Underbelly Land of The Long White Cloud

Last night on TV3 a new television show featured, Underbelly of The Long Green Cloud. I was intrigued to watch this show as I was unaware of the large drug industry in New Zealand during this time. However, what intrigued me more was the characters and the casting that were visible within the show. Although the show is based upon real life events its casting perhaps reveals more about real life New Zealand at this time.

The two detectives who feature in this show are both of white origin. Along with these two characters the head of police is also a white character. This shows the idea that authority and the law-abiding citizen is the white character and not the Maori or "Other" character.

As the episode progressed so too did the introduction of more characters. The character who is typcast as the "baddie" ripping all the drug dealers off is typecast as the character of "Chinese Jack". For no other character in this series has the race of the character been put before the name of the character. Would it not be just as effective to name the character "jack" who is played by a chinese actor?

Further, the head of the operation "Marty" Johnstone is also an intriguing character. That is he is perpetrated to be a white middle class man who through being business savvy has come to lead the organized crime unit centered around marijuana distribution. Interestingly, none of those featured as trusted by Marty are of any racial colour. However, the women, who are never to be trusted as they sleep around and are apparently more likely to shed information/gossip from within are shown as Maori.

It is hard to argue that racial stereotypes are not still deeply imbedded in the audience when new productions feature them as an easy assumption of the audiences knowledge.