Fear and Loathing at the PCC

Are you getting tired of these posts yet? Take heart. There's only one more day's worth left, two if I do an extra post on oddities.


In the comments section of an earlier post, Sooziii had remarked on the laughable bizarreness of juxtaposing a beautiful cemetery temple with a gift shop and having both just across the main drag from Micky D's. Never fear, my dear, I've seen worse! Witness the cultural travesty that is the Pantheon McDonald's in Rome:



That's right. You can enter the Pantheon McDonald's, shell out four or five Euros for a Royal burger, and gaze right across the Piazza de Whatever at one of mankind's most amazing architectural achievements. The only thing more impure might be a Wal-Mart right next to the Mausoleum of Augustus or Trajan's Column.

Yes, I've eaten there. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, I've also picnicked by the Mausoleum of Augustus.


Okay. Back to photos of the vacation which is rapidly receding in the rearview mirror, along with the feelings of wonder and relaxation it engendered. One of the places we visited was the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) in Laie.

The PCC is a fundraising endeavor of Brigham Young University - Hawaii. Most of the performers and other employees are students, earning their way through school by working as entertainers, pushing bloated tourists up and down down the faux canals in pole boats, and slinging hash. They hustle both literally and figuratively, hawking refreshments and running here and there balancing huge trays of stuff. One person we encountered, a pasty fellow with arms like toothpicks, said "I'm majoring in IT with a minor in boat pushing."

The PCC appears to present a view of history and culture which is distorted and sanitized. Some reviewers on Yelp have suggested that the Bishop Museum in Honolulu has a more accurate representation. However, because of the Mormon-based "editing", if you visit you won't have to worry about your sons glimpsing scantily clad females and having any of those pesky stirrings in their nether regions. If you have daughters, though, or your sons are gay … well, that's another matter. Evidently modesty rules aren't applied to males to quite the same extent.

I found the entire experience moving and thought provoking … just not quite the way the LDS had in mind.



Here we are in prefab paradise. Paradise has fake waterfalls fed by pumps and recirculated, algae-treated water. You've gotta go with it. American tourism is all about suspending credulity.



I'm not sure what this depicts or why I took it. That's how I know I'm on vacation, when my brain disengages from my hands and I start shooting meaningless pictures. Pump me full of espresso and get some muscle spasms going, and there's no telling what I might shoot.




The facility was organized into "villages" themed on different Polynesian islands: Samoa, Tonga, Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti, Aotearoa, the Marquesas.

Rapa Nui (Easter Island) was represented by these carvings. I've always kind of wanted a giant Easter Island head for my yard. It would make a great housing for an outdoor fridge. Maybe the ice dispenser could feed out through the nose?




This stack of coconuts is outside the Samoa compound. I don't know why it's there. Maybe coconuts are a sign of virility or religious fervor? Or maybe the coconuts fall down and they have to be put somewhere, so this is kind of like the jumble of junk in my garage?



Here, a guy from the Samoa compound is climbing a coconut tree. I would apologize and feel guilty for the indiscreet up-the-skirt shot, but I'm reasonably sure he has on Mormon underwear or shorts as well.



Have you ever wondered how people climb palm trees? The device on his feet may be a clue.




This man was the key performer in the Samoa area and a fire twirler at the evening performance. He was incredibly talented, funny, energetic, and hard-working. Many of the reviews I've read of the PCC mention this guy. I hope the LDS know they have a treasure and pay him accordingly, but somehow I doubt it.

He was working in the Samoa compound when we arrived at noon, and was one of the last performers in the evening show which ended around nine P.M.. The show runs six days a week. I don't know whether he works all six days or not, but even a part time schedule would be daunting. I hope he's at least getting to do what he wants.

His mode of dress was typical for the males at the PCC, although most sarongs were knee-length. Females were clad in a Victorian missionary version of Polynesian attire with nary a coconut bra to be seen.

Although I wasn't uncomfortable with the males' mode of dress, it did raise some issues for me. How much choice did the male performers have about their lot, about working shirtless and having strange women ogle them and grab at them to have photos taken? Were they okay with it, or did it feel uncomfortable? What were the students' economic circumstances? Did they have any other real, viable options to get through school other than attending BYU and working as performers at the PCC?

As always, I'm struck by own ignorance. I really have no idea of what life is like on many of the islands these days. Maybe things are just fine and dandy and the way of life depicted at the PCC, living in grass huts and hacking away of coconuts, has gone the way of the Brontosaurus. These days folks probably live in plywood huts and hack away at cans of Spam.

That raises another question, then: how does it feel to be a literate, intelligent person acting out rituals which are all but dead and gone? How would I feel if I was employed by the Redneck Cultural Center and had to speak in redneck patois and do an exhibit on butchering road kill 'possum three times a day?




The villages at the PCC offered many exciting, vaguely Polynesian-sounding demonstrations: spear throwing! Poi ball twirling! Fishing! Fire making! Other activities worthy of exclamation marks!

Here my men are trying to start a fire. Yeah. Good luck with that. I tried it and it was Darned Hard Work. My wood got hot and started smoking, but that was as far as it went. I notice the Samoans weren't too worried, weren't standing by with fire extinguishers or anything. It was nice of them to not laugh at all of the tourists straining away on the floor of the hut.



The Samoan village was awesome, but Tonga came in a close second. Tonga had spear throwing!

Put a spear in a man's hand and nothing else matters. Not nearsightedness, not endless years of being shackled to a computer until his skin becomes as transparent as a sea creature found deep within the Marianas Trench. Suddenly he is Man, elemental and dangerous.

"It was fun," my husband told me afterward, "Throwing spears is fun."

