Social Fabric

New Zealanders do not seek the Golden Fleece. They seek at flat, matt-finish, pastel-toned, hormone-treated. Riccarton Dalton A. xminster; they tread softly on somebody's dreams, they talk of the night they met P-a-u-l B-a-r-o-n, the NOW decor, and a housebroken bulldozer that didn't really tear the tufts—this is the fabric of New Zealand society.

It is not, even, sufficient for the fibre to be merely white. They strive for whiter-than-whiteness, the unattainable that becomes attainable to the sufficiently devoted. "Which one is your John-nee?" "The one in white." "But they're All in . .. ohhh."

The culture of the lamb, however, makes realistic if temporary allowances for the black sheep. Where toughness, aggression and a modicum of forward drive is tolerated, it is in fact dressed in black to distinguish it and put on the football field. It is sent forth to confuse and occasionally dismay the international conspiracy of excellence. If white represents not so much the purity of New Zealand's being as the vacuum of its character, and is a private, patented, wholly New Zealand-owned thing reserved entirely for itself, black is the nominated national colour presented to the world. The black sheep are despatched to blacken, hopefully, not the country's reputation but the world's eye. One man's Meads is another man's poison. It is a bold subterfuge behind which New Zealand revels in timidity. It is able to get on with the greatest vanishing trick in history while everyone else's attention is cleverly drawn by its ebony envoys. When New Zealand chants "black, black, black." it refers to the sanctuary of the deep pit it is digging itself at home.

But black, like while, is another non-shade. It is, if the world could only see it for what it really is, representative of New Zealand's true aspiration—which is to merge, to hide, and if possible to disappear completely.