Post #117473 by ikitnrev on Fri, Oct 1, 2004 10:20 AM

My guess is that few of us have tikis in their home because of the religous significance of the carvings. I hear few posts about any of us making offerings or sacrifices, except in a joking fashion.

I would argue that most of us are into tiki because of the pop culture/ retro urban archaeology aspect of it. In that sense, we may be more culturally conservative - because we are trying to conserve part of our pop-cultural heritage, a way of looking at life that existed more strongly 40 years ago. It is an appreciation for the era when Hawaii was being welcome into the U.S. as the 50th state, when Martin Denny instead of Britney Spears was on the top of the charts. Very few religous conservatives would argue that this is bad.

This attitude transfers to the resurgence of burlesque. It is a throwback to the more seductive style of striptease popular in the 50's, and a turning away from the more hard-core porn available today. Yet, even with its more innoncent teasing, there are many who will condemn the modern burlesque movement, just because nudity is involved.

My guess is that these people would be less worried about us, if they knew we were more into the scene because of the 'tiki design and drinking' side of it, rather than the 'false worship' side of things. They may still not approve of our drinking, but that sin is probably more acceptable to them, or at least more understandable, than worshipping false idols.

So, my suggestion is to highlight to those co-workers the retro nature of the tiki scene, and de-emphasise the pagan worhip side of it.

Vern