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New Zealand - A Pastoral Paradise? Introduction
The formation of national identity can be seen to be dependent on the acceptance of certain myths. Inherent within New Zealand culture are the myths of the white-settler pioneer and the mastery of nature, the DIY Kiwi bloke, an enterprise culture that favours a 'have-a-go' spirit, and a pastoral paradise that is clean and green. As Richard White writes of myths, "when we look at ideas of national identity, we need to ask not whether they are true or false, but what their function is, whose creation they are, and whose interest they serve".1 The most dominant and persistent New Zealand myth is of an Edenic garden, an Arcadian pasture, a natural utopia. Initially, this concept was fabricated as nineteenth century propaganda to attract emigrés and European settlers. New Zealand painters maintained the myth, importing and absorbing European landscape conventions, creating what W.J.T. Mitchell describes as a "simulacrum of styles".2 Mitchell quotes New Zealand art critic Francis Pound, who suggests that this naturalism is "'a fantasy of the truth' that was devised for the purpose of 'inventing a country'".3 Such invention continued with New Zealand food being marketed as the product of a fertile and unpolluted country. One example is the 1950s advertising of dairy produce, which applied the label "Cream and Sunshine Foods". This coincided with a period when New Zealand was viewed as the premier nation for high living standards, and a popular belief that it offered a 'great way of life', 'a great place to bring up kids', 'security and equality', and a society of good neighbours. Nick Perry argues that these are sentiments which "were once part of a formally approved popular rhetoric of nationalism, understood and promulgated as cultural givens".4 Recently, New Zealand has experienced a boom in tourism, most notably neo-tourism from Asia. Visitors from heavily industrialised nations appear seduced by images of a pre-urbanised, uninhabited landscape. Nature has become packaged and commercialised, and the country has also begun to promote itself as a place that can offer diverse movie location possibilities; a Producer's Paradise for scouting filmmakers from overseas. The nature myth is maintained through national images and icons - the symbol of the kiwi or silver fern appears on seemingly everything from toys to the shirts of the All Blacks rugby team. But as Claudia Bell writes, it creates a romantic "model of ecological harmony"5 which does not correspond, for instance, to the way in which species have become threatened or extinct.
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