Stories Ngā Tamariki Tāne Never Told Us

“So, what is one of the greatest challenges for Leaders in 21st Century Aotearoa New Zealand? Acknowledge that Pākehā privilege makes invisible te ao Māori/a Māori world view.”

I used to teach media studies and it was not until I undertook my PhD that I realised the powerful influence the media has on constructing stereotypical depictions of Māori tāne (boys). The mainstream media perpetuates the hegemonic discourse of Other as dangerous and in doing so, marginalises Māori tāne (boys).

The media’s portrayal of Māori youth as deviant and delinquent contributes to the mōriroriro (cultural alienation) Māori tāne (boys) experience in all aspects of their lives and denies them access to the strong indigenous heroes that might build their mana and confidence.

During the mid-twentieth century, film and television constructed a commercially lucrative “reality” of what it was to be a young
man. Cult films like The Wild One (1953), starring Marlon Brando, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), starring James Dean and Wild in
the Country (1961), starring Elvis Presley, provided a post war Aotearoa New Zealand audience with an emerging paradigm which romanticised and defined young men as wild, rebellious, restless and misunderstood.

American sitcoms like Happy Days (1974–1984) made the wild, and the dangerous desirable by bringing into our living rooms each week fictional characters like The Fonze, played by Henry Winkler. The Fonze perpetuated the myth of the tortured anti-hero, romanticising delinquent youth culture by personifying rebellion, defiance and mōriroriro (alienation) in a carefully stylised, sanitised and so-called safe version of male teenage ātetenga (resistance).

Westerncentric hegemonic ideology reinforced the 1950s stereotypical definitions of troubled youth. In the 1990s
however, I observed a significant shift in the mainstream media’s personification of the tortured anti-hero, and witnessed the displacement of this romanticised, sanitised construct forever. Lee Tamahori’s acclaimed Aotearoa New Zealand film Once Were Warriors (1994) exploded onto the big screen, fashioning a leviathan, a far more menacing anti-hero for Aotearoa New Zealand audiences. When I first watched Arahanga’s depiction of Nig Heke, the oldest son of Beth and Jake Heke, I found his interpretation of the character and his dramatic performance an unrelenting assault on my Pākehā sensibilities. I had no terms of reference or prior knowledge to make comparisons between what I saw (fiction) and what was reality (fact). The film not only frightened me but sadly, it reinforced many of the hegemonic stereotypes I had grown up with.

The film Once Were Warriors was yet another catalyst for a more insidious definition of Māori tāne (boys) promulgated in the 21st century and ensured that the sanitised and benevolent Hollywood version of the troubled youth that audiences had come to know and understand vicariously was gone forever. This subversion of fact with fiction created a pseudo reality that ineradicably defined Māori as Other and Māori tāne (boys) as menacing, violent and dangerous. The wild, rebellious, restless and misunderstood ruffians and hooligans of the 1950s were replaced with constructs of dysfunction, derision and danger.

Having taught film in senior high school for nearly two decades, I felt Communicado Productions, Lee Tamahori and Once Were Warriors contributed to the development of a new genre in film and in literature which indelibly etched Other as savage, without the modifier of noble, into the minds of Pākehā. Angela Moewaka Barnes, Ken Taiapa, Belinda Borell and Tim McCreanor wrote in their article, Māori Experiences And Responses To Racism In Aotearoa New Zealand, “When racism is promulgated on a number of fronts, including the media, it becomes a powerful and pervasive force in society, detrimentally impacting on the lives of those who are its object.”