Let it buckle, let it bend

Those who believe that there is a uniquely New Zealand-European identity (we'll call it a pakeha identity for the sake of brevity) distinct from the British identity fall into two schools of thought that I can identify.

School A: Believes that Pakeha contact with Maori within the unique framework of the Treaty of Waitangi created a hybrid culture that incorporates elements of both British and Maori culture.

School B: Belives that physical separation from the British homeland and unique environmental circumstances allowed the development of an autonomous culture.

The crucial difference is the role of Maori culture in shaping Pakeha culture. In the first scenario it's integral, in the second it's one of the enviromental factors at best.

I'm aware that I'm postulating a false dichotomy here, and that there's probably School C, which holds that it was a combination of environmental influence and direct transfer from other cultures (principally Maori, but also crucially Australian and later American). But the reason is that the question of Maori influence on Pakeha culture is, it seems, a crucial one.

The existence of New Zealand as a nation state is underpinned by the idea of a distinctly New Zealand identity. The question of what that identity is is fluid, and not the subject of this post. But the symbols of that identity are more concrete and can be addressed. Some of the symbols are culture-neutral (eg the landscape), some are specifically pakeha in origin (rugby), but many, probably a number out of proportion to overall population numbers, are maori in origin. The haka, maori sculpture, traditional maori dance and song, etc etc.

There's an essential dichotomy here. On the one hand the pakeha New Zealander is told that s/he needs to embrace symbols of national identity in order to properly be a New Zealander. On the other, s/he is told that attempting to appropriate or control Maori taonga without first seeking the appropriate permissions is wrong. In other words, the pakeha New Zealander who wishes to be a good nationalist is getting the worst of both worlds - reverence for, say, a traditional maori dance is required, but the pakeha person cannot express this reverence by participating in the dance unless they do so within a framework defined by maori cultural leaders.

One of the most unpleasant things about national symbols is that they become 'sacred' - above reproach, appropriation or reinterpretation. National symbols of maori origin are doubly sacred, at least to the vast majority of the population. People who would turn a blind eye to somebody depicting Jesus wearing lingerie on the crucifix or a Buzzy Bee made of severed fingers would protest a picture of a traditional Maori meeting house panel enthusiastically masturbating itself as colonialist defiling of indigenous art.

Now what I'm saying needs to be put in context. I'm not under the delusion that liberal protection towards Maori imagery is the largest wet blanket on self-expression in the New Zealand cultural milieu, in fact it's not even in the top three. I just find it particularly annoying because many of those on the left seem to have a major blind spot when it comes to maori culture as it interacts with freedom of expression.

Music meme, via 5monkeys

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List 5 songs you like that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions, if you so wish.

Monkeys gave me G

1. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Get Ready For Love
2. Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
3. U2 - Gloria
4. Bauhaus - God In An Alcove
5. Dandy Warhols - Godless

This week is Te Wiki O Te Reo Maori - Maori Language Week. As part of its duties to uphold the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, my employer has been encouraging its staff to participate in activities that require them to use Te Reo. Among these are at-desk Te Reo quizzes rewarded with fruit, lots of posters, and distributing little song cards with lyrics in both Te Reo and Pakeha-talk.

All good right? Well I enjoy the quizzes, even though my Te Reo is pretty crap, and I am possibly biased by being on something of a fresh-fruit kick right now. But the song card turned me right off. Why? Innocuous reason, and some of you may end up rolling your eyes at this, but four of the three songs were explicitly christian hymnals, studded with references to the bible, jesus, god, the virgin mary, all that sort of razzmatazz.

I have absolutely zero interest in participating in any activity that requires me to praise God, regard Jesus as anything other than a moderately adroit political philosopher, or celebrate the Bible as anything other than an unevenly but generally well written piece of fiction. Now admittedly the Department is providing other ways for people to practice their Te Reo, and I don't think there is some kind of insidious attempt to push christianity behind some sort of Maori-cultural trojan horse. But it does occur to me that the Department appears to have a double standard here. Put it bluntly there is no way any explicitly christian material* would be distributed as part of a Departmental initiative in any context other than the celebration of maori culture, and that makes me feel that the Department is less committed to its religious neutrality than its promotion of maori culture.
And I suspect that the Department is symptomatic of the wider public service.

