:: tiki through a polynesian lens ::

The first talk that I attended at Thirst Boston was entitled "Tiki Through a Polynesian Lens" and sponsored by Patron Tequila. The seminar was delivered by West Coast bartender Sam Jimenez who has worked at Prizefighter, Interval at Long Now, and Striped Pig and is about to open Here's How in Oakland. Sam's heritage is half Samoan and half Mexican that he described as Akafasi meaning "half of one" (or half Samoan/Polynesian). He began with the premise that Tiki bars utilized symbols that he was familiar with, but they executed them differently that he was used to being brought up in the culture.

Sam ran through the history of Tiki to set up the genre. The timeline is better read elsewhere including in Beachbum Berry's books than I can do right now, so here are more of the salient aspects. Tiki began in California right after Prohibition. During this time, Hollywood blossomed and offered escapism and exoticism especially escapism from the harsh times during the Great Depression. People were willing to spend their money on escape but could only do so locally instead of through travel. Sam put up a quote from Sigmund Freud that read:

Life as we find it is too hard for us; it entails too much pain, too many disappointments, impossible tasks. We cannot do without palliative remedies. We cannot dispense with auxiliary constructions, as Theodor Fontane said. There are perhaps three of these means: powerful diversions of interest, which lead us to care little about our misery; substitutive gratification, which lessen it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensitive to it.

Sam continued that escapism is not inherently bad. These Polynesian restaurants became places of status especially with the amount of money sunk into decorating them. Many people could not afford to travel across the ocean during the Depression; moreover, people had a lot of interest in the area due to the media's influence whether through music or through Hollywood that set many movies in the late 1920s and early 1930s in the South Pacific. World War II added to the interest for soldiers coming back from the Pacific front wanted to return to innocence by experiencing familiar aspects without the cloud of combat lurking overhead.
With this exoticism came a focus on colorful and unusual traits considered characteristic of these foreign lands. When these traits were exaggerated, it became racist. Sam brought up the idea of "othering" which engenders marginality and persistent inequality based on group identity; here, self is anything that you identifiy as similar to yourself and everything else is other. Othering does not have to lead to racism just as exoticism does not have to lead to negativity, but these do occur through exaggeration and inaccuracy. Finally, Sam brought up that you cannot unlearn things such as when something is wrong. In terms of Tiki, most people doing the style have little experience in Polynesian culture, so the ideas do not trigger things internal to their development and culture.

Sam described that Oceania is a series of islands united by the sea that could be broken down into three regions: Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. Polynesia is the most familiar for it has the most United States military outposts and has a lot of lighter skinned people. These great seafaring people migrated from Taiwan throughout the South Pacific, and there is evidence that they made contact with South America and procured the sweet potato from there. In worshipping gods of the sea and nature, they carved statues of these gods out of wood; these sculptures would later become known as "Tiki." The American Tiki culture born in California in the 1930s was built more on Polynesian culture with some borrowing from Micronesian and Melanesian ones as well.

The history of Oceania cannot be discussed without mentioning the effects of colonialism. This falls under three aspects: economic exploitation, exploitation of defense, and colonization of education. For the first, agriculture such as sugar production in Hawaii was a major draw for continental countries to seek out the islands as a means of profit. For the second, many countries including France and the United States wanted to use the Pacific for military presence. For some, it was a first line of defense as well as an area to test out nuclear bombs to the detriment of those displaced or too close. For the third, when islanders learn American or European culture instead of their own, they lose sense of themselves and begin to view the island culture as "other." Children there are not taught about their own history or things that make them valuable.
A lot of the imagery of Tiki culture can be seen in Trader Vic and other restaurants' menus with the oversexualization of women, infantilism, savage behavior, and servitude to white people. This view can be traced back to the early 1700s when Captain James Cook's voyage brought them to the islands. They wrote about Hula as rather sexually liberating and promiscuous despite it not being so to the islanders. With Tiki mugs, there is othering of Hawaiian gods and people as well as the Chinese such as with the Fu Manchu mug. For some reason, we do not expect workers in Tiki bars to know what words and symbols mean; by contrast, Sam pointed out that we would expect a worker in a Spanish restaurant to understand the menu and be able to explain it.

Tiki is built on the back of Polynesian imagery, but the food and drink is from elsewhere. The food is a bastardization of American Chinese food, and the drink is rather Caribbean. In fact, Polynesia does not have a drinking culture, so creating a bar based on that would be a significant misrepresentation. For flavors, there is some overlap with coconut and banana, but those two elements are throughout the area. Furthermore, Tiki was created in a time when this behavior was accepted, but now we should ask if we can do better. Some bars do it well like Lost Lake that approach it as tropical instead of Tiki. They do not use mugs with exaggerated features, and there is no word or symbol appropriation. Sam continued that Tiki is more than escapism as it is build on false representation of real cultures. It can indeed be done without the cultural aspects; otherwise, Tiki comes across as a lazy means to a quick buck. Finally, creativity and design factors can lead to escapism without treading on others' cultures.