Native Hawaiians are offended because Cameron Crowe’s new movie, Aloha, does not include anything about the historical or cultural significance of the word “aloha.”
“If you have a romantic comedy about the military in Hawaii . . . but a title that says ‘Aloha,’ I can only guess that they’ll bastardize the word,” Walter Ritte, a Native Hawaiian activist, told the Associated Press.
“They’re taking our sacred word . . . and they’re going to make a lot of money off of it.”
Ty Kawika Tengan, chair of the ethnic-studies department at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus, agreed:
“It gets so divorced from important indigenous Hawaiian context,” Tengan said.
“It’s romanticized, literally,” he added.
(According to the Associated Press, “Aloha is not just a greeting or a word to convey love” but “has other meanings, including compassion, mercy, grace.”)
#related#Others are upset that the proportion of white to nonwhite people in the movie’s cast does not accurately represent the proportion of white to nonwhite people in Hawaii.
To be fair, I’d imagine that the movie — in which a man (Bradley Cooper) relocates to Hawaii for his job in the military only to be faced with the difficult situation of having to decide between Rachel McAdams and Emma Stone — is in fact not an accurate representation of what life is like in Hawaii, and also probably not rich with historical information.
But here’s the thing: To my knowledge, most people generally do not turn to romantic comedies as historical or cultural resources. Personally, I do not turn to them at all.