by Nicole Currier

Abstract:

During the period between 1927 and 1959, Hawai'i-themed films were a staple of Hollywood motion picture production. At a time when the Hawaiian tourist industry was still in its infancy, these films were perhaps the major vehicle through which Americans living on the mainland came to "know" native Hawaiians. However, the film images upon which their perceptions were based actually reveal more about the needs and desires of Euroamericans than they do about native Hawaiians.
"Imperialist Images" situates the films within a period in which the United States' professed democratic ideals were sharply contradicted by native Hawaiians' status as a colonized people. Ultimately, it was images of native Hawaiians which served to bridge the gap between the United States' democratic rhetoric and its imperialist actions. By portraying native Hawaiians in a manner that suggested that they were incapable (or undesiring) of caring for themselves, Americans rationalized the contradiction, imagining themselves to be the islanders' protector. This essay identifies the specific images used to justify the native Hawaiians' disempowerment, and analyzes the manner in which they were adopted, as well as popularized, by Hollywood films.
Currier's project is based on a close reading of approximately 30 Hollywood motion pictures, many of them obscure films purchased from private collectors. In addition, she draws on a wide range of secondary sources, particularly works on Hawaiian history and Hawaiian culture. Her project is, in part, an attempt to address what Amy Kaplan, in her book Cultures of U.S. Imperialism, refers to as "the absence of empire from the study of American culture; and the absence of the United States from the postcolonial study of imperialism."