The Key(wi) way to being ordinary – Part II

Some 16.4 percent of total net worth is shown as owned by the top 1 percent of wealthy individuals, and as noted above this is likely to be an underestimate. Perhaps a more revealing statistic is that at the halfway mark, the bottom half of the population collectively owns a mere 5.2 percent of total net worth, although this takes into account the considerable negative net worth of 6.5 percent of the population. (pp. 7-8)

Key’s millions place him in a minute fraction of one per cent of the population. Not exactly ordinary.

But Trotter’s point is that Key remains ordinary in the eyes of New Zealanders even given his immense wealth. That is, despite the fact that Key’s personal outcomes are so at variance with those for ordinary New Zealanders that still doesn’t exclude him from the favourable label of being ‘ordinary’.

In addition, Key’s background, on the surface, has at least some ‘ordinary’ aspects – raised in a state house (though from a middle class family that, through separation then widowing, came upon relatively hard times), educated at a populous Christchurch state school (Burnside High School), local university (University of Canterbury), did an unremarkable B.Com. (along with many thousands of others) and, early in his work career, got a job with a local firm (Lane Walker Rudkin).

But, surely, those selective facts are not the essence of New Zealanders’ acceptance of Key’s ordinariness? After all, Key’s life also has decidedly non-ordinary aspects, when viewed through the classic ‘Kiwi’ lens.

Perhaps pivotally, he is Jewish. His childhood was dominated by a widowed mother, an Austrian-Jewish migrant, who was keen for the family to re-establish itself. (She was a refugee from Germany when she met the British George Key, a man who had fought in the Spanish Civil War as well as WWII.) She was notoriously outspoken, highly intelligent, well-educated and politically informed. The dinner table, by John Key’s own account, was the battle ground for political debate between his Labour leaning mother and the Muldoon/National supporting Key.

[As an aside, despite these vigorous political debates and his self-reported strong support for Muldoon, Key can’t remember where he stood on one of the defining issues of Muldoon’s time – the Springbok rugby tour of 1981.]

John Key’s early childhood experiences were derived as much from his mother’s more cosmopolitan, sophisticated, Jewish experiences, and- being such a strong personality – her influence upon him, than by those that characterised the ‘typical’ Kiwi child’s experience in suburban Christchurch during the sixties and seventies. At least, John Key seems aware of her profound influence upon him.

And, if you look closely, it shows. Despite his beer-bottle guzzling antics at barbeques with the Royals, there is also something decidedly ‘soft’ about Key’s general manner when compared with classic Kiwi blokiness. In one sense, there’s more of the school chess team than the first fifteen about Key.

Indeed, that ‘softness’ may well be part of his appeal to some New Zealand women who, while disillusioned with the reality of the Kiwi bloke myth are still wedded – sometimes literally – to it as part of their general acceptance of New Zealandness.

In this context, though, ‘soft’ is not meant to suggest that he lacked, or now lacks, drive and ambition, the very traits that set him apart from many Kiwi ‘blokes’. The ‘softness’ is just the residuum of his non-ordinary origins and, as mentioned above, the influence of his mother. He had expectations placed upon him by his mother, in particular, that were anything but ordinary in a New Zealand context.

So, how does someone from a very non-ordinary, cosmopolitan background culture, who was highly motivated to get where he wanted to go learn to live in a country where being ordinary was almost the ultimate virtue? And, how does he gloss those origins and attributes so that he will be embraced as ‘ordinary’?

That leads to the second question above: What does it really take to be accepted as ordinary in New Zealand?

Key’s trademark is his ‘smiley’, ‘relaxed’ demeanour. Of course, no-one succeeds by being truly ‘relaxed’ about the steps necessary to succeed – especially in the high pressure, high stakes world of international finance. So, the obvious conclusion is that it’s an extremely well learned coping strategy to negotiate the social world in a way that won’t compromise – or may even assist – the ambition.

It may well be that the tactic of smiling affably and avoiding direct confrontation would have been very useful social tools to reconcile, within the setting of his early peer group, the clear differences between himself and others. Practised from an early age, the tactic can become second nature.

Then there’s Key’s self-deprecating humour. Such humour is a hallmark of this overarching ‘affable’ social tactic as it, at one and the same time, shows that (a) you understand what potential criticisms there may be of you and, (b) that you are deferring to those criticisms. (See this link for some insight into the ‘serious’ side of humour). It allows Key to burst any bubbles of pretension that others might think he has acquired through his success.

That this tactic appears to work so well in the New Zealand context says something important about what is meant by the value of being ‘ordinary’. It turns out that ‘being’ ordinary is not the issue. Instead, it’s more about demonstrating that you do not challenge the value of ordinariness.

