The Reproduction of Tiki and the Hawaiian Original
Glossary
Tiki
A pop-culture ‘theme’ modelled after Polynesian aesthetics and environments. Tiki establishments typically serve American Cantonese food and Caribbean-influenced rum based cocktails.
Exoticism
“everything that is other, [or rather] to open oneself up to the strangeness of the other and to feel, among others, clothed in a disquieting strangeness.” (Adinolfi, Pinkus, 2008, viii). A fetishisation of the other, revelling in the diversity of the world, but often in a manner which ignores one’s own colonial, imperialist and/or racist social conditioning.
Clement Greenberg, Avant-Garde and Kitsch (1939)
Oh to be born on one of the south sea islas as a so-called savage, for once to
enjoy human existence as pure and untainted by a fake aftertaste
Goethe, 1828 (as quoted by Kirsten, 2000, p.31)
Tiki, as a facet of American pop culture, was borne of a longstanding Western fascination with “the exotic”. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, Western composers produced no fewer than four hundred operas whose libretti referred to characters, places and situations that can be considered exotic (Adinolfi, 2008 p.34). Picasso and Gauguin’s fascination with ‘primitive’ art as a kind of unrestrained pure expression, which challenged contemporary notions of fine art, represents a wider Orientalist fantasy of the avant garde (Lukas, 2016, p.67).
In the 20s and 30s, an appreciation of Polynesian aesthetics was primarily the realm of high society. The Hawaiian Islands became U.S territories in 1893, legitimising the notion of a paradisiacal, ‘primitive’ world that appeared close, and yet was sufficiently separated by the mainland to be infused with sensuality and mystery. An imagination of Hawaii could be suggested as a projection of the id of mainland America. An exoticised, fantastical perspective of Hawaiian culture came to act, as a critique of the west’s rigid social order; particularly with regard to sexuality. In its fantasy of the ‘noble-savage’, the products of polynesian cultures came to represent a purity unadulterated by bourgeois society “creating something valid solely on its own terms, in the way nature itself is valid” (Greenberg, p.6)
Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1986)
The appeal of primitivism to the avant garde as a ‘blank slate’, representing a kind of instinctive, unrestrained expression- becoming “original” in the terms of Krauss (1996), is problematised upon the entry of ‘primitive’ artefacts into a Western context, at which point they are de-contextualised and genericised into a themed type- Primitive, tribal, oriental, tiki etc. As I will detail later, the distance of the consumer from the source of these artefacts- both physically, and in terms of factual information; creates a fantastical imagining which is bolstered by imperialist imaginings of other cultures as unevolved. Despite the imaginings of the avant garde that primitive art might represent totally unprecedented newness- “an indisputable zero-ground beyond which there is no further model, or referent, or text” (Krauss, 1996, p.9), it immediately becomes codified into a Western framework of meaning, understanding and presumption. As I will discuss later, tiki aficionados were more than happy to reappropriate, reproduce, and invent Polynesian artefacts and objects for utility in an American context. In 1928, anthropologist Margaret Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, a study of the uninhibited relationships between adolescents in a ‘primitive’ society. The book was reprinted in 1955 and 1961, and it became a classic of the tiki generation. The book had a huge impact, bringing anthropology into the realm of mass culture. Mead contributed to a general acceptance of the idea that all “primitive societies” behaved in a similar manner, and that unlike ‘modern’ Americans, “savages” did not sublimate their urges. In fact, they acted them out promiscuously under the benevolent aegis of the tiki (Adinolfi, 2008, p.3). Polynesian culture entered a vast family of symbols and rituals debased and annihilated by Westerners, appropriated to ‘legitimise’ a ‘subconscious’ desire of the Evolved Man.
Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity (1987)
After World War II, an appreciation of ‘primitive’ aesthetics began to appeal to the newly affluent middle classes. A primitive escapism, bolstered by tiki, symbolised a whimsy and playfulness. Tiki, in Adorno’s terms, acted as a “parody of catharsis” (As quoted by Calinescu, 1987, p.241). In 1962, an estimated 200 tiki bars operated in the U.S (Carroll, Wheaton, 2018, p.10), to say nothing of the popularity of backyard Luaus. Kirsten (2000) postulates that these events provided an outlet for “the man in the grey flannel suit to regress to a rule-free primitive naivety” (39), providing an opportunity for escapism in an otherwise conservative society. Tiki bars often required traversing a bridge over a stream, symbolising a threshold to an alternative reality; upon entry to which, the senses were confronted with flaming tiki torches and the gurgle or interior waterfalls (Kirsten, 2000, p.60). Potent cocktails and immersive decor worked together to dissolve concerns about authenticity, allowing the consumer to revel in the hyper-reality of tiki escapism. The rise of the Polynesian escapist fantasy in the 50s was also informed by returning servicemen, many of whom had been stationed in Hawaii during WWII and the Korean war, where they had been largely received warmly as “saviours from the despised Japanese” (Kirsten, 2000, p.126). This nostalgia necessitated a conscious or unconscious repression of the violence of war, producing a collective estrangement from the reality of conflict (Adinolfi, 2008, p.64), reinforcing Adorno’s suggestion that middle class kitsch hedonism produces an “idyll of history”, unhampered by critical sense, rendering it superficial and universal (as quoted by Calinescu, 1987, p. 244)
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)
The American iteration of ‘Polynesian Pop’ (Kirsten, 2000) is more commonly referred to as ‘Tiki’. Tiki, in an American context, refers to carved wooden ‘native’ idols. Many Polynesian cultures have unrelated traditions of idol carving (the Easter Island Moai, for example), however under the category of ‘Tiki’- a term which does not exist in the Hawaiian language (Kirsten, 2000, p.42), these disparate traditions are unified into one signifier. The Tiki becomes an ersatz, priapic monument to exoticism; reproduced and re-interpreted by American artists who blend different cultural styles with cartoonish inflection and add a dash of modern art. The majority of the few tiki idols that could be considered ‘authentic’ are reproductions of ‘originals’ that survived the cultural destruction of Polynesia by Christian missionaries. This account from 1825 describes the liberal attitude towards counterfeiting/ reproducing items of ‘tradition’ (Benjamin, 1935), as it originated in the Hawaiian islands:
The officers of the HBM ship Blonde, when here, were anxious to procure some of the ancient idols, to carry home as curios. The demand soon exhausted the stock at hand: to supply the deficiency the Hawaiians made idols, and smoked them, to impart to them an appearance of antiquity, and actually succeeded in the deception.
(W.S.W. Ruschenberger, Extracts from the Journal of an American Naval Officer, 1841, As quoted by Kirsten, 2000, p.42)
The products of this counterfeiting process came to, at least in part, define the “authentic” component of Tiki culture. As I will expand on later, Tiki is fundamentally a practice of reproduction, re-iteration and re-interpretation which squarely originates on American soil; and is informed by American socio-economics. American Tiki functions in order to create an experience of imaginative immersion, and concerns itself little with questions of provenance or ‘realness’.
Are the mechanically aged Hawaiian reproductions of Tiki figurines; masquerading authenticity through provenance and feigned “close[ness] to the aesthetic movement” (Krauss, 1986, p.6) more legitimate than the work of Milan Guanko (Fig.2)?
Guanko blended Polynesian aesthetics with American commercial appetites, citing “kiddie cartoons” (quoted by Kirsten, 2000, p.249) as an influence. He created hundreds of tiki sculptures from the 30’s onwards. Does Guanko’s work have the “originary naiveté” (Krauss, 1986, p.6), which in the avante-garde tradition, is situated in the self? Or is any notion of originality undermined by the spectre of the ‘true originals’, which in the case of Guanko’s Tiki idols, might be imagined as situated in Polynesia- however ‘real’ these originals might prove to be?
Alice Sherwood, Authenticity (2023)
Tiki, at first encounter, might seem to epitomise a kitschy disregard for authenticity. Even Donald Trump decried tiki as “tacky”, as he evicted the Tiki bar Trader Vic’s from his Plaza Hotel in New York in the 1980s (Carroll, Wheaton, 2018, p.3). Taken as a reproduction of Polynesian cultures, Tiki is unquestionably inauthentic; relying on prejudice, generalisation and exoticisation. Despite this, Tiki exists as a recognisable cultural form. Kitsch is also deeply unironic and self-serious (Greenberg, 1939). How can tiki be at once, self-consciously inauthentic, while identifiable as category?
