Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 35, Number 10, 1 October 2018 — 'THE KING' [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

'THE KING'

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Theannouncementof ■ - an upcoming movie about Kamehameha I opens discussion on how Hawaiians should be portrayed in popular media. ■ Photo: Nelson Gaspar lnset, a watercolor portriat of King Kamehameha I titled "īammeamea." 1816-1817.- Zoy/s C/?o/*/s, Bishop Museum Archives

n the hands of scriptwriter Randall Wallaee, "Braveheart" reified a complex history and important personage into a pat symbol of rebellious upstart underdogs everywhere, a figure of myth greatly enamored and oft emulated in American nahonal history. For it is in the rebellion of the British colonists seeking to break their bonds with their maternal imperial homeland, Britain, that America the nation locates its origins. This typology of the "hero underdog" winning against all the odds shapes many a familiar narrative arc admittedly sustaining block-buster lilm

franchises from the Star Wars universe to "Avatar" and "Rocky." What kind of film treatment of Kamehameha will audiences get from Academy Award winning film director Robert Zemeckis, script writer Robert Wallaee, and Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, a part-Samoan film star raised in Hawai'i, part of the time? More of the same, I imagine, whieh is to say that in / asking questions about eul- / tural appropriation, and the / way "The King" will likely be produced for consumption we might ask about the sources that the team will draw upon for the basis of their film. It is highly unlikely that a Holly wood film about ! Kamehameha will be sourced prop1 \ / n m 1 l", r\ 1 1 1 l/n

erly without knowledgeable people helping to shape the project. Will they seek out experts from the Hawaiian community to discuss the project as it develops? How will the team interpret or understand the story of Kamehameha? Without those knowledgeable in history, culture and language, the answer is pretty obvious: in terms familiar to Americans. Indeed since "Braveheart" has become something of a "byword" for historical inaccuracy in Scotland, where the actual "Braveheart" William Wallaee hailed from, and among Hollywood films more generally, we should not hold high expectations for an accurate account of Kamehameha's life to emerge from the scriptwriter who penned that lilm, nor from the current team of I developers without guidance from knowledgeable individuals. As the movie is being produced primarily for a nonHawaiian, non-Hawai'i audience, the narrative will bend to the tastes and expectations, the stereotypical narrative models that convey an American story of Kamehameha set in Hawai'i. The clearest indication that this is true eame in the form of a tweet. According to the Rock, Kamehameha was "the first to unite the warring Hawaiian islands — fulfilling a prophecy that surrounded his fabled life since birth and creating

the powerful and spiritual 50th state as we know it today." For Johnson, the life of Kamehameha holds signilieanee because it is Kamehameha who has supplied the condition, unification, for the eventual emergence of and therefore, legitimation of the state of Hawai'i. Kamehameha also happens to be the "legacy" role he has wanted to "bring to life" since the "first day of his Hollywood career." Those of us who love to read, see movies, or play video games understand that there is a crisis not just of correct representation of Hawaiian people, history

and culture in these various media, but also that Hawaiians, and native people in general, are underrepresented in all these fields that make mass cultural production and consumption possible. The media that communicates who we were and are to eaeh other require our input. Now more than ever it seems critical that we consider why our mo'olelo matters to us, what function or role does it play in

making commumty and why we care so mueh if the Rock is Hawaiian or not. Who gets to tell mo'olelo and how do we know if the mo'olelo is accurate, are key questions that should get us thinking and engaging with one another again as a community. Mo'olelo and Kamehameha Kamehameha's life spanned a dizzying time of transformation, the young chief sailed on one of Captain James Cook's ships, disappearing for an evening over the horizon he was mourned by his people, He did not die then, but in 1819 just before the first group of American settlers arrived, missionaries from the ABCFM. The wars he fought benefitted greatly from the expertise of foreign and Hawaiian war counselors, from weapons, munitions and ships that aided muhiple sides in conflict, it was the first "modern" war fought on Hawaiian soil. And yet it was still deeply a eonflict between Hawaiian people, the first fallen in battle offered to akua in heiau, between battles ali'iwahine were sought out for their kapu to increase the mana of the lineages issuing from Kamehameha - for war was only one kind of way to acquire and secure the right to rule. It still seems astonishing today that the life of Kame-

