The struggle for recognition in Auckland is, as everywhere, fought throughout the media – from film, television and radio to graffiti, music and street fronts. Each of the areas that this essay will discuss has its own channels of representation such as musical styles, recognisable pieces of art and movies which find their home in the suburbs of Auckland. There is, of course, a recognisably dominant visual culture which maintains its hegemony in Auckland, and this essay will examine the ways in which minority groups use visual culture to fight for recognition and acceptance.
It seems important, in writing an essay about Auckland, to first explain the relationship Auckland has with the rest of New Zealand, and perhaps the best way to do that is to explain Jafas. A Jafa is a slang term (usually offensive) for one who lives in Auckland, meaning ‘Just Another Fucking Aucklander’. Everyone inside Auckland attributes its use to a jealousy about their resources, wealth and power, but those outside of Auckland uses this term out of a dislike of Auckland’s overrepresentation in politics, distribution of national funds and recognition overseas, and the belief that Aucklanders are generally rude and stuck up. They see Auckland as having deliberately geographically separated themselves from the rest of the country with the Bombay Hills; being full of arrogant people and unnecessarily large cars; and being generally ignorant about the rest of New Zealand. One of the key problems the rest of New Zealand has with Auckland is its huge immigrant population; because the main international airport is Jean Batten in Auckland, many immigrants simply stop in Auckland and many New Zealanders in other parts of the country feel that this makes Auckland a poor representative of New Zealand. Luckily, Aucklanders are pretty thick skinned and have now appropriated the term jafa and use it ironically, or with new meanings such as ‘Just Another Friendly Aucklander’ or ‘Jesus Always Favours Aucklanders’. All this means that Auckland as a city is relatively isolated from the rest of New Zealand.
Central Auckland seems an appropriate place to begin discussion of domination and resistance of groups in the area. Auckland Central is mostly white, mostly affluent and either working in the city, or attending school nearby. This area of Auckland comprises two large universities, a huge central library, upmarket bars and restaurants along the Viaduct, several different shopping centres including designer boutiques, vintage hipster stores and chain stores, many souvenir shops, apartment buildings, sky scrapers, heavy traffic and the beginnings of the more well-off suburbs. It is this Auckland which is portrayed in the long running soap opera ‘Shortland Street’ about Shortland Street Hospital . This program, which began in 1992, is the longest running New Zealand made television show, and is easily the most widely seen, therefore arguably the most dominant, visual representation of Auckland Central. This representation would have us believe that Auckland City is largely made up of educated white people with high paying medical jobs and under educated ethnic minorities, especially Maori and Pacific Islanders, who need their services. It would also have us believe that car explosions and thwarted weddings are a regular occurrence, and this is a key sign that we must look further for authentic representation of minorities in Auckland City. Another source of hegemonic media in Auckland City is Metro Magazine – a glossy upper class monthly lifestyle magazine which features articles such as ‘Best Schools’ (it could be called ‘The Three Most Expensive Private Schools in Auckland’), ‘Detox Confidential’ and ‘Winter Fashion, Winter Getaways and the Best of the Film Fest’ . The cover stars are more often than not white and wealthy looking, and with a cover price of $9.50, it is clear that it is targeting a certain demographic.
