Alisha Lewis
AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch): A new TV 3 reality show following the lives of young Māori on the Gold Coast has viewers “embarrassed” and social media buzzing with calls for it to be dropped.
The GC premiered last Wednesday and has already sparked a negative response among viewers over its portrayal of Māori Aussies– or “Mozzies” – that a Facebook page titled "Cancel The GC TV show" was set up.
The creator of the Facebook page, who asked to remain anonymous, says she set it up “within 15 minutes of the show airing”.
“As Kiwis, I think most of us are just embarrassed. It portrays Māori in a very negative, trashy light.”
She says many people felt misled about the show’s content.
“They pitched it as successful Māori living it up on the Gold Coast, yet it only shows them boozing up and picking up girls with tacky lingo that makes you want to smack their head against a brick wall.”
The Facebook page has already attracted almost 13,500 likes while The GC’s official page has less than 12,000.
'A disgrace'
“It’s a disgrace to Māori and New Zealand as a whole. Basically our IQ grew when they left the country,” said commenter Jessica Barton on the page.
Even local beer brand Tui joined the hype, designing a billboard reading “The GC portrays Māori in a positive, accurate way”, followed by Tui’s sarcastic tagline, “Yeah Right”.
However, not everyone feels the show needs to be taken off the air.
“I think it does reflect the kind of TV that some people want to watch,” says Facebook commenter Peter Dixon. “I don’t think they would have funded the show under the idea it would fail.”
It’s this issue of funding which has also drawn a negative public response.
A Facebook poll was created asking people to vote on whether MediaWorks should refund the $420,000 of taxpayers’ money they received from NZ on Air to fund the show.
More than 94 percent of responders voted “yes” – with five percent voting they should pay it back plus damages.
The GC airs on Wednesdays at 8.30pm on NZ''s TV 3.
Alisha Lewis is a final year student journalist on the Bachelor of Communication Studies programme at AUT University.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Pacific Media Centre
