The Story of Koro

Dubbed the "Midnight Dancer", poor Koro laments that his status as a statue in the Enchanted Tiki Room lanai prevents his feet from moving. Nevertheless, with his drum he entertains the other gods and helps them have a "big time." Known in Tahiti as 'Oro, he was considered the supreme deity and patron of the Arioi, a religious sect who prepared dances, dramas, and songs for the large festivals. In peacetime, 'Oro could be gracious, but his fundamental character was a god of war demanding human sacrifice.

An idol of 'Oro, wrapped in woven coconut fibre.
This type of effigy is called a To'o.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The Story of Ngendei

Poor Ngendei, the Earth-balancer... Tormented by Pele, barely hanging on, wobbling around on the globe he is supposed to be supporting... If we descend into the original Fijian mythology from which Ngendi comes, however, it's really Pele who should be on the lookout!

Degei, also called Ndengei, is the supreme god of ancient Fiji. The first of the Fijian gods, he created the islands and peopled them, determines the fate of his people in the afterlife, and provides for them as they live, blessing them with fruits and rains... Or tormenting them with floods, famine, and devastating earthquakes. Like nature itself, Degei's moods change from kindly to wrathful, from provider to judge, jury, and executioner.

Fiji's coastline. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The Story of Hina Kuluua

Outside the Enchanted Tiki Room, Hina Kuluua and Tangaroa-Ru work together to shower refreshing rain on the Edenic lanai. The plaque beside her attributes the happiness of the garden to her, for it is her mists that make orchids boom and rainbows shimmer. Her ability to do that, however, does not have so happy a story behind it.

The story of Hina Kuluua is bound with that of her mother, sisters and brothers. The greatest of her brothers is Maui, the same Maui who conquered the sun. Their mother is Hina, and of her sisters, the most relevant in Hina Keahi. The latter Hina is a goddess of fire and it was one of her exploits that led a jealous and haughty Hina Kaluua to her end. Their exploits were centred around the area known today as Rainbow Falls and the city of Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. In the native tongue, the river feeding Rainbow Falls is called the "Wailuku," which means "Destroying Waters." As melting snow from the peaks of Mauna Kea and precipitation from the lush woodlands of Mauna Loa rush down to the sea, they whip up into such a torrent that rocks and trees can be pulled from their moorings and sent out to sea. In the airy cave behind the falls, Hina was said to have her home.

Rainbow Falls, Hilo, Hawaii. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

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 Rongo

In the garden of Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, Rongo is portrayed as a playful god with a bounty of tropical fruits and a penchant for flying kites. The real story behind this deity is a little more complex and disturbing than the made-up riff on how he could have discovered electricity if only he had a key lying around.

Rongo.
Photo: University of Wellington.

Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Looming large over the history of the Disney company is their adaptation of Jules Verne's classic novel of adventure and scientific romance, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Walt Disney had been trying for some time to film a wholly live-action feature and the success of a series of films shot in England with funds tied up by WWII - Treasure Island, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, The Sword and the Rose and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue - was sufficient to prompt Disney to finally take the plunge and build a soundstage for a Hollywood production. A suitable subject was found in a name pulled from Walt's misty boyhood: Jules Verne.

Illustration of Captain Nemo based on Jules Verne,
by Alphonse de Neuville,

Disney took the Zeitgeist of atomic anxiety and the recent copyright expiration of Verne's books to bring 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to theatres. A new soundstage with a water tank was built on the Disney lot to accommodate the full-size deck of the ship, designed in retro-Victorian fashion by Harper Goff. Unlike George Pal's feature film War of the Worlds the preceding year, the conscious decision was made to retain the mid-Nineteenth Century setting of the novel. Though Verne's literary Nautilus was a sleek, hydrodynamic vessel, Goff's was cast-iron and rivets to put the exclamation point on this being a Victorian submarine. This choice to set it 100 years in the past helped to provide a safe ideological distance from which to discuss the pressing concern of atomic power, which forms the philosophical underpinning of the film.

The literary Nautilus, by Alphonse de Neuville.

Disney trusted his instincts as a filmmaker, altering the novel substantially. It's worth keeping in mind that Verne has suffered from notoriously poor English translations, and the translation that Disney was working off of would have itself been missing about 20% of the original material. The film slimmed it down even more, though it did retain that key sense of wonder that is ultimately what the novel is about. Many scenes were excised that would have made for a phenomenal film in their own right, such as a trip to Atlantis that was, ironically, used for both the Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneysea 20,000 Leagues attractions. Robust characters portrayed by charismatic actors James Mason, Kirk Douglas, Peter Lorre and Paul Lukas carried a fairly standard "jail break" plot against any high-minded philosophical meditations on warfare. It also had a song and a funny animal. And it was a major hit. Disney has gotten mileage out of 20,000 Leagues for decades, from cinematic re-releases to comic books to children's records to theme park attractions in Disneyland and Walt Disney World and Disneyland Paris and Tokyo Disneysea. It has surfaced again most recently as a drink at the new Trader Sam's Grog Grotto bar in Walt Disney World's Polynesian Village Resort. Though not as well-known today as it should be, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is integral to understanding how Disney developed as a company and it is a plain old good film in its own right.

