When 'bugger' took the country by storm
Delving into a crucial part of our pop culture and advertising history.
Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend brought to you by crispy autumn mornings, frisbee in the park and sitting in front of a computer learning about ideas. (In other words, we’re very open to brand sponsors: email us!) It’s autumn music release season and I AM planning to do lots of reading this weekend while listening to the new Waxhatchee album, which you can read an interview about here (if, like me, reading about things is the main way you get hyped). This week we have a controversial advertisement from the days of yore (where were you during Buggermania?), new kapa haka practice strategies for busy people and twinception.
-Shanti Mathias, staff writer
Number of the week: Buggermania generated 120 complaints to the ad authority
Staff writer Alex Casey has compiled an exhaustive history of the 1999 Toyota ad where the only word used was “bugger”, talking to the people who made the ad as well as linguists and the Advertising Standards Authority who received a record number of complaints. The story also features a Very Good Dog and heaps of behind the scenes details. “There was lots of gold that popped up and didn’t make the final cut,” Alex told me. “My favourite factoid came from 82-year-old director Tony Williams (who also made the Great Crunchie Train Robbery Ad btw, where is his Oscar?) when asked if the Bugger ad was his defining creative contribution to the world. He said it was certainly the most successful thing he ever did, but he is the proudest of a 1982 horror film he made in Australia called Next of Kin.”
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Training for Te Matatini 2025 is intense - and already underway
If you’re a busy MP, how do you train for Te Matatini? Rawiri Waititi is part of Te Taumata o Apanui, who have been using hybrid digital and in-person practice to reduce the amount of intensive wananga a team has to commit to. Te Taumata o Apanui came third in recent regional finals, meaning they’ll qualify for the national Te Matatini competition next year – so with commitment from everyone, the training programme clearly can work. “A good result would legitimise their approach to training, but Waititi says that glory isn't the goal. ‘The goal is being able to create a whānau environment that reconnects and continues to connect our people through our language, through our culture and through the many stories that we are able to express,’” Tommy reports.
If your town was cut off tomorrow, what would you eat?
I had to think a lot about the reality of our vulnerability to disaster for this story I reported about food security — but I still really enjoyed the process. Maybe that’s because it’s all too easy to catastrophize about the possibility of the Alpine Fault 8.0 earthquake, or pandemics or floods — but there are lots of people out there thinking about practical, actionable responses to inevitable disasters. We don’t have a national food resilience plan, and we definitely need one. But we do have heaps of people running community gardens, trying to diminish supermarket and harvest waste and most importantly building strong connections between people to make sure that come rain hail or floodwater, there will (hopefully!) be kai.
Writing, illustrating, disability, queerness and ‘twintersectionality’
I’m a twin and when I was younger, my sister and I both begged for matching outfits so we could look more like twins. It didn’t last long – I remember my sister dyeing her top a different colour – but it’s one of the pieces of sameness and not-sameness intrinsic to being a twin. I love that the same anecdote about wanting matching clothes appeared in this wonderful interview between Julia and Helena de Bres and Etta and Sally Bollinger — twins who have known each other for decades, and grew up to be queer and creative. They talk about disability, writing, illustration and queerness, and how all these parts of themselves intertwine with their twinness. “There were times when I wanted to prove our twinness to the world. I think my main feeling was that between us [with writing and illustrating] we had it covered. Together we could make the coolest picture books in the world.” While I can say for sure that being a twin is something special, I think the full interview is fascinating no matter your background.
The ‘undoubted brilliance’ of new novel AMMA
None of these hot cross buns are in the Bible
Lapsed Catholic Anna Rawhiti-Connell has recently beheld an abomination: not just hot cross buns appearing in supermarkets long before the beginning of Lent but enormous leaps of imagination or innovation on the traditional fruit and spices blend. “Hot cross buns of all kinds of fun flavours, including cinnamon jam donut, are now in store for weeks on end. It is clear no one really gives a shit about when the actual cross day happened anymore. We’re a secular society. While Easter holds a lot of meaning for Christians, it’s a holiday for most people. And what is a holiday without weeks of prelude — a countdown at Countdown, reminding us that someday, very soon, most of us get four days off.” She considers several of the flavours — plus provides a helpful bonus graph depicting the seasons of the supermarket year.
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Everything else
It’s camp but it’s so fun: there’s still time to go to one of illusionist Scott Silven’s shows this weekend.
Death by a thousand cuts: how political decisions affect Māori.
It’s obviously the phones: the cause of loneliness and disillusioned young people isn’t hard to identify.
Cutting sorely needed support for carers is cruel and harmful.
What every Aucklander needs to know about the long-term plan.
How does a fulltime doctor and parent find time to write so many books? Eileen Merriman explains her relentless dedication.
Beautiful, moving pieces from column king Adrian Chiles about the devastation of a parent’s death – even when you expected it to happen.
Seven objects that inspired Lauren Keenan’s fascinating historical novel The Space Between.
How Australian macadamia nuts are contributing to kaitiakitanga.
Pete McKenzie explains how a centuries-old British law is helping activist Mike Smith bring a case against some of New Zealand’s top fossil fuel companies.
Why the myth that New Zealand’s high skin cancer rates are caused by the ozone layer hole has persisted.
This piece about sharing a home with your extended whānau is one of several excellent short articles about modern families from a banger edition of The Drift.
How many journalism jobs are left in Aotearoa? Editor Maddie Holden attempted to find out the old-fashioned way.
