1990: Dignity Culture Played Out
April 24, 2024
By AHNZ
A Dignity Culture history era of 5 years or so terminated at year’s end 1990 and it was marked by the Kiwi cover of the song To Sir With Love. In October 1990 the track was released as a single that soon charted at number 1 and stayed there for 5 weeks. It was written by 2 British men. Kiwi version was produced by 2 New Zealand men, Simon Lynch and Tony T Nogotautama. They had their own band but wisely created a female-led vehicle and vocalist for their re-composition and selected Ngaire Fuata under the stage name Ngaire.
The Slydogmania Youtube channel shows that the song was performed on 1 or 2 September 1990 for the TVNZ Telethon a full month before the single was released. Simon and Tony appear in the background pretending to play their instruments. Well, Tony is anyway. Simon was just dancing while in possession of a keytar…
“The reasons for sudden success are seldom easily explained. But for whatever reason, the beautiful Ngaire singing the 60’s schoolgirl-crush classic To Sir With Love struck a chord with the NZ public, and her debut single rocketed to the top of the NZ Singles chart for a lengthy stay at the Number One spot. Here – with producers Simon Lynch and Tony T in tow – Ngaire sings To Sir With Love, prior to the release of the single itself..” – Slydogmania, Youtube
Fuata was a secretary at TVNZ and would go on to presenting and produce for Tagata Pasifika show. But, having good connections in TV land doesn’t explain why this song got such traction and marked New Zealand history. Ngaire had connected with a particular set of ideas and emotions, a memeplex, and re-created it in high fidelity to a culture that was clearly voracious for it and took over 5 weeks to fully digest.
Entry: 07/10/1990 (Position 43) Last week in charts: 17/03/1991 (Position 48) Peak: 1 (5 weeks) Weeks: 20 “Those schoolgirl days of telling tales and biting nails are goneBut how do you thank someone who has taken you from crayons to perfume?A friend who taught me right from wrong and weak from strong. That’s a lot to learn.
What, what can I give you in return?
– Lyrics”At times like these school teachers are accorded high standing as representatives and transmitters of a good and great culture. No wonder Lean on Me (1989) and Dead Poets Society (1989) belonged to such a time just as To Sir With Love (1967) to an earlier one. No wonder that New Zealand embraced as number 1 a song in 1990 that was a cover of that Sidney Poitier film from so long before. One of our own (if an immigrant,) Ngaire Fuata, sang a song of love, gratitude, and respect for the essential Dignity Culture masculine figure. At other times, such as times to come, that would be unthinkable.” – 1990: To Sir With Love, AHNZ“He murdered 13 people on 13 November, 1990. Then was killed himself in a blaze of ignominy as the combined force of over 150 police finally put Grey down on 14 November, 1990.” – 1990: David’s Got A Gun, AHNZ“Kiri was in high demand during the previous cycle, Krypton Factor Dignity Culture (c.1987-1990.) The singing diva came home to New Zealand to a record-breaking reception raising some $100,000 for charity. New Zealand, in its sesquicentennial year, went nuts and fell in love with Kiri all over again.” – 1990: Kiri’s Homecoming, AHNZ“It was Dignity Culture TV, made and aired just as Krypton Factor Dignity Culture (c.1987-1990) had reached its highest point.” – 1990: The New Adventures of Black Beauty, AHNZ
Until the end of 1990 New Zealanders had shared a collective general attitude called Dignity Culture. We were high-minded, technical, dignified, had strong institutions and clear national identity. We didn’t hate ourselves or our past. For example, we made a TV show about an heroic postgirl in The New Adventures of Black Beauty, we turned out in the thousands to listen to Kiri Te Kanawa sing opera. National pride was so strong that it could be evoked in advertising to promote the Bank of New Zealand. Ref. 1990: Who Are We, AHNZ
All good things must come to an end and the Dignity Culture was figuratively played out during November 1990 in the sense that it was all used up. It was literally played out by Ngaire’s song.
