Cut to Shakespeare funding not ‘indicative of a culture war in New Zealand’, says Jacinda Ardern
Jacinda Ardern has said the decision to scrap funding for a long-running Shakespere education festival is not “indicative of a culture war in New Zealand”.
But it is though eh Prime Minister?
See, if Creative NZ had simply said, ‘hey guys, sorry but we are going in a new direction for funding this year’, we would have to take them at their word, because they are the appropriate gatekeepers of this funding for our Arts, but they didn’t fucking say that did they?
They released commentary bragging that they were cancelling Shakespeare and these woke little Wellington fucks thought they were going to get a round of applause on Twitter didn’t they?
That’s why the released the commentary, because as far as they are concerned, Shakespeare is the epitome of heteronormative white cis male privilege whose work is centred in Imperialism and this was a means to decolonise Aotearoa.
These Wellington woke fascists made it a culture war!
The Prime Minister has suggested a hui to discuss the issues, when in reality she should be threatening to sack the Board for such a stupid political stunt!
The joy of the Boomer King Wayne Burns napalming the feckless bureaucrats of the CCOs is a joy to behold, but it also tells the self serving public service their are actual consequences to fucking up.
The Prime Minister shouldn’t be calling for another hug-a-thon, she should be putting the stick about while screaming,
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with the Wellington Professional Class dead! Cry ‘Havoc! , and let slip the vegans of war.”
The Wellington Bureaucracy, the self serving public service, know only the threat of being sacked. In cancelling Shakespeare for crimes against woke dogma, these morons are providing the ammunition for the right to win point after point the longer this drags on!
This is why the Left will lose the election next year, we keep handing the right ammunition!
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“political stunt” – that’s exactly it, and are not public servants professionally bound to be apolitical in their service?
“Cometh the hour, cometh the man.” Ooops! Winstons been thrown out already.
Doth future bodes unfortunate for thees muthf$%^kers!
“Behold what light through yonder window breaks?”
“Oh that’s just Winston lighting a fag”
Hold on a minute! I smell a rat.
Are we going to here that the PM whakapapa’s to Shakespeares’ mother, Mary Ardern are we?
And that is why she’s going to reinstate the funding!! Or not to be?
SEEE! What did tell yah’ll! Her Shakespeare Whakapapa connections kicked in!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/476878/pm-jacinda-ardern-says-funding-for-school-shakespeare-festival-to-continue
Lol
Of course it’s a culture war and I won’t accept someone with a crappy degree from the Deck Chair University saying that it isn’t, just because she happens to be PM. How on earth would she know ?
Someone did gift her a doctorate during her US tour?
About as meaningful as John Key’s knighthood. Lipstick on pigs.
ouch! lol! but so true.
Absolutely an attack by those who seek to “decolonize “ NZ. Wtf does that even mean
It means they still want all the good things brought here by colonists (and colonist inventors) like things with wheels, electricity, hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, computers, telephones while pretending that they don’t need it
I agree the message should have been, “hey guys, sorry but we are going in a new direction for funding this year.”
That said, if Creative NZ is to be about the ‘canons of imperialism’ and ‘decolonising Aotearoa’ maybe they should show some balls (oops, five years solitary on Curtis Island for saying that) and lead the way in getting rid of all imperialist and colonisation art from our galleries and the study of such stuff in our schools.
To what end? What is decolonization? Quick working definition would be helpful at this point.
An indigenous people who did not have a written language want to cancel the greatest exponent of the language that rules the world( it is the language of of money after all).That’s how it reads to me.
Why ? How will this anti intellectualism advance children’s literacy?
Glad to see this fuss anyway. Especially as few English teachers these days can teach the Bard .
I doubt “Maori” want to cancel William Shakespeare. It’s Ngati Pakeha from the woke iwi, hoping to make out with a “native girl”
so if you behave like a dick you get laid??? how very insightful Terry.
Great summary.
