Why Hawaii?

My friend (and ex-colleague) Jason Sperb, introducing his extremely interesting next research foray, posted to coincide with Memorial Day.  This excerpt doesn’t do justice to the entire post, which I recommend you read (also, to watch the “Hawaii 5-0″ YouTube embed):

My next major project, which will take many years to complete, will be a study of US images of Hawaii in film and television from roughly 1935 to 1970. The particular emphasis will probably be the 1950s and 1960s, when the territory/state was at the height of its popularity in the mainland, but the roots of that popularity stretched back to before WWII. The white sugar plantation owners in Hawaii by the 1930s realized that that commodity wasn’t going to last, and thus made the conscious decision to rebrand Hawaii as a tourist destination. As early as 1935, Hawaii became a fad in the mainland US, with the popularity of Harry Owens music and Bing Crosby musicals (in particular, 1938’s Waikiki Wedding). By 1940, the interest had begun to wane, until the attack on Pearl Harbor, which added a whole other layer to the issue. While the US military had long built up a huge presence there, the attack focused mainstream America on the islands, much of which didn’t even know Hawaii was a US territory.

Before WWII, images of Hawaii largely depicted the islands as an ahistorical tropical utopia for the rich and famous (Hawaii was where Hollywood celebrities went to get away from Southern California, which is literally the subject of the 1939 Robert Young comedy, Honolulu). In a sense, that’s not unlike how Hawaii is represented today—think of a recent episode of ABC’s Modern Family or the Apatow comedy, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008).

But, for a couple decades, images of the islands seemed very locked in to a particular moment in American history. In particular, I’m interested in examining the reception of these film and television images through the lens of US military involvement in the Pacific, whiteness’ negotiation with notions of racial utopia, and the emergence of a new leisure middle-class.

Filed under: academia  Hawaii  Jason Sperb