Posts by George Darroch
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Te Ao Nui. In the wider world, in the big world. Te Ao as 'the whole'. My Te Reo Maori is limited, so that's my interpretation.
I changed my location for a couple of reasons. The first is practical; I'll leave Canberra at some time in the next few months, and I can't be sure that I'll update my location here. I'll be somewhere, neither New Zealand or Australia, most probably (but not definitely) in Indonesia.
The other relates more directly to the current discussion. I feel like I'm in a few different places at once, and can't do justice to any of them. I'm in the wider world.
I'm in Canberra, physically, of course. But I know few Australians, and fewer still Canberrans; my friends and counterparts are from everywhere but here. My headspace doesn't reflect my physicalspace. I don't think there is anything unique about feeling young (in my case) and on the wind. This discussion and the ones that have preceded it give me the impression that it is the case for a lot of us.
Te Ao also speaks a recognition that my interpretation of the world is conditioned by Aotearoa, and at least on this board, I feel like I'm dealing with the world in relation to it. It's a rather nice metaphysical space to be inhabiting.
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“I love rumors! Facts can be so misleading, where rumours, true or false, can be so revealing.”
Colonel Landa
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Bastards
As a historian, I find war films intensely disturbing. Not because of their 'historical inaccuracies', but because of the intense fidelity to detail and minutiae that has come to characterise war film making - getting the uniforms right, the accents, the what when and where. I find this tendency extremely dangerous, when compared to earlier films on war like Casablanca or The Guns of Naverone for example, that puported to be set in the war, but did not purport a high degree of accuracy.A man I know (Hank Nelson), a fine historian, was employed as the historical consultant to Kokoda. His work was on making sure everything was right, and he did a very good job. Yet the very first seconds of the film compare the Japanese people to a virus, and the film continues this subhumanisation by having Japanese appear as swamp creatures that only appear from the darkness to enact animalistic acts of violence. And, of course , the Kokoda campaign was of very little strategic importance for either Australia or Japan.
Kokoda grossed extremely highly at the box office, and is now part of the Australian consciousness. Kokoda is now huge as a symbol of national identity. Gallipoli before it was screened in Australian high schools for a generation, and more than any other film has contributed to the Anzac Myth, which in turn has had very real bearing on how that country acts in the world. The recent interventions into East Timor and the Solomon Islands, and Australia's internal intervention, have all been characterised by a particular view of the military and how it acts (which is only partly accurate).
Tarantino is right that rumour and myth reveal more than 'facts'; that is facts stripped of context and meaning. Having established with the opening scene of the that Nazis are subhumans and evil, we can watch two hours of extreme sadistic violence and people (including many civilians) being burned alive without a glimpse of sympathy. What Tarantino very dangerously implies (something he obviously can't say openly), is that we have more in common than we think we do.
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Ditto. The frequency of my posts is a clue to my sense of dislocation.
And me too. Along with Skype and a few other technologies and portals, PA/PAS allows me to keep a virtual foot on the right side of the Tasman.
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it was a national emergency and TVNZ are a public broadcaster.
You'd expect that. But no, they're a commercial broadcaster, like TV3. It just happens that they are owned by the Government (you and I), and the Government has decided that maximising their profit is in the best public interest. Who are we to disagree?
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Working link here
Beware: some very tedious trolling in the comments.
Thanks Sam. Yes, avoid the comments.
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There is a huge amount of historical revisionism engaged in by Western nations over World War II. It upsets me no end, not least because it has very real consequences in how conflict is dealt with in the present.
World War II was not to save the Jews or liberate the Dutch. Turning back the North Vietnamese was paramount, and helping the South Vietnamese was never a primary goal of the Vietnam War. Liberating the Iraqi people was at best a distant second. The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not, and never was, meant to advance the interests of the Afghans.
From an essay at War is Boring about how publicly stated motivations for wars change once they start to get problematic.
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Although I have a few quibbles with minor points* in this essay, Reading The Maps has some excellent commentary on this matter.
*the archeological evidence of deforestation preceding collapse in Rapa Nui is particularly strong, and not a "myth" as Maps characterises it. -
Thank you for this post.
I might post at length about my thoughts about New Zealand and its current perceptions of World War Two, but for now I'll just say that your summarisation of its place in the popular imagination is apt.
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I love him and I speak the langauge fairly well, so, why not? Hopefully I'll graduate and then fly out with him in April.
Absolutely. Other things can wait, love is more important.
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If my memory serves me, there was a school in Bethlehem, Tauranga, in the mid 90s that banned 'Bad Jelly the Witch' because it had a witch in it. Or was it just that they censored it?
I was homeschooled (in part) because a teacher came to school on dress-up day as a witch.