Club Politique by Che Tibby

I started out on a description of the Michael King question, but seem to have been pushed towards a story about the good ol’ days in the Mount. I’d like to talk about how King and others have established a pattern for self-identification but just can’t seem to shake the idea of a great big fire.

You see, we visited a cousin of mine who happens to live up in Ōtaki yesterday and the first thing he mentioned was the marvellous and toxic air in the neighbourhood. It was of course a glorious day of blue sky sans cloud, with all the poison having wafted over the way towards the Wairarapa. Much like the USA does to Canada it would seem.

Damn that must have been a big fire. Plastic not only burns toxic, it also burns hot. As any kid with too much curiosity, a large supply of pegs and a magnifying glass will tell you, very hot.

Anyhow, way back in ’87 I was trying to raise money for my student exchange year by working in the local milk factory and was charged with all kinds of crap jobs. You know the kind of stuff, handling huge bins of broken glass, getting constantly cut, using caustic soda to clean the floors and machinery, getting chemical burns, having to chuck out all the bad milk, getting poisoned, all the usuals.

Did you know that when milk gets really old it kind of separates, then goes grey, and eventually turns into a kind of clear liquid with this bunch of weird black/grey plug of gunk at the top of the bottle? Takes weeks for an experiment like that to pan out according to specifications.

The most fun job was of course driving the fork-lift-tractor. This involved bumping into things frequently and at speed. It also involved sticking the forks into things and breaking them. It involved almost falling off the seat and going under the wheels at least once. It never involved lifting someone’s car up onto a giant stack of milk crates, but should have.

Ok, fire. The most boring job was the weekly setting fire to all the rubbish. This was of course the days before all that namby-pamby PC nonsense of green responsibility and global warming, so we used to just stack all the crap out in the corner of the yard and torch it. I was encouraged to set a fire at the windward end, and really get that sucker burning, so as to save time and money.

The roster system was pretty standard for those days, and even though I was 16 I was on the old ‘three days off, six days on’ rotation. This meant that one time I came back from the days off to this freaking massive stack of rubbish. For some reason there had been a bit of a purge of old milk crates, the stack hadn’t been burnt, and wasn’t due again until the day before my next day off.

Damn that stack was big by the time it got to the end of the week.

I went in to see the foreman and he goes, “Whaddya want Tibby?”
“Boss, that stack out back is pretty huge ay? Should I still burn it?”
“Ay? Stop ya fuckin’ whinging boy. Get out there and do ya job.”
“Yeah, nah, she’s a pretty big stack ay. You sure?”
“Just get on with it for fucks sake will ya, we’re busy here.”
“Yeah…. But I’m gonna start the fire downwind, so it doesn’t get too big, ay?”
“Whatever mate, ya just do your job, and I’ll do mine”

Good old Unions. That last phrase pretty much sums it all up really.

I lit the fire at the downwind end and stood back. It was summer. It was a mountain of paper, plastic, rubber and assorted rubbish at least 2m high, maybe 10 or 15m long, and maybe 5m wide. BIG does not begin to describe the flames.

I went back to see the foreman saying, “Fire’s lit Boss, but she’s going to be a big one, ay.”
“What the fuck… look boy, why are ya still here? Shouldn’t ya be knocking off?”
“But Boss, she’s a BIG fire. See? You can see the smoke through that window up there.”
“Ay? Look, piss off will ya, factory to run mate, factory to run.”
“But Boss, should I at least stay out there with a hose of something, just in case it gets a bit stroppy?”
“Christssakes… look, piss off will ya? See ya in a few days.”

Did I mention it was February in the Bay of Plenty? The fire grew very large indeed in my absence. It jumped over a concrete path to a patch of dried grass and spread quickly, almost setting fire to a pumping station. It almost got my beloved tractor. It spread into the long grass of a neighbouring paddock and pretty quickly got into the timber yards of the local Mitre Ten Placemakers, which were only saved by the timely intervention of a number of Firemen.

Hell, it burned from there all the way to the offices of the senior management, from where it burned all the way back down to the Foreman, and by all accounts singed him pretty badly.

