While these films touch on social reality, they also reveal that stereotypes and myths are deeply embedded in both the Pakeha and Maori psyche.
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Many of the myths and stereotypes that prevail in New Zealand today are the legacy of colonialism, "hegemony"; the dominant societies values and beliefs. It was clear right from the outset that Maori collectivism was philosophically at odds with the settler ethic of individualism. Darwin established the concept of racial superiority and inferiority. The first photographic images of Maori taken in the 1850' depicted Maori as the warrior aggressor( a good savage) rather then the warrior- hero, and women as being sexually promiscuous and available for men. There role being worker or mother and their function to await the arrival of the male. Also, images depicted Maori as the clown, unable to adapt to pakeha society , being gullible and slow witted Edwards(1989). These images became the norm for film makers, but they were of course myth. Critical theorists see stereotyping as an ideological process which obscures fundamental arrangements in society made in the interests of the more powerful. It makes such arrangements (e.g. sexual, racial, class or regional discrimination) appear natural rather than cultural. Blythe (1994) says that. films and television programmes are not essays on authenticity and in-authenticity so much as allegories of cultural engagement and negotiation between the coloniser/colonised. .
Maori, Melanie Reid and Merata Mita, state that "most New Zealand films are about white cultural identity, are sexist, classiest and racialist-( Horrocks 1985). Pihama, (1995) says very few films/videos, outside of those made by political Maori film makers, construct Maori people in anything other than the 'you do not exist', 'you are no good' categories or are located within stereotyped assertions that perpetuate negative belief systems about Maori.
