Post #298764 by Bahookahuna on Thu, Apr 12, 2007 4:51 PM

Sven,

Thanks for the response. After hitting "Submit" on my comment last night, three things occurred to me: (1) I'd used "venerably" incorrectly (I'm a professional editor so this one kept me up late); (2) this topic has probably been covered in spades, both in these forums and elsewhere (I'm new to these forums!); and (3) "modern hypercommercialized sacrilege" isn't the best way of wording what I had in mind.

Regarding the word "modern," look at the decor at the new Mister Tiki's Mai Tai Lounge in San Diego. You find a very modern spin on tiki there -- their giant moai sports a neon nose-ring, the pufferfish lights are made of handblown glass and wear sunglasses...the place even includes some great Bosko stuff! So modern isn't what I meant by "modern." Instead what I had in mind is...let me see...soulless, corporate, or -- as you might put it -- forgetful of the ancestors (both the traditional stuff and its midcentury Poly pop interpretations; by the way, in my earlier comment I used the word "replicas" to include in the good categories all the recent Tiki Revival stuff that ISN'T forgetful of the ancestors).

Maybe the words "hypercommercialized sacrilege" are all right. The Poly-Asian tikis, for example -- to my own personal tastes -- "feel" commercial. That is, I imagine the commissioner of the pieces, and/or the artists, saying to themselves "Let's make some money" (in part dishonestly, it sounds like, by misrepresenting the statues' origins, both actual and stylistic), rather than the more pure "Let's make some money, but let's also generate some mystery, romance, adventure, nostalgia, and a potent and atmospheric sense of place." Commercial stuff -- I'm thinking, for another instance, of these new surfboard-shaped tikis, though I could be way off the mark by including those (anyone: feel free to correct me) -- would look at home in any equally corporate, soulless, and wannabe setting, like your beachtown neighborhood Friday's, perhaps. Commercial tikis are to noncommercial tikis as Jimmy Buffett is to exotica.

Yet lines get blurred, don't they? I notice that both Robertiki and Queen Kamehameha have purchased these guys, so that fifty years from now, during the next great Tiki Revival, the urban archeaologists of that day will unearth one of these things in some authentically-tiki-backyard-Bali-Hai known to have been erected by one of these respected tikiphiles made immortal on Tiki Central, and -- bam! -- today's Poly-Asian sacrilege will have become a genuine tiki-culture artifact to be prized and emulated by tiki purists wearing antenna space helmets and driving flying Mini Coopers.

[ Edited by: Bahookahuna 2007-04-12 16:53 ]

[ Edited by: Bahookahuna 2007-04-12 16:54 ]