Today I was surfing online and I came across an article on the Melbourne Age about Taika Waititi’s new film, “Boy”, which I’m looking forward to seeing. He’s an NZ director for those who don’t know.

Article is here:  www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/new-zealand-humour-americans-just-dont-get-20100819-12pot.html

The article was about how Variety mag had said the movie wasn’t that good, and paraphrasing badly, it wasn’t Maori enough.

Hmm, I thought. My instant reaction was to get all up in arms about some American putting down an NZ movie, assuming they ‘just don’t get it” and come to the defence of my tribemates.  We tend to do that, us Kiwis. 

But I’ve been here in north america long enough to know there was probably more to it than that.   So I read the review myself. The review is here:

www.variety.com/review/VE1117941952.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&query=boy+review

CONFLICTED.

There’s the side of me that really understands what Taika was trying to do. He’s of my generation. NZ back then was a cultural backwater.  Most Canadians don’t use the term ‘cultural cringe’, which means “thinking your culture sucks and actively copying anothers’” even though it’s true sometimes for Canada too.   We in NZ had that in buckets.     We did and do have our own culture, but we were and are so swamped by north american culture that we don’t always realise it is.  It’s like a piece of North American culture gets cut off and left somewhere on a beach, is slowly eroded by sand and creatures eating at it, until it’s barely recognisable to it’s originators but it still seems foreign to the  beach it was left on.   Does that make sense?

 What I suspect Taika is doing – and I HAVEN’T seen the movie so I don’t know for sure – is being honest about that.  Back in the 80′s there wasn’t much of a Maori renaissance in NZ.   Towards the end of high school for me and even more since then, the culture has become more and more a force in NZ, to the point where there’s talk of making Maori language a compulsory school subject.  That was unheard of when we were all growing up.  We were US/UK lite.  A total ex-empire colonial outpost.  An ex-urb of the West.   95% of people thought we were Australia.

Ok, that said.

The Variety review also seems to be saying that “Boy” just isn’t that good at what it sets out to do.  And maybe it isn’t, if by being ‘good’ you mean “in a way that north americans would recognise as good’.  Or maybe it just isn’t.  Haven’t seen it. 

But, maybe the culture just doesn’t translate.  A few months ago I finally got to see “Samoan Wedding” which was a big hit of a movie in NZ and I’d heard so much about from my friends and family.   Himself and I and some really close Canadian friends sat down to watch it.  I had high expectations and also felt a bit of pressure as  a Kiwi showing off her culture.

It was ok in parts, sort of funny in parts, and painful a lot of the time.  What struck me watching it, after living out of NZ for nearly 9 years, is how Americanized NZ seems but in a very facile, surfacey, lacking in depth kind of way, and, in a way that sometimes seemed insulting and stereotypical.  Take hip-hop, for instance.  People who grew up on the continent know almost by osmosis where it came from, what it means, and unless they’ve been living in a test-tube somewhere, that there’s reality behind it.    Put that culture in Auckland, NZ, and something major is lost in translation.    The people in NZ, who copy that culture, don’t really ‘get it’.

What I’m saying is that the movie was a big disappointment.  BUT…I also came away thinking I’m starting to forget how to think like a Kiwi.  So many people had told me that movie was FUNNY…so maybe it was also me?  I guess I’ve changed?    Sometimes friends on FB post NZ videos or comedy – I feel caught in the middle, because I get it, yet I can also see with my new half-north american eyes how it’s too slow, or not that funny, or even a bit insulting. 

I still want to see ”Boy” and Taika’s other film “Eagle vs Shark” .   But what I’m starting to think is that even though we all speak English, we think really differently.  That even though we share the same symbols – MacD’s, Michael Jackson, etc – we actually don’t give them the same meaning.  And, I think it’s always trickier for the artist from the far flung provinces of the Empire to bring his or her stories back to the centre.  It’s like that whispering game we all used to play as kids – the further from the source you go, the more distorted it gets, until you don’t even recognise it anymore. 

But that doesn’t mean it’s not good, or true.

She came to my house in the canadian ‘burbs.  We drank a bottle of wine.  Talked talked talked talked talked until I started falling asleep on the couch because I get up at 6:20am.

She’d found me on Facebook.

The last time I saw her was in Sydney, Australia.  It was summer.  It was muggy and sweaty and foggy.   We had started the night with a bong, went to the pub at Kings Cross and had drinks.  There was a strip club in there somewhere – not the blonde and northhollywoodish type of Vancouver,  but a truly depressing place with a heroin junkie with tracks down her arms sliding back and forth across the stage, completely out of it.   Then we snorted speed in the bathroom and went to a club.  I tell you this because I want to show how totally and utterly off my tits I was.

