#te rangi

Frontier: Te Rangi speaks about “Hope”

They’re barely visible.

I didn’t even notice them the first time I watched the show, and this is the best picture I could find where you can see them at all.

“Are you sure they’re not more visible in better lighting?” says the hypothetical person in my imaginary argument over why they’re like that.

Yep.

Here are some more reasons that my hypothetical argument person gave for why they’re so faint and my reasons why those arguments aren’t valid.

1. Maybe they faded because he’s old and spends a lot of time in the sun.

What about Old Rangi in River Queen?

He looks to be a lot older than Te Rangi (I wish their names weren’t so similar) and he’s the only tattooist in a large radius, so he probably travels quite a bit. Of course, he doesn’t travel on the open ocean, but as the name of the movie implies, everyone spends a lot of time on the river in open canoes.

I think with modern tattoo technology, they would have faded a lot from Te Rangi’s lifestyle. My oldest tattoo is almost 7 years old and it’s noticeably faded from when I first got it, and I don’t even spend that much time in the sun. But the show takes place in the 1790s. See how Old Rangi’s tattoos are in actual grooves in his skin? That’s historically accurate. They were supposed to scar like that. It was done with small chisels and deeply pigmented ink, and seems like it would be a lot more permanent for people who spent a lot of time in the sun with little to no skin protection.

2. Maybe Temuera Morrison didn’t want them but production did so they compromised by making them barely noticeable.

Once again invalidated by River Queen, and I don’t even like that movie.

He’s also had fake tattoos, both cultural and non-cultural, in Once Were Warriors, Barb Wire, Couples Retreat, and Aquaman at least. I might be forgetting some.

3. Maybe it’s the opposite and Temuera Morrison did want them but production didn’t because they thought they would be too distracting or something, but the result was the same as the first hypothetical compromise.

I don’t have a good rebuttal for that one other than “they’re not distracting they’re cool.” Maybe I could say the show focuses a lot on indigenous cultures in Canada, so why not showcase more of another indigenous culture?