Surprise, surprise – Stuff supports woke cancelling of Shakespeare – here’s the list of Board members

34 Comments

1. “Advisor, Funding Services” – Nice work if you can get it, I’m sure.

   Maybe for their next project they can erase the works of Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Picasso because of they are “located within a canon of imperialism…”

   1. Seven ‘Advisors, Funding Services’. That’s at how much a piece, plus their managers? Say 7x $40,000 each (some might be part-time – take it as a low average) – that’s near $300,000 in salary plus desk and computer cost that could go to some struggling artist.

      The artists and creatives that marched in protest against Sir Peter Jackson’s methods to get Lord of the Rings made here, and tried to link up with the oppo in Oz for some union leverage, they were looking at the wrong group. I would not be surprised to find some of them amongst Creative NZ’s acolytes, that is amongst those that haven’t parachuted in to NZ to rise to management positions bringing their ‘oe’ – overseas expertise.

      1. Grewarbler. At least double that $ 40,000 each.

2. Can we stop cancelling culture and start cancelling violence against others instead. Some very sad stories of children and teens who have been murdered but the police/OT/ did not discover it for whatever reason straight away – this leads you to wonder who many times murder is now being missed in NZ.

   Too much protection and enablement to high needs violent people in NZ – very sad case with a teen doing all the right things and excited about life being killed brutally and no justice as yet.

   Less focus on woke and more focus on protecting people here!

   Murdered teen Ariki Rigby’s sister: ‘No one deserves to die like that’
   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/murdered-teen-ariki-rigbys-sister-no-one-deserves-to-die-like-that/QZEXD2CLL44XW6FQ2GZYL73OSM/

   Auckland teen was kidnapped and tortured, court hears
   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/398171/auckland-teen-was-kidnapped-and-tortured-court-hears

   Exclusive: Woman arrested over suitcase child homicides hiding out in Korean apartment complex owned by a metals company
   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/exclusive-woman-arrested-over-suitcase-child-homicides-hiding-out-in-korean-apartment-complex-owned-by-a-metals-company/OIP4EN7QTBXRAV57IYFPQKACXI/

   Ombudsman accuses Oranga Tamariki of ‘litany of failures’ before Malachi Subecz’s death
   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/476106/ombudsman-accuses-oranga-tamariki-of-litany-of-failures-before-malachi-subecz-s-death

   Body of newborn found at Auckland recycling centre came in on rubbish truck
   Body of newborn found at Auckland recycling centre came in on rubbish truck

   Stop pretending NZ is a good place to bring up a family, it seems to be a place where young children in state care are abused and neglected by agencies that are too woke now to do their job and missing kids are murdered but nobody notices.

   Bodies are being found all over the place.

   1. NZ doesn’t need children. They can be imported. Only those people with money can count on receiving care and compassion from government agencies. Everything must be costed and net profit calculated; Child numbers will be worked out on marginal effectiveness basis.
      (This is possibly at the basis of NZ/Aotearoa current approach. Perhaps the NZ Initiative would like to comment on this from their deep economic understanding and experience.)

      The ‘law’ of diminishing marginal utility, asserts that additional units of a commodity are worth less and less to a consumer in money terms. As the individual’s consumption increases, the marginal utility of each additional unit declines. Baumol & Blinder 1979.

      1. NZ is raising cockoo children, who are not Kiwis but somehow get free everything here, while NZ children are ignored.

         Saw a post by a charity, getting all hot under the collar about how aged care is closing down and they need more migrants – while also acknowledging that the aged care nurse wages are so low they can’t retain anyone.

         We already have more migrants in NZ than ever before! https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/128282098/nz-may-get-60000-more-migrants-than-forecast-under-visa-scheme-says-national Many of the people coming to NZ on these visas are children who can’t work but require an education and health care. Workers in NZ don’t want to work those jobs because they do not pay enough and migrants quickly leave for better pastures.

         They just opened the migrant parents category so obviously not a good idea when there is a shortage of nurses and health care spaces everywhere and aged care is closing down!