Took me two days to find out why no-one was talking to me after the break.

And she's telling the truth, she did attempt to hold her tongue about my cracker-cooking. One email did slip through though, and the indignation was well evident.

In my own defence all I can say is that the recipe for a curry was something drafted so that any damn fool with a frying pan could turn out a respectable dinner for 'da missus'. And by all accounts it seems to have worked well, a few recommendations came in, and a few ideas were swapped.

Which is a little not-so-masculine really.

Truth be told, when I make that recipe myself I like to have made the curry paste from scratch. You know, tamarind paste, shrimp paste, lemongrass, whole chilli, the whole kit and kaboodle. But trying to convince some of the guys that cooking isn't just something 'for chicks' is always a battle at the best of times.

This all naturally leads to the stereotype that guys can't cook, which is patent bullshit, or that only women should cook, which can be a risk to health. Plenty of people can't cook, and it's my humble opinion that they're the worse for it. Fact is, cooking is a social thing. You cook for people because it's good for everyone. There's nothing more satisfying than getting a big feed together and sharing it.

Ah well. I suppose some people feel the same way about any number of hobbies.

There is one thing I've been pondering for a fair while now though, and have tried talking it over with a few people. The thing about cooking is that sometimes the types of guys who consider it women's work stand out as a bit backwards. Not only do they realise that cooking has also long been the preserve of men, but they seem to not understand why it is that the missus puts on a feed for you every night.

The first time I really thought about 'cooking' was not long after I left home. As it was my brothers and I were made to cook dinner every few days; first because it was a job around the house (and was worlds better than cleaning the dunny), and second because it just isn't a bad skill to learn. But even then I left home with very little knowledge about the hows and the whys. I pretty soon realised that if I ever wanted a decent meal again I had three options. Buy it. Get a wife to do it for me. Or go home and have Mum do it.

None of these things were sustainable or suitable options.

Of the three, subcontracting the job to 'the missus' is of course the most likely to succeed long-term. But I wanted to kind of get on with my life, you know? An Eve to my Adam would doubtless lead to that dreaded inevitability, rugrats. You can't maintain a hard-core rock and roll lifestyle with kids around. Well, you can, but the instruction booklets say it's not advisable.

Where I'm going with this is my later realisation about my grandparents generation. Whereas among my parents generation cooking in men is merely uncommon, among the next level up it's positively rare. But what I noticed is that this is for a fairly decent reason.

Back in the day, my grandparents made a bargain. The grandmother would cook, clean, and look after the mini-mes, while the grandfather would be a breadwinner. And it was hard yakka on both fronts.

These days thing seem to have changed though, with feminism and whatnot breaking down those old stereotypes the bargain has been shattered, women and men swap roles frequently and easily and no-one really kicks up a fuss. New Zealand is, it seems, nice and liberal in that regard.

I think I've noticed another kind of way the bargain has been shattered, and that's the one where feminism has kind of half-backfired. What I mean by that is that a woman may well be liberated, making her own cash, but still be expected to tow the line on the domestic duties.

It's a strange one, because you can have a couple both working, but the missus is still required to be the one who does the domestic bullshit. And frankly that seems to be a bit of a stink way to end up. The bargain was a good thing if you ignore all that man-owns-woman crap, and could still work in this day and age if it's made explicit who plays which role.

I mean, it is fair. If one partner is expected to maintain the house, the other one should be willing to part with their cash to cover the costs. Which gender taking on the role of domestic servant is really up to the couple, the important thing being that unless you're willing to fork out to cover costs, you'd better put on that damn pinny and get into the kitchen.

And the lesson to be gleaned from all this is that if you expect something for nothing, you're leaning towards being a bit of an asshole.

Well, it must be slow season here in the news, because there has been waaaay too much Whale coverage on TV of late. And it's starting to kind of get on my [nerves].

This is because, and I'm willing to put money on the fact that I'm well in the minority on this one, when 50-odd Pilot Whales turn up on a beach somewhere, you know what I think?

