Missionaries, Modernity and the Moving Image
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Missionaries, modernity and the moving image: re-presenting the Melanesian Other to Christian communities in the West between the World Wars Stella Ramage A thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington February 2015 ii Contents Abstract . v List of abbreviations . vi List of illustrations . vii Acknowledgements . xi Prologue . 1 Introduction . 3 PART ONE – Strange Bedfellows: Missionaries And Travelogue-Adventurers Chapter One: Facilitation: Missionaries Behind the Scenes . 27 . Chapter Two: Commissioning: Missionaries Engage Help . 77 Chapter Three: Collaboration The Thoroughly Modern Missionary And The American Movie-Maker . 121 PART TWO – Alone at last? Missionaries Roll Their Own Chapter Four: Seventh-Day Adventist Case Study: Cannibals and Christians . 161 Chapter Five: Roman Catholic Case Study: Saints and Savages . 205 Conclusion . 259 Postscript . 277 Bibliography . 279 iii iv Abstract This thesis considers conflicting representational strategies used by Christian missionaries in displaying Melanesian people to white audiences in the West with particular reference to films made during the period of colonial modernity between 1917 and 1935. Most scholarly work on Christian mission in the Pacific has focussed on the nineteenth century and on the effect of Christianisation on indigenous populations, rather than on the effect of mission propaganda on Western communities. This thesis repositions mission propaganda as an important alternative source of visual imagery of the Melanesian ‘Other’ available to white popular audiences. Within a broader commercial market that commodified Western notions of Melanesian ‘savagery’ via illustrated travelogue magazines and commercial multi-media shows, missionaries trod an uneasy knife-edge in how they transmitted indigenous imagery and mediated cultural difference for white consumers. Five case-studies consider missionary propaganda from four Christian denominations in disparate parts of Melanesia. They reveal a temporal trajectory in the conflicted but symbiotic relationship between, on one hand, missionary organisations interested in propagandising their work and, on the other, travelogue-adventurers operating with commercial motives. This trajectory follows missionaries as they move from facilitation of travelogue-adventurers, through passive commissioning of their services, then active collaboration, and finally to autonomous film-making in their own right. I consider how white missionaries played a pivotal role in both enabling and subverting the dominance of the prevailing commercial paradigm of the period: that Melanesians are by nature and definition ‘savages’ and ‘head-hunters’ residing in a thrilling, timeless, virtual place called ‘Cannibal-Land.’ These contradictory impulses, I contend, destabilised both Christian and ‘Cannibal-land’ stereotypes. This destabilising effect was not restricted to film, but I suggest that it was amplified by the use of the quintessentially modern medium of moving images. I argue that film – particularly film made by missionaries – posed an implicit challenge to the essentially literary trope of ‘Cannibal- land’. Moving images offered a more unruly medium within and around which indigenous Melanesians of the colonial era could sometimes display what I term a radical visibility that escaped and transcended both types of Western stereotype. v List of abbreviations ABM Australian Board of Missions AHC Seventh-Day Adventist Heritage Centre, Cooranbong, NSW. AR Australasian Record, Seventh-Day Adventist newsletter. JD38 Jonathan Dennis File #38, Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision MAW Marist Archives, Wellington NFSA National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra, Australia NZFA New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington (now Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision) vi List of Illustrations 0.1 Advertisement, Methodist Missionary Society of Australasia, 1925. xiv Methodist Archives, Auckland. 0.2 George Baxter, Massacre of Rev. Williams at Erromanga, colour print, 16 1839. 1.1 Martin Johnson, Nagapate, c.1917. 26 1.2 Martin Johnson, Nagapate among the devil-devils, c.1919 34 1.3 Martin and Osa Johnson and three unknowns before Grand Theatre, 44 Nouméa, 1919. NFSA. 1.4 Martin Johnson, Hunting for the Magic, c. 1919. 46 1.5 Nihapat, ‘Rambi’, ‘Atree’, Norman and Alma Wiles, c.1919. AHC. 46 1.6a Banner photograph header for ‘Trailblazers of the South Pacific’, The 51 Youth’s Instructor, 17 October 1944, 16. AHC. 1.6b Martin Johnson, The Watcher of Tanemarou Bay, c.1917 51 1.6c Photographic print from which ‘Trailblazers’ banner was derived. 51 AHC. 1.7 Big Nambas men, Malakula, c.1919. Wiles Album, AHC. 52 1.8 Film poster, Chez les Mangeurs d’Hommes, c.1931. 