Kaili Signs Letter of Intent to play for the University of Hawaii

Kaili Britos rips a forehand at the Black Sand World Championships in Waikiki, 2007

On national collegiate sport signing day, talented Hawaii golfer Kaili Britos signed a letter of intent to play golf for the University of Hawaii (UH) Lady Warriors Golf Team. Kaili toured and visited with several teams earlier this month including UH and CalPoly.

"I love the girls and Coach Cartwright at CalPoly," says Kaili, "but ultimately I wanted to play in my home town, study Hawaiian, English Literature and Law. Also, I'm excited to play for new head coach Lori Castillo." Attending UH will be something of a homecoming for Kaili who attended Kindergarten in Manoa at Noelani Elementary School right in back of the UH campus.

Kaili is a senior at Kamehameha Schools Kapalama and a long-standing member of Team Black Sand. Other sports she excels at include body surfing and outdoor and indoor racquetball. Kaili has one more season to play for her high school team where she is the number one girl golfer, captain of her team, and a three-year first team all star in the Interscholastic League of Honolulu (ILH).

Kaili's next tournament will be the Hawaii State Junior Golf Association's (HSJGA) end of the year Tournament of Champions event. Golfers have to qualify by winning one of the HSJGA events during the season. The tournament takes place the second week of December 2008 at the Wailea Golf Course on Maui.

8. An Episodic Reading

PHOTO:  The promise of authenticity: Poncie Ponce, Tourists and Tiki in "Maybe Menehunes"
Symbols, Myth and TV in Hawai'i

8. An Episodic Reading
“Maybe Menehunes” was one of the last shows aired in the final 1963 season of Hawaiian Eye. By this time, the series had achieved a substantial level of redundancy as a system of discourse. The placement of “Maybe Menehunes” at the end of the series run suggests an effort to pedagogically and self-reflexively acknowledge and resolve differences and conflicts between Western and Hawaiian legal, moral and historical perspectives. Within the episode, binary positions are sketched out and strengths and weaknesses are assessed. The tiki serves as a center point for the cultural mediation enacted in the narrative. Throughout the episode tikis in various placements, framings, and compositions represent a whole range of dichotomies: past and present, primitive and civilized, legal and illegal, superstition and science, good and bad, intelligence and ignorance, triviality and nobility, and ultimately, right and wrong. The unctuous parody of the double-tongued symbol slides between the enunciative poles of ancient tradition and newfound appropriation. Playing off the theme of detective-as-native, for instance, the tiki is ubiquitously paired in two-shots with lead detective Greg McKenzie (Grant Williams) during crucial confrontations with village natives and mainland haoles alike. Like the buttocks of another era, the tiki becomes a symbolic touchstone that the detectives must scientifically and emotionally master in order to lay to rest the demons and prejudices of contemporary ethnic, political and moral debates.

Despite the telltale two-shots of the investigator(s) in “Maybe Menehunes” and the symbolic alignment of the tiki with the Hawaiian Eye agency during credit and interstitial sequences, the tiki in this episode ultimately comes to evoke the obsolescence of Native agency and superstition. Two discursive traditions on the Native pinion the dialectic at work here. On the one hand, the worship of idols and attendant “non-rational” thinking will be depicted as inferior to the secular skepticism of Western science, and the imperative of White romance; on the other hand, Hawaiian compassion, generosity and helpfulness is narrativized to be more “noble” than Western arrogance, indulgence, and selfishness. The Hawaiian is positioned to mitigate against such Western excess, teaching the Caucasian subject a certain humbleness, “natural” balance, and ultimately, peace of mind.

The rational Western subject meanwhile teaches the Native empirical lessons in socio-political progress and non-mythological, objective reality. Empirical reality and its categorical certainty educates the Native, while the Native reaffirms these conditions (diegetically) through their humble acceptance of the series’ rhetorical polemics and dénouement.

The Hawaiian villagers in “Maybe Menehunes” believe their land is sacred, a gift from the god Kulono, and that Norma Marriot (Diane Foster), the aging Hollywood starlet who purchased the land upon which to build her dream retirement home, has no a priori claim to it, no matter what the system of law. They “cling to their old ways,” as Hawaiian Eye investigator Greg McKenzie explains to his client, and are holding up construction by refusing to vacate a choice parcel of the property near the lily pond, around which their village has stood since time immemorial. In the village, a towering tiki of solid stone weighing “at least a thousand pounds” and named Malahealani is revered by the natives as a sacred relic. Erected in the center of the village, it is as well a flashpoint for their resistance to White law. It has exaggerated predatory teeth and teeters from side to side like a metronome when “upset” or communicating to the villagers.

Despite its high-seriousness, “Maybe Menehunes” did not lose sight of its consumer-driven context. The tiki is positioned in the narrative early on as a renowned tourist attraction. Kim takes two elderly visitors from the Midwest for a walking tour of the village, where they have him ask Akao (Joe DeSantis, in brownface), the village chief, if they can touch the statue for good luck. The solemn nod of the village elder, and the enthusiasm of the gray-haired women hustling to rub the tiki, delivers on the promise of a Hawaiian style access to authenticity, before the episode becomes a contemporary social issues exposé, exploring the underbelly of the White versus Native dialectic.

In this narrative, legitimization through written law and the imperative of White romance supersede all claims to indigenous proprietorship. The crisis of marital romance drives the Hollywood starlet to insist on the authority of the law to uphold her fee simple claim and force the villagers from the land. As representatives of “American” jurisprudence, the HE team must insist on the letter of the law, even if they question the morality of the act. But above and beyond the call of duty, they are susceptible to the plight and delicacy of colonial coupling, and the nobility of its calling. On a summit overlooked by tikis, Norma professes to McKenzie that she needs the home to save her marriage. Finally McKenzie understands the true import of her mission and solemnly promises he will do all in his power to help her.

