Rethinking the Documentary Audience: Reimagining the New Zealand Wars

Abstract

Narratives of war and history are central to the development of nationhood. Within the distinctive context of New Zealand decolonisation, The New Zealand Wars documentary series offers a revised version of a formative moment in New Zealand history. This paper draws upon textual analysis and audience research to explore the potential of this series to function as a catalyst within the process of decolonisation. The television broadcast of this five-part series has arguably played a role in evoking a reimagining of the New Zealand ‘nation’, and in opening a space for public debate. This recently invigorated debate can be characterised by the negotiation of a number of discourses of ‘race’, ‘culture’ and ‘nationhood’. While examples of this public negotiation illustrate the social and intellectual activity involved in the process of making sense of a documentary text, a closer examination of audience response to this series reveals an especially emotional, even ‘mimetic’, dimension of engagement. The few available examples of documentary audience research have tended to focus on intellectual and social processes of negotiating meaning. Through a discussion of passionate responses to The New Zealand Wars series, this paper posits an argument for extending the traditional conceptualisation of documentary audience engagement beyond the intellectual, to include a visceral dimension. Rather than viewing these different types of activity as diametrically opposed, they are considered here to be interconnected elements within a dialogical and experiential encounter between the viewer and the documentary text.