C.K. said:
>>While we are evolving/have evolved a distinctively New Zealand culture (better described using negative statements than positive)... Upon which, belMarduk asked:
C K …what do you mean by this. It sounds awfully self-critical.I appreciate Max Quordlepleen's immediate leap to my defence (120-odd miles in a single bound ... how DOES he do it?) although I think his example may be a little off the mark. The comedian he refers to, John Clarke (or his alter ego, Fred Dagg), did indeed say or semi-sing "You don't know how lucky you are." The point that Max missed (or chose to ignore) is that New Zealand is surely but steadily bringing civilisation to the inhabitants of the Ocker Isle. The Land of Oz,
sans Dorothy but
avec Dame Edna Everidge. Go figure. Anyway sending some genuine comedians over there was part of a deliberate policy, best articulated by a now mercifully deceased Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, to raise the average IQ of both countries ...
However, even as I was reading the two posts, a comedy debate was being shown on TV. The debaters were actors/TV personalities, all of them very good. I hope you were watching it, Max, because it reinforced our view of Kiwi Kulcha. The topic of "debate" was "New Zealand is the best little country in the world". I guess most people realise that these comedy debates actually allow the debaters to express real opinions in a non-threatening way. Some of the jokes were really funny. And some were definitely not.
One of the debaters, a Samoan, as it happens, talked about the New Zealand "number eight wire" syndrome. This is a myth (mostly urban, wholly fallacious) that all New Zealanders are born able to do or fix anything that needs doing or fixing without professional help. Folklore has it that whenever nothing better is to hand, anything can be fixed with a piece of No. 8 wire (a gauge of wire generally used in fences designed to restrain as many of New Zealand's 40 million sheep as possible). Since everyone knows that the myth/folklore is not true, it's a negative view. While it's saying "Kiwis can do anything", it also evinces carelessness or sloppiness and a willingness to put up with second best.
And this is generally true (isn't there a thread running on generalisations?) of all our cultural idioms.
But don't get me wrong. Apart from our currency woes (our dollar is becoming known as the "South Pacific Peso") it's a damned good place to live. But we like to leave frequently to reassure ourselves about this by comparing our lifestyle with others ... I'm off to Singapore next week!
Syncopically
,
Capital Kiwi
