Whale Rider

Whale Rider is a film of a young girl, Paikea who struggles with the duty she believes she was born to fill and the stereotyped role that her grandfather who is also the leader of the community, Koro expects her to play. 

Paikea was born as one of the twins. However, her birth was accompanied by the death of her mother and her elder twin brother. Koro was not happy with her birth as only the first-born male of every generation were allowed to take up the mantle as the chief of the tribe. Koro demanded Paikea's father to get married again so that there would be a successor but Paikea's father was in despair and did not want to obey. Over the years as Paikea grew up, she started to grow on Koro and he no longer looked at her with the same feelings of disappointment yet there is still some beliefs in his mind that he could not abandon.

Cognitive Dissonance
In the film, Koro seems to display cognitive dissonance as he appears to be having conflict between his attitude, belief and behavior. At the beginning of the film, Koro seems to be having an affectionate bond with Paikea through his act of fetching her back from school everyday and his patience while explaining to Paikea about the history of the tribe. However, when he was having an argument with his son, who is also Paikea's father, about his marriage and the issues faced within the tribe, he told his son that Paikea "has no use to him" and asked him to bring her away. At some point of time in the film, Koro even blame Paikea and condemn on her for what had happened in the community. According to Festinger (1962), cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort which would lead to the alteration of one's attitudes, beliefs or behaviors, which in turns help to reduce the discomfort. Koro has always believed that only male descendent could be the leader of the tribe which leads him to be unhappy about Paikea's birth as her dead twin brother was supposed to be the successor. Even so, he managed to develop a strong positive bond with Paikea over the years, which clashed with his belief of dominance of male. This had created a sense of discomfort within Koro and led him to alter his behavior towards Paikea, i.e. not picking up Paikea from school without informing her. It was there that ignited his harsh treatment towards Paikea, which he would punish her for trying to attend lessons to become the chief of the tribe.

Hostile sexism
One thing noteworthy is the element of sexism in the film. As mentioned above, Koro has a strong belief that only male descendent could become the successor, which was why he did not allow Paikea to attend classes. Paikea was not given the opportunity to showcase her ability. He did not want to acknowledge Paikea as the chief candidate even after Paikea demonstrated having the ability to become the chief because the role of tribe leader has traditionally been male. Would it be possible to say that Koro was only trying to fulfill the tradition which at some instances, it's the culture being sexist, and not Koro?