Black Sand Chronicles

HPU@HIFF Awardees Announced

2011-12-09T00:34:00.000-08:00

Click Here: HPU@HIFF Best in Show Awardees for Hawai'i International Film Festival Collaboration with Hawai'i Pacific University.

BSChronicles Motion Graphic Board, Draft 1

2011-09-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

Magnum PI "Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii" Part 2

2011-09-08T02:09:00.000-07:00

Magnum PI "Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii" Pt. 1

2011-09-08T02:03:00.000-07:00

HPN Interviews Governor Neil Abercrombie

2011-05-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

Hawaii Pacific News interviewed Governor Neil Abercrombie in April as one their television magazine projects. Producer-Editors were Justin Ornellas and David Lawrence. The reporter/interviewer was Serena Karnagy, pictured above. The interview is expected to air this summer on OC-16.

Malielani Golden Exhibitions

2011-04-18T01:28:00.000-07:00

Malielani & Kamahele

Malielani Golden had art hanging in two exhibitions this spring. A competitive exhib at the Capitol Building for High School artists state-wide, and another at Kahala Mall with her portfolio class at St. Andrews Priory.

Ohana Exhibition at Hawaii Loa

2011-03-14T01:13:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the opening of the 2011 Ohana Exhibition at the Hawaii Loa campus in Kaneohe. Pete Britos has two paintings in this exhibition, "The Immovable King," and "Blue Girl". In the photos above Kaili Britos, Kamahele Britos, Natalie Lewis and Pete Britos.

Kamahele and Uncles

2011-02-26T23:52:00.000-08:00

Kamahele in 2006 with some of his uncles down at the one-wall outdoor racquetball courts on Waikiki Beach (Fort DeRussy). Barry, Arthur, Noa (holding Kamahele), Manuwai, Rudy, Big Rod.

HPU@HIFF Theatrical Card production

2011-02-06T21:40:00.001-08:00

HPU @ HIFF--It's On

2010-10-14T03:13:00.000-07:00

The Hawaii International Film Festival starts Thursday October 14th and HPU students will be on site as reporters. About 55 students have been accredited as members of the press contingency for the 30th anniversary of the film festival, and will deliver stories to several online journals, as well as their own social networks. This real-time reporting collaboration breaks new ground for both HIFF and HPU. 2010 also marks the first time that HPU participates as an official Sponsor of the venerable film festival.

HPU-HIFF
Hawaii Pacific News
Kalamalama Newspaper

Myth is the hidden part o, Italo Calvino | Dictionary.com

2010-07-15T02:15:00.000-07:00

Myth is the hidden part o, Italo Calvino | Dictionary.com

Malielani Golden Eco-couture

2010-04-17T01:58:00.000-07:00

Malielani Golden is a multitalented young lady who this past weekend went to her junior prom at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in a gold satin dress she sewed herself the night before the event. It wasn't by design. She had purchased a dress, but her alterations didn't turn out the way she envisioned. When a last minute search at Ala Moana and Nordstroms turned up nothing, she convinced her mom to purchase a bolt of fabric and returned home determined to sew the garment she wanted. She was up well past midnight the evening before the event, but got the job done. The fabric of her golden dress matched the satin dress of her date, and best friend from small-kid time, Chelsea. Later this week Malielani found out she had been excepted to a Youth-Conservation program this summer at Chaminade University. She had gone to an extensive testing and evaluation session a couple months earlier, and was surprised to get the acceptance in the mail. Malie is a talented Tahetian dancer and currently competes on the Saint Andrews Priory sailing team. Regattas are near Magic Island at the Alawai harbor. One thing is for sure, if Malielani every had to compete at creating a fashion design overnight she would succeed in getting it done. And with her conservation and nature interests, who knows, one day she might surprise us with some first rate eco-couture.

HPU First Look Mixed Media Festival LOOMS

2010-04-06T01:56:00.000-07:00

HPU's First Look Mixed Media Festival deadline is Monday, April 12th at 5pm. Get your videos, photography, paintings, flash animation, sculptures, books, clothing or other material in ASAP. Application forms are available at www.hpu.edu/com

Flying Full
Undergraduate Student Jen Byrne's Award Winning 2009 First Look photograph

Ka'ili steady in stormy conditions

2010-03-08T23:57:00.000-08:00

University of Hawai'i golfer Kaili Britos fired rounds of 73 and 74 today at the Julie Inkster Invitational in San Jose, California. Britos, a UH freshman from Kamehameha Schools-Kapalama is tied for fifth place going into the final round in a field of 84 players from sixteen Universities.

Hosted by the Almaden Country Club, conditions were tough by any standards, as players had to brave rain, wind and hail. San Jose State University's Cristina Corpus leads the tournament at one-under par (72-71=143).

Photo by Brigitte Baker

Kamahele and Auntie Pat

2010-02-14T14:37:00.000-08:00

Kamahele with Kumu Pat

Kamahele with Auntie Pat at Kawaihao Church School. Auntie Pat taught Kamahele music, singing, art, math, reading, writing and lots of other things. Kamahele loved being in class with Uncle Kaipoi, Auntie Pat and his other haumana. Now he's in class with 20 other first graders at Lincoln Elementary on Puowaina, just down the crater from tutu.

"Empire of Silver" wins HIFF Top Award

2009-10-21T20:50:00.000-07:00

And the winner is...

Empire of Silver wins the Hawaii International Film Festivals Halekulani Golden Orchid Feature Film Award. Here are some reports from the front:

screendaily.com
Hawaii Reporter

Here is a synopsis:

Empire of Silver – Christina Yao (2009)

Cast: Aaron Kwok, Zhang Tielin, Lei Hao, Jennifer Tilly, Cheng Ding Zhi
China, 1899: A hedonistic young man must assume the role of heir to a banking empire he cares little about. Following the tragic kidnapping of his brother’s wife, "Third Master" reluctantly submits to pressure from his overbearing father. Powerful bank-owner Lord Kang is determined to prepare Third Master for financial leadership by molding his son into his own image. The ruthless businessman tries to convince his son to choose a proven unscrupulous bank manager over a more honest one. But the idealistic Third Master has always questioned his father's autocratic rule and ethics. The tense relationship is further complicated by Third Masters undying love for his beautiful young stepmother, his first and only love stolen from him by his own father. Embarking on a metaphysical journey, Third Master must decide whether to follow his father's path or find his own. Greed, deception and jealousy surface under the pressures of war and the impending change from silver to paper bills...

Year 1899, China is under the control of Qing Dynasty with their financial capital located in Shanxi. The Kang family is part of the national banking empire which is also known as Chinas Wall Street. Lord Kang (Zhang Tie Lin) is looking for a suitable heir for the family banking business and he decides to groom his third son, Third Master (Aaron Kwok) as his other brothers are involved in accidents. Third Master is reluctant at first but succumbed to his father’s stern and autocratic actions. As his age is slowly catching up and he wants the next generation to continue the family-run banking business, Lord Kang is determined to turn his son into a ruthless businessman just like himself. However, his son has always called into question his father's style of leadership and uncharitable business principles. The tense and conflicting relationship between father and son worsen further when Third Master expresses his love for his lover (Hao Lei), who is also his step-mother. She is the first and only love of his life. It all began when she was his English teacher but it was his stern father she ended up marrying. Now Third Master must decide to follow his father’s way or his own way in life...

