Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider: Thematic and Narrative Differences Between the Novel and the Film Version

Abstract

Acclaimed Māori writer Witi Ihimaera’s 1987 novel The Whale Rider addresses the spiritual, environmental and economic challenges facing Māori people in (then) contemporary New Zealand society, while demonstrating the continuing relevance of legends and myths in everyday life. The novel also emphasizes the historical significance of whales in Māori mythology and genealogy, arguing that by abandoning these cetacean creatures, Māoridom as a whole has lost its way in an increasingly materialistic world. Drawing upon the story of tribal founder Kahutia Te Rangi, commonly known as the Whale Rider, and focusing on one particular tribe in the tiny New Zealand East Coast village of Whangara, Ihimaera offers a feminist twist on a popular genealogical tale. In doing so, he challenges the prevailing patriarchy that regards females as incompatible with leadership roles. This essay analyzes the novel’s thematic concerns, and then compares the work as a whole with the critically acclaimed 2002 film adaptation—renamed simply Whale Rider—arguing that the latter dilutes Ihimaera’s thematic richness and mythological emphasis. This occurs largely through a major shift in narrative perspective and the aggrandization of its principal female protagonist. Indeed the film, far from being a faithful adaptation of the novel, is in fact an example of what film theorist Geoffrey Wagner classifies as a commentary on an original work, that is to say an instance in which an adaptation either deliberately or unintentionally departs significantly from the precursor text. Ironically, however, the thematically more profound novel has received virtually no scholarly attention, in contrast with the critically and commercially successful film adaptation, and has essentially been supplanted by the latter work in academic analysis. This essay seeks to redress this imbalance by demonstrating that The Whale Rider is a novel deserving of greater scholarly attention that it has hitherto been afforded, while at the same time more successful tonally—in terms of presenting a world in which myth, legend and reality co-exist—than the somewhat prosaic film adaptation.