Ethnicity in the Films of Taika Waititi
Exploring the representation of ethnicity in “What We Do in the Shadows” and “Boy”
Minorities and ethnicities are at the butt end of social discourses and genres. In Westerns, Native Americans are the enemy, a savage with poor war tactics and few lines. Another place minorities find themselves is the recipient of white generosity and heroism as in Dances with Wolves or Amazing Grace. More recently, minority filmmakers are attacking stereotypes and representation, effectively creating works that revise traditional Hollywood conventions.
One filmmaker whose work is finding more and more commercial success is Taika Waititi from New Zealand.
His films are most easily characterized as comedies, though a more ambitious reading offers insight into minority and ethnic life in New Zealand. Two of his films easily fit into this interpretation. Those two films are What We Do in the Shadows, a mockumentary about Vampires living together in Wellington, and Boy, a serious yet humorous film that centers on a young Maori boy in rural New Zealand.
The most natural reading of What We Do in the Shadows is as a comedy charged with slapstick and situational humor, based on shared living and dating tropes, and full of New Zealand quirkiness. One critic called it “an irrepressibly charming B-movie.” Compared to Boy, the mockumentary is subtle and reserved in its ethnic and minority-based voice.
Still, Waititi uses two different methods to reverse and revise cultural narratives about ethnicity: the cinema verité genre (as opposed to an actual documentary) and mythical characters. The distinction between cinema verité and documentary is important in understanding why What We Do in the Shadows is so effective. Consider some of the nuances at play in a documentary and how they are revised by cinema verité.
A documentary is primarily concerned with facts. Aside from aesthetics and narrative, that’s what differentiates it from other genres. But a documentary goes one step further and makes and generally has an agenda in mind when presenting those facts. A documentary focuses on a person or subject of interest, but also tries to persuade the audience one way or another on the issue.
For example, a recent documentary, Batman and Bill, follows a man’s search to learn about the true artist behind the original Batman comic strips. Additionally, it not only focuses on the details of the search but claims the search is worthwhile and important. Likewise, another documentary, Bigger, Faster, Stronger*, concerns itself both with the history of steroids and a voice of warning against them.
What We Do in the Shadows has no agenda, nor does cinema verité. Cinema verité, as opposed to a documentary, shows the subjects in their daily routine without commentary. Think of The Office, for example. Like a documentary, The Office looks for facts or a truth about a subject, in this case, a paper company. However, The Office doesn’t make a claim about what it films. There is no attempt to say that office work is boring or exciting, worthwhile or meaningless, or any other distinction.
What does cinema verité look like in What We Do in the Shadows? For one, the characters are aware they are on camera. It starts with the first shot. As Viago rises out of his casket bed, he pauses at 45 degrees, turns to the camera with a smile, then continues rising with more smiles and more glances. In the first few minutes he explains every decision step by step as he opens the blinds or tells the crew about his friends. Essentially, the vampires get to tell the story without a narrative telling them what to do. They get to speak for themselves.
The second device Waititi uses is the choice in mythical characters. Waititi (also an actor in the film) and his flat mates are vampires. As with many monster movies, vampires effectively represent a minority/ethnic group as do other creatures in the movie like werewolves or witches.
Just because the film avoids ethnic stereotypes doesn’t mean it avoids vampire stereotypes. In fact, the choice to use vampires is smart thanks to the cultural obsession wrought from Twilight. The vampires have to confront these stereotypes that happen in film.
There are several scenes that play on this idea. Nick, a human, is bitten during the film and becomes a vampire. New to the scene, he fails to understand the heritage the other vampires revere. His identity is constructed by what he sees in popular culture. He tells strangers that he is a vampire, even going as far as to show off some of his mythical powers. Deacon, another vampire, confronts him, saying, “You’re not Twilight!” Nick responds by saying, “I’m Dracula, man,” to which Deacon says, “You don’t know who Dracula is!” Through this scene, the audience learns the struggle of being ethnic in a culture where the minority has never controlled their own voice.
