Hollywood's Hawaii

DELIA MALIA CAPAROSO KONZETT is an associate professor of English, cinema, and women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. She is the author of Ethnic Modernisms: Anzia Yezierska, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Rhys, and the Aesthetics of Dislocation.

• Acknowledgments  Introduction The American Empire in the South Pacific and Its Representation in Hollywood Cinema: 1898–Present1 The South Pacific and Hawaii on Screen: Territorial Expansion and Cinematic Colonialism2 World War II Hawaii: Orientalism and the American Century3 Postwar Hawaii and the Birth of the Military Industrial ComplexConclusion Hawaii in Contemporary Cinema and Television: The New Cultural Amnesia  NotesSelected BibliographyIndex

"This book covers an entire history of 'Hollywood Hawaii' and does it in a superlative, utterly inclusive manner-in a text that is clear, concise, and deeply informative. This is a model of accessible, yet reliable scholarship."- Wheeler Winston Dixon (author of Black and White Cinema: A Short History) "A marvelously comprehensive gaze at cinematic representations of Hawai`i, this insightful study shows how those fictions constitute and are constituted by US imperialism, Christian capitalism, and white nationalism. Moreover, the imagined South Pacific is not a distant, fleeting pleasure but an imminent, durable presence." - Gary Y. Okihiro (author of Island World: Hawai`i and the United States) "A useful example of the many ways war and society intersect." (H-Net) "The strength of Hollywood's Hawaii is its breadth. Through this widened scope, Konzett examines Hollywood's representations of Hawaiians and Asians and explores how, throughout film history, they have echoed and complicated Hollywood's long, troubled history of representing black bodies. From minstrelsy (blackface and yellowface) to plantation (cotton and tobacco to sugarcane and pineapple) melodramas, Asians, Polynesians, and African Americans have been marginalized throughout film history. Konzett's work gets us closer to understanding the complex interplay of these multiple, layered, and problematic representational histories-and opens the door for further, more in-depth analyses of these intersectional cinematic moments." (The Velvet Light Trap) "Konzett's insightful book is a highly recommended puzzle piece of the ongoing critique about race and representation in film." (The Journal of American Culture)