Lunch.

Seriously. I have this disturbing urge to eat a large marine mammal.

And why? Because I bet those suckers are really, really tasty. How could they not be, living on a diet of Omega-Three enriched fish? And probably barbequed. A salad of rocquette and chargrilled artichokes, with a nice vinaigrette. I'm guessing it's a meat much like Marlin or Tuna.

So sticking with my mission statement of only eating local produce and non-processed product, if flipper washes up out from of the bach? Then we're making casserole with the tough bits.

Of course, you can't really go advocating scaring the piss out of cetaceans with light explosives to encourage that transition from majestic wildlife to 'target-for-toothpick', but if accidents happen, then hey, let's make the most of it.

There's nothing like devouring a graceful, svelte animal to really reinforce your place at the top of the food chain.

I mean, cattle? They drool, they've constantly got snot hanging out their noses, they hose crap on you if you aren't nimble, and they frickin' stink. Sheep? They're the village idiot of the domestic market, they also stink, they can't take a dump without soiling themselves, and only exist because we farm them. Chickens? They are plucky, evil little bastards with beady eyes and nasty beaks. Take a close look at one, they're like the Osama Bin Ladens of the avian world.

But have you ever seen a Pilot Whale half-covered in it's own poo? I think not.

And god people love the damn things. Show the people footage of half a dozen of the creatures that were stupid enough to take on walk on dry land and you've got the nation in tears.

Me? "Whoa there flipper! No legs! Remember?"

Worse, you have some dodgy Japanese trying to butcher a few other types of cetacean and you have people making idiotic demands like boycotting Sealord.

People, if you took the time to stop and examine many of the products you consume on a daily basis you'd find pretty much every major company is poisoning, robbing, plundering, exploiting, murdering, lying, undermining and overstating its way to constant profitability. Many of the companies you buy things from without thinking are actively taking part in poisoning the entire world, not just turning a bit of blubber into yakitori.

Think about that next time you fuel up the 4x4.

However, we can't all be to blame for the world's woes. Certainly many of us aren't conscious enough about where our stuff comes from to make informed choices about what we do and don't buy. So we need people like Greenpeace to take an interest in those important things, publicise bad behaviour etc.

I haven't got a problem with greenies per say. I follow green principles like forgoing excessive consumption, conscious purchasing, producing minimal waste, taking the low-energy option, public transport, etc etc. But that said, some greenies are just so fucking sanctimonious.

And it's not all greenies. No, it's the one's who treat the rest of us like idiots because we haven't acquired the same self-referential 'cool' status they have. You know, the ones you get to ask, "nice leather shoes, where are they from? Oh, they aren't leather? Nice petrochemical shoes then."

Worse are the upper-middle class bandwagon-jumpers. The ones who buy toilet paper made from recycled material, but buy food or wines imported from the other side of the world. The ones who will probably buy a Prius to drive to work in, when they could just live within walking distance? You're still over-consuming people...

Ah well. Deep breath... Speaking of which, I saw at least three very large octopi whilst diving this past Sunday. Cute. Scarey, but cute. And also tasty. We let them live this time.

Good old Wellington. Must be the easy city to be green in I know.

So in that regard, let me recommend a few people you need to introduce yourself to.

If you need to now what's going on round town, then you need to meet two blogs. Wellingtonista, and Well Urban

Then, if you're into New Zealand made cinema, get along to the Film Archive. Last week we saw End of the Golden Weather for the wallet-shattering price of $8. This Wednesday is another classic, Sleeping Dogs.

And finally there's the baristas at Peoples Coffee. Damn these guys can talk a lot of crap about the old caffeine delivery vehicle. So much crema, it was like coffee porn. It's good enough to send Mr. Brown into a three blog epistle... ("ahem" he says, not wanting to bite the hand that feeds, nor our Auckland-based sponsors).

Some interesting responses to this weeks other post. It seems that the original Being Pākehā was an effort by King to rationalise his position as a commentator on things Māori, and that the 'seminal' blurb on the cover of the copy I have is probably the publisher trying to cash in on King's recent death.

