Josie Pagani: We're more divided than ever - culturally, not just economically

Thursday, 29 December 2022

The National Library of New Zealand culled 600,000 books from its overseas collection. But, says Josie Pagani, ‘’What is really going on is a form of cultural cleansing’’.

Josie Pagani is a commentator on current affairs and a regular contributor to Stuff. She works in geopolitics, aid and development, and governance.

OPINION: I’ve been hosting talkback this week. So far I’ve spoken to a tradie in his ute, a rocket scientist, a cook, retired folk and a dad with his 2-year-old waiting for a Covid test. The range of life experiences reminds me of the diversity you might expect to find this week in a holiday campground.

I am more likely to hear a working class accent on talkback than on RNZ. The New Zealand accents I hear on TikTok are nothing like the accents I hear in our cultural institutions.

I'm not here to argue one is better than the other, but that all are important. Today, diversity in our formal cultural outlets, from gallery and libraries to publicly funded arts, is measured by identity much more than by social or economic class, lived experience or diversity of values.

Working people are seen in crises and crimes. Formal culture is about working class people more than it is of or for them. Those of us eating the wrong food, driving the wrong car, or having the wrong views apparently need to be corrected and educated.

* People power shames governments into action

There has always been cultural snobbery towards common tastes. The awfully dull writer Virginia Woolf apparently stood on her seaside balcony in Blackpool in the 1920s, despairing at overweight, unhealthy masses in their deck chairs and knotted hankies, eating fish and chips and smoking.

Even if the Bard is part of a ‘’canon of imperialism’’, that canon is part of who we are.

‘’How could they, after all we've done for them?’’

Posts, tweets and stories going viral are changing the world around us as profoundly as TV changed us in the second half of the 20th century. Our cultural gatekeepers are threatened by rival power and influence.

Social media brings dangers, they warn, which is sometimes true. Therefore, cultural elites want strict oversight to prevent the wrong sort of voices from being amplified.

Lest you think I am attacking straw people, there is a cultural purge in our elite institutions.

I have written this year about the mistake that Creative NZ made when it rejected funding for a Shakespeare showcase in part because the Bard is part of a ‘’canon of imperialism’’.

Even if he were, that canon is part of who we are, the source of everyday expressions like ‘’wild goose chase’’ and ‘’eaten me out of house and home’’, which are cliches because they describe universal experiences.

Our National Library has discarded 600,000 books. It claimed this purge is to make room for New Zealand books, and especially texts by Māori and Pacific authors.

There are not 600,000 works by Māori and Pacific creators that have been denied a place on the shelves of our national institutions by a first edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road (among the trashed texts) and books about the Holocaust.

What is really going on is a form of cultural cleansing: Local is more valuable to us because it ‘’tells our stories’’. But our cultural institutions are telling only some of our stories.

Josie Pagani: I had more wow moments learning about the universe from six hours of podcasts than I had in 12 years of school.

Local is not always more relevant. The music of the Beatles, Adele, Mozart and Ed Sheeran is more relevant to us than Kāpiti driftwood art. The Rolling Stones and Beethoven are global because of their excellence.

Editorial choices will always be needed. Cultural collections need to be curated. My argument is not against selection, but against chauvinism.

If we want to understand which of our creators are genuinely excellent, we need to expose ourselves to world-class alternatives so that we can understand what makes the best as good as they are.

Incredibly, the minister who authorised the National Library's cull was Tracey Martin. She is now in charge of merging TVNZ and RNZ, which gives us some idea of why that merger is becoming a ‘’Waka Kotahi’’-grade fiasco.

One of the world's great awards for journalism is named after Joseph Pulitzer. As a Hungarian refugee arriving in the US, he never forgot what it was like to sleep on a park bench because you had no money for rent. 'Never lack sympathy for the poor,' he said on his retirement.

Pulitzer's media was deeply democratic. He set out to provide a cheap daily newspaper for the poor that would be an alternative to the more expensive alternatives. He followed Benjamin Day, who had created the first ‘’penny paper’’, called the New York Sun, because, like the sun, a penny paper was for everybody.

We are a culturally divided country. Trust in the media is dropping, particularly among people with more conservative views. You might not worry if your views are left, but it does matter in our democracy if a chunk of citizens don't feel represented.

People who vote for Donald Trump in the US are those most alienated from big media, Hollywood and universities.

Today, 55% of New Zealanders regard the media as a “dividing force” in society, against 23% who saw it as ‘’unifying’’.

Intellectual conformity in our elite cultural institutions is leading to division in New Zealand.