The Descendants Trailer: A Different Side of Hawaii

By Susan | Wednesday, June 1, 2011 | 9 Comments

Thanks for visiting 8Asians, a blog about Asian American issues. If you find this interesting, subscribe to the RSS feed, visit our Facebook Page or add us on Twitter!

I have never been one to be able to turn down a George Clooney movie. The veritable “silver fox” simply has to give his small come-hither smile before I (and many other women) flock to shell out $10 for a short two hours with him. So when someone sent me the trailer for his new movie, The Descendants, I was intrigued.

The trailer features Clooney as a father of two daughters, living in Hawaii. He goes to pick up his trouble-making daughter from “Hawaii Pacific Institute” before going around the island of Oahu to tell family and friends that his wife has fallen into a vegetative state due to a boating accident. Then, about 30 seconds from the end, his older daughter reveals that his wife has been cheating on him. Apparently tired of giving away plot points, the trailer ends with clips of Clooney running through the streets and punching teenagers.

After I first watched the clip, I had no idea why it was set in Hawaii. All of the people featured in the trailer are Caucasian, apart from a few people who just stand around to form the crowds. The drama that is set up seems like it could be set anywhere: a father, a cheating wife, a good daughter, and a bad daughter. Without any further context, this movie could have been filmed in the suburbs of any metropolitan city. I didn’t want to call it white-washed…but is it?

The truth is more complicated than a simple yes. The novel which this movie was based on was written by a Hawaii resident, Kaui Hart Hemmings. And the most telling line from the Amazon synopsis is:

Hemmings’ bittersweet debut novel, an expansion of her first published short story (“The Minor Wars,” from House of Thieves and originally published in Story Quarterly), stars besieged and wryly introspective attorney Matt King, the land-rich descendant of Hawaiian royalty and American missionaries and entrepreneurs.

Well then, that explains it. Clooney’s character is akin to some of the people who still populate Hawaii today. The modern economy here is based off of plantations which were owned by Americans. Those “missionaries and entrepreneurs” settled here, intermarried with the pre-existing Hawaiian royalty, and created many organizations which still exist today. Punahou, the school that Barack Obama attended? It was founded for the children of those original missionaries. The buildings there still feature names like Dillingham, Castle, and Cooke–all missionary or plantation-owning family names.

I wish that the trailer had alluded to Clooney’s character’s family history, but his character brings up new questions. Since the movie isn’t technically white-washed (those families I mentioned? Despite Hawaiian blood, they are phenotypically Caucasian), is this history really the one Hawaii wants featured? Many families are tied to those plantations in some way–my own father grew up in one, and my great-grandparents were brought over from Japan to work on them too. These plantations caused strife, racial hierarchies, tension–far from the happy, peaceful atmosphere that Hawaii’s tourism features.

While Clooney’s character does draw attention to the fact that there were these American missionaries/entrepreneurs, it also sets the tone that people still stand to profit from it. Amazon’s synopsis suggests that the main character must ultimately make the choice between keeping his blood money estate and selling it, but I’ll have to wait for the movie to come out before making a final call on how complete a picture it gives.

Categories:

EntertainmentMoviesObservations

NOTE: 8Asians.com is a community, and we thank you for being a part of it. While we welcome and appreciate differences in opinion, if you're rude or you're promoting spam, we have a right to edit or delete your comment. Read our comment policy for more information.

If you see a comment that violates the 8Asians.com comment policy, you may flag the comment by mousing over the comment and clicking "FLAG."

Facebook Comments (Beta)

http://asiansonyoutube.posterous.com/ AsiansOnYouTube

in hollywood’s version of hawaii… hawaii is 99% hauli
susan.hirai

@AsianOnYouTube

In the trailer, yeah, everyone shown is haole (or mostly so). The race of the main characters isn’t out of place, though. I wonder what the ethnic makeup of the crowds will be–that will be the most telling part.
mwei

@susan.hirai @AsianOnYouTube tangent commentary: according to some grumblings on the internet, in all those college comedies you never see Asian students in the background…
Annie11

A movie set in Hawaii that did a pretty good job of portraying its Asian/Pacific Islander residents was, ironically, “50 First Dates,” that Adam Sandler movie with Drew Barrymore (not that Sandler hasn’t worn down any of my good will with his subsequent movies that make a bunch of Asian jokes).

