Samantha Russell
New Zealand Society and Culture
International Studies 381
March, 2009
What do you do when you see a Kiwi eating a Kiwi in a Kiwi reserve?: A history and potential explanation as to how New Zealanders became Kiwis.
It is possible to examine the process of the kiwi identity using Roland Barthes’s ideas on myth and signification. According to Barthes, myth operates on two levels of signification. The first level is how a society or culture assumes a common understanding of the signified of any sign. In this instance, the way kiwi signifies New Zealand. However, Barthes points out how this signification leads to another level of signification. This, for Barthes, is where myth, or, ideology, takes place. In this case, kiwi as a nation identity signifies supposed New Zealand traits such as rugged individuality, adaptability, and ingenuity. So the transition from the kiwi as a nocturnal, flightless, whiskered bird to the kiwi as a national symbol and as a synonym to the individualistic people of a nation is a process of myth-making and the unthinking adoption of this by people is an example of the creation ideology. This demonstration of the creation of a kiwi ideology is best explained and demonstrated through three categories; commercially, or how products and money have contributed; through war; or how entering the war theatre and mingling with other nations has helped to create ‘The Kiwi’; and through sport; and the uses of a mascot to form an identity.
The myth of New Zealanders as Kiwis is first and foremost best expressed through commercialization. Advertisements serve as reinforcements and for the proliferation of stereotypes, as well as to invent catchy little phrases that simply won’t leave your head. Through advertisements and products, it is easy for one to develop a sense of how the world works, why it is the way it is, and what one’s place within in the world is—whether or not these ideas put forth by advertisement are in anyway how the world actually is. New Zealanders are no exception to this, and in this portion of the essay, I will out line a few examples of how the presence of kiwis (as the bird) in advertisements and other commercial concepts may have helped to create the myth of Kiwis as kiwis—especially through shear exposure to these unfathomably charismatic little critters.
At the root of all commercial endeavors is money—and the commercial aide of transforming New Zealanders into kiwis is most certainly no exception. In 1934, when New Zealand released its very own currency for the first time, what else but a kiwi bird appeared on the two-shilling coin, the ten-shilling coin, and even the one-pound note. This made the image of the bird a part of every day New Zealand life, and while I am sure that those folk from the United States would never refer to themselves as “Washingtons,” it is not hard to see how, with this root, it may not be that far from possible. Additionally, during New Zealand’s economic upheaval in the mid and late 1980’s, when New Zealand’s currency was floated, New Zealanders further identified it as “the kiwi.”
The odd and slightly alarming thought of Kiwi Bacon also plays into the commercial evolution of the kiwi as a people (even more alarming, when re-inserted in the bacon context). Around about 1921, Mr. Thomas Fenton took on the avian kiwi as a symbol to be associated with his line of porcine cured-hams and bacon. Eventually, this peculiar association of bird and bacon grew, and became the dominate producer of New Zealand’s pig products. By the 1960’s, Fenton’s company further cemented its strange identification with the kiwi by installing gigantic fiber glass and steel birds that rotated above each of the company’s four factories. These enormous birds became land marks and even the subject of pride to local New Zealanders.
Many human kiwis of a certain age remember with fondness the “Good Night Kiwi” that signaled the end of the television broad-cast day, reminding New Zealanders to set out the milk jugs and head off to dream land. Apparently, the facts that this bird is nocturnal and, being avian, would never drink milk and the ironies associated therein are a bit lost on the population. However, this again serves as evidence of the ubiquitous nature of the bird and the ease of which it can be integrated into popular culture.
Finally, perhaps the premiere integration of a ridiculous bird into commercial consumer culture and as an aspect of New Zealanders identifying with the kiwi is that of the ever popular, omnipresent, Kiwi shoe polish. Once upon a time a nice girl from Oamaru married an Aussie bloke and moved to Melbourne. There, the Aussie bloke developed a new boot polish. In need of a short, memorable, and easy to pronounce name, Mr. Aussie bloke (William Ramsay), in a likely effort to impress his lady, struck on Kiwi. The boot polish took off and by 1917 the Kiwi Boot Polish Company had received a colossal order from the British Army. Despite being an Australian invention, this boot spiffer-upper first introduced New Zealand to the world as being a land of kiwis.
