I can’t claim to speak for all the Welling­ton­ista, but I have to say it: Sev­ens week­end is hor­ri­ble. There’s a lot of gushy talk in the main media out­lets about how colour­ful and vibrant and alive the city becomes, but one could say the same about a nasty fun­gal rash. Many of us who live in the cen­tral city can attest to how colour­ful and vibrant and alive the city is most of the time, and in an appeal­ing, organ­ic and inde­pen­dent way, but we found the CBD close to unbear­able dur­ing the week­end.
 

What is it that appals us so much about this spec­ta­cle?

Let’s start with the aspects we don’t mind. The tour­na­ment itself is fine: we’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly against rug­by, and it’s good to have a big inter­na­tion­al event in the city. It would be a bit rich for most of us to com­plain about the drink­ing, and we can all enjoy a bit of bois­ter­ous carous­ing. Debauch­ery, even. Most of us enjoy dress­ing up, some of us rather often. And I for one am not com­plain­ing about groups of well-put-togeth­er young ladies in skimpy out­fits.

But it’s all just so very … naff. There’s a strong whiff of cor­po­rate team­build­ing about it, of David Bren­t’s “MC Ham­mer shit” and the project-man­aged jol­li­ty of the office Xmas do. This is Car­ni­val for peo­ple who think that Stein­lager is a pre­mi­um beer and are gen­uine­ly look­ing for­ward to a new Feel­ers album; who are hap­py to ditch the Rodd & Gunn for two days of wear­ing a hi-lar-ious $2‑shop tutu but would shout “whaddarya?!” to any­one who dared to dress uncon­ven­tion­al­ly in pub­lic any oth­er day of the year.

True, there are some tru­ly imag­i­na­tive cos­tumes every year, but why do many peo­ple still seem so amused by hordes of Flint­stones and T‑shirts that read “FBI (Free Breast Inspec­tions)”, after so many years? I think Robyn got it just right on one point: it’s the uni­for­mi­ty of the cos­tumes that is so unheim­lich; the “group cos­tume [that] lets you dress up but not stand out”. Safe­ty in num­bers, and the great Kiwi tra­di­tion of being “a team play­er”, out­weigh any chance of true expres­sion.

Under­neath that, there’s an under­cur­rent of aggres­sion that is quite dis­turb­ing, a mix of frat-boy haz­ing and build­ing-site cat­calls that gets worse as the vom­it and bro­ken glass piles up. Medi­ae­val car­ni­vals were undoubt­ed­ly heady events, and far from pret­ty, but the there are times when the Sev­ens is more Bosch than Breughel. I know that Denis Welch has brought out the Bac­chic prece­dent, and while I’m not going to get all Bakhtin on you, I have to say that this is nei­ther an over­turn­ing of estab­lished hier­ar­chies (as in the north­ern Euro­pean tra­di­tion) nor a lusti­ly Latin cel­e­bra­tion of the good life.

Which brings us to the Cuba Street Car­ni­val, which is upon us in less than a fort­night. I’m look­ing for­ward to it, and hop­ing that my friends get into the spir­it by dress­ing up for the par­ty. Isn’t that a bit hyp­o­crit­i­cal? Is it alright when hip­sters and bohemi­ans get dressed up and drunk, but not builders and accoun­tants? Isn’t there more than a touch of intel­lec­tu­al snob­bery in that?

Well, per­haps. I’m cer­tain­ly more of a Cuba Street per­son than a Courte­nay Place denizen, and the Sev­ens is Courte­nay Place writ large, so of course my taste is more like­ly to run to the Car­ni­val. And I’d dear­ly love to see Welling­ton cel­e­brate music, art and dance at least as wild­ly as it does sport and bad beer. But I think there’s some­thing more fun­da­men­tal than that; some­thing to do with the way that cel­e­bra­tion and joy are or are not woven into the fab­ric of our lives.

If we don’t have a touch of cre­ativ­i­ty and sen­su­al­i­ty in our dai­ly exis­tence, then squeez­ing it all into a cou­ple of days will just cre­ate a forced and sor­ry mess. If, how­ev­er, you seek out new tastes, rhythms, colours, friend­ships and adven­tures just a lit­tle bit every day, then on those spe­cial occa­sions when you col­lab­o­rate to cel­e­brate that togeth­er in the streets of your city, the results are going to be a hell of a lot sex­i­er than a job-lot of slut­ty cow­girls and drool­ing oafs.