62 2.1 Film poster, 10,000 Miles in the Southern Cross, c.1921. NZFA. 76 2.2 Advertisement, Evening Post, Wellington, 5 June 1922, 2. 102 2.3 Lantern slide, Pearls and Savages. National Library of Australia 112 2.4 Freeze-frame, Adventures in Cannibal-land (c. 1932), George Tarr. 120 NFSA. vii 3.1 Title slide, Transformed Isle (c.1922). NZFA. 122 3.2 Freeze-frame, Transformed Isle/Black Shadows (c.1922). Edward 150 Salisbury plays a black-birding captain. NZFA. 3.3 Intertitles, Transformed Isle/Black Shadows (c.1922). NZFA. 154 3.4 Intertitle, Transformed Isle (c.1922). NZFA. 155 4.1 Title slide, Cannibals & Christians, c.1929. NFSA. 160 4.2 Maluan Vavau and Andrew Stewart, c.1920. AHC. 197 5.1 Advertisement, Marist Messenger, 1 June 1933, 10. 204 5.2 Emmet McHardy, ‘Matepai trying to imagine she is a turtle’, 207 Rorovana, c.1930. MAW. 5.3 Emmet McHardy, ‘Baria’s Catechist cross was not hanging to Maria’s 221 satisfaction’, Tunuru, c.1930. MAW. 5.4 Maurice Boch, Sister Claver and schoolgirls, Kieta, c.1929. 248 www.delcampe.net. 5.5 Armstrong Sperry, illustration, World Magazine, 23 May 1926 253 PS.1 ‘Young Rockefeller ‘eaten by cannibals’, The Dominion Post, March 276 17 2014, B5 viii ix For my father x Acknowledgements Second only to bearing and raising a child, writing this dissertation has been the most demanding and fulfilling task of my life. It would have been impossible without the support of innumerable people. It has its roots in my involvement with the multi-authored landmark publication Art in Oceania (Thames & Hudson, 2012). From 2009 to 2012 I had the privilege of working for this Marsden-funded project as image researcher and editorial assistant to a team of top scholars in the arts, cultures and histories of the Pacific: Peter Brunt, Nicholas Thomas, Lissant Bolton, Sean Mallon, Deidre Brown, Damien Skinner and Suzanne Kűchler. I gained a sweeping education and an enduring fascination with the complexities of indigenous representations in and of the Pacific. Nevertheless, without Dr Peter Brunt’s encouragement and faith in my ability, I would not have embarked on my own research journey. My supervisors, Professor Geoffrey Batchen and Dr Minette Hillyer, did me the honour of careful reading and insightful engagement. They have challenged me to think both more broadly and more rigorously. Thanks to my colleagues in Art History for providing a companionable environment, especially to Pippa Wisheart, Phylllis Mossman and Kirsty Baker. Annie Mercer has provided unstinting moral and emotional support as well as practical guidance through the administrative forest. I am grateful to her, and to my other good friends on campus made over these years of study – Belinda Ricketts and Vivienne Morrell – for coffee and conversations that have helped assuage the loneliness of the long-distance writer. I have benefitted from a Victoria Doctoral Scholarship, without which this thesis would not have been undertaken, and two Faculty Research Committee grants that enabled overseas research. Thanks also to the dedicated staff of several institutions: Chief Senimau of the Vanuatu National Cultural Council and Ambong Thompson, Director of the National Film, Sound and Photo Archives, Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Port Vila; Kathryn McLeod and Jack Dunstan of the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra; Jo Smith, Archivist for the Methodist Church of New Zealand; Rose Power, Curator and Archivist of the Seventh-Day Adventist Heritage Centre, Cooranbong, NSW; Ken Scadden, Brother Gerard Hogg S.M. and Elizabeth Charlton of the Marist Archives xi Wellington; and Kiri Griffin, research librarian of Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision (formerly New Zealand Film Archive) in Wellington. I am also grateful to Dr Allan K. Davidson of the College of St John the Evangelist for sharing his work with me. I owe special posthumous thanks to film historian Jonathan Dennis, who compiled much of the documentation on which Chapter Two is based. He had, I believe, planned to write an article on this topic. I am indebted to Jonathan for doing the groundwork, and to Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision for making his research available to me. Finally, my love and gratitude to Chris Thorn, who has, throughout, kept me warm, sane and well-fed. xii xiii Fig 0.1: Advertisement, Methodist Missionary Society of Australasia, 1925. Methodist Archives, Auckland. xiv Prologue Something NEW, Something THRILLING, and Something TRUE. Film advertisement, Methodist Missionary Society of Australasia, 1925 The missionary enterprise of the early twentieth century faced a dilemma in representing Otherness to popular audiences in the West. As transmitters of indigenous imagery within a broader commercial market that commodified Western notions of Melanesian ‘savagery’, missionaries