So the above examples serve as evidences and examples of how the commercial use of the kiwi as a bird has given New Zealanders a symbol with which to identify. This makes it easier for the sign that is signified by the signifier to warp and mutate from an odd bird, to the people of a nation.
Because New Zealand is a nation that is separated by massive volumes of ocean from the rest of the world, New Zealanders weren’t exactly known as being anything throughout the world. Names like Fernlanders, Maorilanders (how interesting that a nation could potentially be named by its indigenous peoples), and En Zedders were tried and didn’t stick, but it took a world war to introduce New Zealanders to the rest of the world and open them up to an array of names. This is where the world thought to change what it signified when it spoke the word, “Kiwi.”
Picking up on Kiwi boot polish, this ubiquitous image introduced international soldiers to this icon, and in the name of mateship and military camaraderie, the shoe polish allowed this name to be applied to the New Zealand soldiers. The New Zealand soldiers didn’t seem to mind this name, and during the First World War, helped to solidify their identity as kiwis by carving a giant kiwi into a chalk hill Flanders to mark the New Zealand territory of encamped troops. Also during the first world war, kiwi (the bird) started appearing in political cartoons to represent New Zealanders and the cartoons were often seen saying cheeky things like, “Seems rummy; me going to fight a Turkey.” Apparently, as with many things about the kiwi, the irony of being a kiwi was lost on young New Zealand pilots. However, the kiwi did appear prior to World War I as a military emblem. In 1886 and 1887 the kiwi appeared on the badges of the South Canterbury Battalion—a volunteer military core.
Military sport teams, especially the New Zealand Army Football Team toured the British Isles and Germany in 1945 and 1946 traveled as the Kiwis. If the war had not popularized the term, this tour certainly did.
Military identity, and being thrown into the world theatre by means of warring further helped New Zealanders to see themselves as something other than “not British” and New Zealanders. This further twisted the meaning of the sign kiwi into something larger both ideologically and physically than a bird.
As wars ended and troops returned to New Zealand, sport replaced the military as how the outside world viewed New Zealanders.
Unlike other nations that had charismatic mammals to chose as mascots like buffalo, springbok, and the lion (well, Britain never had lions, but they can pretend if they must), New Zealand had nothing. They had two species of bat, but bats aren’t exactly known for their athletic prowess—one can imagine the jeers associated with a bat mascot, “You’re blind as a bat!” “Aww, mate! You’re going batty!” New Zealand also had seals. Another animal that is not known for its sportiness. This leaves the bird world for mascot choosing. The Kaka and Kakapo are out based on name alone and Kea sounds far too girly. What’s really left that says, “New Zealand?” The Kiwi. Thus a fierce and intimidating mascot was born.
Though the kiwi lost to a plant (Oh, how fearsome that) as the symbol for the national sport of rugby, rugby league did honor to this avian friend by adopting it as their mascot. Much like United State’s citizens and their personal identification with their football team, “Oh drat! We lost the Super bowl!” New Zealanders identify a sense of self with “their” sports team.
Commercially, through war, and through sport, the transition has been made from the kiwi as a bird to represent the rugged, individualistic, self-reliant, and sometimes nocturnal people of New Zealand. As evidenced by the examples above and New Zealander’s reactions to the examples and evidences, New Zealanders have unthinkingly associated themselves, along with the rest of the world, as Kiwis. Despite an attempt on behalf of the Export Institute in 1985 to change the image of the kiwi to what amounted to be a fancy snail and a ponga frond, the kiwi remains. The sign has successfully been signified as a national identity by the signifier of the people.
Isn't that awful? That took far too much of my life to write. Never again.
Bibliography
“Kiwi-A kiwi country: 1930s-2000s.” Encyclopedia of New Zealand. March 2009. http://www.teara.govt.nz/TheBush/NativeBirdsAnd Bats/Kiwi/5/en.
“The Kiwi.” Nzs.com. 2004-2009. https://email.uwsp.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=99d15a976a874e9aa4041586968960eb&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nzs.com%2fabout-new-zealand%2fthe-kiwi%2f
Wolfe, Richard. “The People’s Bird.” New Zealand Geographic. Jan/March 2000. Vol. 45. p. 12-21.
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