There is widespread agreement, both now and historically, that there were no bars or restaurants in the South Seas upon which the first American tiki bars were modelled (Carroll, Wheaton, 2018, p17). Victor Bergeron and Donn Beach, who are credited with inventing American tiki, assembled the form from objects that were ready-at-hand, based on their imaginations of exotic locations. Tiki, in its original and current iterations, has little nominal authenticity (Carroll, Wheaton, 2018, p17), serving an escapist function for Americans with little respect for the islander’s cultures. In order to be identifiable as a category, tiki must have some standard upon which it is measured in the mind of the consumer (Carroll, Wheaton, 2018). The standard of authenticity upon which a Tiki bar is assessed is based upon a set of signifiers constructed in California in the 1930s. The cultural type of tiki is a reputation, or brand which though informed and inspired by imperialist imaginings of Polynesian cultures, is constructed through incarnation and iterations far removed from the actual territories of Polynesia. Tiki, in the American consciousness, has come to be associated closely with Hawaii; a pairing which has attracted understandable criticisms of imperialism and cultural appropriation. In reaction to this, when rock legend Todd Rundgren opened his own tiki bar in Hawaii he stated that he intended to “remain mindful of a more historically authentic representation of Hawaiian culture.” (As quoted by Carroll, Wheaton, 2018, p17). This assertion, while seeking to undermine the damaging exoticisation inherent in tiki, reinforces its nominal authenticity. American tiki does not have a definitive origin (outside of America) that can be determined in a black and white way. In the words of Warhol, as quoted by Sherwood (2023, p.194), “Repetition is Reputation”. Through each iteration, reproducing the tropes of the prior, Tiki becomes legitimised as a form in its own right, independent of a referent outside of itself.
The Reproduction of Tiki and the Hawaiian Original
I won a competition in a little column in my local paper
So I packed my bags and flew across the sea all on my local paper Sailing to Hawaii in the U.S.A
I'm just an English boy who won a holiday in Waikiki
I didn't realize it was commercialized when I unpacked my cases Because a genuine Hawaii ukulele cost me thirty guineas
And even when I'm swimming I have to pay
I'm just an English boy who won a holiday in Waikiki
Across the coral sands I saw a hula hula dancer, looking pretty I asked her where she came from and she said to me
"I come from New York City
And my mother is Italian
And my dad's a Greek"
I'm just an English boy who won a holiday in Waikiki
It's a hooka hooka on the shiny briny on the way to Kona And in a little shack they had a little sign that said Coca Cola
And even all the grass skirts were PVC
I'm just an English boy who won a holiday in Waikiki
Holiday in Waikiki (1964)- The Kinks
Tiki exists in modern memory as a far-off, anomalous cultural quirk. We might cringe upon recollection; a poorly aged distasteful phenomenon, characterized by colonial and orientalist tendencies. In this essay I will describe Tiki’s emergence as a fantastical, American haute monde fad, which went on to shape the reality of Hawaii as a U.S State.
In 1931 Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt washed up in Southern California. He had spent the majority of the US prohibition era as a rum runner (allegedly) in Jamaica, Papua New Guinea and Tahiti. A charismatic dandy with a keen eye for opportunity, he spent the remainder of the Great Depression working odd jobs around Hollywood, through which he charmed and befriended celebrities such as David Niven and Marlene Dietrich (Curtis, 2006).
