576 the Contemporary Pacific • 27:2 (2015) Vilsoni Hereniko *

576 the contemporary pacific • 27:2 (2015) Wild felt familiar. I had experienced film, disguised as an ordinary road the same feelings in countless other movie. As such, it is a film that is easy mainstream movies. In The Pā Boys, to overlook, even at film festivals however, my emotional responses where it might be possible to discover emanated from the deep recesses of a fearlessly independent voice. my being, which very few films have When you accidentally stumble been able to touch. Rotumans call this on an authentic voice, like I did, you place huga, which literally translates know you’ve finally experienced as “inside of the body, esp. of the the film you have always hoped to abdomen”; Hawaiians call it the na‘au see when you go to the movies but while Māori call it the ngakau. thought the day would never come! It is in one’s gut that the truth of This was how it was with me. the ages resides. This kind of knowing vilsoni hereniko cannot be explained logically or ratio- University of Hawai‘i, nally. It is a knowing that is activated Mānoa when one experiences a universal truth, which in The Pā Boys, is this: *** For these Māori young people to be truly healed, they needed to reconnect Jonah From Tonga. 2014. Televi- with and learn about their ances- sion series, 180 minutes, dvd, color, tral pasts in order to become more in English. Written by Chris Lilley, humane, more compassionate, better produced by Chris Lilley and Laura human beings. This is the universal Waters, and directed by Chris Lilley message, told not through a sermon and Stuart McDonald; distributed but through a musical story about by hbo. us$19.99. boys and their girlfriends, going away together on what they thought would The television series Jonah From be a fun journey but instead became Tonga was released to low ratings a transformational one for all con- and accusations of racism. Origi- cerned. nally presented in Australia, where it Himiona Grace and his produc- was produced, it later premiered on ers, cast, and crew have made a film hbo in the United States. It features whose truth is as old as the moun- Australian comedian and show-runner tains, as vast as the sky, and as deep as Chris Lilley, who is white, as Jonah the Pacific Ocean. This is a film that Takalua, a fourteen-year old Tongan deserves our respect not only because high school student. Lilley’s use of of its inherent wisdoms (and there are makeup and a limp frizzy wig—what several) but also because it is fearlessly might charitably be called “Polynesian culturally specific. face”—are easy targets for criticism, if In most films made by indigenous not outright dismissal, of the apparent filmmakers thus far, nuance and speci- minstrelsy that at first glance seems ficity are often compromised to cater to characterize the six-episode series. to the tastes of a global and main- And if one looked no further than stream audience. Not so with The Pā the phenotype of the main charac- Boys. The result is an extraordinary ter, certainly this show would not be book and media reviews 577 worthy of discussion. However, for possible opportunity: he swears; he is those who sit through all three hours homophobic; he punches male rela- of the show, a much more complex tives in the genitals; he has a penchant and uncomfortably important geno- for graffiti that ostensibly spells out type emerges, one that forces viewers the words “dictation” by drawing a to contend with issues that go beyond crude facsimile of male genitalia fol- superficial representations of Islanders lowed by the letters “tation” (he even in the contemporary media landscape. tags the side of a pig) and “pussycat” It is necessary to situate Jonah (I will let readers use their imagina- within the cosmology of actor and tion); he tries unsuccessfully to date creator Chris Lilley so that one who is his cousin; and he is prone to bullying not familiar does not get the impres- others. But unlike Mr G and Ja’mie, sion that this character, or Lilley’s who are so self-centered that they are portrayal of him, is an isolated clearly archetypes of parody, Jonah is incident or occurring in a vacuum. slightly more self-aware and therefore Jonah first appeared as one of three is potentially redeemable. One of the characters played by Lilley in his 2007 underlying currents in the series is series Summer Heights High. That whether Jonah will actually redeem show, filmed in the now ubiquitous himself. What is surprising is that, in mockumentary style first popularized his way, he does. by the British version of The Office, A number of plot points woven followed Mr G, a drama