Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [33]
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More than a pidgin dictionary, Pidgin to Da Max by Douglas Simonson (aka Peppo) is a side-splitting primer on local life that’s knocked around forever because it (and its sequels) are so damn funny.
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Other important Hawaii writers include Nora Okja Keller, whose first novel, Comfort Woman, won the 1998 American Book Award, and Kiana Davenport, whose Shark Dialogues (1994) is a sweeping multigenerational family saga entwined with island history.
Meanwhile, new Hawaii writers abound: some, like Mia King (Good Things, 2007) and Joe Tsujimoto (Morningside Heights, 2008), eschew purely ethnic or Hawaii-centered narratives, while others – like Kaui Hart Hemmings (House of Thieves, 2005) and Mavis Hara (An Offering of Rice, 2007) – continue to explode the ‘paradise myth’ as they explore real Hawaii.
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CINEMA & TV
Nothing cemented the fantasy of Edenic Hawaii in the popular imagination as firmly as Hollywood. Today, the ‘dream factory’ continues to peddle variations on a ‘South Seas’ genre that first swept theaters in the 1930s.
Whether the mood is silly or serious, whether Hawaii is used as a setting or a stand-in for someplace else, the story’s familiar tropes hardly change: white men arrive in a languid tropical paradise to be tempted by, and consequently to ravish, island women, updating the original Garden of Eden soap opera and providing a romantic gloss to the real history of colonizers and continents on the islands.
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HULA: LANGUAGE OF THE HEART
In ancient Hawaii, hula was as much a way of life as a performing art. Sometimes hula was solemn ritual, in which mele (songs or chants) had to be word-perfect as an honor to a chief or an offering to the gods. At other times hula was lighthearted entertainment, in which amateur and professional, chief and commoner, danced together. In many ways, hula embodied the community – telling stories of and celebrating itself.
Dancers trained rigorously in halau (schools) under kumu hula (hula teachers), so their hand gestures, expressions and rhythms were exact. Still, in a culture without written language, the chants were equally important, giving intention and meaning to the movements. Songs often contained kanoa – veiled or hidden meaning. This could be spiritual, but it could also be amorous or sexual. Hula ma’i was an entire tradition devoted to metaphorical praise of the chief’s genitals.
One can only imagine how hard Christian missionaries blushed. Their efforts to suppress hula were aided by Christian convert Queen Ka’ahumanu, who banned hula in 1830. In the 1880s, King Kalakaua revived it, saying famously, ‘Hula is the language of the heart and therefore the heartbeat of the Hawaiian people.’ Then the monarchy was overthrown, and hula faded again, until a revival in the 1950s brought it back for good.
Today, hula halau run by revered kumu hula are thriving, as hula competitions blossom and people once again adopt hula as a life practice. In hula competitions, dancers vie in kahiko (ancient) and ’auana (modern) categories. Kahiko performances are raw and primordial, accompanied only by chanting and thunderous gourd drums; costumes are traditional, with ti-leaf leis, primary colors and sometimes lots of skin.
’Auana can include all manner of Western, contemporary influences. English singing, stringed instruments, pants, pop culture jokes, sinuous arm movements and smiling faces – all may be included. Some troupes flirt with postmodern dance, creating what’s been dubbed ‘Cirque du Soleil hula.’
Among festivals, the Olympics of hula is the Merrie Monarch Festival (Click here), but hula competitions and celebrations fill island calendars year-round. For a selection of the biggest, see the Events Calendar (Click here).
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Hollywood first arrived in 1913, and Hawaii has been catnip ever since. By 1939, over 60 movies had been shot here, including classics like Mutiny on the Bounty