The stresses over the historical past occur at other moments in the film. Viago (Waititi) says, “Vampires have had a pretty bad rep. We’re not these mopey old creatures who live in castles. And while some, most of us, are, a lot are… bats. There are also, those of us, who like to flat together in really small countries like New Zealand.” However, as much as they would like to redefine the stereotypes surrounding vampires, they hold on to this past, as alluded to by Deacon.
The audience gets the sense that the vampires used to have a better life than they do now. Vladislav used to be an amazing hypnotist and could transform into different animals. Now, he screws up the faces when he transforms and isn’t as confident in his hypnosis. Deacon was a Nazi vampire, and ever since the war, he’s had to reinvent himself. Throughout the whole film there are references to the historical past of vampires and some of their terrifying deeds. Now, the vampires are cooped up and can’t even decide who does the dishes. The anxiety they feel is reflective of a minority whose past is all but disappeared or has been misrepresented in popular culture.
What We Do in the Shadows uses the cinema verité genre to eliminate any narrative or discourse besides what the vampires can present themselves. However, like most minorities, the vampire’s cultural awareness affects their self-identity; still, they are given the chance to speak for themselves.
Though Boy makes use of several different methods to present ethnicity it also shares key similarities with What We Do in the Shadows. In fact, much of what works in What We Do in the Shadows also works in Boy, most notably the documentary feel and insider’s voice. Consider this recent interview featuring Taika Waititi and Ruban Nielson, a New Zealand, Polynesian-Maori musician and lead singer of Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
Ruban Nielson: Boy is my favourite movie.
Taika Waititi: Really? It’s still my favourite of all the films I’ve done, too.
Ruban Nielson: It’s the closest thing to my childhood that I’ve ever seen (on screen) by far. I knew I was going to like it before I even saw it, and then when I saw it I was like, ‘Man, this is almost too close to the bone.’
Taika Waititi: (laughs) That’s why it’s got a special place for me, because it was shot in the house I grew up in. We shot stuff with my dad; we shot stuff in the farm that I worked in when I was a kid. It was more like a weird documentary, in a way.
Ruban Nielson: It’s a beautiful film, man. I can’t watch the whole thing very often, because it’s a bit heavy. Like, all the nostalgia, all that stuff about Michael Jackson is a big deal, because we were obsessed with Michael Jackson when we were kids. I remember my brother, Kody, hiding behind the couch (for the ‘Thriller’ video) ’cos he was terrified. But he wouldn’t leave the room, he kept trying to peek for the cool bits.
Taika Waititi: It was scary, man, it was scary. We also used to think Bob Marley and Michael Jackson were Maori. I thought that Bob Marley was from Ruatoria and I heard that Michael Jackson was a local! (Denny 2018)
In this casual conversation, the two artists touch on several key stylistic effects of the film. Most notable in comparison with What We Do in the Shadows is the documentary feel. Two things make Boy feel like a documentary: location and nostalgia.
Obviously, the film is not a documentary. But the fact that two minority creatives perceive it as such says much about how ethnic minorities see themselves in cinema. Why, when a film shows a reality about the minority’s existence, does it feel like a documentary? For a few reasons, specifically the two mentioned by Waititi and Nielson. First, modern ethnicities rarely see films that centers around their location. A surprising (or not) majority of films center on white families in suburban and urban settings. A film about a Maori kid in a rural North Island town doesn’t correspond with most cinema goers experience, nor is it fantastical or scenic enough to even feel escapist. Many Maori grew up in rural environments before moving to the cities in the late 60’s and onward. Boy shows a rural realism that is typically overlooked in modern cinema.