HIFF Feature Film Halekulani Golden Orchid Award

2009-10-20T03:03:00.000-07:00

Well sat down this evening with writer-filmmaker Toa Fraser and actor Daniel Dae Kim to discuss the merits of the films competing for the 2009 HIFF Golden Orchid Award for Best Feature Film. It was an excellent conversation, though Daniel is in L.A. and the cell phone connection kept cutting out. HIFF Executive Director Chuck Boller popped in and out, and Programmer Anderson Le was tracked down to a kareoke party somewhere in Honolulu in order to give some background. Award winners will be announced tomorrow at the Dole Pineapple Cannery Theaters. 4pm. It's free and open to the public.

The Green Ninjas

2009-10-12T03:34:00.000-07:00

Dillon, Ryder, Justin, Hoku, Kamahele

The Green Ninjas are doing great. This past week at Kapiolani Park they won their match in style. The Silver Bullets were worthy opponents. But the Green Ninjas' fire power and creativity were too much. They are having a winning season, despite a couple of losses, and a misfire into another team's goal. Actually, I learned while refereeing this past week that with the six-and-under league it doesn't matter what goal the kids kick it in to. At least that's what one of the parent/coaches told me after their boy ran it to the opponent's goal and kicked it in.

Kamahele dribbles to the goal, followed by Ryder and Hoku

2009 UH Women's Golf Team

2009-10-03T02:31:00.000-07:00

At 5am Kaili is on her way to Colorado with a scarf, beenie and gloves. She's in a 20-team tournament. The tournament is a memorial event in honor of golfer Heather Farr, and is held in conjunction with Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

UH Women head to Colorado

Kaili's first day of competitive college golf

UH Women's Golf Homepage

Green Ninjas

2009-09-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

Hoku, Kamahele, Ryder, Dillon

I signed Kamahele up for U-6 AYSO Soccer. And promptly was recruited to coach the team. It's a great team with some great boys. Talk about energy! These guys are hard workers and good sports. We practice in Makiki, Kakaako, and have games on Saturday at Kapiolani Park. How ironic. Here's a link to a poem I wrote about Kapiolani Park back in 2004 when Kamahele was one year old.

Kapiolani

Hoku, Justin, Ryder, Kamahele

First Look Mixed Media Festival Exhibition

2009-09-07T01:12:00.000-07:00

Phipps Conservatory Garden at Carnegie Mellon University

2009-05-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

Pete's visit to the FINE Fellow GIGAPAN Workshop at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This Panorama was taken at the Phipps Conservatory, one of our hosts.

Here's a link to the image on the GIGAPAN site:

Phipps Conservatory Garden

Kamahele at Makapuu

2009-05-16T18:31:00.000-07:00

Blue Girl (Chapter 4)

2009-03-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

A Serial Tale from the Future about the Past

Chapter 4

Lehua overheard her “parents” in the kitchen discussing what to do with her. We need to get rid of her, they were saying. She’s of no use to us anymore. Maybe we should take her into the woods, or drop her in the sea.

That’s when the woman she thought was her mother caught her eye looking around the corner, and her father grabbed her by the neck before she could run.

For three days and nights they journeyed on foot deep into Sleepy Forest.

A strangely familiar sensation came over Lehua, who began to dream in her dream and see things she had never experienced. She felt a chill take her bones, and the shadows seemed to leap to life with an intensity she couldn’t explain. Even stranger, fat mo’o lizards and nervous birds began to peer down at her with a sense of purpose she could not fathom.

But her parents were as cold and distant as a crescent moon. On the second day she noticed that her fingertips were beginning to turn blue. Perhaps it was the cold, she thought. Or maybe the rope that lashed her wrists was beginning to cut off the circulation.

Lehua fell asleep when they stopped. “Do not be afraid. Come to me my child,” said a stooped and shadowy figure in the cave of her darkest dream.

When she awoke her parents now looked at her silently with a growing suspicion.

They looked like her parents but didn’t feel like they were her parents anymore. She wondered what had happened. She never saw it coming. As if overnight they had changed into something else. It was difficult to put into words, even in her mind. She didn’t remember it ever happening, it just all of a sudden was.

The dark figure in her dream seemed to have made her braver than she normally might have been. She asked her parents why they were being so mean to her. And what had she ever done to make them angry. It’s not what you’ve done, they said, but what you haven’t yet done.

This was confusing. What do I need to do? she asked.

There is nothing you can do, they replied.

This of course, she could not understand, for she had always tried to be a good and respectful girl. Why they tied her hands and led her through the forests by a leash was a mystery, though they told her she was babbling nonsense and a danger to herself.

Here Kuhio Uluwehe paused to serve the delicious ulu and more dark tea. He brought down from bindings up the wall stalks of sugarcane and skinned some to chew. It was sweet and lush. The very first bite was like a drink of cool sweet water.

Kuhio Uluwehe was hungry, and ate his ulu and sweet potato like a shark.

“I don’t mean to scare you with this talk,” said Kuhio Uluwehe. “Surely this is familiar. The truth that is. But you were so young. Perhaps that is why you are confused. Or perhaps you just don’t want to remember. Maybe it’s too painful a memory. That happens.”

“The mind is full of traps and tricky corridors our thoughts can get stuck in. It’s not that what we know has disappeared. It may be that we just can’t find the way back to get to it. The mind is like the forest. It’s alive with secret knowledges and paths that you may never find again.”

“We heard your story through the forest creatures and from our dealings with the village folk who service the aliens. Not that anyone said it outright, but you know how the truth slips from the cracks of the unspoken.”

(To be continued)

Making Myth in the Age of Television

2009-03-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

Kue in Old Waikiki, from Spiral Jungle graphic novel

Chapter 4: Myth and the Liminal Dimension

Finally, Silverstein considers the notion of mediation as more indicative of what the mythic, as a process, entails, than that of the term "transformation." For though myth can involve significant transformations, it does not necessarily always do so. The process of mediation is, however, always present in the mythic articulation. Mediation connotes both "topsy-turvy" change, and a more pedestrian bridging of man in his everyday existence with the natural and supernatural worlds that contain that existence. In this thinking he is indebted to the theories of Victor Turner, specifically Turner's writing on liminality. For Turner, "liminality is pure potency." This potency is located in the ambiguous and fluid nature of states of transition. It is not in resolution that the liminal resides, but in the intermediary spaces of the undefined. Turner writes:

Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arranged by law, custom, concentration, and ceremonial. As such, their ambiguous and indeterminate attributes are expressed by a rich variety of symbols in the many societies that ritualise social and cultural transitions.

Similarly, in Silverstein's language, "mediation is the dynamic within the mythic." It is in the dimension of the liminal where the non-cognitive matrixes reside. Herein lies the power of the liminal, and the untold potential of the mythic, the magic in other words, which makes the whole of a narrative so much more than the integrity of its parts. Silverstein echoes Turner when he summarizes that beyond the cognitive dimension are processes of transition that recover the irrecoverable, illuminate the invisible, allow the forbidden, and suffuse those who are involved with the power of the sublime. In this light, myth mediates between the known and the unknown, chaos and order, right and wrong, reason and emotion. Furthermore it touches in this process on the past, present and future simultaneously, if only fleetingly.