Draq Queens reading queer literature in libraries will fix that literacy.
@Shona It’s part of woke cultural conflict theory of oppressor/oppressed (aka sinner/sanctified). The particular domain here is coloniser/indigenous, one of many intersectional domains.
In each domain you find the tool of Critical Theory (contemporary use*), which is a ‘reflective discourse to find fault’. Rhetorically deconstructing and problematising ANYTHING you want to target. Think of CT as a universal solvent that attempts to dissolves anything it touches.
Examples (genuine):
– A white man won’t date a black woman – That’s exclusionary, he’s a racist!
– A white man will date a black woman – That’s fetishising black women, he’s a racist!
– Seatbelts were originally made for men – That’s sexist!
– Why are there different backpacks designed for both men and women – That’s pointless gendering and transphobic.
One succeeds in CT by arriving at a satisfying narrative that links the observation to the ‘correct’ a priori conclusion. The conclusion typically has an ethical judgement attached (good/bad). By this process, having determined that ‘X is bad’, critical social justice logic demands that X be removed, cancelled, corrected etc to balance the scales of equity.
Within the ‘coloniser/indigenous domain’ this whole process but particularly the last step is ‘decolonisation’.
Occasionally the ‘satisfying narrative’ does match reality (arguably seatbelts) and they get something right. However there is no truth seeking in the empirical, objective sense, truth is explicitly relative, hence the emphasis on ‘lived experience’ and ‘authentic voices’, which themselves are only valid if they agree with Theory.
Please remember most people in an ‘oppressed class’ of any intersectional domain did not ask to be a political football. indigenous people (Māori) do NOT want to cancel the greatest exponent of the english language. They are being used as both human shield and battering ram to leverage political, financial or resource advantage to elite ideologues who are of all races, sexes and genders.
* CT is applied incorrectly by the Woke. A universal solvent has uses as one tool among many, but you shouldn’t use it on everything. CT is the woke-hammer and everything is a nail.
Thank you.Tui.
Copied pasted printed for future reference. Just as well it’s Spring I will be able to ruminate and attempt to reach a grasp of this BS while doing useful stuff like planting my main garden for my food supply.
@Shona yes it’s sophistry and nonsense but a very specific kind of nonsense. It appeals superficially to people’s natural empathy and tendency to root for the underdog while advancing some incredibly bad ideas. Motte and Bailey argumentation.
Decolonisation is…
A: When the indigenous people get back everything that was taken, the colonizing power withdraws, taking all their settlers with them, and the indigenous people rule their own country & destiny.
Or
B: When all the people of the country are intermingled, past differences & grievances are long forgotten, colonial shackles have been consigned to history, and previous divisions are no longer relevant. So now everyone can move forward together towards a brighter future as a united & independent nation with it’s own unique culture.
I suspect Creative NZ were going for option A.
Maybe we just need to stop venerating stone age cultures as something magical and cancel all the cults derived from primitive middle eastern desert cultures? Would that make things better? Sure if it’s your culture & gives you something you treasure, great, hold on to that, but don’t expect any special privilege. We all live in the same society and share same rights.
I love my culture, Shakespeare included, the history, and the many achievements of my dual nations, I feel no guilt. My culture is a component of who I am and the way I view the world and I would not surrender it lightly.
Good on you Richard Slade a view shared by a majority of New Zealanders.
@RS you are correct in the dictionary sense but not here. A big part woke rhetorical strategy is the redefinition of words to advance a political agenda.
Much of woke language is equivocation, words have specialised meanings and not the commonly used ones. (racist, antiracist, sexist, authentic, diversity, inclusion, critical etc).
In this case ‘decolonisation’ could be called ‘disruption’. Disrupt a cultural institution, polarise a social division scoop out the people who agree (the in-group) and move on this one way the ideology propagates. Decolonisation is window dressing, a narrative pretext to justify disruption. It has nothing to do with “the indigenous people” (except as leverage).