Ultimately, McKenzie and Barton (Troy Donahue) will reveal that the moving tiki is a hoax masterminded by Mali Kuno (Naomi Stevens, in brownface), an elderly Hawaiian woman who has allegedly attempted several times to kill the movie star in order to save the village.14 In this sense she is the pagan antithesis to the stereotypic overly generous Hawaiian who has an innate gift for “giving” everything away.15 Mali is a carnivalesque character, a tragic villain, a ventriloquist for Malahealani (just as Stevens, DeSantis, and Conrad in brownface are ventriloquists for American interests). She is the devouring vagina of Hawaiian lore, the orifice with teeth, the Kahuna Ana Ana who prays her victims to death. Ultimately, in this representation, she embodies the reason for social conflict and political contestation.

Under cover of night, McKenzie and Barton sneak into the village to investigate Malahealani. The detectives believe, based on their knowledge of Egyptian lore, that the tiki moves on some hydraulic system and have dug up a cable leading to a hidden lever. But the village men capture McKenzie and Barton just as they uncover its mechanical secret. Mali appears and orders the Hawaiian men to do away with the detectives: “You must! Kulono says you must!” she shouts.

But at the last minute, the young college-educated Leona (Ellen Davalos, in Polynesian guise) and the village chief Akao intervene. And here the fickleness of the gods and transience of historical precedent become tools of rhetoric. McKenzie tries to reason with the angry natives by disavowing their religion. “Don’t listen to her!” he calls out. “She’s just playing on your fears and superstitions. There is no Kulono. It’s just another legend!”

Mali: “Kulono has moved Malahealani to show you his will. He’ll destroy us all if you disobey him.”

“Wait!” calls Akao, stepping from his abode.

“Our gods have always done good. They showed our ancestors the way to steer their long boats. They pointed to this land. They showed our fathers where to build these homes. I’ve given this much thought. They would not bring all this trouble, all this violence down on us. Our gods moved Malahealani to signal us. Maybe we read their meanings wrong. Maybe they wish to tell us our time on this land is ended. I will listen. The house may be built here.”

Mali is dismayed and cries out: “No Akao, you can’t let them do it!”

Akao: “There will be no more violence! No more blood will be shed here. Go.”

At this pronouncement, the Hawaiian men disperse, and the land once so coveted is symbolically relinquished.

“Maybe Menehunes” aestheticizes the historical displacement of Hawaiians from Hawaiian land. It attempts to explain in its pseudo-historical, popular culture way, why rich developers or movie stars have come to develop and live on the prime real estate of the islands. That the audience recognizes it as a fictional narrative does not erase its pedagogical impetus, discursive influence, or its cultural impact, even if such residue is difficult to quantify.

The dénouement finds the investigators and movie star at the swank Dragon Nightclub with their respective entourages enjoying a meal. Mali has been sent away, presumably to prison. Norma’s taciturn husband (Andrew Duggan), who at one time had built his auto enterprise into “one of the biggest companies in the world,” now (re)asserts himself as family patriarch. He allows the Hawaiians to keep their “shrine” and orders the architects to build on another part of the land, so that both the new landowners and the Hawaiians can coexist in harmony. Akao as well put his foot down, halting the violence and leading his people to quiet compliance, an act positioned as a sign of pragmatism in light of Mali’s vengeance and duplicity. In this way the “problem” of Hawaiian landlessness and the issue of the American appropriation of a sovereign nation, are both feminized, implicitly exonerating Euro-American patriarchy of complicity, and rationalized as a legal and historic compromise, in which primitive rights and land are voluntarily ceded to Americanized interests.

Thus the fifty-minute episode wraps up neatly, and the supernatural power of the tiki is revealed as a sham. The Hawaiians have come to acknowledge their place as wards of the new state. The excessively hysterical wife relinquishes her destructive role as head of the household. Furthermore, the new elite have tacitly demonstrated their capacity for understanding and compromise with this ancient race and culture. Superstition and myth are demonstrated to be inferior to secular rationale and a society of Western law. Finally, the American element is exonerated of any breach of ethics by their final, humanitarian gestures. In this episode, the Hawaiians are not so much displaced as reenshrined and repackaged for continental consumption. They are as well neutralized and televisually colonized for pedagogical review.

Conclusion
As a cycle, Hawaiian Eye, Five-0 and Magnum present conventions and iconographies against which other media can be measured. In considering this initial broadcast arc, we can begin to chart a legacy of very powerful representations which have had and continue to have global impact in syndication, on the Internet, in academic discourse, and intertextually as new shows quote, parody and borrow in other ways from the regional mythologies of the past. This envisioning of Hawai`i is not random, nor is it purely entertainment; it is a deeply invested narrative system predicated on naturalizing and idealizing certain kinds of subject-object positions and political processes. The historical contestedness of island territory and the demographic and cultural mélange and specificity of Oceania in general make it an ideal site to consider how national media industries have deployed race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and narrative techniques to rhetorically promote nation-ness.

In Hawai`i , intelligentsia and students of media and communications need to unpack the dense discursive traditions and assumptions that inform and naturalize both the first cycle and other film and television product in the region, for colonization is as much a psychological phenomenon, as it is territorial, political and aesthetic. Not only will the arts and academy be profoundly affected, but the region will gain a yardstick by which to measure and track the historical every-day and virtual socio-political transformations and transitions we so silently witness in local media (i.e., the local news), and in such nationally platformed TV shows as Jake and the Fatman, One West Waikiki, The Byrds of Paradise, Island Son, Marker, Crowfoot, Hawaiian Heat, Baywatch Hawaii, The Break, and in other softpower product like Big Jim McClain, Diamond Head, Blue Hawaii, The Hawaiians, Hawaii, North Shore, Pearl Harbor, Blue Crush and Lilo and Stitch. These Hollywood conceived programs tell us more about the desires and ideals of the people and institutions making the programs than they do about actual island living. It’s a fantasy and allegorical realm predicated on naturalizing continental hegemony and hierarchies, and rehearsing territorial containment and control.

7. The Televisual Amalgamation of Noir

Poncie Ponce and Connie Stevens entertain in Hawaiian Eye

Symbols, Myth & TV in Hawaii

7. The Televisual Amalgamation of Noir
During the Cold War era duplicitous incursions perceived and real seemed to beckon from every corner of the globe as anti-capitalist factions gained global space and ideological converts. More than ever the mapping of the world revealed the spread of Communism from Russia, to China, South East Asia, South and Central America, and interior, to the very foundations of American industry, politics and communications. It seemed America more than ever needed covert policing, both real and imagined, to retain and legitimate its colonial holdings, hierarchies and autonomy. In this atmosphere, TV happily reflected the ideal American Security State, where enlightened civilians work hand in hand with government institutions to protect domestic space and international interests.