As far as resistance of minorities through visual culture goes, the Asian population of Central Auckland has appropriated a huge amount of ‘eyeball time’ through restaurants and shop fronts with Asian writing and images, festivals and simply by looking ethnically different on the street. Asian immigrants are officially welcomed because of a perception of good work ethic and business knowledge, and this is very noticeable in downtown Auckland. Many Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai restaurants, with their recognisably different language have sprung up; several 123 Dollar stores owned and heavily influenced by Asians exist downtown; and most of the souvenir stores are Asian owned and run. Unfortunately, because of the very alien visual culture of Asia and the high density of immigrants in downtown Auckland, they are portrayed in the dominant media as ‘taking over’, for example, prominent politician Winston Peters released a pamphlet titled ‘Whose Country is it Anyway?’ which incorrectly claimed that hundreds of thousands of Asians are immigrating to Auckland and causing problems such as traffic in Auckland. According to this pamphlet these immigrants are both poor enough to prey on the welfare system, and wealthy enough to drive up the cost of housing . Another example of negative representation of Asian immigrants in central Auckland was an article by Deborah Coddington entitled ‘Asian Angst: is it time to send some back?’ published in the upmarket Auckland based magazine ‘North and South’ in November 2006. This article suggested that with the influx of Asian immigrants comes a wave of crime, ‘from a few uppity, wealthy boy racers to highly organised and ruthless criminals seemingly prepared to do anything for big profit. It's capitalism at play, crime following market forces, and currently the market is bullish in class-A drugs, poached paua, fraud, prostitution and, to a lesser extent, extortion’ and with that wave of crime, a huge cost to the New Zealand taxpayer. Obviously, this article caused a huge outrage, and North and South printed an apology in a later edition, but the words were already out there. Anti-Asian sentiments like this leave Asian immigrants in Central Auckland in the position of a weaker minority and force them into a resistant position. Not a lot of Asian media makes it anywhere near mainstream or prime time, so Asians must use the visual culture of the street to resist the negative representation of their culture. A fantastic example of positive use of the visual culture of Asia is the lantern festival in downtown Auckland every year. This year, 2010, 240,000 Aucklanders enjoyed ‘a leading Shanghai music ensemble, Mongolian throat singers, rolling lantern folk dancers from South China as well as Lantern making masters and other artists’ . This use of the street as a location for visual resistance to the dominant media is important to the Asian community of Auckland because it means that instead of the usual isolation of their distinct visual culture, they use this festival to include all the citizens of Auckland – Young Leader Elizabeth Chan commented that
‘Princes Street was ablaze with activity as people jostled with one another, trying to get into lines to taste laksa noodles, fried dumplings, spring rolls, kebabs and all the other tempting Asian delicacies on offer... Hon Phillip Burdon made the opening speech, celebrating Asia:NZ’s efforts in making the lantern festival possible and encouraging us to continue promoting New Zealanders’ knowledge of Asian culture’
By making vibrant and beautiful aspects of their culture accessible and welcoming to all citizens of Auckland City, the Asian community is combating the negative views the city holds about them.
A second area of Auckland this essay will discuss is South Auckland, an area stereotyped as low income and high crime. It is also, however, multicultural, vibrant and colourful, and most people who live there love calling it home. A study of young Maori people showed that although they were
‘clear in their awareness that most outsiders saw South Auckland in a negative light and...expressed the view that South Auckland was seen as a ‘tough’ place where violence, crime and poverty were part of the profile’ they ‘had very positive feelings about living in south Auckland and...tended to focus on connections to two general domains, the physical environment and the people in South Auckland. Underpinning such talk was the notion that South Auckland was home and they had a strong sense of belonging to and familiarity with the area’ .
South Auckland has the largest youth population in New Zealand, and proportionally an even higher population of Maori and Pacific youth, and with this young ethnic minority demographic based in an underprivileged area comes the obvious and observable problems of youth gangs, violent crime, larceny, street fighting and vandalism, and more subtly, the issue of the perpetual negative representation of brown youth in the media. Especially in the news media, this group of ‘brown youth’ is represented over and over again as inherently dangerous and criminal, and because the news is ideologically powerful, this representation becomes innate and eternal, and impossible to rewrite. Bomber, a respected Auckland media figure, commented that ‘the mainstream media make money from crime stories especially when those crime stories confirm the stereotypes we have of other races. Young brown youth beating the shit out of one another rates because it confirms the suspicions white NZ seem to have about brown NZ’ . One only has to look at the South Auckland based stories of ‘The New Zealand Herald’ with headlines such as Teen jailed for mother of three's manslaughter , Youth target in knife-crime review , and Eight youths charged over Tuakau police assault dominating the news to see how South Auckland youth are portrayed. As difficult as it already is for anyone to resist the hegemony of the news industry, South Auckland youth have the additional problem of being materially disadvantaged, being an ethnic minority and being young and therefore patronised and disrespected by the adults in their community and around Auckland – those who hold the power. How, then, are the youth of South Auckland meant to resist the dominant media image of themselves? The Black Friars are a music and comedy group made up of South Auckland youth who speak up about growing up in South Auckland and what it meant to them to be young and brown in a disadvantaged area.