Myth encompasses more than its apparent materiality. It references the natural, communes or mediates with the spiritual, and opens the participant to the potential of the unknown, the unknowable, the yet to be determined. Similar processes occur in the narratives of film and television. And yet, says Silverstein, if television does this, "it does so paradoxically, for the reduction of ambiguity which the narratives themselves achieve, in the context of our culture's endemic uncertainty, is in itself an ambiguous task." Furthermore, the manner in which television disrupts the narrative for commercial promotion, or station identification, influences the integrity of the mediation, the holistic view of the narrative, and consequently the mythic experience.

And yet the segmentation of television does not necessarily eliminate the mythologizing aspect of television narratives, nor the ability of the viewer to have a mythic relation with these types of narratives, or series.

Finally, I find in Lévi-Strauss's serial conception of mythic transformation, a model with which to understand in television, a particular aspect of the myth-making endeavor. If redundancy and transformation are part and parcel of the mythic experience, then television, becomes a prime vehicle for harnessing the psycho-phenomenological potential of this ancient mode of communication.

Myths always "mean" more than their surface articulation. The symbolist, functionalist and structuralist debates over how myths are to be read at the least make this self-evident. The symbols, conventions and iconographies used to construct the mythic narrative are understood in relation to endlessly complex clusters of meaning. This study attempts to come to grasps with some of these elements as they are embodied in a particular cluster--which I have called the Hawai'i paramilitary cycle--I intend to pursue the meanings of the series in terms of mythical interpretation, symbology and historical truth, by refocusing the monocular scope of television onto adjacent vistas of knowledge and discourse.

Lévi-Strauss's method for divining the "meaning" of myth was to collect all the variant forms of a particular mythic complex, regardless of chronology, without privileging any one version. According to Edmund Leach, what Lévi-Strauss was searching for was "the fundamental essence" of the myth, an essence whose logical structure "persist[s] throughout all the diversities of form by which the myth story has been perpetuated. A comparison of the different versions of a single myth complex will reveal this common structural nexus, and it is this common structure that really gives 'meaning' and importance to those who recount the myth."

Theoretically, structural methodology provided analytical tools which allowed the cultural anthropologist to know and articulate things about natives that they could never know about themselves. Lévi-Strauss felt he could somehow distill the essence of humanity itself down to its fundamental architecture, or logic. For as Francis Huxley describes, it is in the demonstration of patterns between elements of myth that "the problem of metaphysics is reconciled with the problems of human behavior."

Such demonstrations, as post-structuralism has taught us, constitute but a particular angle of analysis and not the total truth-value of any social phenomenon. Touching on the conceit of such an endeavor, Susan Sontag has sarcastically noted that the anthropologist, like the navigator of another era, was positioned at the mid-century mark as a foremost hero in the culture of the West. The cultural anthropologist was seen as more than a highly specialized tour guide, or intellectual adventurer. The trained anthropologist came to represent the modern shaman. In a sense, the cultural statistician, or social scientist was transformed by their metropolitan colleagues, and an adoring public, into the contemporary magicians of pagan lore.

Lévi-Strauss was not immune to such a calling. For him, as the obligation of "progress" recedes, and the comparative movement of historicity reverts to the timeless haunt of the primitive, the space of "the permanent possibility of man," then the moment of social anthropology will come into its own and fulfill its "mission to stand watch, especially in man's darkest hour."

With such apocalyptic high-mindedness, structuralism opens itself to criticisms of inflexibility and dogmatism. And yet structuralism is the systematizing tool that has allowed twentieth century humanisms to articulate their methodologies in scientific terms. Furthermore, the notion of mythic density brings cohesiveness to this study. This is especially relevant when myth and history collide, as it does in the recounting of the death of Captain James Cook, and in the pseudo-history put forth in the Hawai'i paramilitary cycle.

Making Myth in the Age of Television

2009-03-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Chapter 3: Function of Myth

The function of myth, like the function of television, is one of its most hotly contested aspects. Silverstone ties the debates over function to assumptions about motivation. In his model the mythic functions as both "a containment of the irrational, [and] a justification of what passes for the rational, a protection against the unknown and the different." Myth as well functions to legitimate the status quo in terms of the past, present, and future. It legitimates social order and the functionaries who create, enforce, carryout and profit from that order.

According to Silverstone, two predominant problems crop up in such theories of mythic function. One is the tendency for theorists to consider myths as directly "coextensive with society, and to assume that the accounts it gives of the world are faithful to the work of lived relations and bear directly upon them." Even more problematic however is the assumption of a totalitarian falsehood. In this model, the mythic construct is designed to hold back both natural and social threats to the existing social structure. As David Bidney writes in 1958: "Myth originates whenever thought and imagination are employed uncritically or deliberately used to promote social delusion." Silverstone points out that this logic became especially common in critiques of popular culture.

But though myth is functional, it is not always at odds with the substance of reality. The latter thinking does point out an important quality of the mythic articulation however. Like television, it does have the capacity to mislead or redirect its audience. The implications are of course far-reaching, as nothing less than the transformation of societies is at stake in such manipulations. Borrowing from James Peacock's 1968 discussion, Silverstone uses the example of how the Ludruk, the classic drama of Indonesia:

"was adapted to meet the revolutionary needs of President Sukarno: the new message of social change was presented within the familiar form of the traditional play. The incorporation of new values and content into the old forms served in this case a number of purposes: first of all it helped both actors and spectators to understand modernization in terms of vivid and meaningful symbolic classifications; secondly it seduced the participants into empathy with modes of social action involved in the modernization process; and finally it involved the participants aesthetically, but equally in favour of the changes being undertaken in their society" (cf Salisbury, 1966).

This passage is especially apropos for this study in that it highlights some of the problems inherent in a discussion about the effect of myth and television on the socio-political landscape of Hawai'i. The use of the Ludruk by Sukarno is much more than a symbolic articulation about the customs and beliefs of the Indonesian people. It is even more than a simple call for change. Rather, the Ludruk myth is used as the basis for an argument for a new socio-cultural paradigm, a new social order.

Significantly, an accepted mythical form is the vehicle for contemporary pedagogic activity and manipulation. Silverstone does not conclude however that mobilizing myth in this manner correlates to a functional activity. For him "[O]ne cannot, easily or at all, move from descriptions about what a myth contains to assumptions about action; nor can we posit a one-to-one correlation between action and communication." And yet myth, like commercial culture, "most often...exists as a form of politics," to use George Lipsitz' description. Lipsitz elaborates:

"Cultural forms create conditions of possibility, they expand the present by informing it with memories of the past and hopes for the future; but they also engender accommodation with prevailing power realities, separating art from life, and internalizing the dominant culture's norms and values as necessary and inevitable."

Silverstone and Lipsitz are essentially saying the same thing from different vantages. They note the potential for wielding culture for political gain, "as a means of reshaping individual and collective practice for specified interests."