If the TV Western sketched out the frontier heartland of domestic space and American ideology, the detective and police melodramas would protect and secure not only urban space and capitalist hierarchy, but international borders and democratic compliance as well. In this sense the 20th century paramilitary genres can be seen to work hand in hand televisually, checking domestic space from interior incursion while forestalling exterior intrusion by patrolling the fringes and outposts of American Empire.

By the late fifties the paramilitary television series had become the most popular form of fiction programming on television. Tales of urban violence, private eyes and federal agents, proliferated. Dragnet (1951-59) had been a ratings winner since its debut. Man Against Crime (1949-54) with Ralph Bellamy and Martin Kane, Private Eye (1949-53) were even earlier examples of popular urban crime thrillers. The issues such shows addressed included traditional noir themes and aesthetics. International espionage seemed to threaten the moral, military and scientific fabric of the nation from every quarter. Murder, blackmail and sabotage were the means of counter-insurgence. The security state of the 1940’s did not disappear in the fifties, but was transformed televisually from the alleys and diners, motels and bus stops of hard-core film noir, to the lighter, more commercially salient environment of sparkling kitchens, family bathrooms and the luxury resort. Noir did not so much disappear however, in the TV incarnation, as undergo a transformation that repackaged it as an eminently consumable, and thus, recoupable product.

Noir would pay, even on TV. But to achieve this sell on a weekly basis, to audience and merchants alike, it employed the framework of noir while divesting it of its ideological ambivalence and stylistic ambiguities. The intense stylization of German Expressionism that conveyed psychological angst and uncertainty in the twenties had by the late fifties become a highly stylized vehicle of realism, a mode that packaged connotations of a certain interior conflict no longer operative in the cathode world of television transmission. Like the paramilitary programs from the late forties and early fifties, the Warner Bros. cycle of private eye series as well quoted noir in its mise-en-scéne, hard-boiled lighting, night-time denouements, use of the femme fatale, underlying emphasis on carnal sexuality, and in its privileging of cosmopolitan politics. But the threat was ultimately contained on television by its commercial framing and cyclical redundancies.

The self-awareness Hawaiian Eye suggests by its parodic tone does not constitute the kind of social critique typically associated with political satire. Rather, Hawaiian Eye, like Magnum some twenty years later, revels in its ad hoc mixture of high seriousness and lowbrow entertainment.

Yet, whereas Magnum breaks the vaunted fourth wall of realism with direct-address glances, winks and raised eyebrows and often irony-laced, self-deprecating voiceover narration, Hawaiian Eye, with its privileging of a cabaret musical number each episode by the voluptuous Cricket Blake (Connie Stevens) and the antics of local sidekick Kazuo Kim (Poncie Ponce), imbues the series with a light-hearted, carnivalesque atmosphere.

In this sense it fulfills a benchmark of Cawelti’s notion of generic change: it achieves humorous or burlesque transformation of the generic form. The mocking sneer of hard-core noir seems fluffed and gilded in this televisual metamorphosis. While the two primary heroes remain true to hard-boiled form, the sidekicks Connie Stevens and Poncie Ponce supply comic relief and spectacular entertainment. Cricket is nothing like the femme fatale of noir mythology, however, but neither is she entirely a goody two-shoes. Rather, she strikes a balance between a strictly conservative aesthetic, and that of the emerging culture of racial tolerance and brotherly love.
The legéreté of the TV incarnation is the polar extreme of the depression and ambiguity of noir. Cricket’s effusive state of prepubescent grace, for example, seems otherworldly next to the sordid sexuality embodied by fellow lounge singer Rita Hayworth more than a decade earlier in Gilda (1946), or the spiderwoman sensibility of Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944). Cricket is certainly no spiderwoman. She chirps but she has no real bite.

Such televisual effervescence was not ubiquitous in popular American culture of the time. Generic articulations on the big screen could still deliver scathing and negative indictments of predatory capitalist ethics by using again the liminal position of law enforcement to explore social corruption.

Thus the legéreté found on network TV—wherein the status quo is vigorously recuperated no-matter how far-flung the narrative—finds its negative parallel in the highly cynical films of late fifties noir like Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958). In these baroque examples of film noir, corrupt agents of law enforcement cross the line and never come back, never are recuperated by the status quo. A push and pull dialectic between film and TV becomes evident. The narrative convolutions and ambiguities of such films are ironed out on network television in terms of both the iterative treatment of themes and characters, and in the insistence on finality and clarity. If film noir of the forties and fifties exploited the lounge, the night club, the motel, the bus stop, the dark alley, the click of concrete on the metropolitan beat, as many suggest, Hawaiian Eye in its luxury resort setting and with the titillating yet utterly wholesome Cricket Blake, takes its noir framing to the limits of parody. Such a framing jubilantly reaffirms the hegemonic power grids noirish films often seemed to question.

6. Hollywood at War

Symbols, Myth and TV in Hawai'i

6. Hollywood at War
To contextualize the rhetoric of the first cycle and the aesthetic and corporate traditions and philosophies the series were influenced by, we must consider the culture and legacy of Hollywood’s nationalist efforts during World War Two. The narrative drive of shows like Hawaiian Eye, Five-0 and Magnum resonate with the timbre of the war years films and postwar expectations. Hollywood studios set a precedent by voluntarily contributing to “the good war.” It was one of the few national industries that Franklin D. Roosevelt did not completely convert to the war effort. Instead, the titular heads of the movie studios were inducted into the military and told to carry on with filmmaking. David O. Selznick was commissioned as a Colonel, and Jack L. Warner was commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel, one rank above his brother Major Abe Warner. Experiments in TV broadcasting were suspended during the war, thus while broadcasting executive Colonel David Sarnoff of NBC was attached to the Signal Corps and saw action oversees in Paris, and Colonel William S. Paley of CBS saw action with the Psychological Warfare Department, the movie moguls took responsibility for churning out propaganda in the form of informational shorts and patriotic war pictures.

