Hawaii is an ocean apart from the continental U.S., in the margins of the coastal media outposts and the peripheries of social-justice Twitter monitors. The voice of Hawaii and its people (locals!) is often muted. But maybe the Hollywood-media complex doesn’t think it needs to be accountable in its accuracy of Hawaii because, for the most part, it depicts the islands as a mellow, chill, pina-colada-slurping, spam-barbecuing paradise where everyone wants to vacation forever, right?
Not exactly. Hawaii's had a big year. Four shows have aired in the last season that are 100 percent set in the islands—"Hawaii Five-O," four seasons and running; and "Hawaii Life," "Wild Hawaii" and "American Jungle"—with a fifth show currently being shot, tentatively titled "The Ark." And not all are glowing or accurate. (...)
Before the flawed and filthy rich, or the flawed and bumpkin-like, became TV’s bread and butter, there was the idyllic and the cookie-cutter. Hawaii was both the symbol of serene beauty and American-suburban escape. It was a safe exoticism, our country’s pit-stop paradise, saved for sitcom vacation episodes or tiki murder mysteries, packed with luaus, shirtless dudes saying "brah" and flirtatious hula dancers. In film, it provided the backdrop for a long history of easy-breezy surf movies—from "Blue Hawaii" and "Gidget Goes Hawaiian" in the 60s to "Blue Crush" and "Soul Surfer" in the aughts—because Hawaii is the place where you Hang 10, pray to the Big Kahuna and avoid the kooks. Hawaii didn’t become a national television staple until the original "Hawaii Five-O’"s 12-year run, paving the way for everyone’s favorite ’80s hunk, "Magnum P.I.," both of which were kind of hokey and not necessarily ethnically accurate but harmless nonetheless, and then there was my fave in high school, "Byrds of Paradise," starring a teenage Jennifer Love Hewitt as a Hawaii transplant, Timothy Busfield as her dad and a lot of young, local eye candy in between (fun fact: a friend of a friend took J.Love to prom). Then the reality shows arrived: "The Real World Hawaii," a.k.a. the one with Ruthie, which, like all the other seasons, no one expected to be real; MTV’s "Maui Girls," as vapid and phony as "The Hills"; and, of course, the original local-trash reality show, A&E’s "Dog the Bounty Hunter." "Dog" may be the least flattering to local life, but in some ways it was the most accurate of the bunch, as meth is no joke in islands; not every nook and cranny comes up desirable. But mostly, I give whatever sensationalism Dog provided a pass because any right-minded viewer could see that the most ludicrous things about the series were the non-natives—the overly tan, navel-bearing bounty hunter and his wife with the ginormous breasts. Compared to "American Jungle," "'Bounty Hunter' wasn’t that much better," Aila said. "But at least, conceptually, it employed someone who was bounty hunter mechanically correct."
I can think of only one mainstream film that has done a fair-enough job in portraying the complications of race, culture and how people live in Hawaii while capturing the islands’ natural beauty—2011’s The Descendants. Beneath a universal story of loss, there were the quiet politics between native Hawaiians, locals, local haoles who’ve lived there for generations but still don’t feel totally local, and the people who move there but never quite get the culture. Based on generation, time-and-place appropriateness and socio-economics, pidgin was spoken accordingly. Locals were cast as extras. Set designers added touches like Hawaiian sea-turtle quilts and shoyu bottles on restaurant tables. The whole thing was done quite thoughtfully because the director, Alexander Payne, worked closely with Kaui Hart Hemmings, the island-born writer of the book he adapted, to ensure accuracy in the details.
by Jessica Machado, The Awl | Read more:
Image: AP
