Shakespeare as Transcultural Narrative: Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti - The Maori Merchant of Venice

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT CAROLO-WILHELMINA ZU
BRAUNSCHWEIG
Fachbereich Geistes- und Erziehungswissenschaften

Englisches Seminar

Shakespeare as Transcultural Narrative: Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti
(The Maori Merchant of Venice)

Magisterarbeit

 zur Erlangung des Magistergrades (M.A.)
am Fachbereich für Geistes- und Erziehungswissenschaften
der Technischen Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig

vorgelegt von 

Claudia Stehr

August 2006

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ... 5

1. Introduction ... 6
1.1. General Assumptions ... 7
1.2. Objectives ... 10
1.3. Outline ...  14
1.4. Definitions ...  15

2. Shakespeare in New Zealand ... 19
2.1. Shakespeare as Colonial ‘Mimicry’ ...  20
2.2. Towards a National Theatre ... 21
2.3. Shakespeare Becoming a ‘Kiwi’ ... 22
2.4. Shakespeare and Maori Theatre ...  24

3. Maori Cultural Identity – A Transcultural Identity? ... 33
3.1. ‘Being a Maori is ...  34
3.2. Transculturality ...  36
3.3. Transcultural Maori Identity ... 39

4. Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti – A Far-Reaching Film Project ...  45
4.1. The ‘Man who colonised Shakespeare’ ... 46
4.2. A Maori Film with Concrete Purpose ... 48
4.3. National and International Reviews ... 51

5. Detailed Film Analysis ... 56
5.1. From Playscript to Screenplay ... 57
5.2. Exposition/ Sequence 0 ... 59
5.3. Act I/ Sequence 1 ... 63
5.4. Act II/ Sequence 2 ... 68
5.5. Act III/ Sequence 3 ...  75
5.6. Act IV/ Sequence 4 ... 82
5.7. Act V/ Sequence 5 ... 93
5.8. Tradition of Shakespearean Merchant Screen Adaptations  ... 99

6. Transcultural Elements in Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti ...  109
6.1. ‘Transcultural Languages’ ...  111
6.2. ‘Transcultural Bodies’ ...  119
6.3. ‘Transcultural Sites’ ... 122

7. Conclusion ...  126

8. Appendices ... 131
8.1. Appendix One: Filmography ...  131
8.2. Appendix Two: ‘Being a Maori is’ ... 132
8.3. Appendix Three: Chronological List of Reviews ...  133
8.4. Appendix Four: Sequence Record ...  136
8.5. Appendix Five: Lines Excluded ... 140
8.6. Appendix Six: Subtitles ... 143
8.7. Appendix Seven: Comparison of Merchant Adaptations ...  158

9. Glossary ...  164

10. Bibliography ...  167

1 Introduction

‘Kaore koia he ringaringa o te Hurai, he manawa, he tinana, he whakaaro, he aroha, he hiahia?’ are the first words the audience hears in a voiceover of the opening shot of the Maori film Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti. The subtitles reveal bit by bit the English translation ‘Hath not a Jew hands, / organs, / dimensions, / senses, / affections, / passions?’ while the camera focuses on a step covered with autumn leaves, then tracks back, tilts from low towards the top showing a person slowly walking up the stairway and looking up into the sky before it cuts to dark bluish clouds and lightning. A ship swaying heavily on the ocean with the gloomy orchestral sound of the film’s musical score ‘The Storm’ fortifies the dramatic tension of this scene. The person’s garment and the yarmulke clearly distinguish him as the Jewish moneylender of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Yet, in the following shot the audience find themselves in an enchanted forest, the moon shining on a mysterious torchlight procession of a group of turbaned people lead through the darkness by a singing woman and disguised fairylike creatures. When seeing this one-minute scene, the viewer would likely be distracted as how to associate this kind of exotic ‘green world’, that is more reminiscent of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the film adaptation of his Merchant play. It is obvious that these two scenes already establish and highlight the film’s focus that will emphasise the play’s theme of mercy overcoming revenge packaged in indigenous Maori¹ cultural elements. However, this screen version of The Merchant of Venice is actually not only a Shakespearean appropriation for a Maori audience. This thesis argues that by mixing local as well as global cultural elements the film promotes Shakespeare on a transcultural level, which on the one hand aids the tangata whenua (Maori people)² with the restoration of their language and cultural identity in New Zealand, and on the other hand also relates to an international audience by providing a culturally enhanced Shakespeare production and contributing a valuable artefact that shows the universal relevance of this play.