Not only the heads of movie studios and broadcast networks, but other executives, actors, directors and cinematographers were assigned to propaganda units, or consigned by studios to work on war films. A quarter of the men at Warner Bros. studios joined the Armed Forces. Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, roughly one third of the pictures churned out by Hollywood depicted combat situations. As Michael Renov and Dana Polan have pointed out, “the war years can reveal...one of the intense examples of an attempt to make ideology into state ideology.” Much as TV became the great contextualizing mechanism in the colonial conflicts of the sixties and seventies, cinema in the forties was the medium more than any other that reflexively propagated, and thus exposed, state ideology. Here, where the boundaries between truth and the real, entertainment and propaganda, blur, the metaphysics and iconicity of nationalism were laid most bare.

During the Second World War most of the wartime combat dramas produced in Hollywood depict conflict in the Pacific arena. Though this was not exactly true of Warner Bros., the industry’s intense mapping and simulated militarization of the region inform the political and aesthetic dynamics of the films and TV shows that followed. In 1945, Harry Warner, then President of Warner Bros., made clear the studio’s post-war objectives when he said: “The essence of the task can be stated in a single phrase, ‘To interpret the American Way.’” The aestheticaztion of this “American Way” then becomes a mission in post-war Hollywood, a call to arms during the extension of the Cold War.

Warner Bros. television production was profoundly influenced by the experience and capabilities of studio feature film production. Sound stages, equipment, crew and established business practices ensured a smooth launch in 1954 into the new medium. While many early fictional TV programs were derivative of the skits and comedy of vaudeville, Warner Bros.’ heralded telefilms—Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, Bronco, Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Bourbon Street Beat, SurfSide 6, Colt .45 and Lawman—initially drew most directly from established paramilitary genres such as the western, gangster and private eye for inspiration.

In an era of ideological uncertainty and economic prosperity, Warner Bros. TV in collaboration with the ABC network presented a violent and conservative depiction of frontier expansionism and urban authoritarian vigor. Like the phenomenon of television itself, Hawai`i was perceived by the mainland as both an extension of the American frontier, and a developing space for cosmopolitan adventure. As such, it was a paradoxical site where agrarian myth and urban sprawl became televisually “fixed” by the pedagogic and propaganda techniques institutionalized by Hollywood during the war years. In this sense, the myth and conventions of the war film, private eye, gangster, and American western inform TV’s discursive incursion into Hawai`i space. These conventions include the racialization of the “ideal” U.S. citizen as embodied later by the first cycle heroes, and the disappearance, marginalization or demonization of the ethnic and indigenous other.

5. The Paramilitary Crucible

PHOTO:  Larry Manetti, Roger Mosley and Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I.
Symbols, Myth and TV in Hawai'i

5. The Paramilitary Crucible
Film and TV often personalize paramilitary conflict, boiling down social and geographic struggle to the mano a mano show down of kill or be killed. Such dramatic fare tends to be highly pedagogic and idealized in nature. In the foundational period of network TV, the audience learns the repercussions of deviance, as socially acceptable “types” win out in clear-cut battles of good versus evil.

Paramilitary TV allows for an exploration of law and order issues in a controlled environment, with a predictable level of resolution. Like the proto-hero Cook, Steele and Lopaka, McGarrett, Dano (James MacAuthor) and Magnum all carry pistols into battle, extend and consolidate the frontiers of far-flung empires, are the agents of secret missions and elite societies, represent and wield cutting-edge technology, function ideologically as Euro “gods” in Hawai`i space, and inevitably resolve crisises in a timely manner. The Hawai`i TV hero has three additional functions, often explicitly stated, if not always implied, which relate to on-going nationalist issues. The Hawai`i TV hero has a mission to prevent foreign infiltration, protect American lives and property, and promote a safe haven for tourist excursion and romance.

Tourism in the islands matured in the fifties, sixties and seventies. Noel Kent in his 1983 study notes that tourism quite literally took over the island economy after World War Two, eclipsing plantation agriculture. While the preoccupation with tourism is relatively recent, the proprietary desirability of Hawai`i was framed as a mission of progress as early as 1837. “Annexation,” wrote the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, a Honolulu business periodical, would mean “national prosperity instead of adversity. It means a glorious life of the people instead of gradual decay and death.” While Caucasian businessmen viewed annexation as a guaranteed economic bonanza, the military saw it as essential foreign policy. Admiral DuPont, U.S. Navy, 1851:

It is impossible to estimate too highly the value and importance of the Hawaiian Islands... Should circumstances ever place them in our hands they would prove the most important acquisition connected with our commercial and naval supremacy in those seas.

In the 1860’s Secretary of State William Seward mapped out a plan, whereby Hawai`i, Midway, Samoa, the Philippines, Alaska and the Aleutians would function as stepping stones to the vast markets of Asia. An American supported coup usurped Hawaiian sovereignty in 1893. By 1898, the year of annexation, the first U.S. military camp, Camp McKinley, was established at the foot of Diamond Head Crater, and in 1908 the U.S. government began construction of a naval base at Pearl Harbor for the vaunted Pacific Fleet.

The proprietary relationship between the military and the broadcast industry during its incubatory radio and TV phases, as well as its government-enforced monopoly and oligopoly phases, directly affected how content was developed for the big three networks. In its vanguard position as a symbol of the Westward reach of the American Empire, the first cycle was especially subject to pedagogic and political pressures. The space of Hawai`i became a space to make statements about such topics as U.S. race relations, the second world war, Japanese imperialism, the Korean war, Vietnam, psychological warfare, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, the cold war, the vanishing Native, ecological terrorism, hippies, drugs, modern sex, women’s liberation, feminism, ageism, gangs, mobsters, labor relations, communism, multiculturalism, the new American male, democracy and the melting pot thesis. In the 570 episodes that make up the first cycle, a new Hawai`i mythos would take shape less constrained by continental distance and oceanic space than it was by institutional expectations. The confirmation and seeming finality of Hawai`i statehood in 1959 opened the way for the mythology of the American nation and its own “peculiar” idiosyncrasies and iconographies to dominate narrative discourse about the region for the remainder of the 20th century.

