Find Me a Maori Bride as a form of progressive comedy

A few months ago, I began watching Find Me a Maori Bride which has ended up teaching me a lot about Maori culture in an incredibly entertaining, honest and informative manner. The show is a comedy-drama that follows two men, who barely consider themselves Maori, on a quest to learn about their culture in an effort to find a Maori bride so that they can inherit a large amount of money their grandmother left for them.  The shows director is part Maori and also struggles with some of the obstacles his characters face as they try to navigate through a culture they aren’t very familiar with yet one that they begin to connect with gradually. The show has two Te Reo advisors and a mostly Maori cast. It is a great example of progressive comedy because it tackles some of the stereotypes and shows how ridiculous the two main characters are as they begin to engage with the language, customs and practices of Maori. In our comedy lecture, Suzanne included the quote “The telling of the tale, the teller, the context of its telling and the social and power relations between participants play a critical role in determining who laughs with whom and why” (Gillespie). Find Me a Maori Bride is created with Maori and by Maori and audiences are intended to laugh at the two white-washed men who oftentimes rudely and arrogantly try to get what they need without actually caring about their culture. 

There is a lot that other television and movie producers can learn from the way this show portrays a non-dominant culture. There are a number of other things I appreciate about this T.V. show as well. It has very realistic supporting characters and things included in the script that make the creators views known as well. In one episode, one of the characters is wearing a “Free Palestine” t-shirt and eventually gets asked whether she’s going to wear anything else to which she replies “I’ll take it off when the occupation ends”. In lecture we talked about how comedy can be a form of resistance against dominant groups and it can also be a form of therapy. I think Find Me a Maori Bride does both. It offers a lighthearted form of entertainment to wind down to and enjoy but it also actively works to shift perspectives on indigenous people in New Zealand.