So there’s this new haka the All Blacks are doing before big rugby matches, with a gesture at the end that is interpreted as ‘throat-slitting’.
Parents are complaining about their kids copying the gesture in a threatening way.
I’ve been trying to find out what my opinion is on this important issue of the day. But I’m stuck! I can’t figure out which side are the silly Politically Correct wooly woofters!
Are they:
- the people who make a fuss about the haka? (Everyone knows that trying to mollycoddle our kids is the worst kind of PC liberal tree hugging nonsense!)
Or are they:
- the people who don’t make a fuss about the haka? (Everyone knows that favouring “Maori values” over proper New Zealand values is the worst kind of PC happy-clappy idiocy!)
I’ve consulted a range of right-wing blogs and columns but they don’t seem to agree! Gosh! What a fix! Someone explain it to me please, or I’m going to start thinking *everyone* is a Politically Correct nancy!
I think you need to think on this as if you were corporate advertisement executive. The haka is a NZ brand. That brand just keeps on geeting exposure. The publicity, be it PC or not, is increasing that exposure. Rub your hands with glee, and milk that brand (or at least the account)!
And Huzzah! You already have, you weasely you. You are a writer, and you have absorbed the brand into your blog. Innocent young throat slitters are now going to google ‘Haka Throat Slit’ and come here.
Dude, you should try being a silly-Politically-Correct-wooly-woofter Pro-Wrestling fan.
Political Correctness is a myth. Like the dragon, the pint of beer, and the Irishman. None of them really exist.
Well now, if this was a haka taken from some Iwi then ok, maybe I would say “oh but it’s a traditional Maori custom etc” – maybe. But it’s not. It was written exclusively for the All Blacks to apparently represent the more diverse ethnicity of the team. What throat-slitting has to do with this is unknown. Maybe the writer thought there were some Taliban in there? I think it’s bullshit. It’s a rugby game for God’s sake, and this is how we welcome our guests? Emarrassing macho posturing and total ignorance of the values that make sport the great thing it is. A curious mixture of NZ’s arrogance and insularity at its worst.
And I say that as one who admits to as irrational an emotional relationship with All Black success or failure as any to be found in these isles.
“Emarrassing macho posturing and total ignorance of the values that make sport the great thing it is.”
Uhhhh… Isn’t that an oxymoron?
Scott, Chris Moller NZRFU Chief Exec. released a statement a few weeks ago that included the following:
“While the haka’s final movement has been described as a cut-throat gesture, its meaning within Maori culture and the tradition of haka was very different.”
This was confirmed in more detail by Kapa O Pango’s composer Derek Lardelli who said the haka ended with the word “Ha” meaning “the breath of life”.
“The words and motions represent drawing vital energy into the heart and lungs.”
The right arm searched for the “Ha” on the left side of the body while the head turned to the right also symbolically seeking vital energy.
The right hand hauled that energy into the pou-whakaora (the heart, lungs and air passages), then the eyes and tongue signalled that the energy had been harnessed before it was expelled with the final “Ha”.
I would say that individuals are free to have their own response to Kapo O Pango. My own thinking about it has changed in light of the intentions of the composer and the performers – the ABs are well aware of the intended significance in both hakas.
And as far as Political Correctness goes, the suggestion that I am somehow obliged to accept a pre-fabricated moral standpoint without recourse to any kind of independant thought is a standpoint I’d reject.
“uhhh…is that an oxymoron”
uhhhh…is that a rhetorical question? I don’t know if that’s an oxymoron Pearce, to be honest. Why? Was the sentence unintelligible as a result?
I was about to give more details about the Haka (energy transference et al)… but Brad beat me to it. Go Brad.
I could give a toss. If they wanted to drop their trousers and expose their backsides to the opposition, I wouldn’t really care. Is it setting a good example for kids? Possibly not. But it can’t be worse than any of those video games (a la Grand Theft Auto). Bad influences are out there. Deal.
The easy way to do it is to give any kids making the gesture a damn good thrashing, that way there’s no mollycoddling the little buggers or indulging the bloody Maoris.
Yeah, but Grand Turismo isn’t preseuming to represent me as a New Zealand citizen and All Black follower – whereas the entire All Black brand is predicated on it – so tell me, is it wise to execute your prisoners before you’ve captured them?
Dont’ get me wrong – I want us to uttery destroy all and any opposition as is our God-given Rugby Right – It’s just stupid if we fall victim to our inherent Hubris yet again …
And, I maintain that is is an embarassment; motioning to cut throats before something as apolitical as a game of rugby. We ain’t fighting the Second World War, no matter how much the media would love us to believe we are…
Sport is as impotent as it gets.
From a historical standpoint the inference that the gesture is a Maori gesture for throat slitting implies a technology level in Maori that they did not develop in their own culture.
I assert that effective throat slitting requires a sharp knife. You can make sharp edges from metal, high end cermaic formed under pressure from powder or glass.
Traditional Maori have no metalwork and no glasswork. As metalworking is a prerequesit technology to forming high end ceramic knives, Maori could not have possesed ceramic knives either.
The Maori did posses an interesting weapon making technology in the form of wood petrification. They would petrify wood in swaps which makes wood very hard. Not hard enough to hold a cutting edge as I understand it however.
Of my limited extend of Maori martial forms, I understand that various Maori weapons where used in striking motions, not in slitting motions.
Although I understand warrier Maori were able to cleave a long way into a skull with various weapons, this was in a striking motion not a stabbing motion.
The interpretation of the gesture as throat slitting, and the assertion by many people that this is what it will be interpreted as by other peoples is an extremely arrogant interpretation of a tradional form from a culture that is not aware of it’s own technological prowess.
Scott: I was sort of saying:
“Aren’t ’embarrassing macho posturing’ and ‘the values that make sport the great thing it is’ the same thing?”
As a joke. You know?
d3vo: What about bone carving? Some of those fishhooks are pretty durned sharp.
It’s not throat slitting. Whiners and moaners can get f**ked, they’re wrong. End of story.
to add to pearce: greenstone is really sharp too.
Some of those stones, you know, on the foreshore and seabed like, they are pretty sharp also.
Some sea shells are also sharp. Also teeth. The occassional rock. A woman’s tongue. Etc.