Breaking with English

Broken English and the bone people, a New Zealand film and novel respectively, fall into the category of nation‐building texts. Many narratives in this 'genre' accomplish cultural reunification through the family. However, these two works are particularly intriguing because they use land and specific spaces in order to work through these transcultural shifts as they are played out within the main characters' relationships. 'Breaking with English' is therefore not only a linguistic concept, but also a metaphor for the transculturation of bodies and land undertaken throughout these two titles. Keywords: CinemaEthnoscapeMaoriNation‐buildingNew ZealandNovelPakehaPostcolonialTransculturation Notes My gratitude goes to Dr Jill Casid (University of Wisconsin‐Madison) for all of her insightful comments on my many drafts of this article. Gregor Nichols, director, Broken English. Performers: Julian Arahanga, Rade Scrbeddija and Aleksandrea Vujcic (Sony Pictures/New Zealand Film Commission, 1997). Keri Hulme, the bone people (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1985). Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 6. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, p. 4. Aotearoa is the Maori word traditionally used to refer to the North Island of New Zealand. Contemporary translations include 'land of the long white cloud' or simply 'New Zealand' (as a national entity incorporating all islands). All Maori words were translated using P. M. Ryan, The Reed Dictionary of Modern Maori (Auckland: Reed Books, 1995). See Margery Fee, 'Keri Hulme: Inventing New Ancestors for Aotearoa', in Robert L. Ross (ed.), International Literature in English: Essays on the Major Writers (New York: Garland, 1991), pp. 53–62; Chris Prentice, 'Rewriting Their Stories, Re‐naming Themselves: Post‐colonialism and Feminism in the Fictions of Keri Hulme and Audrey Thomas', Span, 23, 1986, pp. 68–80; Elizabeth Webby, 'Spiraling to Success', Meanjin, 44, 1985, pp. 15–25. See also an interview with Gregor Nichols, writer/director, online at: www.spe.sony.com/classics/broken/interview.html, in which he discusses the post‐colonial concept behind the themes of Broken English. Sample investigations of nation‐building texts include Fee, as well as Doris Sommer, 'Irresistible Romance: The Foundational Fictions of Latin America', in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 71–98. For more detail on the production and reception of Once Were Warriors, see my article entitled 'White, Brown or "Coffee"? Revisioning Race in Tamahori's Once Were Warriors', Film Criticism, 25/3, 2001, pp. 22–36. Two million constitutes a blockbuster in New Zealand. These statistics are from Jonathan Dennis and Jan Bieringa (eds), Film in Aotearoa New Zealand (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1996), p. 186. Judith Dale, 'the bone people: (Not) Having it Both Ways', Landfall 39/4, 1985, pp. 413–427. Fee, 'Keri Hulme', p. 54. Whakapapa is the Maori word for genealogy, cultural identity, family tree. Pakeha is the Maori word for a New Zealander of British settler descent. Sommer writes: '[these] romances are inevitably stories of star‐crossed lovers who represent particular ... races ... or economic interests which should naturally come together. Their passion for conjugal and sexual union spills over to a sentimental readership in a move that apparently hopes to win partisan minds along with hearts' (Sommer, 'Irresistible Romance', p. 75). A foundational cultural dream in New Zealand is embodied in the 'quarter acre'. Much like owning one's own home in America, New Zealanders covet their own piece of land and, having achieved this, devote much time and energy to its upkeep. Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 2nd edn. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985). Smith, European Vision, p. 177. Smith, European Vision, p. 177. E. Ann Kaplan, Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 176. For a lucid summary of Pierre Bourdieu's work on cultural capital and, by extension, national capital, see Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (New York: Routledge, 2000). Margaret Orbell, A Concise Encyclopaedia of Maori Myth and Legend (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 1998). Robert J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (New York: Routledge, 1995). Young, Colonial Desire, p. 169. Young, Colonial Desire, p. 167. Young, Colonial Desire, p. 167. We know about Vanya's marital status not only because we see her wedding ring, but because when Ivan and Darko find her having sex with one of the hangers‐on from the poker party – a lout with a strong Australian accent – they proceed to bludgeon the unfortunate fellow's car with baseball bats while setting the dogs on him. Young, Colonial Desire, p. 19. My thanks to Jill Casid for raising this point. Young, Colonial Desire, p. 19. W. J. T. Mitchell, 'Imperial Landscape', in Landscape and Power (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1994), pp. 5–34. 