At the club, we had ecstacy.  Or maybe we had the e before the speed, the mind is foggy.  We were surrounded by these british guys we’d picked up somewhere.  One of them was there playing football.   It was fun to turn them on.  We had the Power.    We decided to kiss.  They groaned.  One of them said “I fucking love Australia”.

There was more drugs somewhere in there.  I didn’t wonder how she had so many.

The thing is, back then, she was sex on a stick.  People ordinarily think of genius as something dry and academic, or male.  She was a sex genius, by which I mean, it was all around her, like a Force.  You know how some people are just MORE?  They’re just more than the average person.  Well, she was more than the average when it came to sex.  Men, women.  Many fell for her.

The next morning, we’re coming down.  It’s bright hot outside already, even though it’s only around 8am.  She goes in to kiss me again.  But I’m not off-tits anymore.  She pulls back.  We both know I’m not into women.  It’s clear.  It’s over.  I’m not bi.  Aaaalrighty then.

I kissed a girl,

and if I wasn’t so wasted,

I’m pretty sure I would have hated it.

That would be my song.

I don’t understand people who think homosexuality is a choice.  If it was a choice, why couldn’t I have chosen it?  But the body said No.  The body said, it’s all about men for you, no matter if they’re assholes, that’s what you’re into.

She became unreliable after that.  I was going into my rigid judgemental phase.  We lost touch.  11 years later, she told me she got more seriously into the drugs.  She was a dealer.  She lost other friends.  She was so happy I was willing to meet up with her again.

And I told her that I was a rigid cow who was dealing with everything in black and white.  I had no tolerance.  But, I was over that now.

IT’s the friendship I least expected to be resurrected.

of people waiting

I’m debating

About what to do

Getting cold

People hogging the showers

Trying to get out every lastbitofchlorine

for hours

YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

I’m tired of it.

I’m on the bus

The bus is packed

There’s old people coming on back to back

No one stands up

No matter how young

They turn away

As if to say

I DON”t CARE WHO YOU ARE

I’m tired of it

I want to say something

But I don’t

I don’t want to rock the boat

I know who I am

I’m tired of it.

I’m walking my baby

It’s the afternoon

Sleep coming and a daytime moon

There’s a girl up ahead, she

Looks like a doll

Sick thin and  frail

And she’s a pro

The car slows down

The guy hidden inside

Stalking his prey

Alone outside

I  scream at him, leaveheralone

YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

I’m tired of it

When she came back on Thursday I asked her how her day off was. She said, “Actually, I was having drug treatment”.

Then she said, “I have liver cancer”.

Wow, say I. That’s hard core. Which is the understatement of the century.

We carry on talking but it like her liver is hanging between us in my mind yelling CANCER CANCER CANCER CANCER CANCER CANCERY CANCER CANCER CANCER CANCER CANCER.

She says, Once my doctor told me she can’t believe I”m still alive.

She’s had it for SEVEN years.

I don’t know what to say.

Yesterday I tweeted about this show http://www.jaclife.com/ which is aiming to be the new “Hills”.    So, I checked it out.  I checked it out because I am a big reality tv slag.  I love it.  I loved it from the very first “The Real World” on MTV back in the 90′s.

Jaclife is a new Canadian show, but, blech.  Long-haired, vapid,  flossy human My Little Ponies cavort about somewhere in Toronto, and that’s basically it.   That’s IT.  So I said something along those lines, but quite a lot nicer, on the show’s website.  The comment has gone. WTF?  Can’t handle a little criticism, Slice?

Anyway, it sucks.   I suspect “The Hills” was one of those shows that hit the zeitgeist and can’t be repeated.     “Jaclife”  feels like it’s trying too hard without getting it, all at the same time.

"Jaclife" - crap rip-off, like this fake My Little Pony

I have a better job (own office! ye-hah) working in an industrial area in the deepest, big- box storiest burbs.

Some city habits I’ve brought with me, like wanting to walk around outside for fresh air.  I seem to be the only one doing this.  Everyone else outside is there to do something work related, like digging a ditch.

One day I was walking around the zone, trying to get my daily constitutional, when I realised it reminded me of something. Or somewhere. First of all, there were a lot of men around and hardly any women and the men were really aware of my presence. In Office World, women are everywhere and the men couldn’t care less unless you are a knock-out or about to knock them out.     Here  there are a lot less of us and even fewer of us working outside.   Just being a woman is enough to cause the men to stop what they’re doing and check you out from under the hard hat.

