Tapu Misa: 'Gentle men' overshadowed by one-dimensional image

The one-eyed All Black fans in my household, none of whom are old enough to vote, think people ought to lay off about that gesture at the end of the new haka. It's a war dance, sighs number one son, what do people expect?

Of course, this fan club also thinks the gesture looks like throat-slitting, which only goes to show how lacking in imagination they are (I blame the education system).

Sure, it looks exactly like a throat-slitting gesture, but anyone who has read the press statements can see how it symbolises the drawing of energy into the heart and lungs (yeah, whatever).

Fast-forward a couple of days from that bruising, scratching, hair-pulling Bledisloe Cup match of the weekend - where there was no sign of throat-slitting - and there is Dr Paratene Ngata on TV3's 60 Minutes, lamenting the dearth of gentle male role models for young Maori.

Ngata was one of three prominent Maori men. The others were Maori Party MP Dr Pita Sharples and former Labour MP John Tamihere, who shared on 60 Minutes their first-hand experiences of family violence - both as victims and perpetrators.

Ngata grew up with a violent father, the kind who would chase the frightened mother while holding a loaded gun. Paratene Ngata thought he would be a different kind of dad. That was until he nearly killed his 10-year-old son for not doing the dishes.

Ngata thinks we don't see enough in the media of gentle Maori. Gentle, kind, loving and generous Maori that young Maori men can aspire to emulate. Gentle Maori, gentle men, Ngata said.

Indeed we don't see them. It's not that they're not out there, just that they're not newsworthy - kindness and gentleness not being worth our attention.

I know his lament, because I chanted it myself, many columns ago, when I bemoaned the lack of positive male role models for Pacific Island boys, who are, for many schools, the most academically and behaviourally challenging of students.

At the time I wrote that particular column I was worried about my eldest son, who at 12 was trying his best to emulate the Black American gangsta rappers with whom he was obsessed.

It seemed then that none of the positive role models in his life - his father, uncles and grandfather - could hope to compete with the glamour of gangsta rappers.

A year later, I can report that the flesh-and-blood role models, as well as the more distant heroes (Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Gandhi) appear to have won, at least in my son's case.

But it isn't easy for brown boys, even relatively privileged ones, to work out who they are supposed to be. My son's peers expected him to be staunch, which to them means being dumb and tough. Showing an interest in politics and history isn't cool. ("Why are you talking like a gangster?" I once asked my son. "It's like being in a foreign country," he said. "You have to speak the language to fit in.")

I couldn't help wondering that if my son - with so many good men in his life - could be swayed by his friends, even for a short time, what hope was there for those who had only media images to feed off?

Some months ago, when this column was going into hibernation, Sione's Wedding was starting its run.

Everyone I talked to loved the movie - everyone except Samoans.

The harshest criticism came from the men. One of them, a high-powered public servant, complained about the portrayal of Samoan men as, once again, stupid, one-dimensional, juvenile. He hadn't liked bro-Town either, where one of the central characters is a deadbeat father who gambles and drinks and neglects his kids.

He was trying to break through the stereotypes, he said, and Sione's Wedding and bro-Town set him back years.

My brother - a kick-ass executive and one of the best dads I've known - hated Sione's Wedding too. "It wasn't my culture. It wasn't me."

Um, they're comedies, I suggested. Nobody takes it seriously. Nobody really thinks that's what we're about.

But maybe they do. Another Samoan told me how even his lawyer wrote him off when he tried opposing his former partner's move to take sole custody of their children. His former partner is white and had been through a drug rehabilitation programme. He, on the other hand, is drug-free, articulate and well-qualified. He says that being a Pacific Island male was so much of a drawback that after only 10 minutes in the company of a court-appointed psychologist, he was branded as a bad father.

So where do we find Ngata's gentle, kind, loving men? Probably in the same place we find the so-called hard men.

Look, for example, at the end of the Bledisloe match and you get a completely different picture from the pre-match muscle-flexing and face-pulling. There is hugging, smiling, chatting.

Tana Umaga could tackle like there was no tomorrow but he gave up test matches to be home when his babies were expected - and, yes, that handbag incident was just him getting in touch with his feminine side.

Michael Jones plays like a demon on any other day but Sunday, when he goes to church like most good PI boys.

Even Jerry Collins, the hard man of All Black rugby, comes across as thoughtful and shy when interviewed.

Should the All Blacks blow kisses in their next haka? Perhaps not, but maybe it's time our heroes became a little less one-dimensional.