The questions I raised about what it is to be Pākehā raised some good thinking among readers though. What most seemed to indicate is that when the original version of the book was published, it was read by persons who were genuinely interested in both the position of Māori in New Zealand, and of understanding inter-relations between the two groups in ways other than those espoused by contemporary mainstream conventional wisdom.

That's one of the great issues that constantly plague science and the acquisition of knowledge, in my humble opinion. All too often people draw bad conclusions because they ask the wrong kinds of questions. So if you believe that Māori are destined to be assimilated into the mainstream, then you seek justification for the outcome you want. All too often New Zealand history has been written in this way, and King was one of the first writers to try to shatter that conventional wisdom.

Other intellectual traditions do it as well, or that has been my experience of many writers looking at philosophical questions around ethnic conflict/warfare. Mostly this is, for example, because someone looking at ethnic conflict will often begin from the premise "ethnic conflict is bad, so how do we stop it?"

But, under the tutelage of VUW, I quickly learnt that a better beginning is to ask, "ethnic conflict is bad, but it is normal, so how do we minimise it, or at least direct it away from armed conflict towards non-violent interactions?". But I digress.

What I've noticed about Being Pākehā is that it exhibits a common method of beginning to talk about ethnicity and belonging, and that is to establish the point of view of the speaker through autobiography. Pat Snedden also does it in Pākehā and the Treaty, James Ritchies does it in Becoming Bicultural and John Pilger does it in A Secret Country. It seems that by talking about your own experience and history you can establish that you do indeed have a legitimate belonging to the nation you claim as your own. And that's fascinating, because in doing so you're kind of saying that holding citizenship isn't enough, and you're giving a kind of mainstream, non-family whakapapa to justify your legitimacy.

The premise of this process of establishing belonging is that the statement 'I belong' isn't enough, you have to actually run through your history and lineage to prove authenticity. And in this day and age of globalisation and high population flows, that's very important. It illustrates for instance that culture isn't something you can take off a shelf, you have to immerse yourself in it for long enough to build up a proper cultural 'coat'. And sometimes, you have to be a descendant of someone who wore the coat before you, which you develop in turn.

And this premise causes me problems. If King was indeed seeking to justify both his own place as a 'native' of New Zealand, and his right to speak both to and for Māori, then he has actively demonstrated how Māori society is separate and distinct from the mainstream. Granted, and as a reader pointed out, "[Being Pākehā] was a book for we Pākehā who think Māori to be cool. And was something actually acknowledging that Māori culture had an *impact* on our world." But in order to do so King had to demonstrate that he was conversant enough in the mores of Māori society, a society not his own, to legitimate any of his work or opinions.

What King and others have had to do is illustrate how they crossed over from a self-referential mainstream culture into a distinct Māori society, but if every social commentator in New Zealand has to do this we're all going to become very sick of autobiographies, very soon. And this annoys the crap out of me, because it seems to be so necessary in our still-evolving nation. You can't just use race or religion, because as a liberal, migrant nation we are a melange. Which really only kind of leaves language, but even that isn't a reliable marker of belonging, because half the freaking world speaks English.

On the other hand, it is a good premise because it strongly indicates that New Zealand culture has reached enough of a critical mass to allow an autobiography to stir nationalistic feeling. Once upon a time it was the Empire that raised that flag. It's a good thing that our own stories are all that is acceptable to define who we are.

But I still wonder if that means that we're likely to have to favour particular outcomes because of the need to establish authenticity? Ignoring whether you think it a good or bad thing, are we encouraging the continuing distinction of Māori? Are we reinforcing biculturalism as the 'between' place of Māori and mainstream culture?

Big questions people, big questions turned out of many little life stories.

I was given the sage gift of a copy of Being Pākehā Now for the festive season and took the time out to read it cover to cover. I thought this a wise idea as I've footnoted it several times.

For anyone unaware of the book, it's referred to on the back cover as "a seminal book: the first serious analysis of what it means to be a non-Māori New Zealander."