The future of rail in hawaii

One thing is for sure, rail will have a vast impact on the Hawai`i landscape and future-scape when it happens. Along the path of any rail project new slums and shanties will inevitably colonize; so will shops and businesses, streets and crossroads of all kinds. Traffic may not be substantially eliminated, only redirected; diffused throughout the integrated grid. Rattling through the sky humanoids in packets of iron and steel hurtle through the great routers, switches and portals of electronic delivery. Wider corridors will deepen urban encroachment. Five hundred years from now what rail we install now will be a skeletal feature of the island skyline; but in it's pirated and twisted mode, not as nostalgic an emblem as the asphalt remnants of the old Pali road of the previous generation, that slips conspicuously into the green fern of the Windward mountains. From the stars you will see the beautiful design, so precise, yet organic in its logic, on the face of the aina. And at the root, in the shadow and muck, clusters of homeless and low income communities will cling like opihi to the iron pylons of the system, fighting for space and the scraps of endless detritus.

4. Discourse in the Pacific

Symbols, Myth and TV in Hawai'i

4. Discourse in the Pacific
Just three months after Hawai`i "officially" became the fiftieth state, and seven years after the debut of television in the islands, ABC-TV, the third place network in terms of territorial density, would launch Hawaiian Eye, the first prime time television series to call Hawai`i home. At the same time ABC launched another Warner Bros. series about the forty-ninth state called The Alaskans, starring the young Englishman Roger Moore. While The Alaskans filmed just thirty-six episodes before being canceled, Hawaiian Eye would broadcast 134 episodes. It would also set a generic precedent to be followed in 1968 by the phenomenally successful Hawaii Five-0, and then its successor, Magnum P.I., both of which were CBS productions. Five-0 broadcasted 279 episodes on first run network TV, while Magnum broadcasted 157 episodes. These three series span the Cold War decades, stretching from 1959 through 1988.

Much of the success of the first cycle is credited to the aura and mystique of the islands themselves. And yet, Hawaiian Eye was filmed primarily at the Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California, with special episodes and stock exteriors shot on location in Hawai`i. Five-0 and Magnum were filmed on location in Hawai`i, and edited in Hollywood; they have been much heralded for their logistical ingenuity and resulting realism. All three series of the first cycle were promoted and acknowledged for the authenticity and realism they brought to bear on dramatic television.

The success of the first cycle—including the studio realism of Hawaiian Eye—is a tribute in part to the array of narrative traditions the three series tap into. A key strategy was to use indigenous discourse to authenticate the mythic environment of subtropical Hawai`i. “Indigenous means peculiar to,” reads the Hawaiian Eye production bible. “Peculiar to means you find it there and no place else.” Hawaiian Eye and The Alaskans would establish ABC in 1959 as the U.S. network with the most far-flung diegetic expanse. ABC had bragging rights to an empire that stretched tele-visually from North of the tundra to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It would also align ABC and Warner Bros. with the general U.S. project of “settling” Hawai`i, and bringing it into the Union fold.

The universe of the first cycle is a world rich in history and conflict. All three series for instance are steeped in military and anthropological lore. Tracey Steele (Anthony Eisley) of Hawaiian Eye and Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) of Five-0 are Korean War veterans, and Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) of Magnum and his buddies are veterans of Vietnam. Other Hawaiian Eye characters include undersea frogman and demolition expert Thomas Lopaka (Robert Conrad, in brownface, i.e., as a part-Hawaiian Native), Cricket Blake (Connie Stevens) whose Naval Commander father was killed during the Pearl Harbor surprise attack, and Kazuo Kim (Poncie Ponce), a member of the famed 442nd Infantry Regiment. Furthermore, references to Native Hawaiian issues are generally informed and ultimately substantiated by an amalgamation of legends and myths of Hawai`i itself. Along with the narrative traditions that support these discursive locations, the cycle is influenced by Hollywood’s industrial, economic and political culture, and that of the federal government, local government and economy, and the specific traditions of the many cultures that call Hawai`i home.

Let me state that a central thread of my argument is that commercial culture in general, and TV narrative in particular as it is situated in the Hawai`i paramilitary context, serves both historicizing and mythologizing functions. Its influence in other words is doubly effective. Episodic drama in the foundational decades of oligopoly TV tended to yield highly pedagogic and idealized content from a recognizable status quo. The ethnic mix of Hawai`i and its contentious political past fueled an extreme level of self-consciousness in the production of the first cycle making it a perfect site to investigate how cultural producers of mass media mobilize myth and history to rewrite the present and the past, establish aesthetic and psychic boundaries, and provide rationales for idealized hierarchies, often making such entities appear naturalized and historically singular and inevitable.

The Hawaiian Eye television series then marks the insertion of a potent line of discourse in and about Hawai`i at a heavily marked moment in island history. This discourse is both a continuation of other generic discourses (travel, evangelical, tourist, political, legislative, economic, anthropological, archeological, ethnographic, cartographic, cartoon, military, for example) and a formal extension of Hollywood genres and style beyond continental boundaries.

3. The Lesson of Corporeal Politics

Top: The Apotheosis of Captain Cook from a drawing by Webber
Next: Maniere de punir de mort un coupable aux iles Sandwich, Lithograph by Langlame
Next: Hawaiian Eye cast--Robert Conrad, Connie Stevens, Loren Eisley, Ponce Ponce
Bottom: Gilbert Kauhi, aka Zulu, as Kono in Hawaii Five-0

Symbols, Myth & TV in Hawaii

3. The Lesson of Corporeal Politics
Where verbal communications prove inadequate, the language of the body conveys context and subtext in extraordinary ways. The idolatry of apotheosis is problematized for instance by the politics of corporeal violence. Hawaiians were in a state of war when Cook sailed into their waters. The British ships were clearly viewed as vessels of significant military capacity. Cook was clearly a capable if not gifted navigator and leader of men. Oceanic cultures had great respect for those who could navigate the vast waters of the region. My purpose here is not to write a new truth about the Cook saga, but to cast a reasonable doubt over institutionalized interpretations, while suggesting a more proactive role for Hawai`i politicos and intelligentsia. In this way, institutional and commercial culture indebted to the Cook myth for structure and narrative sensibilities, are necessarily called into question for the socio-political assumptions they support, the hierarchies they naturalize, and the mysteries they inevitably resolve.

