Childlike excitement   28 Oct 2009

Mary Fenwick

Perhaps the most classy thing you can do is not be bothered by what other people think. And that comes easier to New Zealanders than to many. 

Initially I didn’t like the idea of being represented on the world stage by John Key, for the kneejerk reason that he’s another white man in a suit: the world is full of them, and New Zealand is more than that.

But, oh my days, in writing this, I caught up with the current Prime Minister on Youtube, doing an allegedly comic turn – Top Ten Reasons to Visit New Zealand - on the David Letterman show last month.

Up until then, I would have said that John Key had that quality that the French call “bien dans sa peau”: to be comfortable in your skin. And I was wondering whether New Zealanders have a weensy advantage in this, especially in the British context.

That bone-deep sense of entitlement is really what people are paying for if they’re part of the seven per cent in the UK to send their children to private schools. I’ve always felt that growing up in New Zealand gave you the sense that no-one was better or worse than you – for free.

Kiwi Don McKinnon says that one of his realizations as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth was that it’s New Zealand which is out of step with the rest of the world: “Actually most of the world is hierarchical. The only areas which are not are the new countries: the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand. The Pacific is very hierarchical, Asia and Africa too.”

He reckons that gives New Zealanders a sort of inherent strength in refusing to be labeled – “we don’t allow people to get up themselves. And we don’t allow people to put us down”.

In the UK, the put-downs, when they come, are quite subtle. We can be seen as uncertain (the old rising inflection thing) or naïve and puppyish (the “have a go” mentality).

Take this comment, for instance, from a profile of Hilary Alexander, the New Zealander described as “the most respected fashion journalist in Britain” – “Alexander’s enthusiasm shows, and there is a small part of her voice that carries a childlike excitement”.

All I can say is thank you, thank you gods of television and Tourism New Zealand that you didn’t put John Key on the Jonathan Ross show. Because then I would have been really bothered about what people might think.

 

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