Next up after Dignity Culture always comes Victimhood Culture. We turned to focus on suffering and injustice as a value in itself that could be mined for attention and money; An Outrage Industrial Complex formed up. A Satanic Pannic arose in Christchurch around Peter Ellis and his fellow teachers to kick off this era. And, while Ngaire was topping the charts David Grey was massacring his neighbors in Aramoana. In 1991 our most potent symbol of Dignity Culture, Queen Elizabeth II, was replaced on out money by our most potent poster lady of Victimhood Culture: Kate Sheppard. At the movies we started consuming delinquency plotlines such as shown in Desperate Remedies (1993,) The Piano (1993,) The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994,) Once Were Warriors (1994,) and Heavenly Creatures (1994.)
To Sir With Love was good clean family values stuff and the last of it we were going to get. A professional man, a teacher, had a cultural reputation in good standing. He was a protector, a guide, a role model to help boys and girls make an essential developmental journey. From crayons to perfume, right from wrong and weak from strong. This was so true, so much believed, so gratefully accepted, that New Zealanders could sing a song about it and have it chart!
Yet to Recover
Since this high point the male reputation has yet to recover and nor has the sex ratio of male to female teachers. The role once done by male role models in our society is vacant so that we’ve now had 2 generations, Millennials and Zoomers, who may have never met a positive male role model let alone had cause to thank one. In the 2020s Dr Jordan Peterson famously responded to someone whose idea of a risky phrase was apparently “It’s okay to be a man”.
The reply was, “It’s not okay; It’s necessary….The gratitude for that is sorely lacking, especially among the people who should be most grateful: the social justice bent who are among the most protected and privileged people the world has ever produced. They take everything they have for granted, failing to understand that there’s a massive infrastructure of unbelievably hard-working, solidly labouring working-class men breaking themselves in half regularly, making sure that everything that always breaks works. A little gratitude for that is in order.” I think he would have happily elaborated that male role models are also necessary to a massive infrastructure of our cultural firmament and that we have a massive level of deferred maintenance in this area.
The solution to this 40-year problem is still outstanding. In all this time we have not found a plausible reply to the idea that masculinity is toxic and therefore men are under suspicion of being unfit to be fathers or teachers. Alan Duff tried to work on the problem with his writings subsequent to Once Were Warriors trying to ‘save’ his character Jake. Honorary New Zealander James Cameron offered a robot substitute dad in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991.) More recent experiments have involved other substitutions like gender-swapping male figures into female ones. For example, Doctor Who became transgender in 2017.
As this experiment has also not arrived at a settled solution and the crisis has deepened we see rapid adaptive radiation into all sorts of they/them rainbow variations. The LGB acronym expanded into LGBT, then rapidly into LGBTQ. The adaptive radiation generators starting spinning so fast throwing gender identities at the evolutionary wall to see what would scale it and what would just splat into it that it became abbreviated to “+” so: LGBTQ+. Poor old Doctor Who had no sooner started to be an L as well that this was out of date and she/her had to become a they/them black + something-or-other.
It’s like a species rolling the dice, hoping one of the new variations will hit the jackpot and adapt successfully to the changing environment. It’s unlikely a New Zealander will solve the formula but if anyone playing along in Britain, America, Australia, etc. figures out a gender identity that works they’ll be a ‘hero’ even if it doesn’t last. The same way that some people mine for bitcoin others are ‘mining’ hard trying to turn the tumblers and pick the lock of what a person is supposed to morph into. Many who were men now identify as women an even compete in the same athletic activity. For example, Gavin Hubbard became Laurel Hubbard and became a competitor in woman’s weightlifting at the Olympic level.
One wonders what To Sir’s Mr Thackery or Seven Periods With’s Mr Gormsby would make of a world like this if they could be plucked from their cinematic universe into ours. I think they would wisely recognise the adaptive radiation event as a Lemming Cycle and not try to stand in the way of natures hurricane as it blows the various identity disciples off a shear cliff to dash on the rocks of reality from a great height. This is not the approach taken by, for example, Destiny Church if they cancel the state-sponsored Drag Queens’ Rainbow Story Times. Or, of Ford O’Connor et al when they go hooded and masked at 3am to re-paint rainbow pedestrian crossings. That’s not men standing up but an anonymous lashing out characteristic of Slave Culture.
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