Media Council tosses out complaints about Tusiata Avia The Savage Coloniser poem published on Stuff
Stuff published the poem The 250th Anniversary of James Cook’s Arrival in New Zealand – written by author Tusiata Avia – which depicted hunting down “white men like” the British explorer. The poem was published within an article about Avia’s book The Savage Coloniser making its stage show debut.
Multiple complaints were submitted to the Media Council and Creative New Zealand received backlash from the ACT Party after revelations the stage show received taxpayer funding.
The Media Council, in a decision released on Friday, said those complaints have not been upheld.
According to the decision, the complainants “have right to express their disgust and disagreement, take a different view of colonisation, write letters to the editor, not to read Stuff and consume other media. But they do not have the right to not be offended”.
“Indeed, this poem is clearly intended to offend and to angrily challenge people’s views on colonisation, as explained in the feature. We note the Media Council does not have principles on taste and decency; that is the purview of the editor and if readers don’t like a publication’s taste they can write to the editor or get their news elsewhere,” the decision said.
What the fuck is this nonsense over a poem? Why is my sanity tested sweet Lord? Why?
Ok.
So a taxpayer funded poem that expresses the cultural anxiety and anger of being Polynesian in a white settler nation uses violent imagery and the performance art Right have taken snowflake trigger level offence and have complained to the Human Rights Commission and Media Council?
Oh Fuck right off!
Look, the only two issues with publicly funded art is:
1: Is it any good?
2: We need fuck loads more money in publicly funded art!
Those are the only two parameters, and on the first parameter Tusiata Avia fails miserably.
Excerpt from the poem:
These days
we’re driving round
in SUVs
looking for ya
or white men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, bitch?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP.
It’s a tired boring teenage rant poem missing unicorns crying rainbow tears level banality, but she has every fucking right to express herself with such tired anger and Creative NZ have every right to back her freedom of expression!
Yes, artists are exempt from the strict letter of the hate speech laws, the same way we give comedians that leeway, the same way we give many important voices of a liberal progressive democracy! This is the very nuance we demand and yet here we have the performance art Right manufacturing outrage the exact same way the woke do!
It’s a tired poem that uses violent imagery, as a defender of Free Speech I absolutely stand by her right to be a mediocre poet!
Attempting to twist her poem and its taxpayer funded roots into hate speech is a reminder to the Left that we should always defend free speech because the fucking right always attempt to use hate speech laws as a means of strangling off voices they don’t like!
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It’s okay for people to say whatever they want but we can’t allow anyone who says things like”people like you” anywhere near the levers of power.
More taxpayer funded resources going to waste on terrible, poetry.
I think it’s fine she wrote it, but feel it’s tone deaf to promote it on stuff. How many more hand outs do NZ woke media need as their readership plummets?
If had been a different race or gender then the shit would hit the fan and it would be banned. Thus we now have a double standard of woke, that people are not happy about in NZ.
Lets change the race and gender and see if it’s still ok? Is it now a hate crime? Thus we have a big problem that seems to elude the NZ government and censors by having a dual system of race/gender/ hate speech.
or black men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, poof?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP.
seems like there are many different versions of tolerance in woke world. Some violence and racial hate are ok, but others are hate speech. Maybe why people are dividing not unified under the woke umbrella and knowledge and tolerance is lost.
Anyway going to go and groom my kids to be victims and ram raid and hate others on race and gender and hate debate too. Cos I can. Sarcasm.
Surely this poem is free speech Seymour?
Or is only free speech when YOU say it is?
Anyone who isn’t irredeemably biased would have to admit that, if the situation were inverted and a White man wrote a poem that was hostile towards brown women, we’d never hear the end of it and the poet would have their life ruined. It’s pretty redundant to point out the inconsistency, but there you have it.
Agreed
Agree with Martyn’s argument that this is Art but you are 100% correct Fidel. This is typical double standard, the media council wont stand up for anyone with a right wing view (oops I meant centrist these days) but suddenly starts speaking free speech when it suits them. They are right of course but dont walk the talk.
“as a defender of Free Speech I absolutely stand by her right to be a mediocre poet!”
Absolutely. But not at taxpayers expense, surely?