While Silverstone acknowledges similarities in the relationship between myth and society, and television and society, he asserts that it is ill-advised to consider these relationships as strictly functional, in the sense that they unilaterally support the status quo. "Often," he says, the mythic is "out of accord with the interests of sections of society who would have most to gain by the transformation of that society and a replacement of one myth by another." The preservation of existing institutions, then, is not an inherent aspect of the function(s) of myth, or by extension, of television.

Similarly, Lipsitz notes that "as long as individuals perceive their interests as unfilled, culture retains an oppositional potential." Thus, though function is necessarily a criterion in the consideration of the nature of television, a functional analysis should not assume that change is strictly a top-down phenomenon supporting ad nauseam the status quo and its agents. Rather, function is a variable term, directed though it may be; it is subject to the time, place, and disposition from which the "reading" emanates. Myth then, and this is important for the cycle under consideration, and the myths it invariably invokes, works in different ways, at different times, in different location, for different groups and individuals.

Like myth, television is a finding and focusing devise: it is a self-contained frame that defines itself in space, time, and in the transformative dimension that marks it as a narrative. The framing indicates both myth and television narratives are marked forms in culture. Most importantly for Silverstone, these cultural forms signal "a transformation, the crossing of a boundary, the entering of, in Victor Turner's (1969) terminology, 'a liminal dimension.'"

The transformation process that myth and television entail is framed structurally by the narrative, figuratively by the presentation of the narrative act itself, and literally, in the case of television, by television technology. While the physical frame of television finds and focuses our attention on the story at hand, the frame of television defines the audio-visual material, as well as the psychological dimension of the off-screen space that narrative necessarily infers. Silverstone notes at least three dimensions to the frame of the mythic.

First he notes the social aspect. In this world, myth is always present and always here, spatially speaking. Furthermore:

"Those who enter this sacred time and space are entering an emotionally toxic world of familiarity and risk, in which we are all expected to suspend disbelief and accept for the time being a heightened set of categorical imperatives."

In this familiar world rearranged by the imperative of narrative design, distance is transcended, and time as it contracts or expands at will is ever present and immediate to the senses. Secondly, for Silverstone "cause" too is transcendent. He quotes Burke: "To be perfect an ending must be perfectly prepared for." Thus, the cause and effect chain, and the reality factor of "empirical connection," are subordinated to the quest for the perfect order and equilibrium of the play.

Here the term "play" refers to both its dramatic implication, and its looser connotation of an improvisational, albeit supremely ordered, fun and enjoyment. Thirdly, such framing is framed itself in the context of mythic content. Here the full scope of the mythic world is marked off from that of the everyday, “though not entirely,”

"for the simultaneity of distance proximity must be maintained and articulated. The content is the product on the one hand of a synaesthesia: the mythic is a communication in which differences of perspective, of emotion, of sensibility are united into a plurivocal text" (Boon, 1972, p. 182).

Since the post-war era, television has been the frame par excellence of popular culture. It frames a perspective, rearranging and redirecting the viewers attentions, not indefinitely, as Mary Douglas and Silverstein point out, "but for the duration." In the case of the first cycle, the duration, fleeting as it might be, leaves a conceptual residue that shapes and informs the spectator's understanding of empirical relations in and about Hawai'i. Its political and cultural repercussions, then, have in turn empirical, real-world influence, and agency.

Making Myth in the Age of Television

2009-03-11T01:43:00.000-07:00

Chapter Two: The Message of TV

Roger Silverstone provides a useful approach for discussing the connections between mythmaking and the television medium in the second half of the twentieth century. In his book The Message of Television: Myth and Narrative in Contemporary Culture (1981), Silverstone employs the synthetic methods of structural semiotician A. Julian Greimas to arrive at a demonstration of how television programming can be read as mythic material.

He does this by activating a cross-section of interpretive methodologies in his multi-level analysis of the function and coherence of television discourse, with an emphasis on the sub-discourse of the drama. For instance, he combines Lévi-Straussian structuralism with Propprian formalism, and Gremisian anthropomorphism, balancing these methods of perception within the framework of the everyday.

For Silverstone, the everyday is governed by the tactical faculty of "common sense." The psychology of the everyday is important because it corresponds to a broad, cross-cultural matrix that all humans experience. "Common sense" or the notion of the "everyday" has of course become an area of intense theoretical debate. No longer suggesting a common field upon which interpretations are reconciled, it is now understood as a structure-dependent model itself.

The objective here is to better understand the intersection and transmogrification of myth over time and across media in its various articulations, as well as to tease out the contextual determinations that influence the content, style and structure of the mythic complex in general, and the narratives that make it up in particular. By extension, I hope to shed light on how cross-cultural processes and institutional objectives, such as those found in the first cycle, influenced televisual myth in the age of oligopoly television.

There are of course many definitions for what a myth is. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as a:

"traditional narrative usu. involving super-natural or fancied persons etc. and embodying popular ideas on natural or social phenomena etc.; such narratives collectively; allegory (Platonic myth); fictitious person or thing or idea..."

In a more functional vein Roland Champagne writes: "more than a simple series of narrated events, a myth is a narrative invested with belief by a group of individuals and expressed in varying ways by other cultures. Myth is a product of a social milieu, a sociolinguistic formulation of a story common to many cultures."

Silverstone as well alludes to a continuing practical dimension to mythic articulation. He defines the mythic dimension in terms of "traditional stories and actions whose source is the persistent need to deny chaos and create order." He goes on to say that myth "contributes to the security of social and cultural existence. The mythic is a world apart, but it is also a world close at hand. It acts as a bridge between the everyday and the transcendent, the known and the unknown, the sacred and the profane." He further enumerates six elements such a definition necessarily entails: narration, tradition, motivation, function, framing, and mediation.

Silverstone is primarily concerned with the substance of narrative and the processes of narration. Like Greimas, he locates narration at the juncture of structure and action. In this sense, mythic narration is analogous to the structure of grammar. Action, like the verb, drives the system. Any story he says, has something of the magical about it, in that it conveys a transformative process. Even a joke or the witticisms in everyday conversation display this propensity for magical transformation.

As with the level of the sentence, the story is ordered by inherent rules and procedures. But not every story is a myth. The mythic dimension is a communal trope. That is, it is defined and recognized by a collective body. The ambiguity of such a tautological definition is perhaps unavoidable, if we recognize that not every folktale, legend, epic or ritual can be called a myth.

For instance, it was a long held assumption that ritual and myth were co-terminus in the sense that one transpired at the level of the act, the other at the conceptual level of theory. They were in other words, two sides of the same coin, or, "mutually redundant." Lévi-Strauss proved that while ritual is always involved in the mythic articulation, not every ritual involves the mythic dimension. One can illustrate this simply with well known examples such as the quotidian rituals of brushing teeth, greeting compatriots or eating a traditional meal.

In Silverstone's analysis, television narratives are potentially mythic primarily because "they preserve in their structure the relatively simple logic of event and meaning, of more obviously mythic tales." Furthermore, such narratives are recognized as mythic by a collective audience. This recognition assumes to some degree that the narrative is both "anonymous and secure." While unsatisfactory as a stand-alone definition, the accumulative and collaborative aspect of the televisual narrative both as a stand-alone series, and as a larger cycle, must be accounted for in our examination.

