centred position, and has been a huge ratings success for Channel 10. The final of the first series of Australian Idol was the most popular program broadcast in Australia during 2003, and the second most popular nonsporting broadcast in Australian television history (wikipedia.org). So does this combination of popularity and ethnic diversity in the mainstream public sphere reflect a generationally different ‘postcolonial’ engagement with diversity and therefore an important moment in Australia as a postcolonising nation? The answer is perhaps, but only if we accompany that assertion with a series of disclaimers. Australian Idol has a competition element (which makes it comparable to sports), and a popular music/ entertainment aspect. These are the two arenas in which ethnic and racial


137

diversity has long been ‘palatable’ and ‘non-threatening’, as it is to a large extent based on performance and not seen as posing a structural change to power relations. If it should do so, it tends to be relatively quickly incorporated, as the example of Casey Donovan shows. In addition, I believe there is an important distinction between what I would call the ‘consumption of difference’ on the one hand, and an engagement with difference in everyday contexts (or the ‘real world’). Mediation has a distancing effect which creates ‘comfort’ and ‘safety’ on the one hand, but at the same time intensifies a desire for Otherness that can be consumed. To make it consumable however, and this is the paradox, Otherness needs to be diluted and its threatening potential removed. Writing about romance novels, Teo argues that ‘desire for dark Otherness is often tamed and trained into desire for suntanned sameness’ (2003: 289). So while contestants on Australian Idol are encouraged to foreground their individual ‘Otherness’, they are ultimately being moulded into consumable commodities, to be fitted into the hegemonic power structure of the music industry in this case. It is interesting to note in this context that while the diversity outlined above appeared to be very successful in the moment and for a period after the show aired (both Guy Sebastian and Anthony Callea broke sales records), the most enduring Idol of all is Shannon Noll. Noll is the prototype of the ‘white male Anglo Aussie battler’ if ever there was one, which affords some perspective to my claim that Australian Idol could be seen as reflective of a new generation’s ‘postcolonial’ engagement with diversity. Furthermore, it is worth noting in the current social climate, that none of the Australian Idol winners were Lebanese Australians nor indeed anyone with an Islamic background, perhaps indicating certain limits to ‘acceptable otherness’ in the mainstream Australian imagination. Overall then, the move from consuming difference in a mediated sense, to changing one’s attitude towards the multi-ethnic neighbours down the road, is not necessarily ‘seamless’ and the two may not go hand in hand. Similarly, ‘diversity as mediated entertainment’ is something quite distinct from ‘diversity in the workplace’. And this is where the comparison to the events at Cronulla comes in. Cronulla As noted earlier a wide variety of factors contributed to ‘Cronulla’ and its aftermath. But while acknowledging that, a significant number of the rioters were members of a young generation of Australians who also appear to fit the audience profile of Australian Idol: they were highly ‘SMS-literate’ for a start (Goggin 2006). This raises a number of questions: firstly, do the Cronulla riots represent a setback in the postcolonising process? This would only be