I realise I sound like I'm echoing the Don Brash Orewa line - 'how dare these maori wreck our rationalist technocratic western society with their primitivist assumptions!'. I think the difference between Brash and me is that it's the anti-atheist, rather than anti-capitalist, undertones in Maori culture that bother me**, and that I recognise this is a more marginal issue than he seemed to portray it as. Ultimately if this trend was taken to its logical conclusion it would not make society significantly worse in and of itself, but it would make me on a personal level pretty uncomfortable.

*I'm not counting christmas or easter imagery, which I acknowledge are somewhat christian, but less explicitly so, I'd submit, than a song praising Jesus as the saviour of the world.
**And really I don't even agree with Brash that Maori culture is that anti-capitalist

Fun fact: ABBA are partly the result of a World War II Nazi breeding program.

So I watched Dr Horrible. It was... alright I guess. Laugh-out-loud funny in several places, entertaining in several others, with some good dialogue and amusing phraseology. In the minus column there were too many one-note jokes that got stretched out, and out, and out, and is it just me or was the female lead - Penny, I forgot her name for a second there - incredibly passive and, well, lame? I'm quite flabbergasted to see people lauding her as a 'strong' female character. If that's a 'strong' female character, then perhaps the bar needs a bit of raising there?

So overall, good, but not a patch on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.

Good to see I'm not the only one who feels this way

I haven't watched Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and I don't intend to, although it does have a pretty catchy website name, an increasingly rare asset these days, and it's not entirely possible that I will end up doing so at some point (probably four years down the track when everybody else is into something else different, going by past patterns). But I just wanted to offer some commentary on the whole alternative-method-of-producing-artistic-content-while-still-providing-the-artist-a-return-for-his/her-labour thing. The fuss that is being raised about Dr Horrible reminds me a fair bit of the kerfuffle that surrounded Scott McLeod's self-proclaimedly transformational endorsement of micropayments. Remember micropayments? How they totally transformed the way people pay for online content, and thus the global economy, to the degree that we now buy every concievable product, service and idea in the way Scott said we would? That was totally awesome wasn't it?

OK, back to beating on Joss. I've commented on the Cult of Whedon before, quite critically in fact, but all I really want to do right now is acknowledge it exists. This is an important point though, in fact my entire argument depends on it. What I'm saying is, I have no doubt that Dr Horrible will eventually find some kind of format that bypasses the executives who Joss was trying to work around during the writer's strike and nonetheless makes a profit. This doesn't, however, validate his model. For the model to work it has to apply broadly, which means it has to apply to somebody who doesn't already have an extensive audience.

I think I can safely say without descending into Whedon-snark (not that I'm averse to Whedon-snark, it's just not the point of this post) that Joss has a large and devoted fan base who will give anything he, or even his frequent collaborators like Fillion, a fair hearing. Not unreasonable in and of itself and I'd be the first to agree that everybody except Uwe Boll and Winston Peters deserves a fair hearing, but the fact remains that, at the very least, the model isn't proven yet. It won't even be proven when some no-name, talented producer/writer team manages to score a runaway Youtube hit with some self-penned video drama or comedy that then makes the leap to a wider, profit-bringing audience. It'll only be proven when a substantial number of people begin doing it. And I don't think that's going to happen.

I was going to say more but I may have wandered down a fatal cul de sac with that earlier throwaway mark because my mind is now spinning with the various similarities between Uwe Boll and Winston Peters. Now if only Winston challenged his political opponents to boxing matches. He's only 5'9", I'd be up for that.

*Or at least, can't catch a break for anything not Firefly related

So remember that Ruben Bolling cartoon I posted a while ago mocking rightist fears that Obama is a hard-left Al-Qaeda sleeper? The above image appeared on the cover of the latest New Yorker and stirred up a storm. People accuse it of being racist, sexist, and all the other things you'd usually expect of a magazine that depicted the Obama family burning an American flag with a picture of Bin Laden on their wall.

