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Cinematic Myth and
the Maori

 


by David Matthews 

All Rights Reserved © David Matthews and Deep South
Deepsouth v.6.n.3 (Spring 2000)

 

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Tamahori has gone on to make big budget, Hollywood films such as The Edge and Mulholland Falls which, like Warriors both feature what has become one of his trademarks – stylised violence. Duff has gone on to national prominence, writing more novels, newspaper columns, and a screenplay sequel to the original film. He shows a commitment to social reform with his “Books in Homes” scheme which encourages reading among children. He is also a pedagogue, one of Maoridom’s most strident critics, and his newspaper columns often brink on the verge of a Frank Haden-like hysteria. So how should I regard these two artists? As Maori bashers? Traitors to their race? Or as visionaries pointing out our faults and offering positive solutiuons?

 

Perhaps my ambivalence springs from the fact that I am the other side of the coin. I grew up in a stable home. My father – a Maori – never hit my mother, I never had anything to do with gangs and neither I nor any of my siblings ended up in a children’s home or jail. And yet I have been involved in the dark underside of Maori society, through relatives, and through both my father’s and my own experiences working with Maori youth at risk and their families. The film does not exaggerate (if anything it is a sanitised view of reality). The problems portrayed in Warriors really do exist. Perhaps I feel guilty for feeling a sense of catharsis, purged of the emotions of pity and fear at the conclusion of the film. And there’s the rub – I get to walk out of the theatre feeling relatively cleansed while the real Jake Hekes and James Whakaruru’s are still out there with no real prospect of escape from the vicious cycles in which they are trapped.

 


Did the film change anything about New Zealand for the better? Perhaps it made us more aware of the problems facing the dispossessed in our society. But it fails to give a balanced picture. It is a modern Maori myth that has gained the currency of truth. The truth, however, will always be far more complex than any one film or book might suggest. So, yes, I admire Warriors as an aesthetically as a pleasing piece of kinetic art, but I would not use it as a measuring stick for reality. Although the Heke family and their milieu may reflect reality to some extent, it is a predominantly negative and, I believe, one-sided view. Having personally experienced many of the positive aspects of Maori culture I would deplore this film’s portrayal of my race, if it were not for the fact that it was made by Maori. I would think that we are doomed as a race if we continue to view ourselves in such a harsh and unforgiving light. I think we need to see a positive reply to this film. We live and hope...

 

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