Texts and ways of thinking:
RETREAT FROM THE GLOBAL
Globalisation of communications:
“Literature is an institution within a society, and as such it both reflects and projects an image of that society’s cultural identity.” (C&IinNZ)
|
The Castle
|
The Bone People |
|
Film is a global medium and is used as a global language. Used to communicate individual, humanity’s stories and emphasise locality. Gives the individual and the community a face in a globalised world, encourages relationships between people and the appreciation of everyone for their own experiences. Values individual’s stories for the importance of their local perspective within a global society. Still, close-up opens the film, “I’m Dale Kerrigan and this is my story.” |
“The Bone People is part of a postcolonial discursive formation evolving worldwide to counter not only the “truths” that drive the imperialism of nineteenth-century but also those that drive the centers of power in the twentieth century.” (Margery Fee) The novel becomes a global communicator and forms part of the post-Provincial group of writers who portrayed the reality of cultural disintegration but also the vision for a new identity. “Maori writers in English have arisen to challenge the literary dominance of the Pakeha male.” (C&IinNZ) Also values individual perspective. |
Erosion of traditional boundaries:
|
The Castle |
The Bone People
|
|
“The Kerrigans are a paradigm for...Australia’s lost innocence as a family and country.” Globalisation has allowed local cultural and ethnic boundaries to become less of a barrier to human relationships. Valuing of multiculturalism reflects the notion of the global village by making the individual and communities more open to other cultural influences, but cultural values tend to become appropriated and standardised into a different context. Positive portrayal of characters and relationships with Darryl from multicultural backgrounds such as Con (dialogue from wedding) “Anyone that loves our Trace as much as we do, deserves our love. So we love you, Con. We love you.” and Farouk (introduced at door, dependent relationship with Darryl) “Mr Kerrigan, can you read something for me?”
|
Hulme explores the nature of identity within a society where traditional values have been eroded, firstly by colonialism and its suggested successor globalisation, and focuses on the effects of this on individuals and their community, “the Maoritanga has got lost in the way I live.” “The Lightning Struck Tower”, destruction of Maori culture, use of lightning as metaphor for imperialism “the lightning came. It blasted my family and it blasted my painting talent.” The use of Maori as an integral part of the text reinforces the erosion of the traditional culture, but also suggests the importance of biculturalism. “It fuses Pakeha and Maori mythology and suggests that biculturalism is fundamental to the future of New Zealand.” (Aorewa Pohutukawa McLeod).
|
|
Global emphasis on self-interest, eroding traditional definitions of community and family. Sitch creates a new sense of what constitutes a family, by suggesting it moves beyond blood-relations to bonds between friends, individuals and communities valuing the support that a community offers to its members and giving the individual more security within their community. This is shown in the scene in which Darryl offers to accommodate Jack after the houses are to be compulsorily acquired despite the inconvenience to himself. The Kerrigans are also used to re-establish the traditional family unit as a localised ideal, valuing the support that a cohesive family unit provides, “Dad had a way of making everyone feel special.” The idealised social framework serves to heighten the insensitivity of the Global economic forces and those who represent these forces. |
Creative answer to the devastation of colonialism on local culture and individuals – Kerewin’s inability to paint, Joe’s carving, Simon’s singing. Novel fuelled by creative energy rather than the sexual energy of Maori mythology. “The end of the novel creates a resolution between contradicting forces such as Maori and Pakeha cultures, humans and nature, past and present.” (Clare Oatoway). Emphasis on the creation of a new community, a microcosm that serves as a model for the future of Aotearoa. “We’re chance we three, we’re the beginning free.” Reestablishes and values the resurrection of Maori values and spirituality – Joe and Kerewin’s rescue from death by accepting the help of elderly Maori figures, ancestors and the kaumatua. Focus on Maori and small created community clearly Retreats from the Global values to form an alternative that is celebrated. |
Universal truths given practical application:
BP – (Continue from erosion of traditional values) Joe is a product of society, the result of losing self-identity and the lack of a supportive community from the erosion of traditional Maori values and structure, “What about korero, Joe? What about our tribe’s famous talk-it-out with all concerned?” Love, violence and need are twisted together in the spiral pattern, “an old symbol of rebirth...the spiralling curve of the universe” that applies to humans who are part of this universal design. “It’s violent and beautiful, full of the deepest contradictions that make us human.” (Gunnar Madsen). “The Bone People gives a deep insight into human nature and breaks new literary ground.” (1985 Booker McConnell Prize jury). Violence part of responders as human beings, exploring of reasons behind abuse.