There is of course a certain historical and ethical accountability that goes into the framing of narrative and images. Ethnographic, archeological and anthropological discourses are tapped to contextualize and substantiate the televisual world, especially when natives, tikis or grass shacks are at hand. For better or worse, the frame is always strictly controlled: this is both an artistic and institutional imperative. The narrative iconicity of White supremacy in Hawai`i is partly rationalized by “official” theories of first contact relations. The pseudo-histories that results depict a tourist-friendly, accessible Hawai`i, where natives drive cabs, serve as doormen, bartenders, helpers and fire-dancers, or occasionally play knuckle-headed muscle. Such activities are generally staged on the narrative periphery of White-on-White conflict and romance, color in this case connoting both an ideal national subject on the one hand, and an ideal subservient position for the local on the other. Hawai`i in this way serves as the exotic threshold of Americanized space.

2. The Buttocks of Captain Cook

Above Photo: Robert Conrad and Stella Stevens in Hawaiian Eye. Lopaka’s girlfriend refers to him as “Captain Cook”. ©1960 Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.

Symbols, Myth and TV in Hawai'i

2. The Buttocks of Captain Cook
The legend of Captain James Cook for instance, a hotly contested narrative, is used by all three of the series to define, justify or identify its heroes in Hawai`i space. The Cook analogy is an important factor in understanding the paramilitary cycle in Hawai`i, for the detective/hero, like the 20th century anthropologist and archeologist, inevitably takes up the explorer/navigator role within the series, looking for clues, discovering exotic locales, erotic entanglements, solving crime, negotiating relationships, leading natives, translating for tourists, essentially becoming the new high priests of the tropics, albeit with a gun in hand, and access to high technology, military infrastructure, and unlimited funding.

(Photo: The Death of Captain Cook, Engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi and William Byrne, 1784. Based on the oil painting by John Webber)

Such a trope inevitably collides with other subtropic mainstays, such as the mystic power of the tiki, the benevolence of the primitive native, the authority of the foreign professor, the acquiescence of tribal elders and the inevitable seduction of the explorer by irrepressible women. The myth of Cook is central to understanding the narrative logic of the paramilitary cycle, and a key example of the necessity for writing a history that acknowledges series influences not usually taken into consideration for a television study of this sort.

Cook of course will forever be associated with Hawai`i not so much on the basis of his “discovery” of the archipelago in 1778, but more viscerally because of his death and dismemberment at the hands of irate Hawaiians less than one year later at Kealakekua Bay. The heartfelt, often rancorous debates in academic circles and popular histories over the meaning of Cook’s death suggests that popular and historic narrative continue to function as lightening rods for struggles over cultural and geopolitical power and legitimacy. Often such debates in Oceania, and there are several of them—Sahlins and Obeyeskere, Mead and Freedman, Trask and Linnekin—are framed as intensely partisan campaigns that attempt to leverage the force of academic reputation, command of secondary resources, and fraternity standing as lynchpins for theoretical rationales.

Academic writing and theories of such sort are not culturally or historically inconsequential. Rather, they have tremendous social and cultural impact, and often unintended repercussions, as Haunani Trask has argued in regards to the Navy’s use of anthropological treatises to substantiate their war-game bombing of the island of Kaho’olawe. Thus the importance of historical accuracy in the interpretation of symbolic (i.e., iconographical) communications is paramount, especially since the history of the past is often used to justify and historicize the present. The narrativization of Captain Cook under the rubric of his assumed godhood, for instance, or perception of his godhood by Hawaiians, is problematic if in fact the historical moment is other than the generic interpretation. In fact, undervalued evidence suggests that alternative interpretations of this complex moment are warranted.

For example, despite the erudition of Marshall Sahlins’ dense analysis of the mytho-poetics and structural apotheosis of Cook from the Hawaiian perspective, the long overlooked buttocks of the Captain tell another tale (no pun intended). Though historiographers and anthropologists have tended to overlook or explain away the nocturnal presentation of six to eight pounds of leaf-wrapped “hind parts”, the horrified crew and officers of the Resolution and Discovery fully comprehended the nonverbal, symbolic insult, as is evidenced by their equally symbolic reply. Days later, after the presentation of the Captain’s buttocks, and other acts of derision, like the slapping of buttocks and parading in British regalia, the Englishmen would murder several defenseless villagers of Kealakekua, after the masses and warriors of Ka`awaloa had departed. They then decapitated their victims and impaled the heads on spears, waving them with taunts to the people in the hills.

Excerpt from Symbols, Myth & TV in Hawaii, first published in the critical journal Spectator, "Oceania in the Age of Global Media", University of Southern California

1. The First Cycle

PHOTO: The Danger of Hawaiian Insurgence. Troy Donahue, Grant Williams & Hawaiians in "Maybe Menehunes" Hawaiian Eye. ©1963 Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.

Symbols, Myth and TV in Hawai'i

The First Cycle
In discussing the sale of telefilms to foreign countries during the export hey-day of the 1950s and 60s, media historian Erik Barnouw observed that “like missionary expeditions of another era,” American television “seemed to serve as an advance herald of empire. Implicit in its arrival was a web of relationships involving cultural, economic, and military aspects, and forming the basis for a new kind of empire.” The psychological and material parameters of this empire find aesthetic expression in a late-twentieth century cycle of television shows featuring Hawai`i as homebase and exotic backdrop to Euro-American men, their Lieutenants, sidekicks, and love interests. Hawaiian Eye, Hawaii Five-0 (1 and 2), and Magnum P.I. form a discursive arc that intersects the hallowed spaces and mediated flows of myth and history, local and global politics, federal and indigenous ideology, as well as the economics, culture and technologies of a networked society.

