KEY POINTS:
Outsiders' romance with and seizure of moko design and imagery have been demonstrated in their publication in postcards and popular culture since the initial presentation of Parkinson, Hodges, Earle and Angas' respective portfolios to a curious world. Throughout the 19th century, the appearance in London and other urban centres of men like Te Peehi Kupe, Titore and Waikato, followed by heavily tattooed British eccentrics Rutherford and Burns, and visiting groups of exotic Maori entertainers, all reinforced this fascination.
Itinerant and studio photographers contributed to the large collection of visual images. John Nichol Crombie arrived in Auckland in 1856, attended some important Maori and missionary gatherings, and by 1861 had images in the Illustrated London News.
He also offered them a set of 12 daguerreotypes of important chiefs, and his work was the foundation for some of Goldie's portraits.
The world of the Maori was still largely rural and unseen by most European settlers, and thus the romantic myth of traditional Maori life could be enthusiastically promoted, with fierce warriors, dusky maidens, domesticated moa and swaying tree ferns appearing in literature, poetry and music.
Images of people with moko featured not only in tourist marketing of the exotic, but also in brazenly commercial advertisements, and this caused considerable concern for an increasingly beleaguered people. In one instance, the flagrant use of the portrait of a major 19th century Maori leader on a petrol pump caused grief and resentment, but those feelings remained on the marae. Another was the character jug Maori piloted in 1939 by Royal Doulton, but never mass produced because of the outbreak of war.
The inappropriate association of moko with certain ideas or objects or behaviours diminished the mana of the taonga itself, and the mana of the wearer; this incurred the risk of illness or injury, even death. As King summarises, [this was] even more likely if photographic images appeared on articles that were themselves profane in Maori terms, especially those associated with food: tea towels, biscuit tins, table mats, dining-room walls. Such juxtapositions constituted obscenities in Maori terms.
There was the additional complication that the most appealing candidates for commercial photography were often men and women with moko - and the subjects themselves regarded moko as their most tapu feature, as the thing about themselves that should be least exposed to a commercial transaction.
Moko, people with moko, thus defined what New Zealand once thought itself to be; the settlers and the supposedly subdued but colourful natives whose strong visual singularity was emphasised in the evolution of this country's popular culture.
The postcard images became moving pictures; within five years of sending nine million postcards, the New Zealand public enjoyed its first full-length feature film, Hinemoa. Most of the female actors were authentically adorned with facial moko. By the time of Rudall Hayward's productions, Rewi's Last Stand (1925) and The Te Kooti Trail (1927), moko had become awkward scribbles, culminating in the curious face paint of Hei Tiki (1935), the second Hayward version of Rewi's Last Stand (1940) and the ambitious British picture The Seekers (1954).
This was transcended by the opening scenes of Geoff Murphy's 1983 film, Utu, in which the charismatic warrior poet, Te Wheke, was transformed by the chisels of the tohunga ta moko. And just over a decade later, the world's movie watchers experienced the massive visual impact of Once Were Warriors, and its male characters' unforgettable faces.
To many people, however naive or ill-informed, this film set the global stage for the contemporary consuming of moko; it became an irresistible object of desire, appealing to the aesthete, the pagan, the trendy. Everyone wanted a piece of it.
Moko artists were regularly travelling overseas on the convention circuit, seeking new knowledge and opportunities, and establishing robust working relationships with European tattoo studios. Part of this involved inking moko design into European, or non-Maori skin. It was also argued as the sharing of a Maori art on Maori terms, whether the environment was a busy commercial studio in Brighton, or the surging convention halls of California. Celebrity involvement, the attraction of people like Mike Tyson and Ben Harper to Maori design, excited huge comment in the Maori world, particularly as one claimed it as warrior markings for himself, and the other identified closely with the spirit of the art form, establishing close links with the artist's whanau.
THE taking of moko by Robbie Williams, an English pop star, was much more controversial; the commissioned artist Te Rangitu Netana was convinced of Williams' sincerity. A few years later, this was sorely tested in an image published in an Australian men's popular magazine. A moko pattern was imposed across his face, with the provocative caption "It still won't make his music sound tough". The only question that can be asked is simply, why? Or was he as much the unknowing victim of predatory media practice as the person whose moko was copied?
Copying, adapting, extending, replicating of ethnic and cultural imagery has always occurred; human creativity and inventiveness thrive with an infusion of new ideas. This is especially so in fashion, and for a couple of seasons moko style was considered de rigueur, appearing on the catwalks of Paris and Milan. The impact was immediate, reverberating as far as New Zealand's Parliament where Tukuroirangi Morgan, an elected member raised by kuia mau kauae, voiced his alarm at the abuse of an ancient cultural treasure by Thierry Mugler. Mugler's media representative defended the use of moko designs in face paint and textiles in his Maori wedding theme: Mugler thinks Maori should be happy to have a tribute to your country and your people. There is no copy; the inspiration came from the Maori, a tribute to them.
Similar rationalisations are also offered for images like Eric Cantona's inscribed face on the cover of GQ, and the dynamic proliferation of moko in the advertising industry.
Because Maori models, many of them sports or cultural celebrities, expose their ornamented skin to sell rugby boots, dog food or banking services, there is some ambivalence about what they are doing. Somehow their being who they are, as admired and respected personalities, means they do not lose mana, but in a way actually gain more, and lend some of it to the product.
They may collude with an obvious branding exercise, but the sense of control over the taonga, the moko, remains. Or does it? Is it illusory? In advertising, the only participant in control is the person commissioning the market promotion of his or her product; everyone else is a hired hand or face. And occasionally, the commissioner is Maori.
Moko has survived 200 years of mixed responses, pitiful appropriations, commercial manipulation, abject snobbery and transient fascination. Moko has always been imprinted in the Maori soul; and sometimes only the soul knows what it means. Moko can be worn simply for its own beauty; not every line has to have a story or a meaning. Some don't need stories at all; they are simply there. So is the need to invent a narrative to explain what's on the skin a way of justifying it as a valid art form?
Is it not enough that it is there for itself? Do we have to legitimise its resurrection by enriching it with significance, with the arcane references of wairua, tupuna, whakapapa, to bring it back?
How many wearers just want a design for its own sake, its own loveliness, its own strong or subtle lines? Not every mark has to have meaning; its own elegance surely carries its own mana.
Moko has revived, as a marker of identity, as an expression of dreams and aspirations, as a keeper of memory. Moko has revived, for itself.
Moko, as an emblem of identity, cannot thrive in isolation; moko is about community, about being out there in the world. Active, loved, alive.
One writer describes this: Identification is never a unilateral process; at the very least, there is always an audience. It is in the meeting of internal and external definition that identity, whether collective or individual, is created.
Moko is about Maori moving into the future, so that those yet to come, the uri whakatupu, will know the answer to this question when they see our bodies, and our faces; when they wonder at the triumph of our skin ...
I taia to moko ki te aha?
* Mau Moko, is the culmination of a project by Waikato University Maori scholars studying the origins, significance, technology and practice of ta moko from pre-European times. It tells the story of the moko today and yesterday, weaving historical narrative with the personal stories of artists and wearers.
Ngahuia Te Awekotuku is a cultural activist, writer and part-time research professor at the university's Maori and Psychology Research Unit. Linda Waimarie Nikora is a senior lecturer in psychology and director of the unit.
Mau Moko, The World of Maori Tattoo, Penguin Books, $65.