The fiery fate of Atlantis, by Alphonse de Neuville.

Due in no small part to the Disney film adaptation, Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea has emerged as the pre-eminent classic of Victorian Science Fiction, or what were called "Scientific Romances" at the time. Verne alone published 54 Scientific Romances during his lifetime, bearing the brand label "Voyages Extraordinaires." The term was invented by Verne's publisher, Jules Hetzel, to describe a brand new genre of literature designed "to outline all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format...the history of the universe." As some critics have observed, based primarily on shoddy English translations, Twenty Thousand Leagues is for the most part a novel about fish. Though an inventive extrapolation on existing submersible technology, the Nautilus is for the most part a plot device by which Verne takes his readers on an unparalleled oceanographic expedition through each of the seven seas. Over its 200-some pages, Captain Nemo is a tourguide through oceans, beneath icecaps, past famous shipwrecks, and beyond Atlantis. But Verne was also an insightful critic of society as well as a literary inventor of technological contraptions. There is more to Twenty Thousand Leagues than fish, or submarines.

Peering out of the salon window,
by Alphonse de Neuville.

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...

The Story of Pele - Part 2

Though Pele longed for her lost love Lohiau, who loved her but ultimately rejected her uncontrollable temper, she met her match in Kamapua'a.

Carving of Kamapua'a.

Collection of the Baily House Museum, Maui.

Born to his mother Hina and father Kahiki-ula, and is considered an incarnate form of Lono, the god of rain and agriculture. He grew up as a trickster by necessity, given that he was a man-pig. Despite being a useful labourer for his brothers and mother, his nature as a pig resulted in his constantly being hunted by Chief Olopana of the island of O'ahu. Kamapua'a evaded him for a very long time, using his powers to turn himself into a tiny piglet in a sow's litter to grass and trees. Olopana wasn't totally to blame though: Kamapua'a was stealing and eating his chickens. Eventually, Kamapua'a killed Olopana himself and swam across the ocean in the form of the humuhumunukunukuapua'a fish (which is Hawaii's official state fish). He came ashore in Tahiti and proceeded to marry the daughters of the local chief there.

One fateful night, however, the fires of Pele summon Kamapua'a back to Hawaii. Assuming fish form once again, he swam back to the island and came to this intriguing new paramour. Though he assumed human shape to woo her, Pele could see through this to his pig form and began to mock him. They engaged in a war of bitter quips that enflamed to torrents of lava and ash being hurled at Kamapua'a. Thankfully his younger sister was born as a rain cloud and could subdue the pyroclastic fury. As they continued to fight, a grudging respect was born that developed into unquenchable passion. Pele and Kamapua'a succumbed to one another. For days. Awkwardly, Pele's brothers and sisters comment on her shameful behavior, which causes them to call a truce to their... activities... and share a meal. In the process they divide up the big island of Hawaii: Pele receives the regions of Puna, Kona, and Ka'u, which are the most volcanically active areas of the island. Kamapua'a receives Hilo, Hamakua, and Kohala, which are verdant rainforests.

The Story of Pele - Part 1

It was like gazing at the sun at noon-day, except that the glare was not quite so white. At unequal distances all around the shores of the lake were nearly white-hot chimneys or hollow drums of lava, four or five feet high, and up through them were bursting gorgeous sprays of lava-gouts and gem spangles, some white, some red and some golden--a ceaseless bombardment, and one that fascinated the eye with its unapproachable splendor. The mere distant jets, sparkling up through an intervening gossamer veil of vapor, seemed miles away; and the further the curving ranks of fiery fountains receded, the more fairy-like and beautiful they appeared.

These words, written by the great American novelist Mark Twain in his book Roughing It, describe Halema'uma'u crater on Kilauea. This pit of lava is within the summit caldera of Kilauea, reaching a further 270 feet below the floor of the main crater. It is a circle roughly 2.5 by 2.9 thousand feet across, constantly belching sulphurous gasses and stony projectiles. The Hawiian Volcano Observatory on the rim of Kilauea, which is now within Hawaiian Volcanos National Park, has declared Halema'uma'u "very active" and suspended all hiking trails, roadways and overlooks to the site. Through 2008, a series of eruption events forced the evacuation of the National Park, and it remains a volatile crater to this day. Halema'uma'u is also the seat of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of Fire and Volcanos, and she is angry.

Halema'uma'u crater, Kilauea. Photo: Tim Bray.

The Story of Tangaroa

One of the more awkward realities of the Enchanted Tiki Room is that what Disney presents as being fun and games and mid-century Tiki kitsch are often the real, genuine religious beliefs of real, living people. This is especially true of the garden, with its enchanted show of Tiki gods reciting wisecrack verse. They are not simply quaint South Pacific Islander mythology. Supreme amongst the pantheon of the Polynesian peoples is Tangaroa, the Sea.

18th/19th century carving of Tangaroa, Cook Islands.

Collection of the British Museum.