Once prohibition ended, high proof alcohol was in demand. Gantt recognised a gap in the market and established a small bar at McCadden place in Hollywood, decorated with
souvenirs from his travels in the south seas. Gantt used rum- the cheapest spirit, in combination with fantastical storytelling skills to create an immersive world within his new establishment- Don the Beachcomber. Gantt would join his clientele at the bar, and experiment with creating new drinks- his "rhum rhapsodies” (Carroll, Wheaton, 2018, p.7)- for customers to sample. He identified so strongly with the Beachcomber persona that he legally changed his name to Donn Beach (Kirsten, 2000, p69). Perhaps drawing on his experience working in film, Beach festooned the bar with exotic materials: bamboo and imported woods were used as wall cladding; tropical plants, fresh flower leis, bananas and coconuts hung from the ceiling; while oceanic artifacts spoke of far-off civilisations. The bar was created as an entirely immersive experience, a tropical island nestled in a metropolis. An intermittent rain-on-the-roof effect (created through the use of a water hose, angled just-so on the rooftop), gave the impression of shelter from a tropical downpour. (Kirsten, 2000, p71) Always the businessman, Beach had inferred that customers tended to stay for another drink if they thought it was raining outside. Soothing, exotic music and potent libations lulled patrons into relaxation and reverie. Hawaii was a popular destination for wealthy Americans after its establishment as a U.S territory, and Hawaiian music had become something of a fad. Several south-seas themed nightclubs opened in California in the 20s and 30s, but they generally demanded black-tie dress (Carrol, Wheaton, 2018, p.5). The Beachcomber distinguished itself by its atmospheric informality. The atmosphere-hungry Hollywood celebrities immediately took to Beach’s establishment.
Per prohibition laws, Beach’s bar had to serve food alongside the alcoholic beverages. In-keeping with other “tropical” themed establishments of the epoch, American Cantonese food was de rigueur. Beach is widely agreed by tiki historians to be the progenitor of the genre. We begin to see tiki’s exoticising, blurred provenance of flotsam and jetsam from its very first iteration on American soil: Caribbean inflected rum drinks with pineapple and coconut, American cantonese food, and Polynesian decor.
When WWII broke out, Beach was commissioned to fight, leaving his ex-wife Cora Irene Sund to operate the business (Curtis, 2006). She shared her ex-husband’s penchant for business, and Beach returned home to discover that Don the Beachcomber had been expanded into a chain, with a series of restaurants around the nation. In 1948 he used the success of the chain to move to Hawaii, and in 1948 he opened a Don the Beachcomber in an up-and coming tourist resort called Waikiki Beach (Curtis, 2006). This new Beachcomber was unaffiliated with the mainland chain, which was now owned by Sund. The restaurant was an instant landmark, expanding on the concept that Beach had established in his initial ventures in mainland America. A faux-Polynesian meeting house, with palms, thatch and a shingled roof (Complete with Don’s hosepipe rainfall), and a trained bird which exclaimed “Give me a beer, stupid!” (Curtis, 2006). The restaurant, as an American export to Hawaii, epitomised American expectations of the nation, rather than representing anything that existed in Hawaii prior to the restaurant’s establishment.
Victor Jules Bergeron was the next major character in Tiki’s development. Like Beach, he was a savvy businessman, and upon visiting a Don the Beachcomber he decided to convert his own watering hole- Hinky Dink’s, into a Tiki themed paradise. Trader Vic’s was born in 1937. (Curtis, 2006) An unscrupulous businessman, who in his wife’s words was “always making a trade with someone” (Kirsten, 2000, 84), Bergeron had no qualms with recasting his missing leg- lost to a childhood bout of tuberculosis- into a casualty from a shark attack, as part of the fantastical creation of his new persona. Trader Vic’s rapidly expanded into a chain of popular restaurants.
Bergeron was an epicurean who elevated Tiki’s south seas inspired “Chow and Grog” (Bergeron, as quoted by Kirsten, 2000, 81) into a delicacy. He was approached to act as the food consultant for United Airlines and the hotels of the Matson Steamship line, who were the main tourist transporters from America to Hawaii, which had become America’s post-war destination of choice. (Kirsten, 2000, p.91)
When asked directly in interviews, Bergeron referred to his cuisine as “American-created” and readily admitted he adapted the tastes to fit American palates (Carrol, Wheaton, 2018, p.8). Trader Vic’s made little claim to polynesian authenticity. Bergeron is quoted as saying:
In 1994 I went to Tahiti for the first time and I hated the goddamn place! Here all these years I’ve been promoting South Seas cuisine and products, and I go there and see it for myself, and it rains all the time and the girls have bad teeth and the food is crummy and I can’t wait to leave. It’s the pits. It’s a boil on the ass of creation, that place. I’ll tell ya!