The concept of tradition for Silverstone encompasses the twin contradistinctions of conservatism and innovation. Tradition assumes the rigidity of stable forms even as it necessarily must to stay efficient, allow for change within its systems. He quotes Kirk:

"If then myths are traditional tales, then their telling is subject to the rules of all traditional tales: they will be varied in some degree on virtually every occasion of telling, and the variations will be determined by the whim, the ambition of the particular thematic repertoire of the individual teller, as well as by the receptivity and special requirements of the particular audience."

The conservatism Silverstone speaks of in relation to the mythic is both dynamic and complex. A mark of this dynamism and complexity is that innovations are routinely assimilated in to conservative narrative forms.

Television then is traditional in at least two ways: one, in the way it establishes its own traditions, and two, in the way it establishes viewing traditions for mass audiences. Significantly, television relies on the constraints and strategies of storytelling to establish and preserve, the traditions upon which it is based.

Making Myth in the Age of Television

2009-03-08T18:21:00.000-07:00

Chapter 1: TV & Myth

The first cycle of Hawai'i television series will become the sacred time of the twenty-first century. Students of global communication systems will look back on this cycle of programs hoping to capture in their prose and multi-media presentations, the flavor of the past. The potential for this capacity to historicize is suggested by former FCC Chairman Newton Minnow at a 1995 television symposium:

"The most important educational institution in America is television. That is where more people spend more time learning more things than anywhere else."

For Minnow, not only is television the most important educational institution in America, but its producers and writers "are the teachers, the teachers with the biggest classroom in the world." Historiographers need to consider more than just the evident emplottment of TV programs like those that comprise the first cycle, and the industrial machinations such productions require, for what is on screen at times masks much more than what it presents.

In the chapters that follow, I will continue to chart the mythic progression of intersecting narratives and topical accommodations in Hawaiian Eye, Hawaii Five-0 and Magnum P.I. This cluster is a complex discursive field with many indexes of textual material to draw meaning from, including music, sound, image, graphics, juxtaposition, composition, editing and color. These elements constitute the raw material of narrative, and these narratives form the stuff of myth.

Television mythologies are not built on a single episode, nor a single season. Industry standard for an acceptable mythological density is a five-year run at about twenty to twenty-five episodes per season. These numbers theoretically put the series into syndication play. The assumption is that a depth or profundity is achieved when the myth can be tracked over time. Its meaning "value"--to use Saussure's third dimension of symbolic signification--is affected. Following this rational, a program's ritual depth determines in part its cultural weight. Frequency is another value factor. That a program recurs less frequently than another, or infrequently, is not necessarily a pejorative criterion.

The placement and spacing of ritual means different things in different contexts. In Native Hawaiian tradition, for example, there were the quotidian ritual supplications and acknowledgments to household and personal gods, the aumakua; and there were the seasonal rituals and kapu obeisances that honor the ascendance of the gods Lono or Ku; and then there are other less frequent, more horizontally spaced occasions such as births, coronations, weddings, war sacrifices, etc. which bring into play still other gods, philosophies and protocols.

The term "myth" connotes both narrative depth and a continuation of tradition. Myths also change over time, in different contexts, and with different practitioners, despite the rigidity of protocol. But they are to an extent stuck in time as well, acquiring the significance of a communal trope that carries, or embellishes, older forms and traditions. Narrative parameters like the structure of the myth, where symbol and function coalesce, limit the course of improvisation. Television culture as it has evolved in the United States achieves a similar dynamic to the mythic, especially in its presentation of recurrent dramas. The television series as a commodity and as a pedagogic device, develops within set parameters, and, takes on additional, or entirely new "value" with subsequent screenings and interpretations, even as the narrative refers tautologically to the context in which it was made. As it retains its familiarity, the myth it embodies remains as well forever negotiable. Its structure and images may be stable over time, but its value is at once contextual, and subject to (re)appropriation, or renegotiation.

Value is at the center of interpretation and translation. In speaking of the difference that the concept of value makes apparent, Vicki Kirby writes:

"With the introduction of value, the sign's closure can no longer be maintained. As the sign is open to the system that informs it, signification is also pregnable to the infinite vagaries of semiosis. In which case, words from different language systems are never equivalent, not even within the supposed circumscription of signification."

Thus, not only temporal spacing, but the cultural placement, or the context of the discourse, affects its signification. Furthermore, any translation, whether into another language or to another media, affects the signification process. There are no pure translations, and thus no pure critiques, nor pure interpretation. But then this fuzzy area is as well the provenance par excellence of narrative, and the mysteries it makes apparent. These mysteries require interpretation. Addressing the truth-value of interpretation is a thematic thread in the following chapters. By considering truth as a value, I can more or less weigh not so much the entertainment value of various narratives and their components, but the historical integrity of the narrative itself. This weighing of narrative integrity in relation to reality allows me to approach the paramilitary cycle as a form of both Hollywood mythmaking and propaganda, with all the socio-political dissonances the terms imply.

Myth and television mediate the experience of man in important ways. Despite the secularized state of television, in its formal aspects and in its worldly affect, it operates as a myth-making enterprise with profound onto-epistemological, and material ramifications. Difficult to corroborate statistically, the study of such an influential institution should take into account that which television programming proselytizes.

Series television in the Hawai'i context has been especially successful at marrying the narrative of regional myth with the project of political and material appropriation. The conflation is revealing, for the ritual dramatization these series deliver is an especially powerful vehicle for proscriptive culturalization, revisionist history and nationalist ideology. In such a context, old myths, or mythic elements in novel (re)incarnations, speak volumes about where we've been, where we are, and what lies ahead.

Blue Girl (Chapter 3)

2009-02-23T03:24:00.000-08:00

A Serial Tale from the Future about the Past

Chapter 3

The Blue Girl could no longer fly up the mountain. She was all out of magic powder. So she was walking. Up the hill she came upon a little hut made of long grass and thatching. Inside was a crackling fire. Someone must be close by.

But there seemed to be no one around. It was chilly. But the Blue Girl did not go inside. Then some rustling in the brush alerted her. A short dark man stepped from the forest. He was so dark he was purple. He had a giant o’o stick slung across his broad shoulders. The Blue Girl thought he had been moving large rocks or gardening or something, cause that’s what you do with an o’o.

“Girl, you look cold,” he said, “get inside where it stay warm.” So the Blue Blue Girl hunched into the hut and he followed.

Inside the hut it swirled with the warmth of the fire; orange light danced across poles and thatch.

“It’s been a long time”, he said, taking off his shawl. He placed a calabash of water on a flat stone in the fire and rolled a packet of leaves into a ball that smelled like herb. He tossed the ball into the water and stuck a couple green ulu and sweet potato in the fire around the stone, to roast.

It smelled good. The backs of the ulu burnt black in the fire and the middles split open with a pop. “Going back up to see tutu, eh?” said the man.

“What do you mean?” asked the Blue Girl. The man laughed as if he thought the Blue Girl was joking. But then from her look he could tell she wasn’t. The Blue Girl stayed with the man that night. He said his name was Kuhio Uluwehe and that he knew all about the Blue Girl.