The scooped out in-group could be 100% white male and zero Māori could benefit and it would still be ‘decolonisation’.
The risk with redefining words is no one knows what you actually mean anymore. Does your cleansing mean cleaner streets or less blacks/whites/Serbs/Croats/Muslims/Jews/Christians/poor? Does your decolonisation mean recognizing that indigenous people have the same rights & protections as other citizens or does it involve rope, lampposts & fire bombing “colonisers” homes & businesses?
Generally if in doubt, assume the worst & stamp it out hard. There is a good chance this will happen under a ACT/National government and it will likely have the backing of a majority of our citizens who don’t like the direction our society is heading.
However, most of what’s going on now is pure distraction, the equivalent of the meme with the man with 100 cookies, telling the worker with 1 cookie that the immigrant is going to steal his cookie, only this time replace immigrant with Maori (because the plan to import plenty more “high skilled” immigrants to keep wages low & inflate the economy).
If you look carefully you might realize the players on the stage of our democracy are merely wooden puppets, peer closer and you may even see the strings. Follow those stings and you’ll find more wooden puppet hands pulling those strings, and so on. Who knows who really controls our world? You can be sure that it isn’t you & me. Stay safe.
Yes Richard, you’re right. Thanks for vocalising it.
@RS
“The risk with redefining words is no one knows what you actually mean anymore.”
Yes that’s the exactly point. These words have very specific meanings to people schooled in CT and often sound positive to everyone else. It’s feeds into Motte and Bailey argumentation.
For example would many reasonable people object to “hearing authentic Maori voices and thinking critically about New Zealand in 2022”?
To normal people this might mean (Motte):
Hearing from a wide range of Maori what it is like living in NZ in 2022 and taking an honest appraisal of the good and the bad.
However what this actually means is (Bailey):
– Authentic = agrees with CT
So hearing from woke Maori who see society as an oppressive colonial power dynamic. Non-woke Maori who do not agree with this viewpoint do not have an “authentic voice”.
– Thinking critically = The cultural conflict theory lens
So interpreting or conjuring narratives about any aspect of present day New Zealand that frames society as an oppressive colonial power dynamic.
———-
“Generally if in doubt, assume the worst & stamp it out hard.”
The Motte aspect usually appeals to empathy and compassion so the caution in ‘stamping it out’ is you will end up facing off against people who are decent and well meaning but never saw past the Motte. Woke ideology propagates by divide and conquer.
———–
“If you look carefully you might realize the players on the stage of our democracy are merely wooden puppets”
IMO the real game is socio-economic politics, finance, resources etc. Culture politics and identity do matter, but they come way down the list of importance and are typically used as a mobilising ploy or sandpit to keep people occupied, divided against each other and away from meddling in things that really matter.
It is as you say, a distraction.
couldn’t agree more!
Peter I think the bastards may have started. The Canterbury Musuem in Christchurch used to have an excellent Early Settlers section, presented in series of tableaux. I read recently that it had to go. Our hard working pioneering ancestors have now been demonised as ‘colonialists,’ and hordes of ignorami from Kelvin Davis up, hate contemporary Pakeha for utterly inexcusable reason.
probably near the truth there terry, I pretended to like david cassidy in the hope of getting ‘top’
I’m seriously considering voting NZ First & Winnie for the first time ever. I’m horrified at the thought of a National + ACT government just as much as a Labour + Green government. Seriously I don’t know which would be worse.
Cancel culture and the criminalisation of speech is a one way ticket one party state authoritarianism. While I shudder to think what National + ACT will lead to
This. Winston is going to steal Labour votes this time around, not Nationals.
If you want a change in govt, why would you vote NZ First? He’ll simply go with Labour, notwithstanding the soft National voter would hardly trust him again and Act are doing a better job in regards of holding the govt to account over co- governance.
Winnie won’t go with labour, he will go with whoever gives him the biggest baubles.
The people in National that he spited last time are gone, so this time around he will revert to his normal greedy, narcissistic self.