There are several other ways the film creates the atmosphere of rural realism. For one thing, nothing happens in the town. Two key moments highlight this nothingness. Boy shows off his new sparklers in the middle of the day. When asked if his friends can borrow some, Boy replies that he’s saving them for a special occasion. Immediately following that statement, he gives one of the sparklers to Chardonnay, his crush. One has the sense that there will never be a special occasion on which to light the sparklers.
Another moment that highlights the insignificance of the town is near the end of the film. A group of bicyclists, noticeably white, pass by Boy as he stands on a bridge. The moment is striking because it is the only sign of outsiders entering the town. Their professional gear reminds the audience of their foreignness. The scene is brief and the bikes disappear as quick as they arrived, passing by with no thought of stopping. The town is insignificant to any outsider.
The second feeling that adds to the documentary feel is a focus on true Maori experience, or as Nielson alludes to, nostalgia. The movie is unapologetically Maori. Some rituals go unexplained, like the hand rinsing outside the cemetery. Additionally, so much of the humor is based around self-diagnosed stereotypes, for example, when Alamein introduces himself as an uncle and his young niece mutters, “another uncle?” as she walks back exasperated into the house. Some of the stereotypical Maori humor might at first seem to play into traditional racist perspectives on indigenous people. The adults get drunk and gamble away their money, the school is subpar, and the kids are left to fend for themselves without supervision.
While this may be a little stereotypical, it matters who is saying it. When Waititi writes stereotypes into the movie, he’s not doing it to be racist but to claim those stereotypes for the minority. Doing so goes deeper than just controlling the tropes; it also highlights that some of these stereotypes are negative but true, and that indigenous peoples can address them intrinsically instead of seeing them second hand from a white perspective.
Another source of nostalgia, and perhaps shocking to Americans who have watched the film or read the Waititi / Nielson interview, is the affinity with Michael Jackson. While I’m in no position to explain how this love of MJ began, Waititi himself tells us why it lasted. Growing up, Maori kids were told that Michael Jackson was a local, or in other words, indigenous. Maori, compared to Native Americans, have relatively no representation in film. There’s a very simple reason for this: the New Zealand film market is so small. In fact, less than five films were made in New Zealand during the 1960s. On the other hand, hundreds of Westerns were made in the United States.
While Native Americans like Sherman Alexi could watch a John Wayne movie and develop a conflicted sense of identity, Maori didn’t have the same amount of consumption and exposure to their own stereotypes, at least in film. Perhaps they could identify with Native Americans in those films or, as is more evident from the Boy, they identify with other individuals from popular culture, like Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson may be the most referenced icon in Boy, but other cultural texts influence the characters identity such as E.T., comic books, Dukes of Hazzard, and Japanese samurai movies. Alamein is the most susceptible to pop culture. “I am the Crazy Horses. I’m the Shogun. I’m all alone on this planet. Shit, man, I’m E.T,” he exclaims after his small band is beat up at the pub by a real gang.
An equally powerful of identity is Maori soldiers from WWII. Just like the vampires feel anxiety about the present as compared to their past, Alamein and Boy are struggle to adopt this past. Alamein is named after an Egyptian city where the Maori Batallion fought and Boy thinks that his father was a “green beret.” What might be most damning is that this Maori based identity is on par with the other pop culture in the film, each adding to the fragmented sense of self. It may be nostalgia, though the movie presents a conflicted, rural past where Maori derived a sense of self from exterior sources.
Though the two films are different in style and approach, both deal with a sense of identity that’s influenced by popular culture. Both let the minority voice speak for themselves. With the cameras rolling cinema verité style, the vampires dictate their own experience without commentary or narrative. They simply are, and what they are is real. Boy feels like a documentary as well in the way it portrays a rural, indigenous realism complete with stereotypes, unabashed ethnicity, but also deep fragmentation.
Waititi’s work has only matured and reached a more global audience in his last two films, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Thor: Ragnorok. While ethnicity surely doesn’t take the main stage in these movies as it did in the two considered in this paper, no doubt both contain new discourses on indigeneity and minority themes (Mele).
