A Man Kicked Out of a Bar

Recently there has been a lot of news around a bar that has a ‘no tattoo’ policy, resulting in a Maori man being kicked out. Tunahau Kohu went for a drink in a Christchurch bar and was asked to leave because of his ta moko. The bar explained that they did not serve anyone that had gang, neck or facial tattoos and asked him to leave. Kohu tried to explain the significance of his moko but according to the media, the bar did not want to listen. This started major public debate with people being disgusted that he was asked to leave, resulting in the bar apologising and the Human Rights Committee being complained to.

I find it very interesting and great that something positive may have come out of this unfortunate event; people standing up for Maori in the public eye. Instead of the majority of people saying things like, ‘he deserved it’ or ‘he shouldn’t have put it on his face’, people gave backlash towards the bar saying that it was unacceptable to treat somebody like this. Showing that mainstream media does not always put Maori in a bad perspective. Even though it is very very rare for stories like this to come about, I really do believe that the only reasons they came about is because of the huge support he received. If nobody cared than nobody would bother about writing about something, linking back to the hegemonic devices of mainstream media. This story I feel ultimately shows the workings of society as a collective and how its interests usually decide what goes into the media. Otherwise, the reality is nobody would watch or read the stories talked about, hurting the mainstream entities that wrote them because they are commercial entities that need ratings to survive. The general rule of thumb is, the juicer the story the better the ratings.

Although the discussed event was not a pleasant one, it has shown that society must care for it to have reached a mainstream newspaper. Putting emphasis on the idea of hegemony because in reality societies interests fuel the demand for the stories to be written. I think it is great that the story received so much support because it is almost as if ‘us’ and ‘them’ were not relevant and everybody was included as ‘us’.