Sports and culture

The last few days have been interesting, watching NZ prepare for the state funeral of Sir Edmund Hillary tomorrow. I fully approve of the offer of a state funeral for him, as he did put NZ on the map when he climbed Mt Everest for the first time. However, I have been comparing the TV coverage about Hillary with the TV coverage about Hone Tuwhare, one of NZ's finest poets, who has also just died, and it seems a bit symptomatic for NZ.

Yes, Hillary was an extremely able sportsman, and yes, climbing Mt Everest was both dangerous and difficult, and yes, doing so made him a hero - the last of the great explorers. I agree that he used his status relatively well with his work with the Sherpas, and he never came across as stuck up or arrogant. However, it seems to me that NZ pays much more homage to its sportspeople than its poets, artists, and other "highbrow" types. Hone Tuwhare was a great poet, far better than James K Baxter (or so I have always thought - I've never liked Baxter). For those for whom PC matters, he was also a leading Maori figure, a fabulous teacher, and a very influential figure in the development of NZ literature as a whole.

I realise that these are two very different men, but to me it says something about the way NZers see the importance of sport and the arts. Our news is full of sports, our papers are full of sports, our TV is full of sports - and literature, music, dance, art, is relegated to a once-a-week feature section or late night viewing. And yet it is the arts that change the way people look at the world, the arts that last, that influence people far beyond the immediate circle of the artist and resonate throughout history. There are paintings and buildings, jewellery and symphonies that have changed the course of history. Why don't we honour our artists (in the broadest sense of the world) in the same way we honour our sportspeople?

Pachyderm