Posted on: Friday, April 29, 2005
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HAWAIIAN STYLE
Local-style ways losing ground to 'Mainlandization'
Predictions of where Hawai'i is going paint a frightening picture: Population trends indicate we are becoming less "local."
Phrases like "inevitably becoming divorced from the conditions that shaped local culture," and "driven by an influx from the Mainland," graced one recent media report on the subject.
You hear "Mainlandization," "vanilla-zation" or "Starbuck-ization," of the Islands.
Already disappearing are the way we give directions: "Go two blocks north, turn east at Exit 54, and follow the H-1 to the West side." On the news: "Police say the accident happened north of Iroquois Point," or in "east-bound traffic just north of Kuhio Avenue."
"Go 'ewa, young man!" Even Horace Greeley would agree: It doesn't matter how you give directions if no one understands them.
So, what's up?
"Here in Hawai'i, there's always been an amenability, a willingness, to change, to accommodate (those from the outside) — a propensity to adapt," said University of Hawai'i language professor and cultural authority, Puakea Nogelmeier. "Hawai'i has always been receptive to outside influence."
But, with the increasing use of "Mainland-style" directions in everyday speech and media, Nogelmeier laments, there's a loss of understanding: "As we move increasingly to the Mainland system of directions, you're giving up a grounded logic, from the visual (toward the mountains, toward the sea, toward Diamond Head) to a kind of system that requires use of a map.
"It may be more broadly functional (across different groups of people)," he said, "but not deeply functional. It was a system well-suited to this place, and tailored through thousands of years of practice — and based on a great sense of the rational."
Newer propensity to use the cardinal points — north, south, east and west — "is an imposed system, a universalization ... so it's the same language everywhere. 'Two blocks mauka' has useability. It works. It has immediacy. (It's) easy to visualize. The universal works only in the abstract — you need a map."
But, he says, Hawai'i has always been willing to accept outside innovations.
This is visible in Hawai'i's changing music, fashion and technology, he said.
"In Kapi'olani's 1887 trip to England, she did nothing but visit institutions that served the people: schools for the blind, hospitals, fire houses, jails. She checked out the train.
"As Kalakaua and Kapi'olani each took their respective journeys, both collected innovation. Hawai'i was very innovative, progressive — the nation of Hawai'i had a Health Department before the nation of the United States and a flush toilet at the ('Iolani) palace before the White House," said Nogelmeier.
"Kalakaua had the telephone two years after its patent," said Nogelmeier, and electricity, before either was widespread on the Mainland. "There's a history of willingness to change.
"The difference here is that change (before) was usually locally driven. Now, one feels perhaps it is driven from the outside."
Veteran local newspaper and TV editor (and quintessential local boy) Mark Matsunaga sees the changes in the media: "Our dwindling use of proper Hawaiian geography reflects the changes in Hawai'i itself. We are far less distant from the rest of the world than the pre-satellite generation.
"And (we're) increasingly less tied to old Hawai'i. Most senior managers and policy leaders are newcomers from the Mainland. Sent by 'absentee corporate owners,' they are here temporarily. There's not much to compel them to learn or adapt — unless they're akamai," Matsunaga said.
"We're changing to accommodate the malihini."
