[/caption]Carol Forsloff - If you like George Clooney and solid entertainment, you’ll get it with “The Descendants.” But if you want a truly accurate portrayal of Hawaiian culture, you’ll have to take your own trip to the islands and see for yourself the difference between Hollywood’s portrayal of it and what the locals and a journalist of 28 years in Hawaii experience.
The film, “The Descendants,”was among the top contenders for Hollywood’s Academy Award for best picture and Clooney for best actor. It is described as an emotional and touching story of a family in Hawaii, dealing with death, adultery and relationships. Clooney emotes sufficiently and at the right times and has enough of a brown-eyed, bronze-skinned appearance to make folks think “hmmmmmm, maybe.” But the rest of his clan bears little resemblance to the rainbow one finds among families, rich and poor, old-timers and newcomers, in Hawaii.
Hawaii’s melting pot has its cracks, revealing the negatives of race and culture and the tendency of groups to continue to cluster together at times and in ways the more socially progressive might consider silly. On the other hand, the interaction in daily Hawaiian life, brings people of divergent customs and colors to mingle harmoniously and to place high value on the multi-cultural aspect of island living.
“The Descendants” portrays a Hawaiian aristocracy, family members descendant of old island royalty dating back to the mid-nineteenth century as virtually an all-white cluster of relatives, hanging on the “haole” ways, with Clooney giving voice to that in his overture to the clan when he decides what to do with the family legacy of land as its trustee. The voice-over narrative speaks of living apart from the Hawaiian ways and not partaking fully of the culture. Yet the film narrows that definition in its portrayal beyond the reality of practice in Hawaii. In other words, even the upper crust mingles more with other racial and cultural groups than the film portrays, and there is far more intermarriage, especially over generations, then is depicted by the sea of white faces that dominate not just the family of descendants but the folks shown in backgrounds throughout much of the film.
Gabby Pahanui’s music, which is a joy to mainland visitors and locals alike, is played generously in “The Descendants.” Hawaiian music with its slack key rhythms is also heard in an island scene at a local café. But it isn’t enough to tie together those errant messages that white folks live in luxurious predominance of life in most of Hawaii’s gardens when they are far more mixed economically and racially than the film describes.
The story of “The Descendants” with its theme of adultery and death, teenage rebellion and children’s defiance at parents’ edicts and ideas, allows viewers an inside peek into the Hollywood version of the realities of Hawaiian life that in many ways are as real as those attitudes and behaviors displayed by families everywhere in contemporary America. The old Asian and Hawaiian ways that include respect for elders and family bonds that seldom separate have disappeared in the islands every bit as much as they have on the mainland. The movie reveals the negative underbelly of family relationships, but still the colors faded white detracts from the real local scene that blends authentic Hawaiian browns with a multitude of hues that make Hawaii unique.
Whether it’s “The Descendants” or Hawaii Five-O” again, the Hollywood version of Hawaii that critics praise doesn’t measure up to the local standard of what life in Hawaii is ; and one must wonder how long the producers of this film spent with those who live day to day in a place far more unique, complex and culturally-diverse as America’s paradise.
