Are we the last generation of Tiki? - General Tiki

E EnchantedTikiGoth Member Calgary, Canada Joined: Dec 31, 2003 Posts: 355	E EnchantedTikiGoth Posted posted on Fri, Oct 20, 2017 5:06 PM On 2017-10-20 08:44, AceExplorer wrote: I do struggle with "purist" thoughts at times, driven partly by tiki having originally aspiring to be escapism through imagery from far-away tropical places. On top of that, just because two things existed at the same time period, doesn't make me comfortable mixing the two. Maybe I should have been more precise. I didn't mean so much that they just happened to happen at the same time, but that they occupy a sort of contiguous cultural milieu. Tiki, Atomic Age Sci-Fi, Monster Kitsch, Spy-Fi, Lounge culture, Rockabilly, Pin-Ups... a lot of that stuff kind of blurs into the edges of each other. I wouldn't consider original Star Trek or, say, The Jetsons to be Tiki, of course, clearly, but both Atomic/Space Age Sci-Fi and futurism were responding to the same mid-century cultural drives as Tiki and resonate with a lot of the same people. It's not uncommon to see aliens, monsters and exotic locales merging in those old drive-in b-movies. There isn't a huge distance between Googie and Poly-Pop architecture at its core. Monster Kitsch in the mid-century was itself a chimera that blended into everything else popular at the time. The first "Tiki party" I ever held was a Halloween one where I showed Mad Monster Party :) Of course, it's easy for me to say all that, because I got into Tiki through Disney and I'm a big fan of "Fantasy Tiki" that includes mermaids, sea monsters, pirates (alive and not-exactly alive), Jules Verne, and stuff like that. Nevertheless, it is important to keep a purist heart at the centre of it too. The edges blur, but there needs to be a central reference point for what Tiki even is.

On 2017-10-20 08:44, AceExplorer wrote:
I do struggle with "purist" thoughts at times, driven partly by tiki having originally aspiring to be escapism through imagery from far-away tropical places. On top of that, just because two things existed at the same time period, doesn't make me comfortable mixing the two.

Maybe I should have been more precise. I didn't mean so much that they just happened to happen at the same time, but that they occupy a sort of contiguous cultural milieu. Tiki, Atomic Age Sci-Fi, Monster Kitsch, Spy-Fi, Lounge culture, Rockabilly, Pin-Ups... a lot of that stuff kind of blurs into the edges of each other. I wouldn't consider original Star Trek or, say, The Jetsons to be Tiki, of course, clearly, but both Atomic/Space Age Sci-Fi and futurism were responding to the same mid-century cultural drives as Tiki and resonate with a lot of the same people. It's not uncommon to see aliens, monsters and exotic locales merging in those old drive-in b-movies. There isn't a huge distance between Googie and Poly-Pop architecture at its core. Monster Kitsch in the mid-century was itself a chimera that blended into everything else popular at the time. The first "Tiki party" I ever held was a Halloween one where I showed Mad Monster Party :)

Of course, it's easy for me to say all that, because I got into Tiki through Disney and I'm a big fan of "Fantasy Tiki" that includes mermaids, sea monsters, pirates (alive and not-exactly alive), Jules Verne, and stuff like that. Nevertheless, it is important to keep a purist heart at the centre of it too. The edges blur, but there needs to be a central reference point for what Tiki even is.

Post #780758 by EnchantedTikiGoth on Fri, Oct 20, 2017 5:06 PM