ABSTRACT
Māori academic Andrew Vercoe’s1998 book Educating Jake: Pathways to Empowerment was in part a reaction to the movie Once Were Warriors (Tamahori 1995) and in particular the lack of attention the film paid to the colonial antecedents of the central character’s abusive violence. Once Were Warriors centred on the sociopathological violence of Māori father Jake Heke (a.k.a. ‘Jake the Muss’–short for ‘Jake the Muscle’) and its effects on his immediate family. The film provided a bleak yet realistic description of the violence within urban Māori life, and some resolution to this problem (a return to indigenous culture and tribal homelands). As its name suggests, the film intimates that what was appropriate and noble in the pre-colonial warrior culture has, in ‘modern’ times, become a naturalized symptom of Māori male urban dysfunction. The ‘uneducated savage’ trope, internalized by the Māori male deviant, confines him in a highly dysfunctional position. This is a space where many Māori men locate themselves, are located to, and struggle to break free from. The uneducated Jake emanates physicality: in his violent rampages, his sexuality, his being itself. He cannot deal with the complexities of his home life except by living up to his nickname. Entirely governed by his passions, he is unable to function other than through uncivilized physicality, void of mature expression. He slurps oysters. He gives Beth ‘the bash’. He is not merely physical; he is hyper-physical.