(As quoted by Adinolfi, Pinkus, 2008, viii)
The fact that a Trader Vic’s was opened in Hawaii, having originated in California- the same way that Don the Beachcomber had preceded is curious, and supports Kirsten’s (2000) claim that Tiki is a facet of American pop culture which was imported to Hawaii to fulfill the expectations of the tourists (p.91). Harry Yee, a Hawaiian bartender, describes that when American tourists returned to Hawaii after WWII (During which, international travel was prohibited, while tiki culture continued to grow), they would ask for a “Hawaiian drink”, of which Yee quickly discovered, Hawaii had none (As quoted by Carroll, 1998). Yee recounts that tourists were disappointed by the drinks on offer in Hawaii, finding them not to be “exotic enough”; while Hawaii’s one, true drink- okolehao- was too strong for tourists (Carroll, 1998). Yee was influential in the creation of many famous Tiki drinks, inventing icons such as the Blue Hawaii in order to meet the expectations of American visitors. Invented fiction was preferable to fact when it came to an experience of paradise.
In the BBC’s Air Conditioned Eden (1996) Dr Haunani-Kay Trask recounts the enormous (30%) increase in tourism to Hawaii after its incorporation as an American state in 1959 (17:17). Hawaii, as an economically unstable nation devastated by imperialism, was almost entirely reliant on tourism, while simultaneously attempting to its own national identity. The Hawaiian people’s expectation and impression of their own nation came to be shaped by the tiki projections of Hawaii by mainland Americans.
Tiki’s impact on Hawaii has been criticised. Through associating Hawaiian culture and identity with tiki’s perceived kitschiness, sovereignty struggles in Hawaii are undermined (Lukas, 2016, p. 68)
Because of tiki’s function as an experience of exoticised escapism for Americans, the authentic object of Hawaii needed to be transformed in order to meet perceptions. Martin Denny, the “father of exotica” who performed at Waikiki’s Don the Beachcomber for nine years straight said of tiki:
Americans couldn’t care less about the religious origins of the tiki. They welcomed it as just another novelty, and I don’t believe they wanted to demean the culture that generated it.
(As quoted by Adinolfi, 2008, p.2)
Tiki in the U.S declined in the 70s. This has been attributed to tropical associations with the Vietnam war, and the generational split of the 60s- the rise of rock, marajuana and free love made tiki seem milquetoast (Kirsten, 2000, p.47). Despite this decline on the American mainland, tiki continues to persevere on the Hawaiian islands. Tiki architecture, bars, cuisine and music abound, having shaped and influenced Hawaiian culture irreparably. Tiki originated as a fantastical, kitschy escapist experience of Polynesian inflection but American provenance. The imperialism that informs Tiki’s creation is reproduced in Tiki’s expansion into the “Original” territory of Hawaii, which it seems to model.
Bibliography
Adinolfi, Francesco, and Karen Pinkus. Mondo Exotica Sounds, Visions, Obsessions
of the Cocktail Generation. Duke University Press, 2008.
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Schocken
Books, 1935.
Carroll, Glenn R., and Dennis Ray Wheaton. “Donn, Vic and Tiki Bar Authenticity.”
Consumption Markets & Culture, vol. 22, no. 2, 27 Apr. 2018, pp. 157–182,
https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2018.1457528. Accessed 31 Mar. 2025. Curtis, Wayne. “The Cult of Tiki.” AMERICAN HERITAGE, 2006,
www.americanheritage.com/cult-tiki. Accessed 1 Apr. 2025.
Greenberg, Clement. Art and Culture. Beacon Press, 1 June 1971.
Kirsten, Sven A. The Book of Tiki. Taschen, 2000.
Krauss, Rosalind E. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths.
Cambridge, Ma., Mit Press, 1986.
Lukas , Scott A. “The Cultures of Tiki.” A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces.
ETC, 2016. Carnegie Mellon University.
Matei Calinescu. Five Faces of Modernity. Durham, Duke Univ. Press, 1987. Sherwood, Alice. Authenticity. Mudlark, 2 Mar. 2023.
The Kinks. Holiday in Waikiki. Shel Talmy, 1966.
Image Bibliography
(Fig.1) Picasso’s Marquesan Tiki, acquired in 1911
https://www.oviry.fr/le-tiki-de-picasso/
(Fig.2) Milan Guanko with Imitation Moai https://www.tikiwithray.com/sven-kirsten-man-wrote-book-tiki/milan-guanko-moai-cop y/