         No mention of training our own children and youth into aged care work and paying much higher rates.

         Migrant nurses are actually leaving faster than NZ trained nurses in NZ.

         However aged care is now a Ponzi full of untrained workers while the large rest home owners get richer.

         To have a ethical society we need to value nurses and support work for older people and have the aged care nurses be required to have the same pay and conditions as hospital and other nurses and have pay parity and visa parity with OZ – who doesn’t give freebies or citizenship to new residents but working migrants prefer it.

3. This is appalling, that great man who brought us so many many wonderful sayings, used by all in our world today. Do you not remember the outcry about Gauguin they wanted to trash his work because he had used the women of the Pacific. Absolute stupidity, admire the art even if you don’t admire the man!

4. I guess they’ll be going through Te Papa right now choosing which works are to be culled.
   Someone will be weaving words from the likes of “a canon of imperialism” and “decolonising Aotearoa” as justification.

   1. It’s already been done at the National Library. Wasn’t its collection of Western literature recently culled because it wasn’t relevant to us?

      1. Badger. It’s worse than that, but they were the unfriendliest library in the western world, destined to be plagued by gastrointestinal issues, ingrown fingernails hirsute elbows, and flatter feet than His Majesty’s Constabulary.

   2. Peter. Nope. They’re busy working on algorithms to block the music of Elgar, Gustav Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Benjam B, so that the next solemn occasions beamed from overseas can be accompanied by appropriate waiata and hip hop. Chopin could get through ok, I think he was a Pole.

5. “Away, you starvelling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, bull’s-pizzle, you Stockton”.
   Read the decision-makers names and you’ll see why I applied a little artistic license to the Bard!

6. To Creative NZ (slightly paraphrasing John Cleese):

   “That’s the sort of blinkered philistine pig-ignorance we’ve come to expect from you non-creative garbage!”

   1. Let them away to their ritual Fish Slapping Dance. That’s an example of being creative and cultural isn’t it?
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XeDvKqI4E

7. Agree that this is a short-sighted decision, what you’d expect from a ‘Year Zero’ revolutionary crowd.

   However

   How confident are we that everyone on that list agreed with this decision. Doesn’t this amount to raising an online mob. Why is it ok for TDB to do this, doesn’t it undermine criticism of Woke Twitter mobs?

   1. Tui
      It can’t be the situation that people can’t make fun of those in positions of power having the ability to deny, sanction. It’s a way of bullying the powerless to set rules against satire, lampooning etc which doesn’t take society forward. Finding balance is what to aim for and when people step into positions of decision making they can expect to be critiqued. We should expect that opportunity to make reasonable criticisms of people in paid positions or even unpaid, where they can make decisions that impinge on others lives or wellbeing.

   2. Tui. Don’t worry unduly about the Arts Council folk. They revel in victimhood and dance in the streets to the music of critical words, real or torturously interpreted within the limitations of their own minds. That’s how they get the backs of their shoes dirty, prancing up and down Lambton Quay, persons with dirty heels. Jacinda has covered her bases here with her anti- free speech legislation – and have a look at who wiggled her way into the top job at VU ‘s Excellence in shutting people up Centre – they’ll even be monitoring the name of your pussy, and the clothes covering your nakedness. They’ll be just fine, weep for yourself and your children.

8. Tui Fair point, but most commentators here are reasonably intelligent persons, some quite high brow, and not mob mentality persons, and we value our time. The protagonists are unbelievably arrogant, a group of nobodies dismissing one of the greatest literary figures of all time and hubristic enough to think that the rest of us will be governed by their ignorance and will accept their depriving our students of a unique hands-on experience. So sod them.

   If some people email them, so what. If anyone tries to phone them they’ll have that covered fairly easily. If they do agree to engage in dialogue, great, except that it could be an excruciating experience when they don’t know what they’re talking about. This is the sort of victimhood mentality produced by Indigenous Studies courses world wide, and not certainly scholarly discourse. Every now and then we do have to stand up to bullying if the alternative is to be dragged down to their level. If Stuff is supporting them, that means the Ardern government is, and it’s social engineering, and the victims are our most precious taonga, our children – their lives are circumscribed enough already, living down the bottom of the world.

