Post #651563 by bigbrotiki on Mon, Sep 10, 2012 11:35 PM

And then there is this article:

http://weather.aol.com/2012/09/07/hawaii-turns-its-back-on-the-coconut-bra#page=1

I am glad that ancestral Hawaiians are striving for authenticity, and clarifying what's not, so that hopefully more and more people will understand that Tiki style is NOT meant to be authentic ancient or current Polynesia, yet has value as an art form in its own right. Native Hawaiians try to preserve the culture of their ancestors, and we are trying to preserve a part of the culture of our ancestors.

If anybody here on TC and in the Tiki Revival would believe that our genre represents authentic Hawaii and Polynesia, I would pity him or her. Our grandparents and parents might have in the 50s and 60s, but because they loved the culture - and so they were inspired by it to create some pretty amazing things.

And that's where it gets difficult to differentiate: We love authentic Polynesian culture and art too, and gladly ad it to our home hideaway - but that only makes it a more authentic Tiki bar, not a real native hut.

While I respect that true Polynesians need to define themselves through their culture, I see Western attempts at authenticity more philosophical: The wish and search for authenticity is an age-old one, the human desire to recreate a lost culture in the most authentic manner is a continuous conundrum: No matter how close we get, it is not "it".

The question of "What is Hawaiian - What is Polynesian?" lies at the heart of the fascination that mid-century America felt for these cultures: The writings of Thor Heyerdahl and James Michener popularized the anthropological research that described the migrations (and stemming from a common source), and later mingling of the individual cultures through inter-island outrigger travel before the white man even arrived. Much of this is not common knowledge anymore, but back in the mid-century it was part of the whole "edu-tainment" experience of the Tiki bar.