This was offered to a media outlet but they chose another piece. Based on the Epilogue of ‘In Open Seas’.
Because New Zealand is very centralised, its central government has considerable influence over the public discussion. Thus, a change of government, as happened in 2023, may change greatly the tone and even direction of cultural development. The influence can be subtle – few ministers are direct contributors or, apparently, even consumers of culture. But who they appoint to make the awards and grants greatly affects the outcomes. Clumsy appointments distort the development. The instances are legion.
For instance, in October 2022, Creative New Zealand announced it would no longer fund the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare festival, a 31-year-old competition in which secondary-school students performed excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays. So great was the outcry that the Ministry of Education announced it would fund the program instead (at the cost of $31,000 a year).
CNZ’s strategic-advisory-panel dismissal of the proposal included the incendiary phrase that it was ‘located within a canon of imperialism’. To what extent the advice influenced the Board’s final decision is not known.
Who were on the CNZ’s panel and board need not detain us, except to draw attention to the considerable discretion in its selection. For instance, had either included one of New Zealand’s internationally eminent Shakespeare scholars, we may be sure that there would have been a different outcome. As politicians are quick to point out, the CNZ board would have made independent decisions. But the politicians’ appointments shape the advisory systems; too often they have been the mediocre and the woke.
What does ‘located within a canon of imperialism’ mean? The eminent Indian economist and philosopher, Amartya Sen, observed that Beethoven was an Indian; in which case he was also a New Zealander. So is Shakespeare. Does Shakespeare belong to a canon of imperialism? (Does the Bible?) And if he does, how is New Zealand to relate to such a canon? Critics of the CNZ decision drew attention to the central role of Shakespeare in shaping the language that New Zealanders use and the way he frames our understanding of the human condition. I draw attention to another critical feature of Shakespeare, so obvious that it is frequently overlooked. Shakespeare was engaged with the rest of the known world; the majority of his plays are based on foreign sources.
Nowadays others engage with Shakespeare. During the just related fracas, state-funded NZ Opera was performing Verdi’s Macbeth, the cast of which included young New Zealanders who will go on to prosper overseas. (One was Māori.) At least six of Shakespeare’s plays are translated into Māori, including Romeo and Juliet published in te reo a few months after the CNZ brainstorm.
The ‘canon of colonialism’ becomes an excuse not to isolate from the world rather than engage with it. Attempts to do so can be damaging. Promoting local need not lead to mediocrity. New Zealand authors, almost all of whom have received some public funding, contribute to the international literary scene, some spectacularly.
Sadly, ‘located within a canon of imperialism’ is one of those phrases intended to close down discussion, to wipe out everything that has gone before. I saw this at a seminar early in 1984, in which a future Rogernome announced that there was no economics before 1975 worth studying. Were that true, it meant that all the knowledge held by those older than him was obsolete and he did not have to master any of it. Of course it was not true, which was demonstrated shortly after by the Rogernomes, who depended on recent economic theory without understanding the context in which it had developed; the result was that economic liberalisation was managed badly.
The downgrading of the significance of the intellectual past exempted the advocates from mastering the evolution of their discipline. Not having a grasp of the past means one cannot learn from it. Too often a vaguely and inaccurately recalled past ends up as ‘truthiness’.
Each generation self-promotes. Patricide (or matricide) is the easy strategy. But that is not true for those who aspire to excellence. For example, at the age of 75 Picasso painted a series of 58 works analysing, reinterpreting and recreating Velazquez’s Las Meninas (the ‘Ladies in Waiting’). He had first met the painting sixty years earlier.
Appointments of mediocrities to position of influence reflect wokeness, like gender and ethnicity or safe friends of the appointee. That leads to the failure to seek and celebrate excellence. It clings to the conventional wisdom blocking out innovation and the first rate. It avoids critiquing the work of the mediocre, which is a necessary part of progress.
While this mediocrity rules, Little New Zealanders huddle down at the end of the world, ignorant and frightened of everywhere else, too lazy or intellectually underpowered to engage. Instead, they try to close down discussions on alternatives. Underlying this inferiority complex is a terrified vision that New Zealanders are not good enough to engage with the rest of the world – the mediocre may well not be.
Refusing to engage with alternatives is too common in New Zealand, especially if one is in a position of power. That is exactly what the Rogernomes did, refusing to discuss challenges to their paradigms. They used their political power and appointments – instead of rational argument – to repress those who disagreed with them. The Rogernomes’ strategy undermined quality economics. It became difficult to offer a coherent alternative as neo-liberal economics proved not to work. The uninformed commentariat took over.
There is a third way, captured by the ambition of a provincial English art gallery which wanted ‘a rigorous international programme, but to still feel very local’.
Our greatest artist, Colin McCahon, illustrates what can be achieved. Despite physical isolation, he followed overseas art trends closely in 1930s magazines. Trips to Australia and the United States in the 1950s enlarged his international understanding but the response when he returned was his alone. He located biblical events in New Zealand landscapes; he used passages from the Bible in his paintings and he used waiata. An eminent American art historian bracketed him, as local as he was, with Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko – one could hardly do better.
I don’t want us to live in a pitiable country dominated by introverted, mediocre Little New Zealanders terrified of the great world outside; nor do I want to join it as a Colonial, slavishly and obsequiously imitating offshore fashions. I want the people I care about to live in a nation where if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.