Film
Samoa's Savage Symbols
A New Zealand Film Examines What It Means To Be Samoan And Male In New Zealand
Nothing better symbolizes what it means to be a Samoan male than the pe’a, the elaborate tattoo that is applied from mid-thigh to waist level. It is a right of passage, an excruciatingly painful process that can take two or three days, sometimes longer. The pain is so intense that some men hallucinate as the tap, tap, tap of the tattoo artist’s hammer is applied against the comb-like instrument that pierces the skin.
The result, says Le Manga Fiso Nafatali, a talking chief on the island of Upolu, is both simple and symbolic: “Those with pe’a serve the people.” The pe’a represents an obligation as much as a symbol.
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But if this rite of passage is commonplace in Samoa, what of the large communities of overseas Samoans, many of whom struggle to understand their native culture?
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That is the premise of Savage Symbols, a remarkable documentary by first-time Samoan filmmaker Makerita Urale. She, along with editor Tamara Finau-Moir, a cousin, and Laeimau Oketevi Tenuvasa-Savea, have produced a 53-minute exploration of the cultural confusion that some overseas Samoans face in trying to understand what it means to be a Polynesian in a palagi or foreign world.
Savage Symbols examines the lives of nine Samoan men in New Zealand who chose to have the pe’a completed. “Some of them have never been to Samoa,” says Urale. “Most of them cannot speak the language.”
Urale, who comes from a family of artists (her sister, Sita, is a well-known filmmaker), compares the perspective of the nine overseas Samoans with that of Le Manga Fiso Nafatali, a talking chief in Samoa who received his pe’a relatively late in life. Le Manga represents Samoa, a place where there is little agonizing over what it means to be a Samoan male. In Samoa, the language, with its many levels of respect and expressions of honor, defines one’s Samoaness. The pe’a is an important symbol of being Samoan, but it is only part of a larger network of language, relationships and ties to the land.
Not so in New Zealand, where many Samoans struggle to understand their uniqueness in a society defined by European cultural and economic standards. For these overseas Samoan men, searching desperately for a way to express their cultural significance, the pe’a itself becomes a symbol of Samoa.
“This is how you definitely state that you are Samoan,” says one of the men profiled in Savage Symbols.
Another man recounts the visions he saw as his body endured the terrible pain associated with applying the pe’a. He was so moved that he later apologized to relatives from whom he stole goods.
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Yet another man, a young Christian minister, tells how the process of getting his pe’a made him closer to his Samoan parishioners. What is unusual is that in Samoa, it would be unheard of for a minister to have a pe’a. Yet that cultural distinction disappears in New Zealand.
Urale says that perhaps in 40 years, Samoan men living overseas won’t have to subject themselves to the pain of obtaining a pe’a to prove to themselves that they are Samoan. But for now, with little else to help define their cultural uniqueness, the pe’a represents the ultimate symbol of Samoaness.
Urale completed “Savage Symbols” with a budget of only NZ$30,000, which was a grant from Creative New Zealand. The film was compiled from 30 videotapes, and edited in two-and-a-half weeks by Finau-Moir, who worked from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. after her normal work as an editor for TV3 and New Zealand’s 60 Minutes.
“It just found its time,” says Finau-Moir of Savage Symbols. “Our rough cut never went beyond 55 minutes.”
Savage Symbols was screened last year at the New Zealand Film Festival, and earlier this year in Apia, Samoa, at the National University of Samoa. Urale is now working on a documentry about Pacific navigation.
