Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
I focus on this film because it is typical of the military's sustained interest in hula, but exceptional in its professional production value.
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
Furthermore, Luau produces a gendered regulation of Native bodies.
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
luau as a form of imperial hospitality between soldiers and islanders.
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
important to note this is seen as a positive encounter
Hula and Hawai‘i have become nearly synonymous in the global cultural imaginary,
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
Those who sought a more indelible Hawaiian souvenir could have a hula girl tattooed on their bodies.30
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
women are objects that can be “tattooed” on a body
I seek to reveal how the colonial relationship between the United States and Hawai‘i has been constituted and intensified by cultural displays of hula since the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom.
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
tourism and Hawai‘i's economic development.
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
Rather than being a colonial weapon or “seeing machine” that operates through visual supervision, the camera in military-occupied Hawai‘i presents a distinct form of imperial regulation: it did not merely discipline or surveil its subjects, but was deployed by the military as a regulatory instrument of peace.75
Adria L. Imada • Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
More so than any other cultural or ethnographic artifact, the gendered hula dancer—or as she is known more familiarly in Americana, the “hula girl”—has come to represent Hawai‘i.