1.1 General Assumptions

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice has crossed my path many times – in English class at school when I was a pupil, as a student at university, as an actress in the theatre, in performances and films, on travels abroad, most significantly in New Zealand as the Maori Merchant, and in many other transformed texts and art forms of the 20th/21st century.³ It has been a controversial play, being produced on stage countless times, and since the beginning of motion pictures, it has been turned into various film adaptations. The play occurs in such a variety of depictions, in all kinds of cultures and nations worldwide in our contemporary life, that this raises the question as to why this play seems to be as significant today as it was in Shakespeare’s time.⁴ After Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice is the most discussed of Shakespeare’s plays (cf. Halio 2000: xvii, 166). Its themes about making money, mercy against justice, love against hate, Jew against Christian, remain relevant today. However, the performance, reception and understanding of the character Shylock has changed from a comical into a rather tragic figure. Shakespeare wrote a comedy for the Renaissance society of his time, where the Jew Shylock was seen as a ‘clown’ and when racial, national and religious difference was a central point of the culture, worldview and ideology of the Elizabethan period. Due to colonialism and the discovery of the new world, some changes in the attitude to difference and ‘modern racism’ occurred (cf. Loomba 2002: 1, 17-20). Today, money and capitalism seem to have developed to the central notion of our lives, and after the Holocaust the words ‘race’, ‘racism’ and ‘anti-Semitism’, ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ have acquired different connotations and are perceived differently to the Renaissance. In addition, The Merchant of Venice is now labelled as problem play (Mahon 2002: 2) or even performed as a social tragedy (McCullough 2005: 34) omitting the last act, acting as a mirror for society.

This change in the way The Merchant of Venice is viewed is not only visible chronologically over the years, but also geographically and nationally within different cultures, as The Merchant of Venice has been adapted for theatre not only in English, but as well in non-Anglophone languages all over the world. Whereas with colonialism Shakespeare was used as an instrument to civilise the ‘Other’ and to stamp the Englishness and the imperial culture on the colonies, we find non European and indigenous cultures appropriating Shakespeare for their own interests. Thus, The Merchant of Venice has changed from a British symbol of imperialistic culture to a hybrid form in non-Anglophone languages to re-establish a minoritised culture. These Shakespeare productions have resulted in changed appropriations to Shakespeare, and command more attention of critics today. Where European or American adaptations of The Merchant of Venice are often produced in the tradition of heritage films⁵ (cf. the BBC television productions or the latest adaptation by Michael Radford in 2004), i.e. recalling the history of anti- Semitism in the 20th century, non-European appropriations without a manifested history of Semitism – though mostly with a history of colonialism – supply a transformed view of the The Merchant of Venice by transposing local references from their own culture, history and tradition to the play.⁶ Especially in the postcolonial cultures such as in India, South Africa, or New Zealand, The Merchant of Venice has been frequently adapted⁷. This re-creation of Shakespeare demonstrates to a certain degree the universal and timeless aspects of the play’s themes that overcome history. However, this does not explain the growing interest and rising number of Shakespearean appropriations during the last century. This certainly has to do with the increasing significance of media and with the former colonised states’ progression into post-colonial positions.

[....]

1 In Maori long vowels can be indicated by double vowels or by macrons. As the use of the latter is more prevalent, this thesis employs macrons for all Maori words with long vowels, apart from the citations where this distinction is missing.

2 For a detailed translation of the Maori words see the glossary.

3 Cf. Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh which draws on aspects of Othello and The Merchant of Venice; or Erica Jong’s novel Shylock’s Daughter that combines elements of Shakespeare’s Merchant within a modern love story. More details on adaptations of The Merchant of Venice in literature, music, paintings etc. see the ‘Sh:in:e – Shakespeare in Europe’ website of the Swiss University of Basel , which gives a comprehensive collection on internet links and references on various plays of Shakespeare and other valuable information.

4 There is a vast amount of literature on theatre and film productions of this play. Most interesting is Charles Edelman’s book Shakespeare in Production: The Merchant of Venice, where he gives an historical outline of different productions and compares them to each other. Kenneth Rothwell gives a list and comments on film adaptations of the play. He registers nine Merchant film productions (1910 -1995) in his filmography. Combining this literature and additional materials I have compiled a list of 24 entries on films of The Merchant of Venice, nine of which are silent films (mostly excerpts of a theatrical performances) made before 1927; five of them are adaptations in a language other than English, and the last two entries refer to Don Selwyn’s Maori film adaptation and Michael Radford’s recent movie (2004) with Al Pacino as Shylock. For the entire list see Appendix One.

5 Michael Anderegg defines the heritage film genre as ‘films from the late 1980s and 1990s whose setting and style are thought to support an essentially conservative agenda [and] capture aspects of the British Empire at its height in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras’ (2004: 36).

6 See Sonia Massai’s recent publication World-Wide Shakespeares: Local approriations in film and performance, which includes four essays on The Merchant of Venice, two of them referring to diverse European adaptations, and the others, contrastingly, to non- European (Mexican and Maori) appropriations.

7 For further information on Shakespeare in India see Trivedi and Bartholomeusz. Shakespeare in post-colonial South Africa is consulted in Natasha Distiller’s book South Africa, Shakespeare, and Post-Colonial Culture.