AUT Master of Creative Writing Thesis Exegesis - Scholarly ...

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AUT Master of Creative Writing 2008 Shorty © Michael Botur 2009 ‘Community Watch’ Extruding the Cultural Characters in Shorty ‘We’d forgive most things if we knew the facts.’ - Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter 1. Introduction The eight short stories in Shorty examine themes including racism, oppression, conflict, social perception, miscommunication, struggles over meaning, truth and ethnic identity. New Zealand is a country reinventing itself from its colonial past (Wyn 2004 p. 277); identity-making in this country is a ‘dynamic process’ (Liu et al. 2005 p.11) which generates new cultural forms and practices. The concept of culture and subculture links the aforementioned themes in Shorty. These short stories are the ‘shorty’ (see definition page 6) of novel- length stories. As the author, I have used the short story form to construct characters that explore themes of identity and culture. Through imaginative fiction based on everyday experiences I have endeavoured to own the characters and manipulate them to explore dilemmas of being a New Zealander. The success or failure of the characters to embody their cultures and find meaning in a fluid social context generates tension, and tension provides storyline. 4
AUT Master of Creative Writing 2008 Shorty © Michael Botur 2009 2. Shorty: Function and Form Shorty is a collection of urban tales, set in buildings. It is not a collection that describes green natural landscapes; instead, the environments are landscapes of concrete, glass and plastic – artificial, much like certain Shorty characters who construct themselves artificially. Shorty is a multiple entendre which references NZ speech, US speech and NZ pop culture. In NZ parlance, ‘Shorty’ refers to Shortland Street but my intention is that the term should reference a different piece of 30-minute entertainment: the short story. Slang derived from US media (rap music, TV and movies) influences the dialogue in most of Shorty’s stories, in particular the speech of the younger characters. These are the reasons the title Shorty was chosen for the collection. The following is a definition of the noun Shorty from the publicly-authored forum Urban Dictionary (Shorty www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shorty Oct 10 2008) 1. ‘Shorty’ originally used to mean a young man, new to the game, a person much younger than you. Now, commercial rappers have turned the meaning upside down to mean a 'fine female' or hanger-on. Young hangers-on trying to express themselves are found in the stories Axe of God, Model Railway, Iesu Ah Scab, Eating Is Cheating and others. 5
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