But, umm, without wanting to disrespect Michael King in any way, that summation of the book just doesn't add up. Certainly it's a good read if you consider it an autobiography, but as a serious analysis of what it means to be Pākehā, I'm of the most humble opinion that the book just doesn't cut it.

Mostly this criticism is directed at the sparse 6 pages of a 241 page book that actually talks about the place of the British diaspora in New Zealand. The remainder of the book does kind of prime the reader for King's opinion in this regard, but it still doesn't stand as a reasoned analysis of New Zealand identity.

Like King, I too was brought up in a New Zealand where people felt no great allegiance to the British Isles. Certainly my grandfather may have spoken with pride about seeing a world map coloured red, and Empire upon whom the sun never set, but this loyalty never really reached me. I've never felt the need to make any kind of pilgrimage to London, and will likely reserve that pleasure for a trip in the unknown future.

Being Pākehā Now really only serves to reinforce King's national authenticity, and to reinforce his position as a critic of both majority and minority cultures. In effect, the greater part of the book is a CV, and the "analysis" for which the book has gained renown is in fact an epilogue.

You might note that my disappointment is palpable.

To be brutally honest, King's book is little more than an interesting life story with a blog-rant attached.

I do get that King's intention was to demonstrate how New Zealand Britishness had evolved over time into a new identity, one framed (in his opinion) by a genteel bunch of distinctly 'high-culture' literary and artistic types. I respect that perspective, and recognise that New Zealand high-culture has taken on new and distinctive tones that more than adequately distinguish us as a distinct people. I also recognise the 'low-culture' stuff King also describes, the fishing trips and rugby culture that underpins our society (I was a little disappointed that he didn't discuss that doyen of New Zealand culture, author Barry Crump). But seminal?

I think that what I'm missing is the impact the book may have had during its original publication in 1985. I was of course very young at that time, and was probably being the Pākehā King obliquely describes. But this doesn't change the fact that it isn't an analysis of that it is to be a New Zealander.

What I do agree with is King's assertion that some of the old stereotypes about what it is to be Māori, and what it is to in turn be Pākehā, need to be overturned. But I can't see that anyone has, since the 1980s, taken the argument that Māori are 'more spiritual' or 'more green' than Pākehā seriously. Which is of course when the book was originally published... Regardless, I find his other assertion, that many Māori or Pākehā no longer want to define themselves in bicultural terms, even more difficult.

The bicultural assertion is problematic because there is no other adequate description for the reality of Māori-Pākehā social distinction. Māori society and culture continues to exist because it actively engages with the majority culture on Māori terms, and because it has continued to exist in at times gritty defiance of attempts to undermine and assimilate it. King argues as much in his history of New Zealand, where he describes two cultures developing in tandem since the 1840s.

It's all very confusing really.

I think what King has attempted to do is justify his own place, and the place of persons like him, me included, who do feel a deep and abiding commitment to this country. He fails though, because his exploration of what it is to be Pākehā merely skims the surface of our identity. It looks at a number of variables that make up what it is to be Pākehā, but ends without really engaging with them except to claim parity with Māori in belonging to these isles.

But parity with and equality to Māori isn't what defines our history. In reality our history has been one of Māori seeking parity and equality with the majority, a history whose main bulwark has been their claim to indigenousness. By making Pākehā also 'indigenous', King is actually proving fuel to fires that would blind and undermine the ability of Māori to self-distinguish.

This is in my opinion foolish, and acts contrary to much of King's own work.

I've tried in the past to nut out the way in which to really define the New Zealander, and reached an impasse every time. Who am I to be so presumptuous? How can I, a New Zealander average in every way, really provide a definition to a society of four million? Such arrogance would be breathtaking.

But I easily recognise what a New Zealander is not, and I agree that we are something more than the descendents of colonists. These islands have flavoured us permanently, and continue to give a peculiar body to each vintage, but you have to continue to ask the question, what kind of grape are we?

To conclude, if anything I’m a little disappointed that a book as vaulted as King’s falls so wide of the mark, a description on a label as it were. But all things in good time I suppose.