Anyone remember “Blue Crush”? Set in Hawaii, lead was a blonde, blue-eyed girl (but at least her buddies were Latina and Pacific Islander). “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”? Full of white people (and has a weirdly racist scene where the main character scoffs derisively towards a couple of Japanese tourists). I can’t even remember the name of it anymore, because it was canned after only one season, but there was a major network series a couple of years ago set in Hawaii that overtly asked that its extras not be Asian– because, the casting people claimed, white people are better suited to walk around wearing swimsuits on the beach than Asians.

This is not surprising at all. Movies written, produced and directed by white people overwhelmingly have to have white people as the center of everything and everyone, NO MATTER where they are demographics-wise. The TV series “Joan of Arcadia” was very, very white– in freaking Arcadia, CA. “Friends” was about a bunch of all white people– in NYC. Look, if “The Descendants” or “Friends” was set in rural North Dakota, it just makes sense that the people featured would be overwhelmingly white. A show like “Mad Men” featuring mostly white people also just makes sense– they don’t try to sugarcoat the very segregated world of their upper middle class characters. But in times and places like modern day Hawaii and NYC? COME ON.

I grew up in the South, and there were many times where I heard people make comments about places like California, or certain universities, along the lines of: “God, there’s so many Asians there” and “Why are there so many Asians.”

MOST NON-ASIAN AMERICANS ARE NOT THAT COMFORTABLE WITH SEEING A LOT OF ASIAN FACES. I don’t know if Hollywood is to blame, because they have to make money– and lots of white people are just completely turned off by images that don’t feature people who look like them. They just cannot relate. Maybe they get scared or confused by the sight of slanted eyes or something. Maybe they think too many pairs of slanted eyes means they are not in America anymore.
susan.hirai

@Annie11 I don’t disagree that movies written, produced and directed by Caucasians would likely feature stars of that same race. However, even though the many in modern day Hawaii are some type of APA, the white characters in “The Descendants” are historically accurate. There is a slit-second in the trailer of some APAs, so I’m hoping the movie features a diverse cast of extras even though the main characters are all white.

Also, to play devil’s advocate, where do we draw the line; do we ever say that Caucasians cannot be featured in movies because they aren’t some minority?
Annie11

@susan.hirai Hi Susan, thanks for your reply. I do have to say I chuckled at your comment about the “slit” second glimpse of Asians in the trailer, though– think you meant “split” “Slit” seems to put a different “slant” on the meaning of the comment. /ba dum bum.

In any case, I just think its better for demographic accuracy in films, whether audiences like it or not. If it’s a movie set in Hawaii about a white family– fine. Whatever– it’s even, as you said, historically accurate in some way. Just please don’t excise the background characters– people on the street, people at restaurants, people at schools–as somehow all being as lily-white as the main characters. If it’s a movie set in Sweden in the 1600s, there’s no need to put a bunch of non-white people in the movie– it wouldn’t make any factual sense. If it’s a TV show set in Arcadia, CA (which has a 45% Asian population) and there aren’t Asians even in the background, THAT doesn’t make any factual sense. Same with portraying race at universities in TV and the movies– a movie set at Brigham Young University? Doesn’t have to portray a very multi-ethnic student body. A movie set at UCLA (i.e., U C a Lot of Asians)? There better at least be a lot of Asian extras.

I’m sure this kind of media white-washing is what possessed Sarah Palin to go to Hawaii for her freshman year of college. Is anyone familiar with that trivial tidbit? In a biography, Sarah’s own father remarks that Sarah left after one semester at a Hawaiian university because she felt “uncomfortable” with all those Asians– in her father’s own words, she felt “uncomfortable.” Because, presumably, she didn’t realize just how non-white Hawaii was. Could you really blame her, when TV and the movies just love erasing ethnic faces in favor of blue-eyed ones?