138


the case, I would argue, if we see this process as a linear one, which is problematic because it assumes that this is a project that can be finished and finalised. It is more useful then to see the postcolonising nation as a process, characterised by contradictions which must be seen in their specific contexts. While I earlier critiqued Tompkins’ idea of cultural baggage as a ‘burden’ as being implicated in keeping binaries firmly in place, it could quite easily be applied to the Cronulla riots (although I would call it ‘racial baggage’ in that context). In the specific context of that Sunday afternoon on Cronulla beach, this ‘racial baggage’ became crystallised as the prime factor ‘involving almost farcical yet deadly earnest efforts to identify, respectively, people of “Middle Eastern” appearance (often specifically “Lebanese”) and to threaten or bash them’ (Goggin 2006: 1). The ‘Lebanese’ response over the next few days followed the same pattern in relation to people of ‘Anglo’ appearance. The reactions to the Cronulla events in the mainstream media were both interesting and disconcerting, because they exemplify narrow and homogenising definitions of what it means to be Australian. Mark Goodwin (NSW Assistant Police Commissioner) for instance was quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald as saying: ‘this is ludicrous behaviour; it is unAustralian. We all share this wonderful country’ (Goggin 2006: 1, my emphasis). There was a proliferation of terms like ‘unAustralian’, ‘mateship’ (always represented as a ‘typically Australian value’), and the ‘Australian way of life’ in the mainstream media, primarily via political spokespeople and a sizeable section of journalists and talkback radio hosts. This in itself is of course nothing new; these terms have been a central ingredient of both the Howard government’s and the opposition Labour party’s political rhetoric for a long time, and they get reinforced on every possible occasion, most recently in relation to the Tasmanian mining accident in 2006. Ahluwalia traces the widespread use of the ‘Australian way of life’ back to the 1950s, and notes that ‘although there was no precise definition of the ‘Australian way of life’, it nevertheless was characterised by assimilation [for both migrants and Aboriginal people] and the view that homogeneity was vital for Australia’s future success as a society (2005: 503). He goes on to argue that ‘it was precisely this lack of definition of the ‘Australian way of life’ which was vital to maintaining the power and hegemony of the white Anglosettler population which remained committed to maintaining Australia’s connection with Britain’ (503). Although this is phrased in the past tense, these forces of homogenisation have recently returned with a vengeance, particularly since 9/11 and various boat people ‘invasion scares’. Ironically, it is precisely the exclusionary properties of these homogenising terms and their associated discourses that create the social climate which ultimately leads to ‘Cronulla’. ‘Calm’ has since been reinstated, ‘or rather perhaps the habitual, much less visible, expression of whiteness as usual’ (Goggin 2006: 5).


139

The continuous reinforcement of homogenising discourses in the mainstream public sphere has the effect of solidifying rigid binary oppositions of race and ethnicity. The resulting highly charged social climate leads to a kind of identity performance which is very different from the one outlined in the context of Australian Idol. In this context, the attack by a couple of individuals of Lebanese descent on perhaps the ultimate icon of the ‘Australian way of life’, the volunteer life saver on the beach, became the catalyst for the riots that pushed the binaries to their rigid limits. At this point it is useful to refer back to postcolonial frameworks of analysis, and in particular the concept of agency, because the concept of agency tends to be appropriated to ‘recover’ the colonised on a theoretical level in the colonial relationship of coloniser/ colonised. Ashcroft for example argues that ‘colonised cultures have often been so resilient and transformative that they have changed the character of imperial culture itself. This ‘transcultural’ effect has not been seamless or unvaried, but it forces us to reassess the stereotyped view of colonised peoples’ victimage and lack of agency’ (2001: 2). This agency is seen as empowering and therefore automatically ‘positive’, because it subverts hegemonic power structures. This works very well when applied to Australian Idol, as in my analysis above where agency is seen as empowering, because it confidently subverts narrow definitions of what it means to be Australian. However, ‘Cronulla’ and its aftermath show that agency is a slippery concept which is always linked to power, but not necessarily in predictable and ‘positive’ ways. The youths who took to the streets in the days after Cronulla, to smash cars and ‘terrorise quiet neighbourhoods’ were clearly acting with considerable agency, but not the kind of agency that is usually celebrated in postcolonial studies. In other words, this is not the kind of benign and quietly subversive agency we like to ‘recover’ from history in literary texts, nor the kind of agency that is analysed above in relation to the popular entertainment of Australian Idol, but it is rather a kind of agency that is confronting, unsettling and in your face right now, with unpredictable consequences for the future. In addition, it is a kind of agency directly related to a position in society that is characterised by an intersection of race, ethnicity, gender and class, to varying but interconnecting degrees. It is thus a kind of agency that is firmly part of a postcolonising nation in motion, rather than a postcolonial nation. Conclusion This leads me to an overall concluding question: do Australian Idol and ‘Cronulla’ represent opposite sides of the same postcolonising coin? The answer in my view is a provisional yes, because postcolonisation is a complex and often contradictory process, as the analyses of