That men-being-aware-of-women feeling reminded me of travelling in the middle east.  There was always sexual tension.   Sometimes it felt full of resentment, as if none of those men had ever had the chance of a shag and weren’t likely to get one soon either, and I was taunting them in my western clothes.    I’d thought an ankle length skirt was nun-ish when I’d bought it in London, but it turned out it was the equivalent of wearing a crotchless bikini in some villages.   Men stared at my ankles.

Admittedly, I probably got more attention in the middle east because I wasn’t wearing a headscarf or a floaty tent thing,  and here, in Industrial Zone, I am THE ONLY WOMAN walking around who isn’t in fluorescent safety gear holding a STOP sign.  So yes.   Yes, indeedy.  I am special. 

I recommend working in an industrial zone if you’re single.  FYI.

Now they just need to get some sidewalks in the ‘Zone because I’m tired of off-roading in my cute boots and/or nearly being swiped by a truck.

thanks to Rob Holland for photo. Bad graphics are all me.

It isn’t easy moving to a new town.  That’s one thing I have learned, over and over again.  When you have travelled a lot  you get really good at it, like anything you repeat over and over again including bad behaviour patterns.  But certain things are always difficult – like breaking in with the locals.  So you want it even more.    And while I love Van, most of the time, even when it rains, it needs to be said that that is one of the worst things about this city -those snobby vancouverite bitches.  (and by bitches I mean the men too).

This image sticks in my mind from my first week in Vancouver:  I was walking down a street.  It was a normal street, buildings, cars, etc, etc.    Light caught my eye; I realised it was glancing off a huge fuck-off glass window.   Inside the window, where everyone could see them, were ‘Couves exercising on equipment.     They all bounced up and down with complete self-absorption, like cyborg exercise lemmings.  I remember thinking, wow, they really don’t care if anyone sees them.  Wow.   It’s like we’re not even there.

BINGO!

The thing with the ‘Couve Diss is it’s not so obvious that you know you’re being dissed. It’s not as if they say “Get away from me, trog.  I spit on your mother” so at least you’d know where you stand.       On the surface, Vancouverites seem very nice people, with clear, soft rain-forest skin, social skills, yoga, the environment and all that kind of shit.    But there’s no taking it further to actually like, becoming friends. No.  Because behind the clear,  kind eyes,  there is a Door Bitch (i.e. those people at the door at clubs who won’t let you in)

“You wanna be friends?  No.  Add your name to the Wait List  and if any of my friends die I’ll let you know mmm-kay?  Thanks for coming by“

You don’t know this, though.  As a newbie, you don’t know about the Door Bitch deep inside the ‘Couve you’re talking to.  They seem so nice. My mate Chris  has noted a second phenomenon, which is you meet a Couve a few times, you get on really well, and then…as he put it…they go dark on you. You never hear form them again.   And it’s like WHAT DID I DO??? WHAT DID I DOOOOOOOO?

Here are my theories about why Couves are this way.

-The rain makes them so depressed they can’t make friends

-They’re looking at the mountains and you’re in the way

-They are an advanced kind of dolphin that appears to be human but can only communicate in high-pitched squeaks that humans can’t hear

-The crap liquor licensing laws that mean most people have to stay home to really have a good time

-They really think they’re better than everyone else cos they come from Vancouver

-They’re very shy

-They are misanthropes

-They see you as competition in the real estate market and wish you’d bugger off

-They’re constantly stoned or paranoid

-They have eye problems and think there are a lot of new trees in Vancouver

So, my fellow newbies and expats,  here’s my advice.  Screw the bitches, and make friends with the other newbies.  Let’s take this town.

mmmmmmmm.  mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  mmmmmmmmm.

One day, even though I live in Vancouver, I will open the door of  a pub – one of those run-down, old-men, sports-on-the-tv ones and walk in with my 5 year old and sit down.

I will order a beer.  It’ll be a Yukon Gold, long and tall, with a white head on it like a slice of cheesecake.  The kid will have a glass of milk.   We will sit and drink together, me like an adult, she like a 5 year old. 

So why can’t I?

 Because apparently, they think I’m going to do this:  I’m going to take my kid to the pub, get a tequila shot in a glass with  a bendy straw, sit her at the table, then bark “THAT GLASS BETTER BE EMPTY BY THE TIME I GET BACK.” before I roll off to the loo to fix my lippy.  

Thus all adults are banned from taking their kids to the pub in BC, and I am stuck in the family restaurant ghetto until she grows up.   I think it’s bollocks.  What do you think?