Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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Bilbrough also claims that due to the absence of explanatory titles or voice-over, the
film fails to elucidate aspects of Puhi and Niki’s life, such as Niki’s illness, for the
viewer. Certainly the film leaves many gaps but he seems to imply that this is a
deliberate mystification: “Knowledge of Puhi and Niki’s relationship to a marae that is
apparently just across the paddock is withheld […]. There remain all the whys about
the community’s involvement or lack of”. 545 He suggests that these information gaps
are a result of the “fictionalising aspect of this film, that is responsible for marginalizing
information that does not fit into its story”, and that the film’s representation of its
subjects is “shaped by an underlying attitude of nostalgia as much as an objective one.
This nostalgic approach (often unconscious) is a difficulty inherent in a European
documenting a non-European people and way of life. There is a strong tendency to read
the subject culture in terms of the lack of the culture that the director/documentor comes
from”. 546 Again, what begins as an aesthetic argument ends as a political critique
focusing on racial or ethnic issues.
Bilbrough’s arguments need to be examined in the wider context of the fierce debate
that developed in New Zealand around the issue of whether an outsider can make a
documentary about a Maori community. Those hostile to such criticisms refer to them
as “political correctness”. Those sympathetic to such criticisms see them as an advance
in awareness that will bring an end to the local equivalents of what Edward Said
summed up as “Orientalism”, the fascination that Europeans have had towards non-
European people and ways[s] of life, with all its attendant mythologising. 547 Michael
King in his book Being Pakeha, talks about the difficulties he encountered when, with a
predominantly non-Maori film crew, he attempted to make a documentary on an issue
that concerned Maori/Pakeha relations during the New Zealand Land Wars in the
nineteenth century - the story of Te Whiti’s passive resistance to the European invaders
at the separatist village, Parihaka in Taranaki . 548 This debate in recent years has
reached such a pitch that according to King, “Some Pakeha have the impression now
545
Bilbrough, "In Spring One Plants Alone: Telling the Story," 17-18.
546
Bilbrough, "In Spring One Plants Alone: Telling the Story," 16.
547
As Said points out, what makes this fascination problematic is that it is a result of “cultural hegemony
at work […] the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European
peoples and cultures”. ( Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1979) 7.)
548
Michael King, Being Pakeha: An Encounter with New Zealand and the Maori Resistance (Auckland:
Hodder & Stoughton, 1985).