I’ve become a little irritated about one aspect of the relentless Lord of the Rings hype. Nothing to do with the film per se but rather the spin offs; no not the Burger King merchandising, but rather the huge push for the main benefit for New Zealand being tourism. Ahh, yes, tourism, that purveyor of McJobs. I’d like to think we could do a little better.
One of the reasons Peter Jackson was entrusted with LoTR was not the New Zealand landscape. A number of movies have been made here on that basis, and they have not been made by New Zealanders, nor have they (by and large) generated a significant boost to New Zealand’s collective bottom line; most of the money has flowed in to the McJobs of the acting world in the form of work for extras. Not, I might add, that there’s anything wrong with being an extra, any more than there’s anything wrong with being a kitchen hand, but unless it provides stepping stones to the better jobs, it only guarantees a ghetto status for the country relying on it.
No, Jackson’s ace in the hole is the fact that it was possible for him to assemble a vast array of movie production talent, from the production crews through to the post-production teams. Jackson has, in fact, been doing more to promote the much ballyhooed “Knowledge Encomony” than all the conferences full of supply-side nutters will ever achieve. The work generated by Weta covers a huge range of disciplines - animators, systems administrators, camerapeople, lighters, riggers, set builders, the works - many of which are decently paying jobs that provide excellent opportunities for marketing New Zealand expertise overseas.
But what does the hype in New Zealand push? Tourism. Pushing millions more people into making New Zealand look like every other tourist destination in the world. One could ask locals in Hawaii what they think of the idea of becoming a tourist “paradise”, but I believe they’re too busy exorcising their frustrations by shooting at surfers.
Of course, it’s tempting to conclude, as the government fast-tracks legislation to drive down pay rates for any job offering much more than the average income, that the government of the day is committed to ensure New Zealand is a country where no-one can aspire to enjoying anything significantly better than a McJob; with legislation to effectively ensure that any employer can drive down any job paying more than $45,000 per annum to that level.
But that’s allright, we’ll all get to enjoy working in tourism!
On a lighter note, it’s amusing to read a review of LoTR that points to the scriptural references the reviewer noticed. But he’s obviously never picked up that Tolkien disliked allegory.