The Oxford Dictionary defines “paramilitary” as: “ancillary to and similarly organized to military forces.” While the logistics and hierarchies of audiovisual production at times resembles the military operation, my use of the term paramilitary relates to the diegetic rehearsal of armed enforcement and control, as seen in military, combat, western, sci-fi, police, detective and an increasing number of reality genres. The first cycle of paramilitary series in Hawai`i helped shape popular perceptions of what Hawai`i is and the nature of its social, demographic and political constituencies in the latter half of the 20th century. The cycle adds up to nearly a quarter century worth of first-run programming on network TV. Hawaiian Eye was the first of the cycle and ran for a respectable four years—1959-1963; Five-0—1968-1980—ran for a detective series record of twelve seasons straight; and Magnum P.I.—1980-1988—the follow up success, ran eight straight years, coinciding exactly with the Reagan years in office.

The inclusion of Hawaiian and other ethnic types in the Hawai`i first cycle context marks an important steppingstone in the politics of media representation in America, and the world in general. But the appearance of such characters on the broadcast tube never guaranteed a representative voice would be heard, or even allowed to speak. When the Hawaiian perspective is foregrounded, or when locals take active roles in episodes, the underlying politics of the shows often become concomitantly exposed.

This dialectic reveals itself in episodic television in the form of pseudo-histories that attempt to (re)define the relationship between plantation authority, for example, and Hawaiian landlessness and subservience. In particular, such episodes (focusing on Hawaiians) try to justify the usurpation of Hawaiian authority by enlightened colonial humanists. Inevitably the paramilitary hero serves as the vehicle of law, recuperation and compassion for both Hawaiian and colonial factions. Certain tropes and iconographies recur in such discursive enunciations. One challenge is to unpack such iconographies and the tropes they suggest; and to write into discourse that which contract auteurs tend to elide, or to contextualize that which has been institutionalized, historically assumed, naturalized, or, as in the case of the tiki, to reveal how symbolic articulation positions the viewer to consume sound and image in directed ways. 


Symbolic utterances, inflections and clusters are often underpinned and informed by elaborate rhetorical traditions across many presentational platforms, from oral to cartoon, to print, cinema, TV, radio, Internet. Some (postmodernists for example) suggest that this discursive materiality is the desert of historical reality:  a gazillion glittering surfaces signifying nothing.  In reality, such stories, myths and iconic amplifiers have tremendous social and cultural effect, and deserve critical attention as much for what they say as what they don't.

Excerpt from Symbols, Myth & TV in Hawaii, first published in the critical journal Spectator, "Oceania in the Age of Global Media", University of Southern California

RESULTS for the 2007 Black Sand World Racquetball Championships in Waikiki

Racquetball Legends Cliff Swain and Marty Hogan Invincible
2007 Black Sand World Championships
Black Sand Chronicles

Gale force winds and torrential rain showers did not deter an international contingency of Pros and Amateurs at the 2007 Black Sand World Racquetball Championships (BSWC) at Waikiki Beach. The BSWC lasted three weeks and was played under both stormy and beautiful conditions. With $10K in prize money on the line and over $50K in sponsorships raised, reputations weren’t the only thing at stake on Waikiki Beach as Cliff Swain and Mighty Marty Hogan, two of the winningest pros in racquetball history, each looked to add to their considerable legacies.

Current Motorola World Indoor Champ and outdoor WOR-Ektelon Singles and Doubles Champ 27-year old Rocky Carson of Southern California steamrolled to both the BSWC Pro Singles and Pro Doubles Finals, as expected, but Cliff Swain defied most odds-makers when he pulverized his way to a 7th World Championship Title by taking out Carson in hard fought straight sets 21-18 21-18. Carson had a shot at redemption later in the evening in the Pro Doubles finals, but Marty Hogan and Scotty Bauman stunned Carson and his partner current WOR-Ektelon Pro Doubles Champ Rob Hoff 31-28 in an uproarious, final pro match of the tournament, and a crowning 8th World Championship Title for Hogan.

The Swain-Carson singles final under a blazing sun was an electrifying culmination to a ferocious singles side of the Pro draw that saw local and international talent like Jimmy Lowe, Matt Robinson and Pete Britos of Hawaii, Alvaro Beltran and Raphael Filipini of Mexico and Jesus Ocana of Diamond Bar challenging world champs Swain and Carson deep into the draw. In the 16s, Ocana took out New York one-wall champ Freddy Ramirez in a long anticipated East Coast-West Coast smack-talk show down—most of the smack-talk till that point took place online in meet and play racquetball forums. Meanwhile, all-time military champ Lowe took out Los Angelino pro Sean Royster, and then quieted Ocana’s thunderous forehand in the quarters. Also in the quarters, 24-years old Beltran, the number three indoors ranked player in the world scraped by Britos 21-18 after Britos had him 13-3 early on. Carson took out a game Waikiki Champ Matt Robinson and Swain ousted resurgent touring pro Raphael Filipini. The semifinals featured the top four seeds: Carson versus Lowe, and Swain against rock solid all-time Mexican Champ Beltran. Both were slugfests with Carson overpowering cat-quick Lowe and Swain pounding left-handed serve after left-handed serve past the scrambling 6’1” Beltran.

All weekend Waikiki was packed with a steady flow of spectators, many of who were stunned to recognize some of the great racquetball pros of all time banging heads in the cage at the beach. It helped that hundreds of 16-page color BSWC Tournament Guides were being distributed with player profiles, photos and sponsor info. And there was good reason for the walk-by flow. That week, the Honolulu Marathon was on all the front pages of the newspapers and featured on broadcast and Internet media worldwide. 27,000 runners and their families were amassed in Waikiki and ready to race.

Paces away at the Waikiki racquetball courts, top international and local players grappled for racquetball supremacy in the last Grand Slam racquetball tournament of 2007. Originally built during WWII, the Waikiki Courts are arguably the first racquetball courts in the world. Repurposed from handball to racquetball in the early 1950s, players like 91-years young BSWC sponsor Commander Bill Robinson (Rear Admiral, Ret.) have played these courts for over 60 years. The courts are infamous for their caged-in atmosphere and unique, short sidewalls. As the tournament guide puts it the historic Waikiki Courts are an “ultimate test of the racquetball virtuoso.”

The BSWC began on Thursday with a well-publicized Pro Challenge doubles match that lined up Pros Pete Britos and Egan Inoue against Jimmy Lowe and Marty Hogan. Local news crews arrived early for interviews and the featured kick off match that saw the night end under the lights in a two game a piece performance. It was the first time Britos and Inoue had teamed up in careers that began in the early 80s when they were both Hawaii teenage prodigies. The next day Friday was a bust with a total of six matches played due to rain, but by Saturday the sun came out blazing and play resumed at assembly line pace. By days end, over one hundred matches had been played with rally scoring helping to facilitate the rapid pace.