Not that I'd ever want to criticise anybody for burning an American flag (or indeed any flag) but it seems to me that this image is clearly satire in much the same vein as the cartoon I posted earlier. And yet it's attracting earnest criticism from many on the Left. I've got to admit this worries me. I feel that the best way to point out some of the over-inflated claims of the conspiracy-theorist right is to depict them as starkly as is done here (and also in the Bolling cartoon, and elsewhere too). The idea that these claims are so powerful that just stating them, no matter how critically the context, is damaging is to basically give up as far as I can see it.

You could argue about whether or not this is effective satire, (personally I prefer the Bolling one) or whether some of the things Obama is being accused of are so bad (while I don't like Islam, I don't think a Muslim President would necessarily be worse than a Christian President, and as I think I mentioned, I'm all for flag-burning). But the fact that it's satire and not a genuine attack on women, muslims or any other minority seems quite evident to me.

So has anybody else been giving some thought to the possibilities offered by D&D Insider? I'm thinking it might be quite cool to try running a campaign using it... with the usual caveats of my time being limited, naturally.

RIP Bronislaw Geremek

How often, when discussing New Zealand's economy, politics or lifestyle, do you hear people saying "Well, we're essentially a rural nation/a farming based economy/etc etc?"

I'm going to explode this myth, because believe you me, it is a myth.

Most New Zealanders do not live in the countryside. According to the United Nations' department of Economic and Social Affairs, in 2005 86.2% of New Zealanders lived in an urban area. To provide some contrasts, the world urbanisation level in 2005 was 48.6%, and the more developed regions of the world (North America, Europe and Japan) averaged at only 74%, making New Zealand more urbanised than most countries of a similar economic makeup. Japan, often seen by many as a hive-like, urban-dominated society, has an urbanisation rate of only 66% - substantially less than New Zealand's. The USA has a rate of 80% - how many of the people who describe New Zealand as a 'rural nation' would see the USA the same way? The United Kingdom has a rate of 89.7% - only three and a half percentage points ahead of New Zealand's. New Zealand is one of the most urbanised countries in the world.

But even if the average New Zealander lives in an urban area, our economy is based on farming, right? Well, actually, no.

Let's look at the CIA world factbook. What percentage of New Zealand's GDP is related to agriculture and agricultural products? Well it's important, so perhaps as much as 50%? But then again many farms have gone out of business in the last twenty years, so perhaps only 30%, 20%? Maybe even as low as 15%?

All these estimates are too high. Agriculture accounts for a whopping 4.8% of New Zealand's GDP. With a GDP of $111.7 billion, that means agriculture is responsible for only $5.4 billion a year. The rest of the economy, incidentally, is divided between industry (26%) and services (69.2%). Agriculture is not New Zealand's largest industry. Domestic tourism, that is, tourism involving only New Zealanders travelling within New Zealand, accounts for $7.6 billion a year, more than the entire agricultural sector by itself.

So agriculture does not take up a large ammount of New Zealander's jobs (since they're not living in the countryside), nor does it take up a large ammount of New Zealand's GDP. All defenders of agriculture as the basis for the country's economy are left with is the assertion that, even if agriculture only makes up 4.8% of the economy, if that part of the economy were to collapse, it would have knock-on effects throughout the economy.

Technically true, but I think the disappearance of any 4.8% of the economy would have terrible knock-on effects. And yet one never sees the same calls for special treatment for any other 4.8% of the economy. Nobody ever talks about New Zealand as an industrial country, let alone a services-based country, nor calls for the service or industrial industries to be coddled the way the agricultural sector is routinely.