9. Reading that column from stuff reminded me of a “popular girl” in my 5th form class who would often proclaim that something we were learning in school was “boring”

   Last I heard, she was working as a stripper

   Anyway what the fuck does de-colonise mean? It sounds like some pointless rhetoric one says at a student party to sound cool so one could get laid

10. Well.. modern theater, cinema, tv series, even cartoons have roots in Shakespeare.

    Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet.. it’s crazy how man modern plots are based on these plays alone.

    Also, when students study Shakespeare, they study the Elizabethan Theatre – critical information for a theater/drama student I would have thought.

    If anything my above points are understated. As for Creative NZ’s decision and Stuffs take – I have nothing nice to say.

    1. Zack Brando. A now deceased friend enrolled in Art History at VU in the early 1990’s as a mature student and found that she had to observe Peter Jackson’s splatter films. I wouldn’t have fancied that. She was the younger widow of a then reasonably high profile good journalist and media critic, and her Art History BA from VU got her a job as receptionist at Creative NZ, then called something else I think. Her job included opening and reading all incoming mail, and she sometimes naughtily told me and showed me contents from New Zealand writers. I may still have one hand-written letter I shouldn’t have.

11. So now “Shakespeare ist Entartete Kunst”
    May I may still read Goethe and Schiller?

    A few years ago RNZ almost moved Concert from FM to AM. No need any more, they dumbed it down to “anything is concert”.

    1. Lightbringer. You should be safe reading in silence, but don’t even think about listening to magnificent Wagner. The Wagner Society could be next on the chopping block. They should disband immediately and head for the Outer Hebrides.

12. The comments (eg ‘canon of imperialism) would’ve been made by peer assessors, not this list of people.

    At the end of the day however, they do have the final say….

13. Oh bugger, I was looking forward to seeing the production of Othello in maori…

    1. Luxflakes. A Maori Iago? Won’t happen, buddy.

       1. Read: https://www.maorihomefront.nz/en/whanau-stories/shakespeare-and-politics/

14. I have written to the board. I haven’t called for their cancellation.

    It’s not about the funding decision as such, but their adoption of an ideologal position that is both ignorant and juvenile. And frankly embarrassing.

    Thanks Martynfor the Shakespearean quotes.

    I think this woke nonsense is why people like me won’t vote for Labour and Greens. The Greens in particular are drenched in this bullshit

    1. Agree Anker – liked both ignorant and juvenile. And frankly embarrassing.
       Then again it’s embarrassing to me and others, but even more if no-one on the Panel of Culchural Ambassadors or whatever is embarrassed, or on the other hand is embarrassed, but going along with it because…

       It’s like what a secondary school group might think when given the opportunity to make some decisions – let’s have something fresh and new and different! Unfortunately the more that I read and think and ponder, the more I find that the ancients have said it all already.

       Bring it out from the shelves , understand the language and nuance, polish it up and startle the growing or dull minds of the television, zombie, generation born into a hiatus of intellect.

    2. Anker, Well done, and thank you. It’s difficult, because drama or theatrical companies could lose their funding if they critique this appalling decision, so I do hope that these awful people can’t affect you – other than what they have already.

15. Who is next? They have got rid of Shakespeare and I am wondering how long before someone asks about the “relevance” of Swan Lake or The Marriage of Figaro and numerous other works produced by the two leading arts companies supported by the Arts Council.

16. If executive level cultural gatekeepers don’t understand that Shakespeare is not a colonial relic but a significant influence on modern culture – which is STILL using his works – or even referencing them -in film, TV, plays, music and written works – then maybe they should try their hand in some other field. Please! Your argument is as flawed as young VF – ‘Senior Journalist-‘ – ugh. What other crap edicts are you lauding over. I hear KFC is hiring…

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