Sunday was a steamy mud bath for the marathon runners; but at the Waikiki courts the asphalt dried quickly in the relentless sun. By 10 a.m. the caged courts were packed with spectators. On a roll, Carson pounded his way into the finals of Pro Singles and Pro Doubles. His coronation seemed rational and apparent. In singles he erased Bauman, Robinson and Lowe, all local, battle-tested outdoor pros. On the other side of the draw, Swain dispensed with local BSWC Junior Champ Robbie Collins (17) in the round of 16. He then handled Mexican pro Raphael Filipini in workman-like fashion. And finally, in a match punctuated with spectacular dives, he ended the run of Mexico’s top-ranked Pro Alvaro Beltran, who was making his first appearance—like Carson—at the Waikiki courts.

It was more classic Swain in the Finals as Carson repeatedly fell victim to Swain’s deep, lethal drive serves and pinpoint backhand. The final two points of the match were Swain backhand blasts down the line from 40 and 45 feet. But Carson served notice even as Swain crafted a perfect exclamation to a stellar career. Currently the number two ranked indoor pro in the world, Carson is the one top pro to claim multiple Outdoor and Indoor Grand Slam titles in the same year (2002, 2006, 2007). Cliff Swain is no doubt a great champion with legendary chops, but so too is Rocky Carson a legend in the making with his take-on-all-comers indoor and outdoor attitude.

The story could have stopped here with a perfect climax to a compelling mythology: an aging gunslinger Swain (40) beats a legend-in-the-making Carson in his prime. But the final match of Sunday night completely updated the mythology when 49-year old racquetball uber-legend Marty Hogan revived the competitive fires one more time in route to taking his 8th World Championship Title, this time in the Men’s BSWC Pro Doubles with local pro Scotty Bauman.

Once again, old school faced new school, and as the story goes, destiny and local knowledge prevailed against a battle-tested championship team. Carson and Hoff have storied outdoor careers, most recently dominating the 2007 WOR-Ektelon Doubles Championships in Southern California. Clearly Carson-Hoff were odds on favorites. Hogan and Scotty Bauman (fresh off a steel knee replacement) seemed long shots at best to capture the title, especially with the exceptionally strong field in contention: Benny Torrez and Freddy Ramirez of New York, Jesus Ocana and Jesus Ustarez (Jesus2) of Southern Cal, Big Rod Felton and Matt Robinson of Honolulu, Swain and Royster of Boston/Los Angeles, Rich Dew and Daryl Smallman of San Diego/New Zealand and Beltran and Bill Donges of Mexico/Waikiki.

But never underestimate the heart of a champion. Players should have taken heed earlier in the day when Hogan volunteered to referee the Pro Singles finals. It was quite a scene with three world champions on the court, Hogan, Swain and Carson, and Hogan calling the shots. Hogan introduced Carson as the hottest player on the pro circuit; and then Swain as a great player and multiple world champion. Someone from the crowd yelled out “the greatest player ever.” Not skipping a beat Hogan blurted back: “greatest left-handed player ever.” The crowd erupted in laughter, and even Swain and Carson cracked up hard at Hogan’s repartee.

Now in the finals of the Pro Doubles after beating Lowe and Southern Cal pro Gary Martin in the semis, Hogan was making a serious statement with his focused play. Playing the right side and controlling middle court, he was all about efficient mechanics and no easy points. When Hogan stepped back, Bauman from the left would step in ripping laser beam forehand pinches to the corners. Carson and Hoff were game, no doubt about it—they handled local heavyweights Big Rod Felton and Robinson in the semis. But Hogan and Bauman were a relentless one-two punch. The raucous crowd was roaring on each point as the tight match wound to its inevitable conclusion. Then, at 30-27 match point, Bauman hustled forward and hit an apparent game-winning backhand dink into the front left corner. Referee Pete Britos called it game and match and the crowd went wild.

But Bauman immediately called a skip on himself, which sent the crowd howling in disbelief. On the verge of his greatest victory ever, Bauman overturned a call on himself. In rally scoring, which is what the tournament played, every rally is a point. So now, not only did Bauman give up his serve, but the Hogan-Bauman duo as well lost a point. A two point turn around. Carson and Hoff lined up at 28-30—still match point, but with Carson in control of the serve.

Carson served an overhead drive to Hogan and after a seesaw rally Bauman ended it with a forehand deep up the middle that jammed Carson-Hoff. The crowd went wild again and the BSWC tiki trophies were lugged onto the courts under the night lights.

Swain received a one of a kind three-foot high tiki trophy carved from a hunk of solid Hawaiian koa and a check for $1500. Pro Doubles Champs Hogan and Bauman also received unique matching tiki trophies and a check for $2000. The Pro Singles and Doubles Champs also received designer Black Fly sunglasses, a package of Black Sand Clothing, Ektelon shoes and other assorted prizes. The tournament paid through the quarters and as well dished out $1000 to the Masters Division Champions and finalists.

While most of the Pros finished play that Sunday evening, the BSWC continued for two more gorgeous weekends. By the end though, the Black Sand tiki goddess, bearer of all good things, had left the beach, and a single sign remained fastened above the cage as a reminder of the play: “Only the Brave.”

2007 BSWC FINALS RESULTS
Pro Singles: Cliff Swain beats Rocky Carson
Pro Dubs: Marty Hogan/Scott Bauman def. Rock Carson/Rob Hoff
Masters Dubs: Rod Felton/Matt Robinson def. Rob Hoff/Gary Martin
Advanced Men Singles: Robbie Collins def. Dave Knox
Women Open Singles: Sarah Houghtailing def. Kaili Britos
Mixed Open Dubs: Mimi Greene/Bill Donges def. Michelle Luke/Scotty Bauman
Junior Singles: Robbie Collins def. Ethan Murao
Junior Doubles: Robbie Collins/Ethan Murao def. Micah Mizumoto/Kaili Britos