Music is music. Film is film. Television is television. Theatre is theatre. And while we seem to have no problem ripping into New Zealand productions of the last two (though God forbid you say Outrageous Fortune has gone off the rails in the last couple of seasons), the first two seem to have all the universally shit exemplars swept under the rug while everyone flies the flag for ‘good’ New Zealand film and music. It saddens me to see reviewers attacked for not liking something from NZ in those fields, as it feels like they’re treating the artist or filmmaker like children, in need of protection (in fact, the parallels between the response to the Kia Ora Khalid review in Salient earlier this year and this Sweetman brouhaha is eerily similar). It particularly disgusts me to see the artists wade into a debate as if they were just another pundit, and then either be completely disingenuous (DJ Mu adding to the misuse of the word racism in New Zealand news this week) or plain petty (Costa Botes on the reaction of some to Forgotten Silver springs to mind, writing letters to reviewers who didn’t like it, going “you’re wrong because other people liked it”). It’s a mindset we need to remove from our country before we can take what we produce truly seriously.