Reading Contemporary Fiction

Lecture 7: Once Were Warriors

Sandra Tawake, ‘Transforming the Insider-Outsider Perspective: Postcolonial Fiction from the Pacific’ (2000)

Until 1970, most of the fiction about the Pacific and Pacific Islanders was written by people living outside the Pacific. It was written from a Eurocentric perspective that depicted Pacific Islanders as exotic, peripheral, “noble”, heroic, primitive (2000, p. 158)

Representations of Pacific Islanders, and more specifically Maori, in the terms Tawake outlines illustrates the way in which colonial discourse constructed the Other.

The Maori’s difference (read: inferiority) in the European world-view was the basis on which their colonization was justified.

Not only were texts that contained such representations read in the ‘mother country’, the ‘canon of English literature’ was used within the colonies to reinforce England’s superiority.

New Zealand Writing

Pre-1950s – Katharine Mansfield – European focus to short stories; no mention of Maori culture

1950 – Charles Brasch – claimed that was no New Zealand literature

1960s/1970s – era of political radicalism

1980s

Literary studies had been pointed in directions that were bound to transform local critical practices, as a result of a range of social and intellectual movements that had been evident in the national and international arena from the mid-1970s. New Zealand’s sense of cultural identity was shaken up, partly in response to loosening political and economic ties to Britain; significantly as a result of the Maori “cultural renaissance” in political and artistic domains which forced a searching interrogation of founding and persistent myths of Pakeha settlement and identity; and at the same time as the result of a widening of the nation’s sense of its place and its cultural influence and relationships in the world. (Prentice, 136).

At the same time there was the emergence of what Prentice calls a ‘new criticism’ that included feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, post-structuralism and later postcolonialism and postmodernism.

The Auckland English Department was the source of the ‘new energy’ surrounding New Zealand literature. However, as Prentice points out, most English departments

Still centred around a canon of mid-century masculine nationalism, tracing an historical and historicist narrative of development, perhaps complicated only by reference to the two traditions of feminine Mansfieldian modernism and Sargesonian masculine realism (Prentice, 137)

Since the late 1980s, there has been a focus on postcolonial literature within English departments.

Postcolonial theory is an oppositional reading practice for reading literature from countries such as New Zealand that deal with issues borne out of the experience of colonization.

Whilst New Zealand achieved Independence from Britain

in 1911, it can be said to be postcolonial in a literal sense but, as Davinia Thornley points out, ‘post-colonialism does not extend to the native people of New Zealand/Aotearoa, who live with the experience of colonialism on a day-to-day basis through the structure of Maori-Pakeha relations within the country’ (2001).

Although the term postcolonialism may imply that colonialism has ended, post-colonial theory recognizes the complexity within (former) colonies which may be postcolonial in an official sense but continue to treat indigenous people in ways that reflect the practices of the colonizers and/or have been impacted upon by neo-imperial aggressors.

J.C Reid's history of the NZ novel shows how very few women novelists have achieved attention, especially in the post war period.

early women's writing – suffrage; Katherine Mansfield did however become a widely acknowledged Short story writer

great absence in the mid-century. janet frame 1960s Yet writers like Keri Hulme, Janet Frame and to

a lesser extent Patricia Grace have been at the forefront of contemporary NZ writing. It's as if the introduction of women's writing into the NZ literary landscape was a particularly difficult but defining moment.

Not only was the dominant NZ literary culture male, it was also European or Pakeha and middle-class

Maori voices were rare

Witi Ihimaera Patricia Grace Keri Hulme Alan Duff

And according to Jensen, themes like manual work sport, especially rugby drinking war

resourcefulness and adaptability dominate this ‘blokey’ canon.

The Treaty of Waitangi

The Treaty ‘legaliz[ed] the rule of the settlers over the native people of New Zealand, the Maori. The document was signed by both representatives of the British crown and five hundred Maori leaders, but never honored by the colonizers’ (Thornley, 2001); it is said to be the basis for New Zealand national identity. The colonization of New Zealand, in a similar vein to the colonial experience in other countries, was ‘shaped by Pakeha ideals’ and involved ‘the erosion of traditional Maori values’.

Although subject to a lot of debate, Once Were Warriors explores the Maori-Pakeha relationship in contemporary New Zealand.

Themes explored in the film

Urban Maori Culture: dispossession, disenfranchisement, loss of identity, underclass status, “ghettoisation”, alienation, ownership of land, race, racism – internalized; oral culture; loss of language

Masculinity: employment/unemployment, ‘the warrior’, fighting, drinking, joining gangs, sport, male bonding (through violence)

Family: domestic violence, rape, juvenile justice, neglect, death, the ‘gang’ as family; haves/have-nots, relationships between family members, paternalism

Brendan Hokowhitu, ‘Tackling Maori Masculinity: a colonial genealogy of Savagery and Sport’ (2004)

argues that Maori masculinity has been constructed from the 19th century onwards in the following ways:

19th C: Maori masculinity - something to be conquered and civilized

20th C: manual labour 21st C: spectacle on the sporting field

The film adaptation of Once Were Warriors

Alan Duff did not write the screen play. Female Maori playwright Riwia Brown wrote it.

The film cost $1.3 million US to produce.

The film Once Were Warriors can be described as a Social Realist film.

Prior to making Once Were Warriors Lee Tamahori made television commercials which may have some bearing on the opening shot.

Remember we see an image of a pastoral green landscape and then the camera pulls back to reveal that it is a billboard situated in an urban environment both populated and fast moving.

This use of the imagery the setting up of a false pretence but for a moment we all see an idealic N.Z then it is taken away the message being this is no ‘idealic environment' undercuts the romantic notion of a return to home.

This point is specific to Maori and the romanticised notion of a post colonial return to ‘home' but it also speaks to the non New.Zealander

Just think of the advertising that we get about N.Z what is it slice of heaven right, it is not marketed for its urban experience.

Reviews of Once Were Warriors Conservatives – unexpectedly headed by the book’s author

– Alan Duff – argued that Once Were Warriors was a necessary examination of the underside of Maori life.

Other equally resonant voices spoke about the need to “contextualize” the film, stating that it actually did a disservice to race relations in New Zealand by providing graphic violence at the expense of wider social analysis, particularly recognition of the impact of colonization and systematic degradation on the Maori race.

Critics have argued that in dramatizing Maori repression and brutality devoid of any kind of social or political context, the lines for continuing racism remained open and unfettered. (Thornley, 2001)