hameha was so well documented in Hawaiian language sources. Samuel Manaiakalani Kamakau, the Hawaiian historian who enjoyed notoriety, and at times fierce criticism of his writings by contemporaries, wrote a lengthy serialized nūpepa series on Kamehameha's life between 1865 and 1871, the battles he fought and his just rule. In the twentieth century, Joseph M. Poepoe wrote again of the life of Kamehameha in articles appearing in 1905-1906. Stephen Desha, drawing upon some of Poepoe's writing, produced yet another lengthy account of Kekūhaupi'o and Kamehameha between 1920 and 1924. Appearing between these lengthy histories and among them were many more stories composed by Hawaiian writers and those trained to recount the stories and chants of the ali'i. Stories and songs of Kamehameha, and of the men and women supported his rise, include their genealogies and chants as well. In Hollywood's "The King," will the ali'iwahine and kaula who were key to the political, diplomatic and spiritual unfolding of his campaign be depicted, or will the entwined families of ali'i who made possible his rise play supporting roles, foils to the "great-man," the "one who walks alone" a caricature romantically etched upon the Rock's chiseled visage? Will we get to see Ha'alo'u the ali'iwahine, a kaula dispatched by Kamehameha to obtain key information about what to do to secure his rule? Will we see her chant her genealogy to Kapoukahi in Waikīkī, will he tell her about Pu'ukoholā? Or will the heiau be reduced to the site of Keouakū'ahu'ula's botched sacrifice? Will we hear the chants mourning his demise? Will we learn that the main threat to Kamehameha's rule was Ka'ahumanu? The reason of course for the kapu he placed on her body that no other chief could sleep with her? The cause was not jealousy but poliīieal necessity. Will the Rock's King have 'aikāne? Alas, for the intricacies of these intimacies one would need to seek out mo'olelo. My point is that we tell these stories to savor them and eaeh other, to teach and learn from them, to glean inspiration and ways of relating, loving and living together. Through mo'olelo we find examples of how we build and maintain the bonds of community, how they might easily be destroyed when left unattended. In the nineteenth century the published mo'olelo of ali'i, akua, 'aumakua and kupua, served to knit together a nascent Hawaiian national history, they gave eommon bond to people living on different islands in a modern nation state. Hawaiians published fervently, eager to engage in the new media of writing and print. But before that still, during the life of Kamehameha and long before, those who were trained aurally and orally to recite the words of the ali'i, their genealogies, the chants and songs associated with their sacred persons, were also approached with deference. Genealogists and reciters of history carried the cultural material of past precedent, of Hawaiian rule and

law. Some texts like mo'okū'auhau were sacred and { were treated as iwi (bones) that should not be shared i with just anyone, Mo'olelo was not dismissed by our | kūpuna as simply "fabled tales" from an irretrievable past - but as nodes of ancestral knowledge that when engaged, allowed Hawaiians to connect and consult with the past in ways that propelled us to move positively into the future, And as we make our movement now from writing and print into creating material in all manner of mediums - film, documentaries, poetry, theater, new genres of music, books, interactive art, mobile applications, virtual-reality, augmented reality, AI, video games - | the creativity is in us to fashion stories that keep us in I sync with our kūpuna. How do we develop our na'au (k)nowledge, so that as we move, our histories, gene- | alogies, songs, chants and prayers shape the way for us, move with us. The strongest way to resist cultural appropriation is to take up our mo'olelo again and share them in whatever medium suits us so the stories continue to move through generations providing us a strong backbone (iwikuamo'o), sacred connectivity between those who have passed and those yet to be born. It is clear then that the film version of Kamehameha's life may not participate in supplying community cohesion in this sense, certainly not in the multi-gen- ' erational way I just described. How could the people currently working on such a film conjure such words out of the story, so many stories that were meant to keep us together in the retelling? How will the words of Kamehameha, "E 'oni wale nō 'oukou i ku'u pono, 'a'ole i pau" resonate through the voice of Dwayne Johnson? Will they touch our nā'au now? If you have thoughts on the movie about Kamehameha you ean email me at onoeau@gmail.com. 'a'ole nō ho'i i a'o 'ia ka 'ike i mea e ho'ohelele'i wale aku ai me ka uku 'ole ia. 'o ka mea hana 'ia, e loa'a no iā ia ka uku. Samuel Manaiakalani Kamakau Ka Nupepa Kuokoa 13 April 1867 ■ Noelani Arista is anAssociate Professor ofHawaiian and American History at the University of Hawai'iMānoa in the Department of History. Her areas of * interest ineluāe Hawaiian religious. legal and intellectual history. Her currentprojectfurthers the persistence ofHawaiian historicaI knowledge and textual archives through muhiple digital mediums including gaming. Herforthcoming book the Kingdom and the Republic: Sovereign Hawai'i and the Early United States will be published by PENN press in December 201 8. She is the founder ofthefacebook group 365 Days ofAloha.