So why does this myth exist? It's politically expedient. Historically agriculture in New Zealand has been dominated by business interests with strong ties to political elites. The farmer-politician is a recurring figure throughout New Zealand history, but I'm not so much talking about individual farmers entering the political structure as the industry as a whole being kow-towed to. No other sector has been permitted to arm its members and send them into cities to use violence to advance its interests. (I'm thinking of the 1913 industrial disturbances here) But the agricultural interests were quite clever, although perhaps cleverer than they realised - they promoted, through innocuous but subtly effective, the myth of New Zealand as a rural utopia, a nation whose unique identity was tied to its pastoral qualities. The image of the cow cockie is still imbued into the psyche quite strongly despite the fact that the lifestyle is extremely marginal. In other words, the image of rural New Zealand as an integral part of New Zealand's identity has outlived the fact of it as a part of New Zealand's identity - or at least, as part of its economy, which is where the identity-defining concept originally arose.

The reason this myth has survived is because the people who should be challenging it don't identify it with its political purpose, the protection of the financial interests of rural landowners. Too many on the New Zealand left are infatuated with the idea of pastoralism, the idea of farming as somehow a simpler, less commercial, more worthwhile lifestyle. Perhaps an anti-materialist rural lifestyle is possible - whether or not that would be a good thing is a question I'll leave for another post - but I'm not sure it's any more possible than an anti-materialist urban lifestyle, and even if it is, it's not in any way similar to the actual practice of agriculture in New Zealand, now or historically.

I was just thinking about it this morning and I've come to realise that I actually don't even like Blackadder anymore.

So I just spent four days and one night staying at the charming Tui Lodge in Pukawa Bay. I spent the time there reading, having long bathes, cooking unimaginative dinners and writing. And the writing was successful - a good thing too, since that was the whole rationale for my visit! In a sense I probably didn't make the most of my visit - other than a couple of walks in the Bay and driving to and from Turangivegas for groceries, I didn't really get out that much, and was thus mostly content to view the spectacular scenery of Lake Taupo from the living room windows. But I really got into a good groove with the writing, and although what I have now is a big mess, I'm pretty sure most of what I want to say is in there, albeit unreferenced and tangled up. So, while I'm at it, who feels up for some proofreading? It'll probably run to 6000 words or so once I get it to the point where people who didn't write it will actually understand it. The subject matter is all fairly political, not to say parochial, but I'd like some people who aren't that into politics to read it, since they'll give a better accounting of how accessible it is... although I can see why the idea of proofing it wouldn't appeal.

Here's my playlist for the roadtrip from Wellington to Taupo tonight:

Arcade Fire, Funeral
Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
The Bats, Daddy's Highway
The Bats, The Law of Things
The Bats, At The National Grid
The Birthday Party, Prayers On Fire
Bloc Party, Silent Alarm
Bloc Party, Weekend In The City
Counting Crows, August And Everything After
The Cure, Three Imaginary Boys
David Bowie, Heroes
David Bowie, Low
David Bowie, Station To Station
David Bowie, Heathen
Editors, The Back Room
Editors, An End Has A Start
Joy Division, Closer
Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures
Joy Division, Substance
My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
Silversun Pickups, Carnavas
The Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream
The Smashing Pumpkins, Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness
Thom Yorke, The Eraser
U2, Boy
U2, October
U2, War
U2, The Joshua Tree
The Veils, Nux Vomica

Apparently Margaret Atwood was inspired to write The Handmaid's Tale by her participation in anti-pornography rallies where she saw feminists and members of the socially conservative religious right temporarily joining forces, and felt a strong distaste for that. How exactly this is expressed in Tale I'm not sure, since the book appears to simply be an attack on the religious right (don't get me wrong, it's a fine book, I just don't see how it relates to what Atwood claims inspired it). But it's a phenomenon I see myself quite often.

Specifically on the issue of male violence against women. Many women's rights activists claim that rape, and male violence against women more generally, is punished quite lightly in the justice system. To quote one specific example, TVNZ's 'Lion Man' was convicted in 2005 of attacking his wife and leaving her needing medical attention over percieved infidelity on her part. He was fined $8000 and recieved no other sentence. His recent return to the goggle box has sparked some people to comment that his sentence was 'too light' and that he should have done jail time.

