Is Tiki "Cultural Appropriation"?

Short of the annual controversies over what are and are not appropriate Halloween costumes, there are perhaps few better candidates for accusations of "cultural appropriation" than Tiki culture. Today, Tiki is mostly a nostalgic niche interest, as evidenced by Disney's creation of Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar. Tiki bars are becoming increasingly numerous across the world, but have yet to enjoy the same cultural penetration that they did in the mid-century. Rather than an example of a vibrant, vital wind of Tiki blowing through society, Trader Sam's is a deliberate thematic element in their retro-Fifties refit of the Disneyland Hotel. Its thatched roof is only a stone's throw from a replica of the theme park's original sign from 1958. The origins of that mid-century milieu - of Tiki bars, tropical drinks, exotic Jazz, and "Polynesian Pop" - are shrouded in the ambiguities of colonial exploitation, tropical fantasy, artistic inspiration, and tasteless kitsch. Tiki culture grew out of America's relationship with Hawaii and the South Pacific, which was alternately a theatre of imperial occupation and deep cultural fascination. With that in mind, Tiki becomes an interesting laboratory to examine where the line is to be drawn between appropriation, appreciation, and acculturation.

Unlike my previous articles delving into potentially controversial subjects - Feminism and the Disney Princesses and Tropes vs. Men in Disney - where I refrained from tackling the thorny issues of feminist theory in-and-of-itself, the discussion over whether Tiki is cultural appropriation requires an examination of cultural appropriation theory. Much of the question over whether Tiki is appropriate hinges on whether cultural appropriation theory is actually valid.

Before Moana and the Enchanted Tiki Room: the Romance of Hawaii in the Golden Age of Travel

Tiki culture was largely a product of post-World War II leisure society, when soldiers who served in the Pacific returned home to build and benefit from an unparalleled economic boom. With more money and more time off than their parents could have dreamed of, reminiscing of faraway beaches and palm trees, Americans took to the road during ever lengthening vacation days while building oases for themselves at home during the off-season. Advances in transportation could bring them virtually anywhere, whether by America's developing system of highways (and old favourite byways like Route 66) or the flyways of the new Jet Age. With Cuba off-limits, an exotic, tropical destination was placed right on Americans' doorstep when Hawaii joined the Union in 1959. The fad for anything and everything evoking Polynesia, Oceania, even Africa and the Caribbean, exploded like an atom bomb, from Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room to Martin Denny's smooth Jazz to the ubiquitous at-home Tiki bar.

Americans had already been primed by Polynesian exotica for several decades before WWII. The roots of Tiki culture are found deep in the DNA of America's relationship with the Pacific, in the very first "exotic" bars that would become Tiki pioneers, in lavish Hollywood musicals, and in radio programs broadcast from the ballrooms of Hawaii's most glamorous hotels. Even Mickey Mouse took a Hawaiian Holiday in 1937, in Disney's first film distributed by RKO.

The Story of Maui - Part 2

Besides taming the sun and raising the Pacific Islands, Maui's other great feat is bringing fire to the people. In the Maori version he tricks the fire goddess Mahuika into giving it, to which she responds with enraged fire across land, sea, and sky. Thankfully his ancestors send rain to douse the flames and save his life. The fire-god is male in Samoa, and dwells in the underworld, where Ti'iti'i journeyed to obtain fire. He did so, but Mafui'e the fire-god blew on it and broke up the oven in which he placed the fire for safekeeping. The two wrestled and Ti'iti'i emerged victorious. The price of defeat for Mafui'e was to surrender the secret of making fire.

Hawaiian fire dancer. Photo: Mynameisben123.

Thankfully, the Hawaiian version of Maui did not have to confront Pele to obtain fire. His adventure was far more comic. Once more we turn to the Hawaiian legends transcribed by Rev. A.O. Forbes:

The Story of Maui - Part 1

Virtually every society has what anthropologists call a "culture hero." These are great heroes, often with fantastic powers, who shape the landscape and culture of the people to whom he (usually its a male) is a hero. In some cases these may be "just-so stories," but more frequently they have embedded within them lessons on proper behavior. In the case of a pure culture hero, these are lessons on how to behave. In cases where the culture hero also acts as a trickster, these can just as easily be lessons in how not to behave.

A prime example of a culture hero is Paul Bunyan. In the Disney cartoon telling his exploits, he becomes responsible for carving out the Dakotas, raising Pike's Peak so he can look out over the landscape, building Yellowstone Falls for a shower, and knocking the Aurora Borealis into the sky. His story also chronicles the transition of the far Western frontier into a civilized, mechanized society. Likewise, Pecos Bill painted the Painted Desert, dug the Rio Grande river, and filled the Gulf of Mexico with rains he lassoed in from California.

The great culture hero of the Polynesian peoples is Maui, who roped the sun and gave his people time.

Illustration of Maui snaring the sun by Arman Manookian, 1927.

The Air-Conditioned Eden

The Air-Conditioned Eden is a 1996 documentary produced by the BBC that touches on all the high points of Tiki culture up to, logically, the time it was made. Unfortunately it cuts off just before the resurgence in Tiki nostalgia in the late-Nineties and early 2000's, helped along by artists like SHAG and events like Disney's restorations and anniversaries of the Enchanted Tiki Room. The Tiki Room is covered in this documentary, as are the American experience in WWII, James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific and the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific based on it, Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki Expedition, Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcomber, the admission of Hawaii into the Union, and Martin Denny's exotic music.

It also attempts to get inside the Tiki mindset and understand what was so appealing about it. This is where I think the documentary is at its weakest. For one, it associates the appeal of Tiki with the repressed sexuality of the Fifties and early Sixties, and then builds an argument that Tiki fell out of favour in the late Sixties once people became less sexually oppressed. To me, this sounds like historical revisionism through the lens of the Sexual Revolution: every revolution attempts to legitimize itself by demonizing the previous generations as being repressed in some way (i.e.: the Enlightenment inventing the myth of the "Dark Ages"). I certainly think there was an aspect of sexuality implicit to hula dancers and anthropological nudity, but I also think the case is overblown if that's seen as the reason for an interest in the "exotic" and not a byproduct. But for all I know, maybe it was. I wasn't there in the Fifties after all, and I'm looking at it through my own lens where the world doesn't revolve around sex.

Another example of its weakness is the undercurrent of contempt that the documentary seems to express for its subject. Perhaps its just the British talking about a phenomenon that is primarily American, but often The Air-Conditioned Eden slips into an attitude of "let's look down our noses at what these silly, tacky, repressed people from a long time ago did." Just beware of that when you watch the documentary.

If we accept the documentary's thesis that Tiki fell out of favour because of sexual liberation in the late Sixties (which I don't, but for the sake of argument), then one might argue that the revival of Tiki culture - as niche as it may be - is a response to the fact that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Now everything is so "liberated" that bar culture (especially) has become too pedestrian: a dull sameness of boring bars full of kids getting drunk on domestic beer and looking for cheap, easily accessible sexual partners. Tiki nostalgia may articulate a desire to inject some fantasy back into the scene, for drinks that take skill to make and satisfy a connoisseur's palate, for something fun and artistic and exotic, as well as something steeped in an historic, mid-century, nostalgic milieu. When Disneyland was opened in 1955, Main Street USA was intended to invoke the nostalgia of grandma and grandpa's stories of childhood at the turn of the century. For a comparable effect, a Disneyland that opened today would want to set Main Street USA in the Fifties. I don't think it's an accident that the recent renovations to the Disneyland Hotel echoed that mid-century time period, and the construction of Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar was an essential part of creating that atmosphere.

Without further ado, I present The Air-Conditioned Eden...