I can only imagine how many white Midwesterners visit Southern California, supposedly land of the blue-eyed movie stars, and are gobsmacked by just how many black-haired, brown-skinned Latinos and Asians there really are walking around. Or when people visit Hawaii, land of more blonde surfer babes and beefcakes, and see just how Asian the majority population there actually is.

I went to a white friend’s Christmas party one year– about 60 white people, 1 black person, and me (Chinese American). The black person and me walked past a middle-aged white man who stared at us, and then loudly remarked to his buddy, “Wow, there’s a good mix of people here tonight.”

A lot of Americans are just like this. One or two drops of color in a sea of white is just the right “mix.” Any more than that, and you are apparently pushing limits. It doesn’t matter that their preferred “mix” is often times demographically absurd fantasy, which Hollywood promotes.
susan.hirai

@Annie11 Wow, that was a comment fail on my part. Yes, I meant “split”… -_-

I still don’t dispute that there should be appropriately represented diversity in movies that are supposed to take place in a certain place. I also think that media portrayals of communities may (and probably does) lead to skewed ideas of what one might find in such an area. I remember the TV show you mentioned in your first comment — the cast was, if I remember correctly, also all-Caucasian in addition to the extras on the beach.

I think the one point I wanted to make about this movie is that I want to see the aforementioned diversity, but I’m not going to make a judgment on the movie yet. I’m hoping that the extras are Asian, Caucasian, etc.–every ethnicity we have here. The main characters are Caucasian, but here’s to hoping that the family is placed with a realistic background.

As for your Christmas party anecdote–I was at first going to say that labeling something as “diverse” can depend on the people themselves and where the story takes place. I don’t know how much depends on media portrayal, but I don’t doubt that it has an effect.
Annie11

@susan.hirai I’m hoping that the movie places the family in a realistic background as well– we can’t judge entirely based on the trailer, that is definitely true. Since it’s directed by the smart and insightful Alexander Payne (who was married to the fabulous Korean-Canadian Sandra Oh for a number of years), I’m hoping it’ll be more accurate and sensitive to these issues than the average movie. But… it’s still Hollywood.

Re: the Christmas party– we live in a city in the South, where it is about 40% black. The fact that ONE black person, and ONE Asian person, at a party within a city with a 40% black population, would elicit a comment about the racial “mix” of partygoers, is just SAD. I’m so used to being the only Asian person in a room, or office, or classroom, among mostly white or black people, I never find it note-worthy how many non-Asians there are around me. (I will concede that some Asian Americans have the opposite problem if they’re from majority Asian American cities– the presence of a non-Asian person might be a little different and more noticeable to them.)

Another anecdote: as a teenager, a group of us were going over prom photos from a different public high school, in a different (comparatively more Asian-populated) city. In one of the pictures, there were a large number of happy, dressed-up prom attendees, about 8 white and 4 Asian. The first and only comment on that particular photo? An annoyed, confused-toned: “GOD, so many Asians there.” Four Asians! “So many”! I’m afraid what happened when that kid found out what the population of East Asia is. Did his brain explode? “GOD, soooo mannny Asians…..*BOOM*” Another time, me and two Asian friends decided to join a club at school. We walked in the room for a meeting, and about ten white kids stared back at us. You should have see their faces– it was a mixture of confusion, annoyance, even fear. “Oh no! Three Asians walked in!!! It’s going to turn into an Asssiiian club!”

The more minorities are portrayed as normal, everyday people on TV and the movies, the more our non-white presence will be normalized in every day, real interactions. If we’re only portrayed as comedic foils, or perpetual foreigners, or never portrayed at all where we demographically ARE, people will continue to have difficulty “understanding” and respecting our presence as their neighbors, fellow citizens, classmates, coworkers, etc.
Pingback: The Descendants Review: Justified Whitewashing? | Entertainment | 8Asians.com

8 Asians