T
Joined: Nov 26, 2005
Posts: 5994
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T
On 2016-02-24 12:46, Jungle John wrote:
The Abandoned Tiki Hut
The haunting beauty of decaying abandoned places has always fascinated me. Now I can enjoy the wonderment of a moldering abandoned place right in my own backyard! That's right, the once illustrious Aloha Hut, home to the Refreshment Room's own Death-to-Captain-Cook Mai Tai, is now a bygone relic, slowly succumbing to the wilds of subtropical Florida.
Here's a snapshot of it this afternoon.
Nature slowly intrudes on the bridge.
Frozen in time, now home to only spiders and mosquitoes.
A lone sentinel to an abandoned outpost of racist-filled overtones.
Sorry guys, I still contend there is more than a hint of racism in this appropriated tiki culture. Celebrating the lack of sensitivity to the poor treatment of indigenous people hardly sets a party atmosphere. I regret being involved with it, and I am glad to watch it fade away.
The quaint charm of tiki/Polynesian/nautical fantasy style seems harmless and alluring when it is based on the fakey ephemera of the mid-20th century plastic tiki fad, but beneath that cheap souvenir veneer is a history of exploitation and abuse. The pre-fab tiki trinkets help sanitize and whitewash the ugly truths and harsh realities.
Check out a link about tiki racism:
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=lux
Check out Jim Crow caricatures of yore. Same racism, different subject.
http://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/picaninny/
I was bullied here on Tiki Central; initially, when I posted my early realization of the unsavory aspects of racist overtones in appropriated American tiki culture. Those right-wing sounding blowhards are still here. I don't care what they say any more. I have a feeling time will heal all wounds, and more than likely a big hurricane is going to come along and scrub my yard clean. Karma's gonna get everybody sooner or later.
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