Post #4595 by bigbrotiki on Mon, Jul 29, 2002 2:45 PM

IF I would be an ill-thinker I would say this:

What Allen was thinking is this:

"Well now that I have to bail California and move to Hawaii because I have angered so many customers, how can I and ingratiate myself with my new neighbours...
And since other Tiki manufacturers have left me in the dust because I don't have it together business-wise, and since a lot of pro-Polynesian pop stuff has already been written without my input...:
I JUST DO A ONE EIGHTY, get all huffy about the kitsch, and thus get lots of attention and the sympathy of the Hawaiian traditionalists, and later appease the American Tiki customers I have left with a seperate piece that is not widely published in Hawaii! Yeah!
I can dance at both weddings!"

...BUT this would be assuming an intentionally manipulative mind, and I have always said that Allen is NOT a bad person. He is well meaning, but just a little confused, and so frustrated customers and these kind of writings are the result.

As a matter of fact, I know Allen has tried to bring together true Tiki mythology and Polynesian pop for a while in his texts, and I believe he has been genuinely conflicted about the impossibility to do that well.
And then he somehow snapped when he saw that Tiki head bobber!
I share his pain at seeing some of that bad cheapo Tiki crap that's out there, and I cringe when I read the misled attempts of bringing traditional Polynesian mythology together with FUN in such tomes as the "TIKI-a GO GO coco-nutty day planer". But that's pop culture!

The fact is that they are two seperate things. That is the whole point of my book. One is an extinct Islander religion, (which can never be revived the way it was, but must be recreated in a new form), the other is an American pop culture. Pop culture IS trivial by nature.

True knowledge never is affected by outer appearences. The secret protects itself. Even if it does so under the guise of a trivialized image of itself.