“Young brown men being brutish”: How Police Ten 7 portrays Māori and Pasifika people as violent and criminal in Aotearoa New Zealand
Date
Authors
Deckert, Antje
Busby Pukeiti, Wairua Taru Grant
Tauri, Juan
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Macquarie University
Abstract
In 2021, the New Zealand reality-TV show Police Ten 7 was publicly criticized for feeding racial stereotypes by showing “young brown men being brutish”. While several overseas studies verify that reality-TV crime shows tend to portray non-white minorities as intrinsically criminal, such research is scarce in New Zealand. Our study sought to determine whether Police Ten 7 represents Māori and Pasifika (i.e., “brown”) people fairly in light of official police statistics; and, particularly, if any distorted representation suggests that Māori and Pasifika people are more violent. We analysed 12 episodes of Police Ten 7, aired in late 2020, quantitatively and compared our data with official police statistics. We found that, on Police Ten 7, Māori and Pasifika people are underrepresented as police officers and overrepresented as suspects, and overrepresented in violent offence categories. Also, most of the TV airtime dedicated to suspects is spent on Māori and Pasifika. We argue that these distortions are intensified through contrasting juxtapositions with white suspects who are underrepresented both as suspects and violent offenders, and overrepresented as harmless drunks and bad drivers. We conclude that together these distortions and contrasting juxtapositions serve to promote the image of Māori and Pasifika as the violent criminal other.Description
Keywords
45 Indigenous studies
Source
Journal of Global Indigeneity, 7(1). ISSN: 2651-9585 (Print). Global Indigenous Futures Research Centre, housed on Wallumattagal Country at Macquarie University, Australia. https://doi.org/10.54760/001c.77757
Rights statement
Journal of Global Indigeneity is published Open Access under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND- 4.0 license. Authors retain full copyright.