Section 6: The Angry Hawaiian

   


Since the late 1960's many movies made in or about Hawaii have depicted the native or local people as angry, threatened/threatening and violent in relations with Euroamericans, or haole, as well as each other.  Movies such as Aloha Summer, set in Hawaii during statehood, depicts a coming of age story for a group of young men and their families visiting Hawaii.  Interactions with locals did not always go well between the males in the film, with racism still clearly seen between both cultures as well as within the classes of the haole who are visiting.  

     In 1987, the movie North Shore depicts another non-local arriving in Hawaii with the main theme of cultural differences between the locals and the haole and rights to the ocean, the land, and what is still perceived as inter-racial as well as a inter-class relationships.  Hollywood uses films such as North Shore as a negative representation of locals as very territorial, a much different perception from movies such as Blue Hawaii which served to invite outsiders in.

     With 1998's Beyond Paradise, the anger that the locals are depicted as having extends more towards each other than towards the haole.  The other consistent theme we see is in how the locals live:  typically in poor, undeveloped areas which could now be viewed as sustainable living, but back then and especially to outsiders, was viewed as a class division clearly marking locals as poor.

     This "angry Hawaiian" theme ties in with the Hawaiian sovereignty movements that began in the 1970's.  While the era saw the revival of interest in Hawaiian music, dance, language and culture within the State of Hawaii, Hollywood chose plots that depicted the people as selfish, uneducated, violent, poor and aggressive much more than did the earlier films such as Bird of Paradise.