Taika Waititi used his platform to make a powerful statement. Photo / File
Taika Waititi used his platform to make a powerful statement. Photo / File
COMMENT:
Taika Waititi's speech at the Academy Awards and the fiasco around RNZ Concert this week told two different sides of the same story.
On the one hand, you had a director talking about the importance of telling stories from the perspective of indigenous groups. On the other, you hada small but incredibly powerful group of people clamouring to hold onto the stories and music they want to keep hearing.
An important part of what's been left out of the RNZ Concert fiasco is that the broadcaster's motivations were partly to better service minority groups, including Māori and Pasifika.
The unwritten observation here is that the RNZ board feels the existing media options simply don't do a good enough job of relaying these groups' perspectives on a consistent basis.
And they may have a point.
In a powerful spoken word track called "Bunga" dropped at the end of last year, Onehunga-based rap collective Swidt – well suited to a local youth radio brand – gives a scathing critique of media representations of Pasifika in New Zealand.
"They call me a bunga, they poke fun at the accent, yet only speak one language," starts the poem, which borrows its name from a slur used against people from the Pacific Islands.
"A bunga, we always blessed with some bad press, our living situation average. Just a bunga, I share a room with six relatives, we draw heat from a stove top element."
It draws on every stereotype, cliche and trope used to describe Pasifika in the media and drives home the complicated relationship New Zealand has with its minority groups.
"They only love us if it's sports achievements .. See a bunga's what they call that, unless you scoring tries for the All Blacks, then you Kiwi."
The point Swidt makes is that if you don't have the means or outlet to tell your own stories, then someone else will do it for you. And the outsider's view will only ever deliver a tiny portion of what you actually are and what success looks like for you.
You also can't read Swidt's sporting reference in "Bunga" without seeing Waititi enveloped in adoration for performing on the global stage and beating competitors – basically, an artsy All Black, loved when he's winning.
This adoration is in contrast to that moment in 2018 when Waititi was cast as a "traitor" among other things, for daring to call New Zealand "racist as f***."
The great irony is that in dedicating his award to "all the indigenous kids in the world who want to do art and dance and write stories," he's making the same point he did two years ago – albeit with more subtle language.
In standing up on that stage, Waititi was essentially tearing up the script that had long been written for people who look like him, and offering the youth a less familiar story. This is the power of giving a platform and voice to people who otherwise struggle to be heard.
There's a clear parallel here with Siyamthanda Kolisi, who became the first non-white rugby player to captain a World Cup-winning team. Both these stories capture the imagination because they're so incongruent with the status quo and the power dynamics that were bequeathed to these two figures. They become global sensations because of how unlikely they are.
The fact that these stories are still exceptional in 2020 is part of the problem. It tells us that people from marginalised groups must tear up scripts and overcome insurmountable odds just to present a slightly different face for success.
A youth brand with a clear focus on minority groups wouldn't have solved all these problems but it would have presented an opportunity for those groups to write their own stories – even if only in a small sliver of the FM spectrum.
In this context, you can't look at RNZ Concert's great escape without considering the power dynamics at play. You have a largely Pākehā audience, leaning to the older side, who also happen to make up an important part of the voting public, flex its muscle on social media and ultimately get its way. There's something a little uneasy about how familiar this story feels.
This is not to say that Concert doesn't deserve to be heard. On the contrary, the important role the station plays in promoting and supporting the arts community is essential and shouldn't be jettisoned.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is onto something when she says it shouldn't be one or the other and she has now promised to dust off an old unused FM frequency to accommodate the youth brand while keeping Concert on air. But committing to both while keeping Concert in its original format will cost RNZ and its primary backer a lot more money.
Now it's just a question of whether the Government deems those untold stories worth paying for – and, if so, how much?