He said the Little Blue Girl was the last of an ancient race of forest people. But even as a little girl she didn’t always know this. She had two parents who it seemed never talked to her that much. For a time they lived in a little town called Lakeside, at the outskirts of Sleepy Forest.

Kuhio Uluwehe told her that her parents really weren’t even her parents after all, which she had suspected for quite some time. It disturbed her though that others were the expert of her own story. But what was she to do? She could not for the life of her remember anything.

How was she to know these things? According to Kuhio Uluwehe she had been a normal enough girl back then in a house with two normal enough looking parents.

“What is normal?” asked the little Blue Girl.

“Exactly,” laughed Kuhio Uluwehe. “Exactly.”

The day it all became oh so clear to her, the little Blue Girl, or Lehua, as she was called back then, awoke with a start. A blue bird that lived nearby was at her window chirping loudly, as if foretelling of some great catastrophe.

(To be Continued)

GIGAPAN Photo Shoot in Downtown Honolulu

2009-02-16T01:32:00.000-08:00

Below are links to a gigapan photo shoot from Thursday February 5th down on Fort Street Mall. Classes from Hawaii Pacific University have teamed up to create an online presence and this photo shoot is one of the the collaborative projects undertaken by the classes. Gigapan is a project from Carnegie Mellon University and NASA originally undertaken to capture terrestrial images of Mars.

http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=16209

http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=16000

http://share.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=15993

Thanks to photographer Richard Palmer and producers from Writing for New Media.

The below ditty is from: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~globalconn/gigapan.html

"The Gigapan camera is a simple robotic platform for capturing very high-resolution (gigapixel and up) panoramic images from a standard digital camera. Sponsored by Google, CMU and the NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group, the Global Connection Project has also developed software which places you inside the panorama and lets you explore.

An earlier version of this imaging technology was developed for the Mars Exploration Rovers; the panoramas created from Mars enabled a simulated experience of being on another planet. The Gigapan project aims to create a similar experience, but for exploration of Earth."

2009 Black Sand World Championships up for the taking?

2009-02-15T23:09:00.001-08:00

Notice was served that the 2009 Black Sand World Championships is up for the taking when Big Rod Felton and Matt Robinson of Honolulu took out legendary world champions Marty Hogan and Cliff Swain last week in the Waikiki Pro Bowl Outdoor Racquetball Tournament.

Defending BSWC Masters Champ Matt Robinson w/ fiance

Furthermore, Hawaii Juniors Robbie Collins and Kaili Britos served notice that the next generation is knocking at the door when the teenage duo plowed through the Mixed Doubles field, only being stopped in the finals by veterans Matt Robinson and Stephanie Christensen.

Kaili Britos (16) and Defending BSWC Junior Champ Robbie Collins (17)

Robinson made it a clean hat trick with doubles partner Rod Felton by taking the Pro Bowl Masters Doubles title over Bill Donges and Gary Martin of Huntington Beach California.

Defending BSWC Masters Champ Big Rod Felton with Black Sand Tiki

The win by Felton-Robinson over Hogan-Swain is significant since 8-time world racquetball champion Hogan is the defending BSWC Pro Doubles Champion along with Hawaii Outdoor specialist Scotty Bauman. While Felton and Robinson are the defending BSWC Masters Champions, the Hogan-Bauman team electrified the 2007 BSWC tournament when they overcame reigning Outdoor National Champs Rocky Carson and Rob Hoff in the pro doubles finals.

Defending BSWC Pro Dubs Champs Scotty Bauman & Marty Hogan vs. Rich Dew

The win over Hogan-Swain has set the tone. Hawaii locals are taking their turf war seriously. 7-time world champ Cliff Swain is the defending BSWC Pro Singles Champion, having defeated 2007 indoor world champ and National three-wall champ Rocky Carson in a stunning performance.

Big Rod and Matt Robinson cover a lot of court

The Black Sand World Championship will be held December 10-13, 2009 at the Waikiki Outdoor Courts at the Fort DeRussy Hale Koa Resort.

Defending BSWC Pro Singles Champ Cliff Swain

The Blue Girl (Chapter 2)

2009-02-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

A Serial Fairy Tale from
the Future about the Past

CHAPTER 2

The little Blue Girl was flying through the forest and up back into the deepest mountain valley. And beside her was her friend the little blue bird.

They were flying back back deep into the mountain forest above the treetops until they came to a very familiar large gnarly tree with rough crooked branches twisting to the sky.

And she knew this was her home. And it was wonderful to be home again, starting over again, even though deep down in her sleep she knew this was just a dream.

But the dream was so real. As if she really was up high in the tree in her own tree house deep in the mountain forest.

It was early and the little Blue Girl was waking up high in the tree. Around her twittered the little blue bird and her friends.

And then a curious thing that seemed so natural. The little Blue Girl sprinkled magic dust from her pouch into her curly blue hair and with a thought she rose into the air above the tree.

The little Blue Girl was ready for an adventure, for everyone in the woods knew that the little Blue Girl loved adventures.

Then Angelina remembered something, and it was like a cloud parting in the sky revealing the deep blue vault of heaven.

And she knew though she didn’t know how she knew. But she knew as clear as day that the secret to her magic powers lay behind her up the jagged face of the tallest, roughest mountain overlooking the valley.

And she knew something important awaited her at the end of the treacherous trail. Something worth waiting for. The little Blue Girl reached into her pouch, and the magic dust was almost gone. She took out her hand. The dust glittered in her palm and on her fingertips.

She sprinkled a little more in her hair and headed up the valley to the wooded mountain. It rose like a stone sentinel guarding its secrets in clouds and blankets of vines and brambles.

Oh how high must one climb to find the truth of the past, she wondered. She was determined to climb every hilltop, cross every ravine, to traverse the waterfalls of the world to find the secrets of her dream.

The animals looked on curiously as the Blue Girl began her trek. There was a feeling in the air of danger and excitement. Why she needed to do this they did not know. But do it she must. It was her curious way. They had seen it before.

The little blue bird seemed to know the limits of the forest. Best friends though they were, there was a point beyond which even the little blue bird would not follow the friend she loved best of all.

The little Blue Girl had an adventurous spirit that went beyond what most beings would dare. Like going down to the beach so far away to play in the treacherous waters of the ocean.

And it was all the little blue bird could do to accompany her friend to the edge of the forest where the dense trees gave way to the grassy highland.

The little Blue Girl paused for her friend. There was no need for words. The little Blue Girl could feel the spirit of her friend giving way to a primal kind of terror at the sight of the vast grassy hills.

Here no doubt were wild dogs and feral pigs and elves and monsters and traps and snares, ogres, mean humans, hunters, giant mo’o, hawks, pueo and other predatory things.

Without a word the Blue Girl and the little blue bird knew this. Yet the little Blue Girl must continue on up the mountain and her friend the little blue bird must gradually let her go, chirping and twittering and hopping madly with love.

(To Be Continued...)

