8. An Episodic Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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