|
The Castle
|
The Bone People |
|
Common interests, friendship and loyalty between the characters Darryl, Dennis and Laurie promotes the notion of egalitarianism. Global creates class differences by creating obvious economic barriers. The ideal of egalitarianism challenges this sense of economic difference and provides a sense of equality between individuals, allowing for more friendly and supportive relationships between individuals. |
“On its surface the story of a man, woman and child defying conventional definitions of familyhood to make themselves a home, The Bone People is an affirmation of the larger families that we are born into – of Joe’s Maori ancestors, Kerewin’s fiercely longed-for parents and siblings, even the nefarious underworld of Simon’s drug-dealing parents.” (Diane Jacobs). Hulme explores the relationships between members of a family and the support that the family and the community offers, and “a quotidian microcosm emerges” (Carmel Gaffney).
|
|
Sitch connects globalisation and the individual, paralleling imperialism and Aborigines. The house is used as a symbolic place that links family members and provides them with a sense of security, and the loss of the house compels Darryl to realise the importance of place, “This house is like their land. It holds their memories. The land is their stories...The country’s got top stop stealing other people’s land.” Sitch uses this situation to make political comments about Aborigine land rights, by promoting an understanding and valuing the connections between people to their environment (land, place and relationships to other people) through the character Darryl. |
Connections to environment, especially land, explored through the Maori association of identity with land. “I am tied irrevocably to this land.” Aotearoa and fusion of cultures symbolic, “But we changed. We ceased to nurture the land...We forgot what we could have been, that Aotearoa was the shining land.” “Competition for land and its resources transformed the relationships of economic cooperation between Maori and Pakeha into opposition.” “The key to New Zealand identity is thus land...today it centers on the struggle for the return of that land.” (C&IinNZ). Numerous references to environment through Kerewin emphasises this. (Connect land as resource or place.) |
Knowledge freed from and limited by the laws of time:
|
The Castle |
The Bone People
|
|
David v Goliath storyline, exploring “The family battle against the intertwined cabal of government and big business.” (Shoot The Messenger reviewer). Timeless legend and themes reused for contemporary meanings. Major impact of The Castle is the central issue of the individual triumphing over the forces of economic rationalism, repeated in other stories throughout such as The Rainmaker. However, the reception of the film is also limited by time, “the context into which the film was released owes much to its positive reception. Who we are as Australians is in a state of flux on the macro and micro level.” (STM) and The Castle serves as “an important step forward in capturing Australian characters.” (Peter Castaldi). |
Hulme mirrors the Maori traditions of storytelling and legends, which brought the past forward into the present by making the events described contemporary, in what she describes as “a deliberate attempt to manufacture New Zealand myth.” Blending real and invented Maori legends with European literary style, exploring current issues, intertwines myth and reality with no beginning or end and in this way, toys with the laws of time. “She [Hulme] and her novel have become part of New Zealand mythos.” (Aorewa Pohutukawa McLeod). “In The Bone People, humans are presented not only as one element of a living earth, they are also just one element in time: links in a genetic chain.” The title draws on the Maori definition of the word iwi, meaning bones but also the vivid sense of the presence of ancestors in the physical environment that form part of the tribe. Emphasis on bone symbolism, “She diminishes to bones, and the bones sink into the earth” and connections with earth and universe through spiral, continuation of time. |
Knowledge at once global and local:
The texts offer a local perspective of the global (film and novel global communication). Also, the individual as symbols of local, retaining individualism while engaging globally through universal truths of human nature.
|
The Castle |
The Bone People
|
|
The Kerrigans are depicted to be embracing symbols of the global such as The Trading Post, the powerlines and international travel, without sacrificing perceived local values of family and community. However, when the letter of “compulsory acquisition”, representing the forces of economic rationalism arrives, the trading post and global association are immediately marginalised, “Hang on Steve”. In bringing global and local values into conflict, Sitch shows the valuing of social principles over economic priorities, and depicts the importance of continuing local or community functioning for individuals. Darryl immediately thinks of those in his community, running over to see Jack (responder faces emotional impact of elderly man with desolate tone “They’re gonna take my house.”) |
“Not only is her spiral dwelling in harmony with the landscape, it creates an harmonious community by achieving privacy, apartness, but also part of a whole.” (Clare Oatoway). (This section discussed above). |