It’s not the free speech issue, it’s the clear double-standard involved: brown people can obviously openly express violent sentiments against White people (we deserve it, apparently), yet White people could never be allowed to reciprocate because of “muh racism.” We should be all free to use our speech to abuse others (short of open incitement), but it cannot go only one way.
Agree
It’s ( admittedly atrocious) “art”. I am sure there would be other funded works that you might like but others would be outraged at taxpayer money being spent on.
Fidel probably has a point about reversing the roles but I guess the problem with that is a bunch of Polynesians didn’t paddle up the Thames and help themselves.
Brilliant!
Yes, but a load of Romans, and then a load of Vikings, certainly did.
They probably would have if they were sufficiently technically advanced. I don’t think it was a superior sense of morality that prevented Polynesians from colonising Europe, it was simply that they didn’t have the capability.
Well I guess we will never know but it’s a bit of a weird argument to say “ but they would have if they could have”. They didn’t.
Creative New Zealand? Oh dear. This is the level which these people function at themselves. They almost certainly thought that this was a good poem.
We have to be honest here and admit that a half-decent New Zealand lady poet like Fleur Adcock, or Lauris Edmond…or gentle Eileen Colonialist Duggan… would be totally beyond the comprehension of Creative New Zealand.
These are the ignorami who believe that William Shakespeare buggered up the colonisation of New Zealand after having incited it in the first place. That’s who they are, shuffling along Lambton Quay dressed like paid funeral mourners whose other specialty is advertising birds’ nest soup the way that Dr Elizabeth Canary does, and invariably, invariably, with the backs of their shoes dirty- ours not to wonder why.
The fact that the Media Council still exists is a surprise though. What on earth have they been doing?
Media being the plural of medium, one wonders if they make their decisions in sandalwood scented rooms with the lights off, holding hands under a table with a fringed cloth, and hoping like hell that the voice of Uncle Frank doesn’t start speaking from the past, and that the dead stay well and truly dead.
Media Council ? Oh God. Predictable bunch of egotistical irritants more concerned with impressing each other and being culturally correct and getting onto as many committees and reviews as they possibly can,than wasting time on aesthetics, let alone truth or beauty. The easy money people. Nice work if you can get it. Ever been at a dinner party of journalists ? They’re so busy showing off that you could feed them pizza with bird droppings on and they wouldn’t notice.
Bearing in mind that it is easier to get into heaven than be published in “ Landfall”, expect to spend eternity in bliss, never having to see or hear from these social vandals again. Try not to think about child povidy, or cold lonely old people, or dislocated adolescents, or evil drug pushers, or cops watching women getting beaten, or mums desperate about kids home alone, or whether our decent hard working grandparents deserve to be constantly vilified at the expense of we, the idiot tax payers, and just plant spuds in buckets and secrete the books which they’d burn if we let them near them.
Fabulous
If Stuff published this person’s writing just doing their usual anti-white mischief making, they were being pretty juvenile. If their intention was to incite hatred then they need to take a hard look at themselves.
There are people who believe what they read in newspapers and sometimes act on it. Stuff certainly wallow in bashing pioneering New Zealand with an absence of both critical thinking and historical knowledge, but MSM are generally like that now, and the politicians are no better. Captain Cook, another great man of history being soiled by a bunch of nobodies, is sickening, but Creative New Zealand seem to be systemic Neanderthals now and Sepuloni ,Minister of Culture, should explain why.
Unfortunately for Tusiata a good number of those SUVs are driving to the nearest church as some of the colonisers were excellent con artists.
Decades ago I went to Kings Cross in Sydney and saw Les Girls. Very glamorous – outdid most women. Now everyone seems to want to be in the act. But what about all the ordinary people around trying to live their lives in trying times, are they to be pushed off centre stage? Answer – yes unless they show their sensitive sides by writing poetry.
which definitely is not easy so would expand minds which at present are too narrow.
Carlotta seems to have been an enduring star.
https://sydneytransgender.com/talent-profile-carlotta.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugclT0fSQEE
https://worldqueerstory.org/tag/he-did-it-her-way-the-legend-of-les-girls/
Les Girls were brilliant back in the day.
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