Tempest in a pasta pot
An Italian ad for Fiat cars featuring haka women has some back home stamping their feet, shaking their fists, and growling with furious displeasure. How appropriate! :-) They bleat of 'cultural insensitivity,' oblivious to the fact that haka is purposefully designed to elicit fear, awe or admiration in spectators. By its very nature, haka challenges & disrupts complacency, smugness & lethargy. It should agitate! It should be provocative! It should be 'insensitive'!
The women's dancing itself (imo) is superb: dynamic, turbulent, passionate - quintessential haka. Would that the All Blacks perform with such gusto & fire!
The fuss all seems so silly, the belly-aching unbecoming. I detest the touchey mindset so ready to take offence. Why? Coz it's debilitating & disempowering. It's limp & weak and reduces us to dour, sulky, fragile paper-dolls who crumple at the merest slight. We're Maoris, we should be tougher than that. Grow a thicker skin or a sense of humour - and while you're at it, a sense of priorities. Coming last in all the social statistics, a light-hearted commercial on foreign TV should be the least of our worries.
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ps - And women DO haka. In my tribe (Ngati Porou), in Tuhoe, Ngati Kahungunu & others women have ALWAYS haka-ed alongside men.
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