140


Australian Idol and ‘Cronulla’ show. It is therefore also a frequently uncomfortable process and one that is never finished, because it goes to the heart of relations of power, which are both context specific and forever subject to change. It is a process which is subject to changing circumstances on both a local and global level, and as such it is also subject to sudden twists and turns, reinforced by continuous media coverage in a variety of genres. Homogenising impulses are part of recurring attempts to ‘manage’ this apparent unpredictability, and it is therefore not surprising that the impulse towards homogenisation is deeply embedded in ‘imperial and colonial habits of mind’ (Brydon 1995: 11-12). The importance of postcolonial studies in this context is that it aims to ‘circumvent imperial and colonial habits of mind’ (11-12), and the notion of ‘resistance’ (to homogenisation) lies at the heart of postcolonial debate. The Cronulla riots show that this battle is far from won, and for all the talk about ‘blurred boundaries’, ‘border crossings’ and ‘hybridised third spaces’, there are certain types of borders that are as strong as they ever were; the political and administrative borders around nation-states in particular, but also the more intangible discursive boundaries. Charusheela puts it this way: ‘How does postcolonial theorising avoid the terrain of liberalist multicultural celebration and cultural relativism that seem to undo any potential critical edge on behalf of the subjects for whom such theorising was first put forward?’ (2004: 50). In response I would suggest a two step strategy: firstly by continuing to interrogate and critique its own terms of reference (like Moreton-Robinson does for example), and secondly by moving its critiques beyond the comforting walls of academia. In short, postcolonial studies should ask itself: what is the most effective form of resistance in the face of homogenising forces that are gathering in strength? Continuing to look for answers to this question will provide postcolonial studies with the tools to make valuable strategic interventions in the future directions of postcolonising nations like Australia and Aotearoa/ New Zealand.

References Ahluwalia Pal (2005) When Does a Settler Become a Native?: Citizenship and Identity in a Settler Society In Gaurav Desai & Supriya Nair (eds) Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, NJ 500-513 Ashcroft Bill (2001) Post-Colonial Transformation Routledge London & New York Bhabha, Homi K (1994) The Location of Culture Routledge London & New York


141

Brydon Diana (1995) Introduction: Postcoloniality, Reading Canada In Essays on Canadian Writing 56 (Fall) 1-19 Brydon Diana (2000) Introduction In Diana Brydon (ed) Postcolonialism: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, Vol. I Routledge London & New York 1-26 Charusheela S (2004) Postcolonial Thought, Postmodernism, and Economics: Questions of Ontology and Ethics In E. Zein-Elabdin & S. Charusheela (eds) Postcolonialism Meets Economics Routledge London & New York 40-58 Chow Rey (2005) Against the Lures of Diaspora: Minority Discourse, Chinese Women, and Intellectual Hegemony In Gaurav Desai & Supriya Nair (eds) Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, NJ 589-607 Collins-Gearing Brooke (2005) Incommensurability and Collaboration: What It Means in Higher Education Public Seminar University of Southern Queensland 23 August Goggin Gerard (2006) SMS Riot: Transmitting Race on a Sydney Beach, December 2005 M/C Journal 9 (1) 1-5 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/02-goggin.php Gunew Sneja (2005) Comparing: Unquestioning Universalism, Complacent Particularism In Tseen Khoo (ed) The Body Politic: Racialised Political Cultures in Australia Refereed Proceedings from the UQ Australian Studies Centre Conference Brisbane 24-26 November 2004 http://asc.uq.edu.au/bodypolitic Hall Stuart (1996) When Was the “Post-Colonial?” Thinking at the Limit In Iain Chambers & Lidia Curti (eds) The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons Routledge London & New York 242-261 Hartley John & McKee Alan (2000) The Indigenous Public Sphere: The Reporting and Reception of Aboriginal Issues in the Australian Media, 1994-1997 Oxford University Press Oxford Moreton-Robinson Aileen (2003) I Still Call Australia Home: Indigenous Belonging and Place in a White Postcolonising Society In Sara Ahmed, Claudia Castaneda, Anne-Marie

