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Fictional Women Around the World: Paikea “Pai” Apirana · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and Smitha and welcome to stuff
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I've never told you a production of ByHeart Radio and
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: we're back with another sub subsubs of sub segment of
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: fictional women around the world. We're doing a lot of
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: throwbacks lately with our movie choices, because today we are
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: talking about Bikea Pie Apriana from the two thousand and
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: two film whil Writer. She was played by Keisha Castle Hughes,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It is directed by Niki Karro and based on the
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: novel of the same name by Wita Ihimira. It was
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a coming of age story that had a sense of
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: place and resonated around the world, and it did win
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: multi awards. I haven't watched it in a long time,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: but I remember the first time I watched it. It
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: was a very long time. Yeah, yeah, but it was.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I remember being so popular and so many people were
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: talking about it at the time. The plot of the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: movie follows Maori, twelve year old girl Pie, who is
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the only surviving child of her family. She grows up
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  Speaker 1: with her uncle, grandmother, and grandfather who is the patriarch,
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  Speaker 1: and refuses to acknowledge her as the heir, so she
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: was born with a brother. A brother died and he's
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: not going to allow Pie to be the heir. Her
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: mother and brother died in childbirth, and her mother's last
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: words were pai Kia Pakia, and that's what her father
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: named her, against his own father's wishes. However, Pie's father
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't stick around, and her grandfather only takes her in
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  Speaker 1: with great reluctance, believing that she is going to be
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: of no use. Even further, he blames her for what
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: happens and for the child misfortunes. Her father goes on
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: to become an artist on the international scene, and after
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: a brief return home, doesn't listen to his father and
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: refuses to become the tribe's leader. At one point, Pie
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: decides to accompany her father back to Europe, where he
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: has a wife that is expecting a child there, but
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: abruptly asks to be taken back home. Pie is confident
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: that she has the skills to lead the tribe in
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the face of all of this. When her grandfather pulls
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: together a school for firstborn boys of her age, she
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: attempts to join anyway, but it's rebuffed. She enlests the
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: aid of her sympathetic uncle to learn the old ways
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and traditions, including the Maori fighting stick. One of the
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: boys challenges her to as far, and her grandfather catches them,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: telling her that she is making the boys look bad
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  Speaker 1: and to apologize to them. Later, her grandfather tosses the
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: tooth of a whale into the water and tasks the
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: boys with finding it as a test to see who
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: will be the next. They all fail, and the grandfather
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: becomes depressed, even more so when he attempts to call
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the ancient Ones for help but is ignored. Pi tries
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: calling instead, unbeknownst to him, and is heard. She finds
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the tooth, but her grandmother informs her that her grandfather
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: is not ready to face the truth about Pie. Pie
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: goes on to make an emotional speech at her school
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: after learning she won the school competition and the regional contest.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: She had asked her grandfather to come, but he refused
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: to speak to her. Here's a quote. But I was
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: not the leader my grandfather was expecting, and by being born,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I broke the line back to the ancient ones. It
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: wasn't anybody's fault, It just happened but we can learn,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: and if the knowledge is given to everyone, we can
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: have lots of leaders and soon everyone will be strong,
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  Speaker 1: not just the ones that have been chosen, because sometimes
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: even if you're the leader and you need to be strong,
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  Speaker 1: you can get tired. Like our ancestor pai Kea, when
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: he was lost at sea and he couldn't find the land,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and he probably wanted to die, but he knew the
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: ancient ones were there for him, so he called out
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: to them to lift him up and give him strength.
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  Speaker 1: This is his chant. I dedicate it to my grandfather.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: And through this, she summons a whale pod to her
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  Speaker 1: location with her song, and the whales are stranded. Her
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  Speaker 1: grandfather's furious, believing this is a signal of the apocalypse,
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  Speaker 1: but she rides the largest whale out to the water
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  Speaker 1: and leads the rest of them back to safety. She
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: nearly drowns in the process and is rescued. Her grandfather
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  Speaker 1: names her leader of the tribe after seeing all of
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: this and seeing that she found the tooth. And that's
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: how it ends. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot a
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: lot of themes we can talk about here. And as
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I said, it was very It was award winning and
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of people really loved it at the time.
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  Speaker 1: Clearly one of the big themes of this character is empowerment,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: especially through knowledge and through traditions. She does have this
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: this family that is supporting her kind of in the
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: background and seeing their conversations and interactions, it's really interesting
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and being determined, like she was determined. She just seems
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: she knew, like, I know I can be good at this.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: I think we can with all of this shared knowledge,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: will be stronger. But having to face that that sexism,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: even when she clearly like knew her stuff and could
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: fight and was the one that found the two like
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: all of these things, but always being like, no, this
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: is not this is not for you. But she was determined,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: and especially like her relationship with her grandfather, where at
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: the end of the speech, it's not it's very much
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: a reaching out and not alli like throwing it under
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the bus. It's it's not like we were just talking
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: about the difficulties of families and having these disagreements, but
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: being willing to listen and open up and change and
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: how that can look messy sometimes and it can take time.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: So because I think of like the grandmother being like, oh,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: he's not ready, but like that slow no, I'm not
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not going away. I have this, I know, I
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: know this about myself. And at the end he realized
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: that all the stuff she'd been saying that was right
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: in front of him all along, that he needed to
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: make this change, like he needed to see her and
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: accept her for the good of everybody. A lot of
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: movies that we talk about in this context. This started
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: a large conversation about representation and who was in it,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: because for a lot of people this was the first
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: time they saw Maori culture in the mainstream. I believe
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I was watching a clip with the author and I
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: think it was like the first mainstream Miori book to
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: get published, So it was a big deal in a
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: lot of ways in that sense. And they talked about
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: like the making of it and having the people from
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Miori culture who were reactors or involved in the writing
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: or whatever, being like, no, it should kind of guiding
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: the story and how it should look. You can find
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of interest seeing articles about that and about
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: like because the director was not myor she, but she
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: she had a lot of quotes about how she was
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: handling that, and you know, ideally I would say it
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: should have been a Miori character. But there are a
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: lot of interesting conversations you can read about about that.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: There's also a lot of talk about through Pie's dad
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: and who goes to Europe and is like he is
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: exhibiting art there. There's a lot of kind of in
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: the background conversation about colonization and art and and kind
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: of him going away and doing this, and him and
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: their grandfather getting a fight about like knowing you should
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: be here is doing art or whatever it is that
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: like you shouldn't be in Europe doing it, which is interesting,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: and you can find a lot of stuff written about
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: that as well, because I think a lot of people
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: didn't pick up on that the first time, especially if
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: they're not from in any way like that culture. But
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: it's definitely there. It's definitely something that is going on
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: when and when Pie almost goes with him to Europe
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: and then she's like, no, take me back home, like
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: that's not gonna be my home. So yeah, there's a
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: lot to talk about with this movie, and people are
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: still writing about that, which I love. So I would
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: love to hear listeners if you have any thoughts on
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: this character or this movie. Or you have any suggestions
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: for people we should talk about in the future. You
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: can emails at stuf Media, mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter at mom Still podcast,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: or on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff One'll Never Told You.
• 10:06
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• 10:08
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• 10:10
  Speaker 1: get your books. Thanks. It's always to our super producer
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Christina or expected producer Maya and our contributor Joey. Thank
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: you and thanks to you for listening Stuff Whenever Told
• 10:17
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• 10:19
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