teacher; through the episodes allow Lilley to Ja’mie King, an over-privileged private highlight, and then puncture, par- school student spending a year on ticular tropes about Islanders, race, exchange at public school; and Jonah. migration, masculinity, and schooling. The series spawned two spin-offs, Jonah overstays his welcome with his Ja’mie: Private School Girl, featuring uncle, and, early in the first episode, Lilley dressed as the title character his father, Aunty Grace, and younger in drag, and Jonah From Tonga. It is brother Moses come to bring him interesting to note that Lilley’s por- back to Australia. There he attends trayal of Jonah in Summer Heights Holy Cross, and he picks up where High did not engender the same type he left off at Summer Heights High. of critical reaction that this latest He leads a crew calling themselves series has, despite Lilley’s consistency “Fobba-liscious” and who spend their between the two series. days bullying the redheaded students At the end of Summer Heights (called “rangers,” slang for “orang- High, Jonah is expelled from the utan”) and dreaming of hip-hop star- school and sent to Tonga to live with dom. The engagement with diaspora his uncle. That is where the story in and racism is both subtle and over the Jonah From Tonga begins, and, from top, as when Jonah takes on Gray- the get-go, it is apparent that Jonah don, an older student and “ranger” has learned little from his expulsion, who offers Jonah no quarter. After nor has he become a particularly Jonah melts Graydon’s locker with sympathetic character. His flaws are an acetylene blowtorch, they are both many and manifest themselves at every dressed down by Mr Joseph, a voca- 578 the contemporary pacific • 27:2 (2015) tional education teacher, who employs Garingal Juvenile Justice Centre after a vocabulary that consists almost attempting to rob a bowling alley with entirely of curses. Also at the meeting a “real” Tongan machete given to is Kool Kris, a youth worker at Holy them by George, leader of the Tongan Cross who is Tongan—and is played Soldierz gang, they attempt to link by a Tongan actor, as are all the up while they are taken to separate Tongan characters except for Jonah. rooms; the heartbreak of that literal A typical exchange then occurs, in separation and breaking of the family which Graydon tells Jonah, “Shut up, bond makes the scene almost too dif- Fob. At least I can read books,” and ficult to watch. Mr Joseph replies, “Hey, that’s enough Issues of Pacific Islander masculin- of the racist thing, Mate. You’ve got ity also come to the fore as Jonah is a Fob youth worker standing right exposed to, and ultimately rejects, a beside you.” It is this inability of a variety of male Tongan role models: figure like Mr Joseph to see his own these include Kool Kris, a devout dissimulation in this scene that makes Catholic and declared virgin, as well it so effective: it exposes the racism at as an accomplished dancer, whom work among white Australians and Jonah therefore tries to dismiss as Islander migrants while forcing the “gay” despite the fact that Kool Kris audience to decide whether or not they believes in Jonah and sticks with him should laugh at it. through to the end; George, the gang Indeed, the target here seems to be leader, who ultimately winds up dating the complexity of this awkward space. the cousin Jonah publicly covets; and Jonah, as the series title tells us, is Jonah’s father, Rocky Takalua, who from Tonga, but it is clear that he is in every scene with Jonah winds up not of Tonga. He does not speak the threatening violence. While in juvenile language, apart from the lyrics of a detention awaiting a parole hear- few songs, and he has no overt inter- ing, Jonah remarks, “If I’m good and est in Tonga aside from his Takalua responsible and stay out of trouble family tattoo, which is unfinished. when I get out, my dad said he’s going He seems more at ease in Australia, to take me to Tonga to get my Takalua despite the hardships and challenges tattoo finished, which means I’m a he faces there. Yet issues of fidelity real man.” I will not spoil the end- to family, and notably Jonah’s rela- ing by describing the Takalua tattoo, tionship with his brother Moses, which is revealed at the end of the demonstrate a nuanced practicing of series, back in Tonga. customary mores that viewers unfa- Perhaps the most touching scenes miliar with Pacific Islander cultures involve those in which Jonah sings may miss. Jonah is highly protective Tongan church songs with his family, of Moses, and his loyalty to being with Moses, and with his classmates.

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