Description: Traces the complex and contradictory representations of Hawai'i in popular film and television programs from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Brief description: Jason Sperb teaches English at Oklahoma State University. His previous books include Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South; Flickers of Film: Nostalgia in the Time of Digital Cinema; and Blossoms and Blood: Postmodern Media Culture and the Films of Paul Thomas Anderson.
Review Quotes:
"The author mines rich archival materials and also builds on relevant scholarship ... A good resource for those interested in popular culture, tourism studies, and Pacific and Oceanian history as well as film studies." - CHOICE
"This is a scrupulously researched historical analysis of the representation of Hawai'i in popular cinema and media. Weaving a compelling narrative about Hawai'i's history as well as its function and transformations within the national imagination, Jason Sperb demonstrates how colonialism, national interest, and the culture and tourism industries have underwritten Hawaiian iconography and myth-and how these myths operate to superficially resolve and allegorize the thorny contradictions of modern Hawaiian history. A particular strength is the book's thoroughgoing attendance to class dynamics and labor history and their relation to the production of racial ideologies." - Nathan Holmes, author of Welcome to Fear City: Crime Film, Crisis, and the Urban Imagination