Facebook Finds

This is not a substantial blog like my previous one, but rather I am posting it because I just stumbled upon this facebook group:

She Just Called You Pakeha, Ohh Hell No! Hold My Stolen Land

It follows a similar trend to several other 'humourous' groups circulating Facebook recently. They are aimed at representing stereotypes - yet this is the first one I have seen in relation to a New Zealand context.

Usually these groups follow the same sentence structure:

"Dude, she just called you scottish" "Oh hell no!, hold my kilt!"

"dude she just called you a perve". Thats IT, HOLD MY Binoculars

"Dude she just called you Australian!!" "OH HELL NO HOLD MY Stubbie!!

What is interesting here is that these groups culturally flatten an entire way of life by using an object to signify their identity. But such stereotyping is designed to be funny - these Facebook Finds use ironic language.

The discourses they employ suggest that in order to be identified as 'Scottish', one obviously wears a 'kilt'. Same rule applies to 'Australian' and 'stubbies'.

So, it absolutely amazed me to see this being done in reverse with the facebook group She Just Called You Pakeha, Ohh Hell No! Hold My Stolen Land because instead of culturally flattening Maori people, it criticises the coloniser... and it's even more interesting that 4,523 people like this group.

This inspired me to go see what other facebook groups have the word 'Maori' in them.

The results of this research were not at all what I expected. Most of the Facebook groups were themed around certain Maori groups or institutions, for example 'Maori teachers in Aotearoa'. Rugby and Maori Art also featured a lot on the list. But in terms of stereotypes, or comments about Maori peoples - there werent any groups addressing issues such as unemployment or domestic violence. Rather, most of them are themed around sexuality...

Being a fine M A O R I with swagg ;

Page

1,377 people like this.

Ilovee my sexc maori boii'sz

Page

298 people like this.

Maori's are HOT

Page

276 people like this.

Rooting a maori chick

Page

11 people like this.

This made me think of how the 'Other' is often eroticised and 'exotic' - could there be a link here in a New Zealand context on this Facebook Find?

The reason I am blogging about this is that I was not expecting these results...

Do you have any thoughts about these Facebook Finds? From a social phsycology point of view, Facebook is a great arena for social research. These 'Facebook Finds' provide interesting raw material and data to sift through and analyse the public opinion.

It is amazing that enough people acknowledge that Pakeha stole land from the Maori, to the extent of having a Facebook group about it. It is also amazing to me that many Facebook groups with the word 'Maori' in them are aimed at physical attraction and sexuality.

These Facebook Finds certainly surprised and intrigued me.


Link to Page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/She-Just-Called-You-Pakeha-Ohh-Hell-No-Hold-My-Stolen-Land/218752431491010

An example of race in satire

Upon reading this week’s chapters from the course book, I was reminded (as I frequently am) of an situation in Seth MacFarlane’s “Family Guy”, in which Peter Griffin is placed in a similar position to that of Susie Guillory Phipps of Michael Omni & Howard Winant’s chapter titled ‘Racial Formation’.

The reading tells of Phipps discovering her official racial identity to be that of African American/Black, as well as briefly highlighting legal efforts to rectify what was for Phipps, a “problem”. What is not clarified is whether Phipps’ found her black heritage to be specifically undesirable, or that it was the sudden displacement of her ready established racial identity that spurred Phipps to try and correct what the State had her documented as in terms of race.

In said Family Guy episode, titled “Peter Griffin: Husband, Father… Brother?” Peter is similarly shocked to find in a local genealogical record that he had a Black relative, living some hundreds of years prior. Being the satirical cartoon that Family Guy is (and the blundering idiot that Peter Griffin embodies) Peter presents himself with the dilemma of how to go about embracing what he soon considers to be his new Black identity. Like Phipps from Louisiana, Peter’s Black heritage may well have gone unnoticed for all his life had he not found it documented, although unlike Phipps, he embraces it with a sense of excitement after over-coming his problem of figuring out “how to be Black”. Peter follows his Black neighbour - Cleveland’s advice to mingle with other Black people as a way of aiding integration into his new racial group, to which Peter agrees, he “should be hanging around more Black people like [him]self”.

For anyone who has seen an episode of Family Guy, the irony of this narrative will be fairly evident. Peters understanding of race, identity and culture is that of them being thrown into one and rightfully inseparable. His failure to see genetics and culture as unrelated, illustrates a misconception of race as one’s biological traits determining behaviour, expectations etc. The point of this episode I believe is to draw attention to the ridiculous stereotyping that is bound up with common addresses to race. This is communicated through Peter’s insistence on a new found aspect of his genealogical heritage completely restructuring exactly who he is and what he is entitled to. The remainder of the episode sees Peter generously compensated for the slavery of his Black ancestor by his Father in law’s early colonial family, a storyline providing great satire while raising further questions on the unsteady ‘boundaries’ of race as a concept.