To ‘be ordinary’ in New Zealand is not, paradoxically, to conform to some list of attributes or even life experiences (though no doubt that helps). As may probably also be said of America, it is not similarity of origins or life experiences that matters in determining whether you are or are not an ‘ordinary Kiwi’ (‘a true American’).

Both are settler and immigrant societies that, from the start, had to fashion a nation state out of people from a range of different cultures, places and backgrounds. Instead, what fundamentally counts is overt acquiescence to the value of being ordinary, of being Kiwi(in America, it is about ‘being American’).

As that young North Island farm boy put it so well 27 years ago, so long as that acquiescence is present you can do whatever you want (within broad limits) and have come from any origins. There is, however, a catch. It’s the catch the Englishman in my story spotted immediately.

Acquiesence is not just about openly agreeing with the myth of the virtue of ordinariness. It also involves the suppression of alternative stories (and potential virtues).

To put it more technically, in everyday discourse, to be accepted as ordinary in New Zealand it is important not to mention alternative experiences and virtues (e.g., the virtue of creativity, of intellect, of activism, etc.) and, if they can’t be avoided, to demonstrate, in every other respect, that you see ordinariness as the pre-eminent virtue that has been the bedrock of your life (and your success).

Interestingly, this type of social suppression of certain, values, ideas and experiences can create what Michael Billig has called a ‘dialogic unconscious‘. In effect, the Freudian notion of unconscious repression begins in the public arena of discourse (i.e., in the arena of what can and cannot be talked about and made explicit in day to day conversations).

Publicly, the ordinary becomes extolled while other values are suppressed. In that discursive context, ordinariness becomes a deeply embodied protective persona, donned to survive in a social world that cannot tolerate fundamental differences that threaten the only collective unity on offer: Commitment to the settler/pioneer ideology that hinges around the purposes of taming nature and building one’s environment/home out of that nature.

An ideology is nothing other than a set of ideas about what life is about. But every ideology also embodies values, forms of emotional expression and behavioural norms. The settler ideology comes with its own particular values and assumed virtues: Pragmatism; practicality; endurance; perseverance; absence of complaint about (your) life.

Over-archingly, it is underpinned by one value: Commitment to these other values.

It might seem odd to say that (pakeha) New Zealanders gain their identities principally by commitment to an ideology. Few New Zealanders would call themselves ‘ideological’. In fact, the ideology to which they are committed has as a central idea (and value) that being ideological is a problem, not a solution; something to be avoided.

But the fact remains, we are not, that is, so much united by culture, background or even by the sheer weight of collective history in the same place – by natural processes – as we are by an ideology.

If you’ve ever thought that New Zealand has the feel of a ‘suffocating’ culture it’s probably this process you’ve been experiencing – the day to day ideological purging of those insufficiently committed to the dominant New Zealand (pakeha) ideology. You can ‘achieve’ anything you like out in the public world but you have to be, and clearly show in your day to day life, that in doing that you’re actually just an ordinary Kiwi.

Even more tellingly, when it comes to being ‘aspirational’ you’ll get the message completely wrong if you think that means you can aspire to be something other than an ordinary Kiwi rather than aspiring purely for external achievements. You can conquer Everest but, if you do so, you better say ‘We knocked the buggar off’ rather than, for example, quoting a suitable line from Shakespeare.

If you feel like quoting Shakespeare then you should take a deep breath, conjur the quintessential Kiwi attitude, suppress Shakespeare and say something ruggedly pragmatic and understated. To do otherwise is to suggest that, just possibly, it was the added insight into life given through immersion in great literature that poured itself into your motivation to conquer the world’s highest mountain. That would be betrayal of all those New Zealanders who think you got there through manifesting something they share with you – your ordinary New Zealandness.

Just how many truly different New Zealanders have been caught, tragically, in this particular cultural vice is anyone’s guess. At the broad cultural level, you could say that New Zealand’s culture has a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell‘ policy when it comes to the expression of non-ordinary aspects of one’s life and self – and Key has learnt to keep well and truly to his side of the bargain.

John Key has learnt that it is best to let New Zealanders think that he got where he has on the back of his ‘ordinary Kiwi’ attributes rather than through experiences and attributes that were very non-ordinary and very non-Kiwi. Being affable and relaxed – quintessential elements of ‘personality Kiwiana’ – allow Key to give free rein to his decidedly non-Kiwi, non-ordinary background and experiences, and the self-focused capacities they have imbued in him.

In New Zealand, then, to ‘be ordinary’ requires only one necessary condition: That you never suggest that being something other than an ordinary Kiwi might be just as good as being an ordinary Kiwi, let alone that it might be better.

John Key may ride high, as Trotter suggests, on “the warm updrafts of his nation’s confidence” but it was not Kiwi ordinariness that put him in the levitated position of being able to take advantage of those updrafts.

To be continued …