But yeah, why would you vote Winnie?
Jays. Mr Peters recognises the importance of leisure and pleasure more than any of our overseers in the current government ever will, they’re too busy keeping people grovelling, preferably in silence.
Mr Peters is a racing man, and that’s a fairly simple example of pleasure having positive spin-offs. In the sadistic department I had the misfortune to work in, we had a hat competition on Melbourne Cup days – initiated by staff not management with their childish USA imported team building exercises. It was fun, and hugely creative. A Parata won once with a stylish woven flax cloche adorned with greenery, and Josh, a Samoan guy, scored with a crown of corrugated cardboard, slightly pissing off when I made it when we were sneaking smokes together illicitly in the landing bay out the back, and he got to keep the prize of chocolate – Cadbury’s from Dunedin, once the best, and pretty indigenous.
The quiet former teacher recovering from a nervous breakdown who used to pray that John Key would get cancer and die, won once, and the lifting of her spirits was contagious, everybody did a Siegfried Sassoon- refer “ Everybody Sang”.
Peters is no worse than anybody else, and has a verbal fluency unmatched by any of the dolts in there now, although James Shaw did make a good Christmas speech a few years ago, and Chris Finlayson had an acerbic show-offy intellectualism which has left a vacuum.
“ What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare ? “
If Winston Peters can provide any distraction from the doom and gloom merchants squeezing us now, he’s welcome to.
Terry. Do whatever it takes to get rid of authoritarian censor-the-world Ardern and the loopy Greens.
It could mean ACT, but there ‘s still time for smaller parties to come thru’. But Labour and the Greens squandered the chances we gave them, and need to be punished. They could emerge the better for it. National are also pretty damn useless; they were also too timid to engage with the Parliamentary protestors, but they do support keeping the much needed Commissioner for Children, Labour seem to be the only group wanting to axe that office.
Terry .. you will have a ton of company doing exactly the same thing. Kiwis are FINALLY waking up to this mind fuck of a govt, and a lot don’t see too much better in Suxon and especially a union with that little Star Trek fan club president and hall monitor C-more… Winny P come on down!
I have found myself in exactly the same position Terry . . between a rock and a hard place with Winnie smiling winningly between ’em . .
Jacinda says it’s not her place to get involved in the decision. So she has a new portfolio: Minister of not getting involved. That just about sums up her entire two terms.
Let’s face it though SK if she did get involved, she would be attacked for it would be the end of democracy for stepping on the toes of an independent body, or she would be accused of worrying about a festival while people are doing it tough etc.
Sounds like Moaist Culture Revolution – destroy the old, cancel Shakespeare, topple the settler and war hero statues, desecrate the churches and replace with what? Decolonisation. Don Selwyn will be laughing at them from the grave.
“When I was going to school they brought Shakespeare in to colonise me,” Selwyn told Herald writer Michele Hewitson. “Now I’ve put it into Māori language I’ve colonised Shakespeare.”
https://youtu.be/seWszkBD6Cw
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/complete-knobs-creative-nzs-sheilah-winn-shakespeare-festival-funding-cut-slammed-again/JXMKRIRD2FRYK4NSASZBITFV2I/
Nailed it!
Where art thou job, where art thou health services the act party cancelled them.
The Prime Minister is part of Wokeborg. She is hardly going to go to war with her own kind.
Well well well. Carmel Sepuloni. Minister of Arts and Culture, and of Keeping the Poor poor, and Putting the Boot into the Children’s Commissioner, looks as if she could be the biggest part of the problem here.
VU’s James Wensley writes today of the shocking underfunding of the arts in New Zealand generally. In pandemic times, when even the odd politician recognises that mental health has taken a hit right throughout the community, I would have expected reasonable funding to be made available to help people’s well being here, but it looks as if Sepuloni doesn’t really care about anybody at all.
