Theres a TV ad with a starving Polynesian child running home for white bread and milk. Goods provided by wealthy families, whiter families, in the earlier scene. It was like the white bread and white milk were a cure for being brown. It may seem to the ad people that the underprivileged kids are the brown kids and that it is as natural and logical to have brown people fronting things issues like rheumatic fever as it is to have white people fronting issues like melanoma. But what is natural or biological about the social order which causes the diseases of poverty in the first place? Isn’t this sort of stereotype reinforcement through the media – and in particularly television – also causative?
How many ads need to be shown of Pacific Island failures, like the smoke alarm burnt daughter, before kids of every type start allocating that group the characteristics of failure? How many selective racial identification of Maori offenders on Police 10-7 (and the other cop shows) needs to happen to maintain a stereotype of Maori. They only have about half a dozen photos to show the public each week, so they choose who they want. A form of meta profiling. Europeans however are a varied and complex group in comparison and their portrayal is in a positive or neutral situation. But is this racism?
Neil Waka reckoned he didn’t get a co-presenters job because the management at TV3 (regarded as progressive in these matters) would not wear two Maori presenters (I think he would have been paired with Carol Hirshfeldt). The odd controversy pops up here and there with staffing and characters on shows, but to most New Zealanders local TV is benign, multi-racial and a blur of happy memories of Terry Teo and Pio Tere, Rawiri Paratene and Howard Morrison; and more recently the Vodafone Maori kid.
Racial antagonism through the TV tube came in the form of Waitangi Day beat-ups, in both senses of the word. Heated current affairs panels and interviews over the years was the raw edge to race relations. At least some of the on-air presenters on state TV were Maori – the state radio, RNZ still has a ferocious colour bar that denies non-Europeans the right to talk on the government’s radio. This is appalling.
The editorial policy of networks and stations may not be prejudiced in themselves – but this says nothing of practice and the penetration of advertising that tends to circumvent the best of intentions. Every Freeview channel except Parliament TV runs ads – it is at saturation point and they are unavoidable.
‘Topsy’ – as any Kiwi would know – is the chocolate coated ice cream from Tip-Top (now owned by Fonterra). There was a Maori girl in pony tails as the mascot. What kiwis will not know is that Topsy is the slave girl from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Darker than dark. Topsy came out before the war of course, the thinking has not. The milky bar kid is creamy white… now a Maori girl. And as for the chocolate ad with a black Negro and a white Aryan getting together…? The opposite of Chuck Wollorey’s Love Connection that graced our screens in the late 80s and early 90s. He did not do inter-racial dating full stop. A stark contrast to the NZ dating games of the times.
The Z petrol station ads that have every race: European, Maori, Pacific Islanders, even Chinese. But not the race of people who actually, in real life, staff it – the Indians. No, you won’t see an Indian face precisely because they want to mask that reality; but in doing so what are they saying to their Indian staff? What are they saying about their Indian staff to the public? Are they are ashamed of it? Do they see Indian staff as a liability? Maybe there was consumer feedback hating on Indians or maybe that was just the ad agency’s Euro-centric bias. This comes from the same font of phobia as the dire Hell Pizza ad campaigns.
Do the ads reflect the shit ad creatives – which reeks of in-house amateurism – or do they reflect the franchise contracts at Hell Pizza keeping the white faces at front of house? If the racism exists in real-life how can the racism not be transmitted in the advertising and promotions? It crosses seamlessly in the case of Hell Pizza.
Susan Devoy to the rescue? Cue Tui ad.
All of the voices of the people in the Z ads were very Pakeha too – like the Maori fulla didn’t have a Maori accent.
I remember I saw Mike McRoberts and Carol Hirschfeld both presenting the 6pm news once.
Key word there: Once.
I don’t know if we are talking about the same ad but aren’t their two polynesian boys running home to get something to eat – one rich and one poor. One finds a well stocked fridge and makes some toast and drinks the milk. One finds an almost empty fridge but, yay, there is bread and milk there.
Before we got rid of the TV we used to mute the ads and talk…now we just talk uninterrupted and stream the latest shows at our leisure.
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