Blue Girl

2009-02-04T12:22:00.000-08:00

A Serial Fairy Tale from
the Future about the Past

CHAPTER 1

A Blue Girl lived in Kakaako. They called her Angelina. She was a beautiful girl. Everyone wondered where she came from. But no one knew, not even her.

The Blue Girl decided she wanted to be a surfer. So she bought a big blue surfboard with three fins from Uncle Loma down the street. One day she was surfing at Duke’s with her girlfriend Carla when Carla got hit on the head by another surfboard.

Carla went under and the Blue Girl dove in to save her friend.

She lugged Carla on to the surfboard and paddled to shore. But Carla was not breathing, so the Blue Girl rolled her friend over and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She blew air into Carla’s mouth and Carla’s lungs filled up.

Carla coughed and sat up suddenly, spitting out salt water. When she sat up her head bumped the head of the Blue Girl.

The Blue Girl scratched her head. Carla lay back down but laughed a funny little laugh. The Blue Girl didn’t think it was funny. But she was very happy her friend seemed okay. “Angelina,” said Carla, “please take me home.” So Angelina took Carla home, fed her Ramen soup with shoyu and crackers and hot lilikoi tea and tucked her friend in for a good night sleep.

The bump on Angelina’s head grew into a purple knot.

She lay down beside Carla and began to dream, even though she felt like she was fully awake.

Something in her mind opened, like a doorway to the past. It was a strange experience, as if walking down a long tunnel. She saw a young Blue Girl sitting on the beach in the sun.

It was a very specific beach that she tried hard to remember.

In her waking dream she saw the little Blue Girl playing in the waves. She was bodysurfing when the lip of the wave threw the little Blue Girl hard to the sand. She lay there for a long time.

The sun went down and came up again before an old woman carrying two fresh coconuts came across the little Blue Girl.

Angelina could see in her dream that it was Tutu Lilinoe who found her on the beach, dropped the green coconuts and picked up the little Blue Girl in her strong brown arms.

Angelina had heard the story before from Tutu Lilinoe but had never really seen it in her mind before like she did now.

Then, in her waking dream, something strange happened. As if there was a shift, like stepping to the side without stepping anywhere.

And now Angelina was dreaming backwards, or at least it felt backwards but really it was going forward.

She saw the little Blue Girl crashing to the sand on exactly the spot of the purple knot on her head.

She saw the little Blue Girl bodysurfing the perfect turquoise waves, and the foam spraying back as if combed by a giant hand.

And then she was coming to the beach on a sunny day, but not just coming the way you might expect, but flying to the beach, yes flying from the mountains perfectly on the slope and sway of trade winds.

And then she was flying back into the forest, and beside her was a little blue bird who she knew was her best friend in the whole wide world.

(To Be Continued...)

Black Sand 2009

2008-12-29T21:22:00.000-08:00

Black Sand Hawai'i spent 2007-2008 reinvesting its energy in the analog world of painting, landscaping and store design. Check out the Natural Hawaiian stores and Tiki Burger in Paradise in the International Marketplace. Working with Dennis Sullivan and Abby Tan of Natural Hawaiian, Black Sand Productions went retro with tiki, petroglyphs and thatched roof installments in the world famous International Marketplace on Kalakaua Avenue, and out in Mapunapuna.

Black Sand Creative Director Pete Britos also curated several exhibitions and public events at the Hawai'i State Art Museum where he served as Gallery Director at Capital Building No. 1 in downtown Honolulu. Two of the exhibitions he curated were He Alo A He Alo, Face to Face, a reworking of the museum's Ewa Gallery using portraits from the State Art Collection; and Palolo Kids and Friends, photos of community children from the 70s and 80s in the Downtown @ the HiSAM restaurant. Enjoy slow foods? You gotta check out chef Ed Kinney's wonderful vegetables, sandwiches and entrees.

For all the fun Black Sand had delving back into the world of hammers and chopsaws, paper, canvas and paint, 2009 will require the company to invest time and resources in multiplatform media development as it prepares for the biennial 2009 Black Sand World Championships (BSWC--outdoor racquetball) at the Hale Koa Resort on Waikiki Beach.

On tap are a series of live action videos from the 2007 Black Sand World Championships. Legendary athletes and World Champions Marty Hogan, Cliff Swain, Rocky Carson, Alvaro Beltran and Jimmy Lowe are just some of the talent captured on tape by the Team Black Sand Crew at the 2007 championships.

Says BSWC producer Scotty Bauman, "we are looking forward to another great event in December of 2009. Remember, the tournament is held the weekend of the Honolulu Marathon. We'll be revamping the Black Sand websites with new content, and as well getting some of our footage over to ESPN and other media outlets to see if we can get the Black Sand World Championships finals televised for a global sports audience."

Along with the BSWC, Black Sand is hard at work on the Spiral Jungle graphic novel. "It's coming along," said Britos. "In between our other writing projects, we are looking for an exceptional colorist to take our digital imagery and work some magic. We hope for the graphic novel to be ready for distribution by the beginning of 2010."

Meanwhile, the design team is considering a foray into 3D modeling for the project. All in all Team Black Sand had a great 2008, and is looking forward to more great things in 2009.

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

2008-11-22T00:35:00.000-08:00

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.

Thoughts on the Day Before the 2008 Election

2008-11-03T19:38:00.000-08:00

Today, driving down Beretania Street I saw my friend Hugh Gentry loaded down with cameras walking down the street. Hugh and I had worked together at KHNL-NBC back in the 1990s. He stuck his head in my car and said that Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had passed away. At that moment it made sense why all the production trucks were gathered on the Central Union church grounds, at Beretania and Punahou Street, directly across from her apartment.

Madelyn Dunham was a trailblazer in the Hawaii banking industry, breaking the gender glass ceiling in Hawaii by become a Vice President at Bank of Hawaii. Now her grandson is on the threshhold of shattering an even more notorious glass ceiling, that of the color barrier and the Presidency of the United States. Hopefully Madelyn voted early, and in that way will continue posthumously to participate in the election process of her progeny.

There is something poignant about the timing of Madelyn's passing. It reminds me that despite what pundits may say about how the economic downturn was the harbinger of Obama's rise in the national polls, really Obama's rise, to me, seems more about a generational shift from a 20th century mentality to a 21st century mentality.

Ironically, we have been prepped for this shift by the creative industries, and an increasing number of films and television shows that have depicted blacks at the helm of the presidency, narratives like Deep Impact (Morgan Freeman, 1998), 24 (Dennis Haysbert, 2001-2008), The Man (James Earl Jones, 1972), Head of State (Chris Rock, 2003), Rufus Jones for President (Sammy Davis Jr., 1933).

The question then would be what is this 21st century mentality? Well in part it seems a majority of the electorate is interested in smarter leaders who can empathize with their challenges and struggles. Furthermore, the folks in the trenches seem to be much more analytical about the options. This means that the voting population is willing to go beyond the sloganism and character assassination tactics that usually sway those who step in to the poll booths.

In fairness, the cult of personality may have a lot to do with the surge in voting interest. Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan commanded similar reactions from the population, though perhaps not on the cross-over scale we are witnessing in 2008. One can only hope that a shift in sensibility is at hand. Informed engagement is of course the democratic ideal.