In contrast, Tahiti had a fishing demonstration. A beautiful young woman sat in a fishing hut, passing out little pieces of dough for pressing on one's fish hook. The dough would invariably panic and fly off the hooks the instant it sensed water. The woman was so hideously bored that she darned near strained her facial muscles forcing the rictus of a smile. (Is it possible to get a facial hernia?)

"Take heart," I wanted to tell her, "At least you're with the LDS. They let you work your way through school by capitalizing on your beauty, letting you pretend to conform to a cultural stereotype and, if you're talented enough, by dancing. If you were a Southern Baptist, you'd have to get a special Southern Baptist haircut and you wouldn't be allowed to move below the waist."





The Tongan guys were having a blast, though. I think of the non-Tongan guys in this picture and the one below as Shill #1 and Shill #2. You know, performers who pretend to not be performers and are planted in the audience.

I first encountered shills at that bastion of sea mammal degradation, Sea World. On that occasion a little girl "accidentally" fell in the tank with the giant sea monkeys (or was it the dolphins or killer whales?), much to the "terror" of her "family". "Oh my God! Look at that! She fell in the tank! Somebody help her before she's covered with whale crap!" Then, of course, she emerged proudly riding around on the creature's back. Dadgummed shill.

The shills at the Tongan village were just way too good at drumming and performing to not be shills. Here was part of the performance:

Tongan performer: "Say hello in Korean!"
Shill #1: "Hello, Korea!"
Tongan performer: "No, say hello in Korean!"
Shill #1: "Hello, Korea!"
Tongan performer: "Um. You're not getting it, are you? Sure you're not Japanese?"


Ha ha ha ha! There's nothing quite so funny as an ethic slur!




Here's Shill #2, supposedly a random guy from California, performing with the Tongan guy. He was awesome. Everybody was awesome, loud and enthusiastic. My kid hated it. There was an instant regression back to two years ago, with him covering his ears and freaking out. Oh, well. You can't win 'em all.

I think the coolest performers period were the Samoans and the Tongans. However, that could just be because we didn't see every last one of the performances. Some of the performances required going in a hut with fifty jillion other people, which I wasn't interested in on an eighty plus degree day. I also steered clear of the mission huts, from which creepy white guys scowled out at the world. I'm guessing they were there in case anybody felt an on-the-spot urge to join the LDS, which we did not.



Um. LDS? Yeah. We have a problem here. I know that folks have delicate sensibilities and all, but how is this creature supposed to reproduce without any privates?

The afternoon was capped off with a luau. After all, what's going to Faux Polynesia World without going to a Faux Hawaiian Luau, one where a family's tickets cost more than the staff get paid in a week and the staff have to smile and make nice like life is fair? Nothing, that's what! Yeah, we did the luau thing. There was a dead pig and there were interesting purple taro rolls and some nasty taro. I didn't take photos. I'd always wanted to go to a luau and try luau food. Now we don't ever have to do it again!

Gosh, this entry is dragging on. You know what it reminds me of? An eleven-year-old redneck boy describing an action movie. Instead of briefly describing the plot, "a nerdy teenager is bit by a spider and finds he has superpowers," the boy will describe the movie in tedious detail, scene after scene. "So Peter is this guy and he makes this drawing of this really cool costume then he's in a cage with this bad guy wearing a mask. The bad guy starts punching him …"

Maybe my problem is that I can't figure out the plot. I should ask my husband if he knows what it is. Back to the movie.

We had some time to kill between the luau and the evening show, and our son was dangerously restless. My husband thus proposed taking the Free Tram Ride into Laie, which was - surprise! - a means of getting people to the local LDS temple where they would have the opportunity to be saved.

The visitor's center featured a Christus sculpture or, as I like to think of him, Outer Space Jesus. I was so overwhelmed at the sight of Jesus presiding over the solar system (or random, non-scientific assortment of planets) that I didn't manage a photo. However, others on the web have.

The depictions of planets are very important. According to some sources, "after death, a good Mormon man who has followed a few certain rules … receives his own planet to populate and rule over." As for the women, um, if they haven't been eternally "sealed" (shades of canned goods and Tupperware) to one of these fellows, they're out of luck. So there.

Sometimes it's best to not dwell on the contents of the sausage. Do the Mormon planets exist in this universe or an alternate universe? Given that alternate universes hadn't been posited when the Latter Day Saints were organized, the planets are probably supposed to be in this, our very own, universe. That means that if we ever explore the universe far enough, we may find planets filled with the offspring of formerly dead people!

At the visitor's center, we were treated to a brief film about the history of the PCC and BYU-Hawaii. It was interesting, if at times unintentionally funny. "Family is very important to us," a speaker said, while a vintage photo of a man standing by five or six adult women flashed on the screen. Um … what was the man's precise relationship with these women? Thoughts of polygamy rushed through my brain, forcing me to choke back a belly laugh.

Despite my tendency to mutter comments which made my husband flinch, we made it back to the bus and the PCC without incident. (Yes, I admit that referring to the film as "Jesus Christ and the Temple of Doom" wasn't terribly polite.)

The evening show was supposed to be about a young Polynesian man's journey into manhood. The story was wrapped up in thinly-disguised Mormon theology, but who cares when you get to stare at people whose colorful native costumes are not like our own? Because, as I learned in elementary school back in Texas, that's what's most important about other cultures, their foods and the way they dress.





Pledging allegiance, maybe? Or maybe this is the way one signifies heartburn.




Special Costar: Baby Alive Wets 'N Wiggles.



"I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair … wash that man right out of my hair …"




Ow ow ow. I hope these guys get a corporate discount on Tuck's Medicated Pads.

Coming in the next post: high adventure in a rain forest!