When Dave Snell was awarded a $100,000 grant seven years ago to study the bogan lifestyle, there was outrage. "What possible value could that have?" raged the critics.

Well, for Snell, it was the beginning of a journey that has so far produced a PhD for his thesis on "boganology", a book, a YouTube channel – and now Bogans, a TV reality series following a small group of Hamiltonians who proudly lay claim to the title of "bogan".

Let's face it, bogans are everywhere (although mostly in Hamilton and West Auckland).

CRAIG WRIGHT New series looks at the bogan culture in New Zealand.

If you are not a bogan, you may know one, or at least have met one. They are quite easy to spot – often in black heavy metal concert T-shirt, mullet, black pants and driving a car that has probably seen better days and will certainly see worse. And they are probably fixing your car or your plumbing.

For Snell and his comrades, being a bogan is just a way of life – and that is what he wants this series to show. "It's showing everyday people really," he told TV Guide. "What I've tried to get across in a lot of the things I do is that (bogans) are everyday people who just happen to like certain things. They're not anyone to be feared or looked down at. They're just like everyone else. It just happens that they spend their weekends a little differently."

Snell quickly rejects the notion that the series is going to be the bogan equivalent of The GC. But TV – being the brutally exposing medium that it often is – may well put this particular social sub-culture under intense scrutiny. So is the series a plea for acceptance for the bogan community? "I wouldn't say it's a plea," says Snell. "We don't really care. But it definitely aims to give an insight into the culture I guess. People can take it or leave it."

In many ways, Snell says he was a bogan before he even realised it, essentially through his choice of music and dress style. But he had to move to another part of the country before it sank in. "It was probably when I moved to Hamilton, I think," he says. "I was just into the things I was into and dressed the way I dressed. And back then, when I was from the far north, I used to have a bit of a mullet when I was 17 or 18. And when I moved to Hamilton I heard of this term and liked that there was a collective name for the identity I had shared with other people, and I was quite proud of it. So I took it as a good thing."

Perhaps the man who did the most to inject boganism into mainstream culture was the late Ewen Gilmour, who took his Westie (Auckland bogan) persona on stage for his comedy career, and then into local politics. Gilmour's gift was to make boganism simultaneously a source of both humour and pride.

So would Snell Snell describe it as a self-effacing sub-culture? "You mean taking the ****?" he says. "Yes, definitely. It's quite a common thing. I think as a collective group we're quite willing to make jokes at our own expense. There's no fear of making a joke about ourselves and making ourselves look foolish. That's definitely a bogan attitude."

But if Ewen Gilmour was boganism's figurehead, then Snell Snell is its diarist if not its social analyst. Boganism, he says, exists in a kind of working-class border land between the rural and the urban lifestyles – hence its predominance in Hamilton and West Auckland. But does he think that even trying to define boganism might begin to change it? "No," he says. "A lot of our symbolism and music is based in the 80s, and it has been quite resistant to change, so I don't think this particular project will make any difference really. There are certain things within the series that we do that definitely fit the stereotype, and there are others that potentially don't. People are going to view it and it's either going to confirm what they thought or they'll ignore it."

Of course, such is the power of the medium that pointing the camera at the sub-culture might actually help to swell the ranks. "Well, if that's the case, we'd welcome them," says Snell. "Again, I don't think it's going to change much. I would hope that a greater level of acceptance for the group comes about. It would be nice."

Bogans, TV2, Thursday.

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