'The bush' is another cultural metaphor widely used by New Zealanders. It is understood as the landscape that has played an integral part in shaping New Zealand identity, and in shaping our literary and visual art tradition. Europe might have Culture, but New Zealand has Nature – the bush, the sea, the fjords and the mountains. Behind what some might judge as an essentialist and romantic attachment lie important historical determinants. For Maori, the land is intricately tied up with whakapapa and turangawaewae, their family line, ancestry and their determination to 'have a place to stand'. Pakeha, too, have deep emotional ties to place. Our nineteenth‐century forebears, many of them middle‐ and lower‐class British stock, could never have owned property in the 'home country'. It was this possibility of owning land that functioned as a lure, marking the formation of New Zealand as a settler colony (Annie Goldson, 'Piano Recital', Screen, 38/3, 1997, pp. 275–281). Justine King, 'Crossing Thresholds: The Contemporary British Women's Film', in Andrew Higson (ed.), Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema (New York: Cassell, 1996), p. 220. For another reading regarding liminality, this time in relation to Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994), see my article entitled 'Executing the Commoners: Examining Class in Heavenly Creatures', in Alexandra Heidi Karriker (ed.), Film Studies: Women in Contemporary World Cinema (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), pp. 51–68. Jonathan Dennis, 'A Timeline', in Dennis and Bieringa, Film in Aotearoa New Zealand, pp. 199–235. I have written further about Pakeha New Zealanders' tendency to essentialise Maori and the practical problems this creates via policy decisions in 'White, Brown or "Coffee"?' Hulme, the bone people, p. 4. Hulme, the bone people, p. 406. See Dale and Janet Wilson, 'Intertextual Strategies: Reinventing the Myths of Aotearoa in Contemporary New Zealand Fiction', in Wolfgang Klooss (ed.), Across the Lines: Intertextuality and Transcultural Communication in the New Literatures in English (Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998), pp. 271–290. Goldson also mentions the same myth in her Screen article. Hulme, the bone people, p. 7. Hulme, the bone people, p. 7. Hulme, the bone people, p. 7. Hulme, the bone people, p. 7. Hulme, the bone people, pp. 14, 68, 239. Hulme, the bone people, p. 35. Hulme, the bone people, p. 109. Hulme, the bone people, p. 271. Hulme, the bone people, p. 425. See Kaplan, Looking for the Other; also Sylvia Walby, 'Women and Nation', in Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the Nation (London: Verso, 1996), pp. 235–254, and Nira Yuval‐Davis, Gender and Nation (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997). Hulme, the bone people, p. 16. Hulme, the bone people, p. 427. Hulme, the bone people, Chapter I, Part 1. Tapu is the Maori word for things sacred, forbidden, confidential or taboo. Orbell, Maori Myth and Legend, p. 83. Hulme, the bone people, pp. 78, 184, 190. Hulme, the bone people, pp. 20, 322, 398. Hulme, the bone people, p. 406. For a summary of opinions, see Mark Williams, 'Crippled by Geography? New Zealand Nationalisms', in Stuart Murray (ed.), Not on Any Map: Essays on Post‐Coloniality and Cultural Nationalisms (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997), pp. 19–43, and Graham Huggan, 'Opting Out of the (Critical) Common Market: Creolization and the Post‐Colonial Text', in Stephen Slemon and Helen Tiffin (eds), After Europe (Sydney: Dangaroo, 1989), pp. 27–40. Radhika Mohanram, 'The Construction of Place: Maori Feminism and Nationalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand', National Women's Studies Association Journal, 8/1, 1996, p. 55. Liisa Malkki, quoted in Mohanram, 'Construction of Place', pp. 55–56. Jara says 'we want to make "small Kiwi"', when expressing her desire to have a baby. My thanks to the anonymous reviewer who suggested this reading

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