8. An Episodic Reading

2008-10-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

The promise of authenticity: Poncie Ponce, Tourists and Tiki in "Maybe Menehunes"

Symbols, Myth & TV in Hawaii

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

2008-10-10T20:52:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

Symbols, Myth & TV in Hawaii

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

2008-10-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

Larry Manetti, Roger Mosley and Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I.

Symbols, Myth & TV in Hawaii

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.

Fear, Inc. USA--state of the U.S. race for President

2008-10-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

After main stream media's conventional suggestion to Joe Biden not to skewer Sarah Palin during their one and only debate, and not to give the "impression" that he is kicking the woman in the teeth while she's down--for he might appear the bully--Palin has rebounded by becoming the unimpeachable Teflon hatchet woman for the McCain machine, delivering one darkly veiled innuendo after another. Is Barack Obama a potential terrorist; what's with his (middle) name? Who is this international man of mystery?

But is it too little too late? Or will the seamier side of politics prevail?

The problem with the mud-slinging tactic-as-strategy is that it's a predictable and old-hat kind of last hurrah. Perhaps if there were no other issues blowing in the wind, this one might take hold and bear fruit. But it seems the climate is too sober for the throw mud and see if it sticks campaign strategy. This move has all the feel of a last ditch act of dirty desperation. Quite frankly it comes off in a way that makes you feel sorry for stoic John McCain and his six gun sidekick. But can the Republican brain trust make it stick. I don't think so, tho it's dangerous, unpredictable, the product it would seem of an erratic sensibility. As if they are hoping to hit a nerve and spark a rebellion of common sense, and in that act demonstrate a rare kind of genius.

Meanwhile the smartest guys and gals on the street are being called to task in Congress for having played the global market (and American market, of course) like an amusement park where they didn't have to pay for any rides, or stand in any lines, and they still got to win all the stuffed animals. Finally a platform from which to showcase the often obscene compensation of CEOs for the smoke and mirror construction of a numerical house of cards. Case in point the now infamous $484 million compensation package since Y2K enjoyed by now defunct Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld. Given the collapse of Lehman Brothers stock, Fuld explained somewhat sheepishly that his compensation was actually only worth about $350 million.

Some of them of course are hiding like cockroaches, trembling in the corridors of the capital, claiming sudden illnesses and seeking again desperately to disappear, become invisible with their millions, cached no doubt in offshore accounts.

And in the lurch, with George W. Bush playing the little boy who finally got found out, gloom and doom engineers are hoping that the apparent multiple crises will bring about a miracle whereby McCain sheds his Darth Vader mantle and becomes the savior man-child in his midnight hour.

So my final rhetorical question is: will the culture of Fear prevail? My guess is no, not this time. Barack Obama seems to be able to draw the line and defend himself in compelling ways.

There seems to be a consensus building on the street that Obama is the U.S. collective's best shot at getting the culture out of the steaming muck it's wallowing in. We'll see in the next debate if McCain has the stomach for continuing the muckraking.

He risks losing more than an election should he embrace this last grasp approach. His very character as a politician and human being is at stake. The next twenty-something days, including tomorrow's second Presidential debate, could determine our ultimate reckoning of this man. Will he deliver the message of nefarious mystery and fear so often deployed in the racialized discourses of the past, or will he keep his cool and address the issues in a rational, pragmatic manner?

The future of rail in hawaii

2008-09-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

One thing is for sure, rail will have a vast impact on the hawaii landscape and future-scape if 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 our 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 for space and the benefits of endless detritus.

4. Discourse in the Pacific

2008-09-21T01:28:00.000-07:00

Jack Lord in Hawaii Five-0, 1968-1980, CBS.

Symbols, Myth & TV in Hawaii

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.

McCain and Obama responses to Wall Street Fiasco indicative of future?

2008-09-19T19:08:00.000-07:00

With the US soon to be another trillion dollars in debt because of the Wall Street financial bail out, the candidates for President are showing interesting colors. John McCain claimed earlier this week that the US has a fundamentally sound economy. Then he scapegoats the financial fiasco by saying he would fire the Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, a fellow Republicain. Barack Obama was more impressive in his response to the Federal Government buy out of Wall Street debt. Rather than trying to grandstand, he suggests its time to be productive, but defers announcing any specific plans, opting instead for outlining principles. It just seems to me that the Obama-Biden ticket has a more responsible and pragmatic approach. McCain-Palin almost seem desperate to impress--and in such a scenario you get an improbable shotgun effect. We see that in the unpredictability of Palin as well. The difference between Palin's think-tank crafted speeches early on and some of her more recent gaffs (i.e., "calling their ticket the Palin-McClain Administration") is striking. In a volatile world, McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden need to demonstrate between now and November 4 that they have the aptitude and humanity to make critical decisions for the most powerful country in the world, decisions that will impact the rest of time. In this global environment, you better be strong, and measured.

3. The Lesson of Corporeal Politics

2008-09-12T03:24:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

Above Photo #1: The Death of Captain Cook, Engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi and William Byrne, 1784. Based on the oil painting by John Webber.
Above Photo #2: Robert Conrad & Stella Stevens in Hawaiian Eye. Lopaka’s girlfriend refers to him as “Captain Cook”. ©1960 Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.

Symbols, Myth & TV in Hawaii

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.

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

2008-09-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

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

Symbols, Myth & TV in Hawaii

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

Chinatown

2008-08-30T19:14:00.000-07:00

it's saturday afternoon in honolulu. earlier we took the bs golf team down to the ala wai golf range and hit four buckets of balls. now we have scattered across honolulu. malielani went shopping at ala moana; kaili is taking pics with her pentax on punchbowl; k-boy is trying to get someone to play racquetball with him; and the rest of us are in chinatown setting up a new media project. It's kinda empty down here in Chinatown, but that's not going to stop us from scouring the streets for manapua and filipino mochi.

Black Sand World Championships Gallery

2008-08-30T03:39:00.000-07:00

2007 Black Sand World Championships at Waikiki Beach. Three weeks of World Class Competition at the Hale Koa Resort Hotel.

Black Sand World Championships

2008-08-30T00:53:00.000-07:00

The Black Sand Chronicles is where Black Sand Hawaii tracks ideas, designs and projects. We took over two years off from posting our blog. But as you know the BS never stops. In December 2007 we sponsored the Black Sand World (Racquetball) Championships in Waikiki. Black Sand raised $50K in prizes and awards and teamed with Natural Hawaiian Stores, Black Fly Sunglasses, Ektelon, SB Management, Rob Hoff Enterprises, Lee Sands Jewelry and the Hale Koa Resort to throw a killah party and world class outdoor racquetball tournament. Legendary pro Cliff Swain triumphed over Indoors World Champ Rocky Carson in the Singles Pro Finals; and Uber-legend Marty Hogan and local pro Scotty Bauman prevailed over Outdoor National Doubles Champs Rocky Carson & Rob Hoff in the Pro Doubles finals.

RESULTS for the 2007 Black Sand World Racquetball Championships in Waikiki

2008-08-26T16:12:00.000-07:00

Racquetball Legends Cliff Swain & 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

©2007-2008 Black Sand Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.