For a long time, Vau [a member] says, the key South Auckland issues have been the same: violence and gang violence. "But to only focus on these things in both private and public spheres is to disregard all of the beauty, passion and talent that come out of South Auckland. People are too quick to judge and to stereotype."When the media focuses only on the negative, they miss the whole point, and they misrepresent what we, as a community, are all about. Sure, there might be gangs...but there is a huge and prevailing sense of community and family that exists in South Auckland that you will not find anywhere else. The media are more and more interested in the negative side of everything - they would rather shock their readers than give them a true picture of the world we live in.”
The group uses their music and comedy to speak out about their love for South Auckland, and the community they grew up in, and they use the respect garnered by their performances to help young people growing up in South Auckland. Not only are they a positive role model for youth in their community, they are also a positive new face for South Auckland focused media. Another alternate media voice that South Auckland’s brown youth have acquired is ‘bro’Town’, a primetime cartoon set in the fictional suburb of Morningside which follows the adventures of The Boys – Jeff da Maori, Valea and Vale (brothers), Mack and Sione. Created by a group of South Auckland based actors, entertainers and producers called the Naked Samoans, this program takes all the stereotypes about South Auckland and puts them all together in one place to make them laughable. Not only does it claim (through the character of God, who is Polynesian here) that Morningside is ‘a town where the children of the world frolic freely together, because no matter what ethnic group you’re from, young people are the same all over the world’ (thereby re-humanising brown youth) but it also helps to lay responsibility for South Auckland at the feet of the adults by portraying characters like Dad, Valea and Vale’s father, whose catchphrase is ‘I’m going to the pub... I may be some time’ and Constable Bababiba who can only communicate with The Boys through the use of his ‘smack smack stick’ . There is debate about whether ‘bro’Town’ merely reinforces South Auckland’s stereotypes by representing characters through the eyes of the dominant media but it can also be argued that the positive representation of South Auckland and its brown youth (especially in contrast to other areas of Auckland such as the racist ‘White Boys Grammar School’) is a resistance to the dominant news culture and its negative portrayal of South Auckland.
In Central and South Auckland, minority and excluded groups such as Asian immigrants and Maori/ Polynesian youth are portrayed negatively in the media, especially news media. Because of their lack of voice in the mainstream and traditional media, they are forced to revert to more ‘street’ mediums to challenge the dominant views about them. While the Asian population uses festivals to educate and include others in aspects of their culture, brown youth turn to music and comedy to give themselves a way to tell their story in their own words.
Works Cited
Asia:NZ Online. Chinese Lantern Festival. 2010. 9 April 2010
Bannister, Mathew. “Where's Morningside? Locating bro'Town in the ethnic genealogy of
New Zealand/ Aotearoa.” New Zealand Journal of Media Studies 11.1 (2008):1-15.
Black Friars. 10 April 2010
Bomber. TUMEKE. 2010. 9 April 2010 <>
Borell, Belinda. “Livin’ in the City Ain’t So Bad: Cultural Diversity of South Auckland
Rangatahi.” Diss. Massey University, 2005.
bro’Town. 9 April 2010
Chan, Elizabeth. A Roaring Start to the Year. 2010. 10 April 2010
Cheng, Derek. “Youth target in knife crime review.” New Zealand Herald 12 March 2010.
Coddington, Deborah. “Asian Angst: is it time to send some back?” North and South Magazine November 2006.
Eriksen, Alanah May and Edward Gay. “Eight youths charged over Tuakau police assault.” New Zealand Herald 23 February 2010.
“Go Home Stay Home.” Bro’Town. TV3. October 27, 2004.
Koubaridis, Andrew. “Teen jailed for mother of three’s manslaughter.” New Zealand Herald 18 March 2010.
Metro Live. 10 April 2010.
Ministry of Social Development. Nesian Pride. 8 April 2010
Pritchard, Ashley. “The Folly of Looking Only in the Mirror.” Diss. Lehigh University, 2008.
“Season One Trailer.” Bro’Town. TV3. 2004.
TVNZ. Shortland Street. 2010. 10 April 2010
Interesting reading. As a South Aucklander I found your piece a lot more balanced than the garbage I read in mainstream media outlets. Well done!
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