NZ on Air commissioned some interesting and useful research on what type of entertainment Maori like to access, how, where etc. Having understanding of what a large segment of the population wants should be helpful in making funding decisions. Some interesting findings:”
* 87% of Maori watch online video, 45% TV and 41% radio. Only 15% read newspapers
* The most time is spent online gaming and streaming music
* Of those who watch TV (around half), 58% watch TV1, 38% TV3 and 17% Whakaata Maori
* Of those who watch streaming video, 79% are onNetflix, 29% Disney and 15% Amazon Prime
* 22% of those who listen to radio listen to Mai FM, 12% National Radio and 11% NewstalkZB
* The main reasons Maori watch video/TV is relaxing 52%, passing time 28%, background 22%. Reflecting Maori culture was 10th at 9% and last at 5% was because of use of te reo
* Only 4% of Maori found shows fully in te reo appealing
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
7 comments:
Years ago I went to the movie theater in Whangarei. The movie was "Once Were Warriors" which had just come out. I found it profoundly sad and came out almost in tears. By contrast many of the Maori teenagers (mostly male) who were in the audience came out pumping their fists in the air and talking about the violence in the film like it was an action movie. When I thought about later, I realized that for many of these kids, violence in their home was normal and the movie was for them a reflection of their reality as victims. Maybe feeling sad about being victims would have been too depressing for them and, in a kind of psychological compensation, they were identifying with the violent adult males in the movie. Just a thought.
‘ME WARRIOR!’ IT’S JUST TIKANGA
The last thing we need is more encouragement via kapa haka towards primitive, violent behaviours and attitudes among people already culturally inclined to violence.
A culture that institutionalises violent display, ritualised confrontation, and naked aggression as markers of group identity will always breed violent thugs and bullies.
Many New Zealanders—white and brown alike—find Māori culture ugly and unappealing for that very reason.
The more "Maori" someone is, the more he tends to define himself with his fists. Never on his own, mind you. Only ever a tougharse with the bros to back him up.
Or within his own family, where Jake the Muss gets to lord it over his missus and kids.
A big arm is more important to such subbos than a big heart or a big brain.
As one of Allan Duff's characters says in a rare moment of introspection: "Us Maoris, we love our staunchness. Dunno why, juss is."
I do.
Natural selection over centuries of inter-tribal warfare meant the small, the weak, the sensitive, and the contemplative soon ended up in the hangi pit.
Only the strong and brutal survived to pass on their genes and values to succeeding generations.
Where victory in battle was a matter of life and death, the highest status in pre-European Māori society went to the brave and successful warrior.
Allan Duff paints a candid picture of such throwbacks in “Once Were Warriors.”
The bar room talk between the bros is all about fistic prowess, who "smacked over" whom.
Want your missus to cook a bro some eggs? Someone give you a ‘smart look’? Want to stop your baby crying? Want to derail a Treaty referendum?
Just use violence.
Since Maori culture cannot hold up a single discovery or invention that has come out of it to the betterment of mankind, the only tūrangawaewae its adherents have is “Me Warrior!"
Duff again: “There’s a culture of violence that runs through Māoridom.”
That's why Maori TV promos always feature aggressive mass haka by way of group self-definition.
And why Anzac Day on Maori TV is a self-congratulatory celebration of the exploits of the Maori Battalion, as though only those boys served with bravery and distinction, those boys won the war on their own, and many New Zealanders of Maori descent didn't prefer to serve in non-racial units with their fellow-countrymen.
One wannabe I’ve argued with online has a profile pic of whanau males striking staunch poses and showing off medals presumably won at amateur boxing.
Nothing wrong with sports. Many in my family (myself included) have participated in various sports to at least provincial age group representative level.
But if my part-Māori family were to publish a self-defining group photograph, it would be a bunch of people in academic dress brandishing our university degrees.
Not bare-chested in piupiu, rolling our eyes like mad dogs, contorting our faces, poking out our tongues, and brandishing taiaha.
See my point?
The ability to punch the sh#t out of someone is no measure of the man where I come from.
The dynamic I’ve observed in many of the more "Maori" whanau -- and in the more "Maori" mateship circles -- is that of a dog pack.
“Top dog" is the one who can throw his fists around the best and hardest.
Everyone else in the pack knows their place in the pecking order: who they get to growl and snarl at, and who they have to kiss up to.
Where violence is rewarded with power and status, children soon learn that moving up the dog pack ladder means being harder and more brutal than those one intends to supplant.
And how to gang up to pile onto outsiders.
Then they bring ‘Me Warrior!” to our schools, streets, bars and nightclubs, late night takeaway outlets, gas station forecourts, footy field sidelines, and road rage incidents.
It’s not just dudes.
There’s girls on this trip too, cursing and brawling like men.
That’s just nasty.
How ugly and unfeminine these so-called ‘wahine toa’ are.
This part-Māori doesn’t want a bar of it.
It would be geat to see comment as Anon 10.26in the msm, but we will not.The characteristics which made the maori battalion resonably successful are not necessarily those associated good citizenship.(ie bayonet charging)
Anon: thank you for the insightful comment. I would add that traditionally Maori society was tribal. that was a hierarchical arrangement with chiefs at the top, a warrior class, and the "peasants" which included woman who did a lot of the hard work.
I've had personal experience of this way of organizing society during my 17 years of cruising around the S. Pacific on my yacht during which time I stayed for months at small isolated islands in Fiji, Vanuatu, tongs, etc. As a way of organizing society, Tribalism, like Feudalism, given the right conditions, does work, but the concept of freedom and the "rule of law" is absent. Unless you are top dog, you do what you are told and there is no dissent. If you don't tow the line, you are punished and/or suffer banishment, which in a small island is basically a death sentence.
I've often thought that Maori and Pacifica gangs are just extensions of the Pacific tribal way of organizing society. That is part of their appeal. And that is why they tend to be violent both to outsiders and to their own members.
Spot on, Nuku. I too have lived in tribal societies for many years in Melanesia and Africa (and there is still some tribalism in the Middle East - usually a particular tribe is overwhelmingly Sunni or Shia or whatever). Tribalism is the way our own ancestors lived. It's a developmental stage in human social organisation which contains the germ of many modern social institutions e.g. tribal elder councils foreshadowed parliaments. Some land-owning families in Britain go back to tribal times.
Robert Arthur:
The Māori Battalion was primarily set up at the urging of Māori leaders of the Ngati Porou tribes of the East Cape.
Their rationale was that the Maori boys fighting alongside brothers and cuzzies would urge one another to greater deeds of bravery and hardness.
As you correctly identify, this is exactly what being in a Maori or Maori-dominated gang does.
While this may be of some value during wartime, it has no place in a civilised society that is at peace.
Judging from the ever pandering programme content I have always assumed that in recent times 90% of maori avidly listen to RNZ
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