CONFORMITY PACIFIC STYLE

Its true that 'Pacific Narrative' has emerged from refined oral traditions. Traditions that have not only survived but also evolved in spite of fierce  colonization, forced migration and most recently, western globalization.

Film, as an agency of cultural transmission and a vehicle for ideology has always position the pacific experience as under privileged and therefore its means of construction, are a rite reserved for those with privilege. The new position of power has only begun to shift in recent years with the accessibility of the means of creating expression becoming more domestically available and that high forms of narrative art have been devalued by technology and its integration into cultural and social functionality.

In knowing this and understanding cohesively the broader context in which Pacific Narrative is constructed, It burns on the inside to know that the challenge for emerging Pacific writers, orators, story tellers is quantified as a risk. That contemporary Pacific narrative has not yet settled into a state of natural or norm implies that; to tell a non western story we are perpetually at a state of risk.

I'm reminded of that risk every time I hear a story that reenforces Pacific inferiority. It is no wonder our Pacific males are incapable of exercising conviction when our modern narratives forcibly impose conformity. This is rendered through depictions of Pacific life embedded in sentimentality and romanticized notions of the past. Ownership looks like the guilt that governs our need to tribute and champion our underprivileged position to a state of norm.

JERRY will change this.

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