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Imagining Hawaii through Popular Music: Sheet Music’s Construction of the Hula Girl Image
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Imagining Hawaii through Popular Music: Sheet Music’s Construction of the Hula Girl Image
Abstract:
Entertainment has been a powerful source of knowledge about Hawaii, beginning with its annexation in 1898. Hawaii was also a useful backdrop for songs, films, and even television, making it appealing for the entertainment industry’s use. The hula girl was a popular image invoked in various categories of entertainment, reminding the audience of a lost primitive culture and offering an appealing sexualized fantasy. This image creation was deliberate.
One of the earliest efforts to popularize the hula girl came in sheet music distributed across the mainland. Through the music and lyrics of the songs, as well as the images on the covers, sheet music brought the hula girl to the attention of American audiences. Analyzing how the hula girl is constructed through sheet music demonstrates the efforts of the entertainment industry to fit Hawaii and its native population into broader American understandings. The image is the narrative by which the U.S. came to know Hawaii.
The hula girl became one way of speaking “in the name of Hawaiians,” to use communication scholar Rona Halualani’s term. Sheet music’s construction of the hula girl image acted to define who would count as Hawaiian. Analyzing what belonging to that identity entails demonstrates the implications of how the hula girl depicts the native Hawaiian. These articulations simultaneously make Hawaiian culture available to all and yet unappealing in many ways as a cultural identity. The hula girl’s sexualized and primitive nature makes her seem to demand civilizing and protection from the United States. Belonging under the terms created by the hula girl also creates difficulties in addressing historical and present problems facing native Hawaiians.
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| | Authors: Kimokeo-Goes, Una. |
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Imagining Hawaii through Popular Music: Sheet Music’s Construction of the Hula Girl Image
Abstract:
Entertainment has been a powerful source of knowledge about Hawaii, beginning with its
annexation in 1898. Hawaii was also a useful backdrop for songs, films, and even television,
making it appealing for the entertainment industry’s use. The hula girl was a popular image
invoked in various categories of entertainment, reminding the audience of a lost primitive culture
and offering an appealing sexualized fantasy. This image creation was deliberate.
One of the earliest efforts to popularize the hula girl came in sheet music distributed across the
mainland. Through the music and lyrics of the songs, as well as the images on the covers, sheet
music brought the hula girl to the attention of American audiences. Analyzing how the hula girl
is constructed through sheet music demonstrates the efforts of the entertainment industry to fit
Hawaii and its native population into broader American understandings. The image is the
narrative by which the U.S. came to know Hawaii.
The hula girl became one way of speaking “in the name of Hawaiians,” to use communication
scholar Rona Halualani’s term. Sheet music’s construction of the hula girl image acted to define
who would count as Hawaiian. Analyzing what belonging to that identity entails demonstrates
the implications of how the hula girl depicts the native Hawaiian. These articulations
simultaneously make Hawaiian culture available to all and yet unappealing in many ways as a
cultural identity. The hula girl’s sexualized and primitive nature makes her seem to demand
civilizing and protection from the United States. Belonging under the terms created by the hula
girl also creates difficulties in addressing historical and present problems facing native
Hawaiians.
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