Características de la Ansiedad 40

The methodology used in this work is both qualitative and interpretive in that it focuses on the key thematic of a nationalised race-relations narrative in eight New Zealand films: Rewi’s Last Stand (1925/194), Broken Barrier (1952), To Love a Maori (1972), Utu (1983) Ngati

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(1987), Mauri (1988), Once Were Warriors (1994) and Whale Rider (2002). Utilising Griswold’s cultural diamond, each film will be treated as both a “cultural object” and as a case study, where the work will be placed in its broader historical, social and political context, in order to investigate the continuous key thematic of race-relations. By employing Griswold’s typology what will be used to examine how films, as “cultural objects”, are bound by a number of interrelated factors that need to be considered by analysts when determining “meaning”.

Griswold’s (1994, pp.14-16) methodological framework explores the argument that an understanding of cultural objects from a sociological perspective entails an analysis of four interrelated factors:

(i) The intentions of creative agents, which refer to the social agent’s purpose in light of the constraints imposed upon him or her in the production and social

incorporation of specific objects;

(ii) The reception of cultural objects over time and space, which refers to the social agent’s consumption, incorporation or rejection of cultural objects;

(iii) The comprehension of cultural objects in terms of intrinsic and heuristic genres is contingent upon the understanding of internal structures, patterns and symbolic carrying capacities of the cultural objects.

(iv) The explanation of the characteristics of cultural objects is referenced to the social and cultural experiences of social groups, and categories.

It is important to note that Griswold’s typology is not a theory of “culture”, but is an

analytical approach to investigate the point at which individuals and groups interact with the cultural object.

Film is used in this thesis as a “cultural object” or as a “snapshot” into a society’s views, values and mores about race-relations at a particular time and place. The term “cultural object” refers to the embodiment of a work of art and its shared significance for human beings. In this fashion, representations reveal aspects of the societies in which they were produced in, because they are intended for specific audiences. Wolff (1981, p.49) describes representations as, “… not closed, self-contained and transcendent entities, but … the products of specific historical practices on the part of identifiable social groups in given conditions, and therefore bear the imprint of the ideas, values and conditions of existence of those groups ...”. As Wolff’s comments indicate, works of art or in this instance, cultural objects, are products of specific practices and are produced under specific conditions.

Meanings and significance are ascribed to socially constructed categories, and further, shaped by issues of importance in the environments in which they are created.

Audiences, for example, have to receive, decipher and elicit meaning contained in the works. In essence, individuals have to have a shared form of significance or be familiar with the representations in films, in order to make sense of their intended meanings. As Griswold (1994, p.14) states, people have to “… hear, understand, think about, enact, participate in and remember them”. Thus, films do not float freely, but are anchored in a particular historical, social and political context which informs the representations, and interpretations contained therein.

Griswold’s diamond provides a useful tool for analysing relevant sociological factors that might explain various cultural phenomena. As Griswold (1994, pp.7-8) states:

The cultural diamond is not a theory. It has nothing to say about how its points might be related, only that they must be related. Nor is it in itself a model, for it implies no causal direction. Any point or linkage may be specified as the dependent variable. Furthermore, each link is an arrow understood to have two heads … I am contending that cultural analysis demands the investigation of the four points and six connecting lines of this diamond; studies that neglect some points or connections are incomplete.

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Griswold’s cultural diamond is employed to examine the hypothesis that films from 1985 onwards remain within a continuous race-relations narrative. The following factors in the case studies will be investigated:

a. The biographies of each director and film, including film reviews to highlight how the subject of race-relations was a key influence in the production of the film;

b. The dominant views of race-relations found in State policy prescriptions directed toward the Måori population in the social context when the works were produced and how the same are evident in the works;15

c. An overview of the Måori population in each particular social context and

examination of how national interests can, at times, conflict with Måori interests; and d. The meta-narrative of the cultural authentic and cultural degenerate dichotomy by

examining how archetypes, prototypes and stereotypes of characters (termed

“encoded characters” or “transitional figures” in this thesis) are used as plot devices in the works to examine race-relations.16

Moreover, by embedding the works in a socio-historical context, what is identified is how the race-relations narrative functions in the works in their relationship to the policies of the State. As indicated, the films form a socio-historical narrative of their own in their endorsement of or responses to the State’s view of race-relations in the public record. Moreover, the films exist in a linear-historical relationship to each other by referencing, responding and reworking key aspects about race-relations from contemporary standpoints. As a result, it is important to adopt a chronological approach to the films and draw the links between the works, the social world and also, to the political directives of the State.