island dreams

I woke up on Tuesday thinking about Whale Rider. There are two films that absolutely destroy me, and that’s one of them (the other is Billy Elliott). Last week I was in a writing slump so I did some research on folktales for a write-for-hire gig; I’ve always wanted to write about a mermaid, and was happy to come across a Sirena story from Guam. A few days later, I watched a documentary on veterans in Guam and realized I have a lot to learn about the Pacific Islands (Disney’s version of Polynesian culture is on its way). On Wednesday I wrote over a thousand words and decided to treat myself to a matinee; Hunt for the Wilderpeople was playing at the Angelika so I went to see it without knowing much about the film (spoilers ahead). It is HILARIOUS but there were some problematic parts for me and I left the theater unsure whether I wanted to watch Lord of the Rings or Whale Rider (I love both, but chose the latter). This month I’ve committed to seeing films that have people of color at the center, and Wilderpeople met that criteria because one of the stars is a Māori boy, Julian Dennison. He brilliantly plays Ricky Baker, a 13-year-old foster child who has been labeled “a bad egg” by Paula, the caseworker responsible for finding him one last placement on a remote farm with Bella and Hec. Paula sees Ricky as a “thug” who is beyond redemption and the boy is clearly inspired by US hip hop culture (he sports a hoodie, tags walls with graffiti, aspires to be a “gangsta,” and at one point he admits the deceased rapper Tupac is his only friend). Bella is loving and welcomes haiku-writing Ricky into their modest home but Hec is a loner who has no use for the boy; when Bella dies suddenly, the caseworker returns for Ricky but he sets a fire to fake his own death and flees into the bush with his new pet (a pitbull named Tupac). He quickly gets lost but is found by Hec and the two wind up bonding as fugitives on a five-month run from the police and child welfare services. As you can probably tell from the images I’ve included, the problematic parts of the film for me were the moments when Ricky “played Indian” (see Debbie Reese’s analysis of this same issue in Lane Smith’s latest picture book) The film’s writer/director is Māori and half the actors in the film are as well, but there was no mention of Indigenous history, which I found odd. What percentage of kids in foster care in NZ are Indigenous, and what is that experience like? Ricky inadvertently and then deliberately accuses Hec of “molestering” him, but in a serious moment he also reveals that a friend from the group home committed suicide after being abused by her foster father. When Ricky and Hec venture into the bush, there’s no mention of the history of land ownership. How did those thousands of hectares become a national park? When Hec admits that he can’t read, Ricky cruelly teases him by performing the role of a “dumb savage” (I’m not sure how to describe it, but that’s how it read to me). By the end of the film, Ricky does end up placed with a Māori family he met while in the bush, which gave me hope (he also invites Hec to live with them). Before she died, Bella told Ricky about a lake that seems to feature in Māori mythology, and that possibly served as his introduction to his cultural heritage. Isolated from his cultural community, Ricky immersed himself in US hip hop culture, which does create some comedic moments in the film (at one point he cocks a hunting rifle and hollers, “Shit just got real!”—a dramatic gesture mimicked by elderly White Hec who doesn’t grasp the cultural significance). But it also makes Black culture look ridiculous and/or only violent, and even though I know that rap music has empowered marginalized youth around the world, it hurts to see young brown men modeling themselves after Black “gangstas.” While watching Whale Rider last night, I noticed that a father recently released from prison leaves the cultural heritage school his son attends to join his tough-guy friends in a car blasting rap music—so rap figures as the antithesis of indigenous cultural awareness rather than the tool to heighten, promote, and preserve one’s history/heritage. I’ve been watching HBO’s The Night Of and EVERY Black character in the show is criminal and/or pathological. In a way, the young Pakistani-American wrongly charged with murder is in Rikers because he wanted to “be cool” and party with the Black male athletes he tutored at college. Now he’s in prison being mentored by the kingpin Black criminal who controls the inmates (all Black) and corrections officers (also all Black). I keep saying I won’t watch another episode but…I’m probably going to see Disney’s Moana, too. We look for the value, right? I should say that I thoroughly enjoyed Hunt for the Wilderpeople and will probably see it again in the theater just so I can discuss it afterward with a friend. And the film IS a comedy, so perhaps it’s unfair and/or unrealistic to “burden” it with these considerations. And clearly I’m viewing it through a US lens. If you’ve seen it, let me know what you think.