Asserting Feminist Claims within Māori Culture: Whale Rider (Niki Caro, 2002)

Despite the popularity of "Whale Rider" (2002) with audiences, some Māori found Niki Caro's cinematic adaptation of Witi Ihimaera's novel culturally offensive.They objected to the film as promoting a paternalistic narrative that ignored the role of Pākehā in the oppression of Māori and denounced the misrepresentation of various tribal traditions.The result, these critics claimed, was merely a simulacrum of Māori culture that distorted the original story.This essay identifies ways in which Caro and her producer deliberately reworked Ihimaera's source story so as to make the film of "Whale Rider" appeal universally across cross cultures with an international audience in mind.In particular, it traces how Caro applied her own personal feminist vision to Ihimaera's original, converting it from a narrative that was culturally specific into a conventional coming-of-age genre film with international box-office appeal.