It's possible to see the Lion Man's staying out of jail as trivialising male violence towards women. It's also possible to see it as part of a general 'coddling' of criminals, a culture of lax jail sentences, etc etc. In other words, the same event can be percieved as a problem by both feminist and generally law and order thinkers, and both will advocate the same solution - a harsher sentence. The only difference is that feminist critics interpret the lax sentencing as a narrow problem, law and order critics as a broader one. But around this specific series of issues, there's a confluence - a confluence with a potential for alliance at least as strong as, say, that between law and order groups and socially conservative family values-oriented groups.

When feminists critique light jail sentences for violent crime against women they are, in my opinion, making a criticism of the justice system that is in fact too narrow. It basically accepts the idea of imprisonment as an appropriate response to crime and a way of reducing its incidence. I don't agree with that, and furthermore I feel that accepting that concept involves accepting presuppositions that are incompatible with feminism, or at least, any feminism that aspires to do more than police equality of opportunity. Slamming people in jail is a tool of the patriarchy, in my opinion, even if those people are men, and by calling for tougher jail sentences, more prisons and harsher courts, one is caller for stronger patriarchal institutions.

Furthermore, although I don't prescribe to the idea that violence, authoritarianism etc etc are innately masculine, some feminists do, and while I don't specifically know that these are the same feminists who want to lock rapists up and throw away the key, there seems to be a lack of intra-feminist debate on the subject. I can accept that

[Postscript: I realise that feminism is not monolithic and some feminists don't agree with the ideas I'm criticising. I'm talking about 'feminist thought' and 'feminist groups' not because I'm trying to imply these unsavoury opinions are held by all feminists but because the people having these thoughts or joining these groups are self-identifying feminists and I'm not going to invalidate that).]

I bought three non-fiction books for myself for my birthday using a bookstore token my father bought me. I'm ashamed to say I've yet to read them. I'm beginning to regard books rather the same way I imagine a prostitute might regard sex - something that was pleasurable until you started having to do it. Almost all the books I read these days are either research or stuff I'm paid to review.

But you know in a way I'm glad. I've noticed a disturbing tendency among my peer group to have discussions about the number of books they read/own in the same way one might expect male teenagers to have discussions about the number of girls they've slept with.

Happy Tunguska Day!

It seems that Don Brash, whatever you might say about him a fellow who indisputably enjoys keeping busy, has been pretty much just marking time since his resignation from Parliament early last year. But it also seems likely that his protege, John Key, the man who all but rolled him, is going to become Prime Minister in November this year. What does this mean for Don?

I've heard it rumoured that he was promised the post of ambassador to Washington DC in exchange for stepping down. Whether or not that was an explicit deal or not, I think it sounds likely. Washington is a favourite resting place for former party leaders turfed in messy coups - both Bill Rowling and Jim Bolger ended up there, so clearly it's a tradition that has deep roots on both sides of the parliamentary aisle. Of course Brash, not being a former PM, doesn't carry the same gravitas as Rowling or Bolger, but he's got an abiding fondness for the USA, has already lived in Washington for a long time during his service with the World Bank, and would be conveniently removed from any possible return to politics as an ACT member while he's over there - which would probably be a good long time.

So, that's my prediction. By the end of 2009 Don Brash will be Ambassador Brash, whispering in President McCain's ear on behalf of New Zealand.

I have absolutely zilch desire to see Prince Caspian. I was utterly unimpressed with the lifeless LOTR-cloning of the first Narnia film, and while the sequel is a separate movie and all that, sequels are only better than originals when originals exceed a certain level of film-making competence that The Lion, The Witch and the uneccesary CGI battle didn't meet*. So you can count me out for this particular exercise in sucking the blood out of the withered corpse of Elijah Wood's Frodo, thanks all the same.

I do experience a tiny twinge of regret because I've always been a bit of a fan of Spanish-renaissance style culture in fantasy settings. But I'm pretty certain I'm doing it better in my DnD game than Andrew Adamson will in his movie.

*It's true. Think of all the sequels that were better than originals. (Aliens, Mad Max II, Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, Silence of the Lambs, Daywatch, etc etc. In all cases the original film, while not as good as the sequel, was still pretty good)