Terry Sturm: Whim Wham and art of relevance

Opinion

Many older readers are likely to remember Whim Wham, who contributed light topical verses to the Herald every Saturday from the 1950s to the 1980s, commenting humorously on some absurd pronouncement or act of folly reported in the previous week's news.

Whim Wham, meaning "a fanciful idea or person", was the pen name of poet Allen Curnow, who died in 2001.

The pieces he wrote for more than 50 years (beginning in the Christchurch Press in 1937) provide a remarkably witty, readable and still highly relevant commentary on New Zealand's social and political life and its place in world affairs.

A selection of 200 of the best of them (Whim Wham's New Zealand: The Best of Whim Wham 1937-1988), will be published next week by Random House.

There are lampoons of all New Zealand's political leaders of those years and edged comments on the policies they were identified with - the welfare state, Think Big, Rogernomics - but always from the perspective of one who valued the democratic institutions of the country:

Don't make Fun of Politics
Make Politics your Fun!
The Vote denied the Ballot Box
Is a Vote for the Gun!

There were many satirical pieces on bureaucracy, censorship and the tourism industry; on the oracular pronouncements of pundits and planners and the mystifications of spin merchants; and, more seriously, on the dark threads of racial discrimination and xenophobia.

Many of his darker comic pieces addressed global events: wars, arms and space races, nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific, and sporting contacts with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Because Whim Wham was so lively a satirist - exposing self-interest, power-seeking, hypocrisy, deception, greed and folly, in its myriad guises - his best pieces not only provide insights into the past but speak directly to the present.

This year was the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland by French secret service agents, and the recent release of the Cabinet papers of Margaret Thatcher's Government at the time has revealed the extent of the British Government's behind-the-scenes support for the French Government.

When Thatcher's Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, visited New Zealand in 1987 he said the bombing and international terrorism were "as different as chalk from cheese".

Whim Wham's piece at the time was called Showing Us Howe:

The Time has come (Sir Geoffrey said)
To talk of many Things,
Of Nukes and Ships and the Butter Trade,
Policy Deals, and Strings.
Maggie's Man at the Foreign Office,
Who but He can talk
About Things like these, and explain how Cheese
Differs from Chalk?
It wasn't a British Port, you see,
Where the Ship was sunk that Day,
It wasn't Gaddafi, the PLO,
Nor even the IRA -
Whatever was done was the Work of one
Of your friendly Western Powers!
Can that, in Fact, be a Terrorist Act,
Which was (almost!) One of Ours?
I placed two Bombs on his Table,
And I asked Now, which of These
When it blows us Both to Kingdom Come,
Is Chalk and which is Cheese?
And how shall We know the Difference
Between the Former and the Latter?
Which is the Terror, or whose is the Error,
Will it seriously matter?

Curnow had no idea that his pieces would prove to be so popular. During World War II the newsprint shortage forced newspapers to reduce their size and the Press regularly polled its readers for guidance on which features to remove. Whim Wham regularly polled in the top three, alongside the editorial and the racing news.

Perhaps because of his own newspaper background - he was a reporter, then a sub-editor, on the Press until he joined the English Department of Auckland University College in 1951 - Curnow was familiar with the demands of attracting and sustaining a loyal readership.

He was adept at mixing light pieces on commonplace topics (complaining about the weather, walking his dog, poking fun at our eating and drinking habits, making fun of himself) with serious pieces to challenge his readers' opinions. He was also left largely free to express his own viewpoint.

Readers identified with Whim Wham as an ordinary Kiwi whose humour, intelligence and willingness to ask pointed questions offered a kind of ideal image of themselves as concerned citizens with a stake in the future of the country and the planet. He gave the lie to the notion that New Zealanders were apathetic, materialistic and smug.

In the late 1970s, when New Zealand was hit by an oil supply crisis and rocketing petrol prices, Whim Wham wrote Feet on the Ground:

Buckle the Belt and start the Car,
Drive It while you can
The Day may not be distant far
When Somebody in Iran,
Or Somebody else, turns off the Taps
And the Thing won't even start, perhaps.
Think of the Man who owns the Rolls,
All of the car-proud Few
Think of Them, if the Thought consoles,
No better off than You.
Their shining Pride and your rusty Shame
With an empty Tank, it's all the Same.
Buy ye Bicycles while ye may,
Time's Hand is on the Tap -
And the Car that carries you home today,
Tomorrow may be Scrap
And I quote, my old Shakespearian Source,
A Horse! A Kingdom for a Horse!
Dream of a Nuclear Sports Saloon,
Or a 3-Litre Solar Beam!
Pray for the Day, pray for It soon,
Of the Jet that flies by Steam.
Dream if You must - I'd recommend
A comfortable Pair of Boots, my Friend.

One of Whim Wham's most popular pieces from the 1950s, Pioneer Stock, was a lively comment on a suggestion by economist and social historian W.B. Sutch that Pakeha New Zealanders aspired to a comfortable middle-class life because they were largely descended from the 19th-century Victorian labouring classes, who had emigrated to New Zealand to better themselves:

Who were the Pioneers, my Boy,
That tamed the Wilderness,
The Pioneers who braved the Storm
In such peculiar Dress?
Oh, They were of the labouring class,
The Servants and the Trades, Sir.
They came out Here to better themselves,
They weren't of the Upper Grades, Sir.
RIGHT, my Boy. Now answer me,
What was the Vision splendid?
What was the Star that led them on
Till the long Voyage ended?
Oh, the Vision it was a lofty One
That steered them through the Gale, Sir:
Antimacassars and Silver Plate,
A Rise in the social Scale, Sir.
RIGHT, my Boy. Now how do you think
They prospered in their Quest?
What did the Nation-builders build?
How was the World impressed?
Oh, Some went up and Some went down,
T'was Life in a Looking-glass, Sir,
The same old Scenery back to front,
The Victorian Middle Class, Sir.
And What was the net Result, my Boy?
What became of the Plan?
What was the Fruit of the Enterprise
For the average Pig Island Man?
Oh, they crossed the Upper and Under Dogs
To produce this Island Race, Sir,
A Society neither Up nor Down
With a puzzled Look on its Face, Sir.
Is This a very good Thing, my Boy?
Or What do you think about it?
Is it Civilisation's finest Flower,
Or could we manage without it?
Oh, yes, it IS a very good Thing,
A very good Thing indeed, Sir
Here's looking at Me, and looking at You,
Of that identical Breed, Sir.

Such unresolved questions of identity recur throughout Whim Wham's 50-year career. He was fascinated by the kind of society that was emerging in New Zealand, the ways it dealt with cultural and social differences and defined itself in the world, and the extent to which its institutions enabled freedom of opinion to flourish. Perhaps this is why his verse has so much to say to us today.

* Terry Sturm, Professor of English at the University of Auckland, edited the verses and has written an introduction for the collection. [The verses are reprinted here with the permission of Jenifer Curnow.]