Post #776280 by AceExplorer on Thu, May 25, 2017 12:57 PM

So I just came back from a visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They have a section on Pacific Islander peoples and their art, and it was curated by Margaret Meade, so it's pretty good. No surprise that I found nothing which was even close to Polynesian pop-style tiki stuff except for a tiny and relatively new display case with two small kid-size aloha shirts on display. One of those shirts had President Obama's image on it. They were making some sort of point about modernized clothing and cultural sensitivity or insensitivity, or something like that. But clearly what is "tiki" is not anywhere close to the authentic stuff you find in places like the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, or what I just recently saw in New York.

"Tiki" is a recent development which is very loosely and very casually tied to reality.

But can we control "tiki" now that it's so pervasive in Walmart, Party City, and in today's pop culture? I think that's unlikely we may just need to suck it up and enjoy what we have, and stick to our standards. I think the de-evolution will continue regardless of what we do. Not sure how much more crappy it can get, but Party City is pretty much the bottom of the barrel. I think of their stuff as "clown tiki" because it's so colorful and ridiculously stylized.