It would be unfair to expect a Tongan lady to have any appreciation of Shakespeare, or knowledge of
his massive and enriching impact throughout history ever since, but as the Minister, puzzlingly
responsible for Arts and Culture, she should have been ensuring that funding is maintained ,and increased, and she hasn’t, just like she hasn’t been a voice for the children of the poor. What a piece of work.
I do hope that Dr Wensley does’t lose his job for speaking out about funding issues and so on, and kudos to him for doing so. The picture seems to me to be of a culture war with the Labour Government V The People of New Zealand.
I decided to apply for a role online recently. Perfect fit with my experience which was great.
Until I discovered, at the bottom of the job ad, ‘Māori, pasifika or women preferred’. WTF – that used to be illegal.
Thought there must be some mistake. So I emailed the human rights commission – who told me this was called positive discrimination and was perfectly ok and encouraged.
Didn’t seem that positive to me.
I posted this online somewhere. Someone I knew saw it and warned me not to say anything else I’ll end up branded ‘stale, pale and male’. That these three words are ageist, racist and sexist didn’t seem to occur to them.
I decided to check out from society.
checking out from society is exactly what they want you to do. You’re better off standing your ground and engaging
Self ID as a women, she/ her pronouns and all that jazz, don’t worry yu don’t need to wear heels or lippy, and voila bingo you are ‘stunning, most marginalized’ and chances are they will hire you. After all you have all of the experience. And no, I am not kidding.
Jays. Mr Peters recognises the importance of leisure and pleasure more than any of our overseers in the current government ever will, they’re too busy keeping people grovelling, preferably in silence.
Mr Peters is a racing man, and that’s a fairly simple example of pleasure having positive spin-offs. In the sadistic department I had the misfortune to work in, we had a hat competition on Melbourne Cup days – initiated by staff not management with their childish USA imported team building exercises. It was fun, and hugely creative. A Parata won once with a stylish woven flax cloche adorned with greenery, and Josh, a Samoan guy, scored with a crown of corrugated cardboard, slightly pissing off when I made it when we were sneaking smokes together illicitly in the landing bay out the back, and he got to keep the prize of chocolate – Cadbury’s from Dunedin, once the best, and pretty indigenous.
The quiet former teacher recovering from a nervous breakdown who used to pray that John Key would get cancer and die, won once, and the lifting of her spirits was contagious, everybody did a Siegfried Sassoon- refer “ Everybody Sang”.
Peters is no worse than anybody else, and has a verbal fluency unmatched by any of the dolts in there now, although James Shaw did make a good Christmas speech a few years ago, and Chris Finlayson had an acerbic show-offy intellectualism which has left a vacuum.
“ What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare ? “
If Winston Peters can provide any distraction from the doom and gloom merchants squeezing us now, he’s welcome to.
Jimbo. There’s nothing to stop you ID’ing as Maori, Pacifica, or a woman right now. The Greens got the legislation through empowering you to, and your kids too, and if you try and stop your kids doing so, they can lock you up. Considering how “colonialists” buggered up the gender fluency and diversity of Elizabeth Kerekere’s ancestors, this is an opportunity for you to redress historical wrongs, so seize the day, it could be the making of you. You may go slightly mad, in which case join a political party and become a politician among others just like yourself.
It sounds like the HRC has just lent strong support to Seymour’s plan to abolish it.
Some Kiwis are more equal than others.
Let’s face it though SK if she did get involved, she would be attacked for it would be the end of democracy for stepping on the toes of an independent body, or she would be accused of worrying about a festival while people are doing it tough etc.
Yeah, we need to ban all that colonially imposed, racist stuff like….the written word.
/sarc
Andrew. The PM has already addressed the UNO about the desirability of banning, and it wasn’t talking that she talked about, it was the post post-modern modes of expression. Hide your digits.
So now the PM has stepped in and the thespian rapture looks set to continue. She said she didn’t agree with original decision.
Now queue all the whinging old prats who say she should not get involved.