142


Fortier & Mimi Sheller (eds) Uprootings/ Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration Berg Oxford & New York 23-40 Roscoe Jane (1999) Documentary in New Zealand: An Immigrant Nation Dunmore Press Palmerston North Said Edward (1978) Orientalism Vintage New York Smith Linda Tuhiwai (1999) Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples University of Otago Press Dunedin Teo Hsu-Ming (2003) The Romance of White Nations: Imperialism, Popular Culture, and National Heroes In Antionette Burton (ed) After the Imperial Turn: Thinking With and Through the Nation Duke University Press Durham & London 279-292 Tompkins Joanne (2001) Fatherlands and Mother-Tongues: Family Histories and Futures in Recent Australian and Canadian Multicultural Theatre In Marc Maufort & Franca Bellarsi (eds) Siting the Other: Re-Visions of Marginality in Australian and English-Canadian Drama Peter Lang Brussels 347-362 Ward Stuart (2003) Transcending the Nation: A Global Imperial History? In Antoinette Burton (ed) After the Imperial Turn: Thinking With and Through the Nation Duke University Press Durham & London 44-56 Zein-Elabdin Eiman O & Charusheela S (2004) Introduction: Economics and Postcolonial Thought In E. Zein-Elabdin & S. Charusheela (eds) Postcolonialism Meets Economics. Routledge London & New York 1-18


143

144


NZJMS BIBLIOGRAPHIES:

Sue Abel is a lecturer at Victoria University where she teaches critical analysis of the news media, wider issues of cultural identity and the media, and is convening a conjoint paper ‘Māori and Media’, taught as both a Māori Studies and Media Studies paper. She is Ngāti Pākehā, with iwi links to Nga Ruahinerangi. Brendan Hokowhitu is of Ngāti Pukenga descent. He is Programme Coordinator of the Masters of Indigenous Studies within Tumu, The School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies at the University of Otago. He has published in the areas of Māori masculinity and sport. Shiloh Groot, Ronald Ngata, Darrin Hodgetts, Linda Waimarie Nikora, Rolinda Karapu & Kerry Chamberlain are members of The Maori and Psychology Research Unit at Waikato University. This Trust is an initiative designed to provide a catalyst and support network for enhancing research that recognises the psychological needs, aspirations, and priorities of Māori people. Henk Huijser grew up in The Netherlands, began his tertiary education at the University of Amsterdam, and in 2002 received his PhD from the University of Waikato in Aotearoa. After two years of teaching in the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT, he is currently a lecturer in learning enhancement (communication) at the University of Southern Queensland and a researcher in the Public Memory Research Centre. Current research interests include applications of new media technologies in education, multiculturalism, race and ethnicity, indigeneity, reality television and media audiences. Donald Matheson is a senior lecturer in the School of Political Science and Communication at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Prior to that he worked at Cardiff and Strathclyde universities in the UK, and before that as a news reporter. He is co-editor of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics and the author of Media Discourses: Analysing Media Texts (Open University Press, 2005). His research interests are in journalism practice, particularly its digital forms, discourse analysis and communication ethics. He is Scottish. Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Ngāti Porou. Te Kawa a Maui, Victoria University of Wellington. In 2002 Ocean Mercier received her PhD in physics from Victoria University of Wellington, and NZJMS 10:2, December 2007

145

subsequently began her BA in Te Reo Maori. Since 2004 she has been lecturing in Te Kawa a Maui, her research and teaching mainly focussed on the nexus between Western scientific and Indigenous ways of knowing. As part of Te Whata Kura Ahupungao, Ocean has helped produce a suite of educational short films in te reo Maori, designed for students and teachers of NCEA physics. These are free for download at http://www.tereophysics. school.nz Ian Stuart is of Te Ati Haunui a Paparangi descent. He was a journalist before teaching Journalism and Media Studies in the Faculty of Māori Studies at the Eastern Institute of Technology. He is currently Head of the School of Arts within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at EIT. Su’eina Sharon Televave is of Samoan descent but was born and raised in Auckland New Zealand. She completed her Master of Arts Degree in Music in 2006. Her thesis focused on Samoan popular musics (of the Samoan diaspora community of Nuisilaa [New Zealand]). She has been a tutor and Tuakana Mentor for the University of Auckland Anthropology Department for many years. Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Atiawa) is a Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, where she teaches Māori, Pacific and Indigenous writing in English. Alice’s current book project, Once Were Pacific, explores articulations of Māori connections with the Pacific and is supported by a Marsden grant. She also writes the occasional poem. Dr. Kirsten Zemke-White is a Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at the Anthropology Department of the University of Auckland. She teaches and researches in Pacific popular musics, the history of Popular music, gender and popular music, and global interactions in popular music; but her specialty is New Zealand hip hop.

146
