Why are there not Badlands in New Zealand ?
Despite the fact that New Zealand and Australia share a substantial colonial history, and that there are relatively vast parts of Aotearoa that are uninhabited and extremely inhospitable there is nothing in New Zealand akin to badlands or at least similar to what can be found in Australia or in the US. What there is however is a relation with landscape fraught with the anxieties of settler community and/or deeply connected to indigenous history. The paper will look at several recent developments including New Zealand as middle-earth, the selling of New Zealand as a “land of opportunity”, and the branding of New Zealand as a digital frontier as attempts to recast the history of the land for first-world consumption. The purpose of the paper is to eventually argue that the creation of badlands in New Zealand is important critical and creative task. BIO: Thierry Jutel is a lecturer in the Media Studies Programme at Victoria University, New Zealand and a film producer. He has written on The
