Central Christchurch. It ain’t what it used to be. I mean, BIG time.
New buildings are rising out of the rubble at a surprising rate now (after the last four years anything faster than glacial speed feels pretty giddy) but buildings aren’t people. A central city needs life, the hum and bustle of people going places and doing things. When I visit Auckland or Wellington, this feeling of energy, of people just going about their daily lives is what strikes me because it is largely absent here at home.
So when all these new buildings are completed we will need people to come and live in and operate businesses from them. And I believe this is the purpose of the recently launched Live Central website. To encourage people to live centrally and to give them an idea of what that might look like. To this end they have included a group of city dwellers to share their stories about living centrally.
Which is a great idea except for how everyone looks like they could comfortably get away with using the same “medium-beige” L’Oreal foundation.
Which is not at all the fault of any of the people profiled on the site and good on them for being part of it. I commend them. I lived centrally for ten years and really enjoyed it which is why I feel comfortable pointing out that as a group, the people they’ve chosen to represent the resprouting central city collectively…don’t.
I mean, there’s not a single person of Asian descent featured? Census data tells us that upwards of 15% of central city dwellers are Asian so that seems like a weird omission to make. Māori account for between 5 and 10%.
Naturally I’m not the only person to have noticed this oddly “samey” approach. Someone even complained to The Press about it. Somehow, even though they’ve used real Christchurch people, by selecting a clutch of nice, middle-class, pakeha-looking folk they’ve been rendered as convincingly realistic as stock photographs. Except that stock photos usually have at least one African-American or Asian in them. So even less real looking than stock photos. That IS an achievement.
And this is mildly annoying but not all unexpected.
But then esteemed (not by me) city councillor Jamie “Why are bogans allowed to go to the same beach as me?” Gough, weighed in on the controversy via his Facebook page, with all the sense and sensitivity you’d expect from an elected representative who’s about as progressive as a butter churn operated by child slaves on a whaling ship. Some excerpts follow.
Is it just me or is this PC gone mad?
It’s not just you. There’s a legion of wrongheaded talkback listeners only too ready to agree with you. This is not the same as being right.
By the way, “PC gone mad” is the kind of phrase uttered by bigoted morons right before they say something bigoted and moronic so it’s probably not a great idea to wave a signpost like that around…
Perhaps a dark skinned person in a wheelchair would make this all ok!?
Yep, there we go. Because the only reason you would ever want to have a dark skinned person with mobility issues on board with anything is when you’re trying to dig yourself out of a PR hole. It’s not because you’d be genuinely interested in their particular perspective or experience or anything wildly inappropriate like that. Such people merely exist to help tick diversity boxes and clean up marketing oil spills.
If they socially engineered this with false actors and models who had nothing to do with Christchurch then would the PC brigade have cooled down?
A few points. First off, the term “social engineering” which it appears that Councillor Gough doesn’t actually understand the mean of. Social engineering refers to the wholesale “influencing” of a population by government, the media or, I don’t know, The Illuminati? Groups with power, anyway. All those advertising campaigns encouraging us not to “drive drunk/smoke in front of your kids/set your house on fire” are examples of social engineering. Attempting to encourage people to live in a particular part of the city might also be called social engineering. What is definitely not social engineering is portraying an appropriately diverse range of people to reflect the ethnic diversity that already exists within a community. This is called “accuracy” or “representation”. But how could we expect someone whose job it is to represent people to understand that. Oh, SNAP.
Also, there is no “PC brigade”. Because if there were one I would join it. But there’s not. Which is a shame because this seems like it would be the perfect opportunity to wear a beret. Whenever I see “the PC brigade” written I always read “a disparate group of individuals whose sole commonality is that they disagree with me and can demonstrate more sensitivity than a concrete bollard”. I invite you to do the same.
But the main point is surely this, that actors or models aren’t necessary because THERE ARE ACTUAL NON-WHITE PEOPLE LIVING IN OUR CITY. And most of them aren’t living under a rock. And some of them are quite photogenic. Honestly. I’m not fibbing. I can’t believe I actually have to explain that to a Christchurch city councillor. How is it possible that that is a thing I need to do?
Surely a person of Asian decent [sic] is not going to take great offence and believe that this ad means they cannot live in the Central City? If they do, they have problems.
Where to begin. The lack of understanding. THERE IS SO MUCH OF IT. To start with the “surely” needs to go. Clearly people have taken offence and it’s likely that at least some of them may be of Asian descent. Or maybe like me they’re past offence and just went “huh, nobody who looks like me there. That does not inspire me greatly”. Because as a minority, that is the kind of thing that happens to you a lot. And it wears you down a bit. And it’s really hard to explain to people in the majority because it’s largely invisible to them and when you do bother to point it out you get “PC GONE MAD” shouted at you and nobody listens. But just take my word for it, okay?
And as for claiming that people who take things too literally have problems…oh, councillor, you’re the one with the problem here.
Inclusiveness is just about being welcoming to everyone. Presumably that’s what the people in charge of this campaign intended and they’ve kind of failed, so that’s actually valuable feedback for them to have. Because why would you knowingly make your message less attractive to a sizeable portion of your market? Unless we’re saying that the target market is Kyle “I’m not a neo-Nazi so won’t you vote for me for mayor?” Chapman. Because he probably loves the way the Live Central website looks right now. And if that’s not a reason to change it up a bit I don’t know what is. Hopefully they’ll take this into account as their campaign continues, rather than just spout nonsense like a certain elected representative.
Are you PC, and have you GONE MAD? If not, why not? Does this campaign have a beige problem?
Originally published on Stuff, 17/03/2015
(Images, screenshots from the Live Central website)