Darkness and Light: Dusky Maidens and Velvet Dreams

Cowboy contradictions: Westerns in the postcolonial Pacific

“…(1974: 12) introduCtion Hollywood's mid-twentieth century South Seas cinematic archive has been liberally referenced in contemporary Pacific literature, theatrical performance and screen production. A significant number of these references subvert and ridicule stereotype: either the doomed erotic figure of the dusky maiden (Pearson 2005;Smith 2008;Tamaira 2010;Taouma 2004) or the prelapsarian paradisiacal island and often both. Variously theorized as strategic exoticism (Huggan 2001), reverse colonial mimicry (Balme 2007) or revised spectacle (Fresno-Calleja 2012), these analytical frameworks share a common emphasis upon anti-colonial critique, indigenous agency and especially semiotic play.…”

Pacific camp: satire, silliness (and seriousness) on New Zealand television

“…The incongruity between Charlie's Angels, who occasionally took on menial employment in order to 'disguise' themselves while undercover, and Tali's Angels, which used the well-worn trope of Pacific Island women in service sector employment was perhaps humorous, but also indicative of the gaping disparities between Hollywood imagery and the socio-economic realities of many Pacific Island women. The use of drag was likewise comedic because of its incongruity with the women in Charlie's Angels who were hyperfeminine, and the way it simultaneously undermined prevalent tropes of the exotic and erotic dusky Pacific Island maiden (Pearson, 2005;Taouma, 1998). Drag also signalled Tali's Angels as camp, mobilizing transvestism as a signifier of traditions in Pacific comedy.…”

The construction of a myth: Bloody Mary, Aggie Grey and the optics of tourism

“…The persistence of this Pacific romanticism, with its roots in much older literary and art historical traditions, in which the Pacific is represented as an idyllic physical and sexual mise-en-scène, and to which settler representational traditions from painting to photography and Hollywood cinema have long contributed, suggests some of the complex aesthetic interrelationships of the Pacific and the West. In what follows in my close examination of the historical figure of Aggie Grey and, more particularly, in what I name the optics of tourism, I join with earlier scholars in urging that we be more attuned to the affective power of visual media and the ways in which Hollywood plays a powerful continuing role in cultural memory, tourism and popular culture (see Pearson 2005;Mallon 2012).…”

“…Fresno Calleja's study of three literary texts by Victor Rodger, Sia Figiel and Tusiata Avia challenges earlier critiques of Pacificism or Pacific Orientalism, arguing instead that by 'interpolating dominant cinematic modes, [these artists] strategically embrace the performative qualities of Hollywood's narratives to construct alternative postcolonial spectacles' (Fresno Calleja 2013: 275). Works like Sima Urale's short film Velvet Dreams (2008) appropriate and rework Hollywood genres like film noir, adopting a critical perspective on their subject matter while recognizing aesthetic and emotive value in velvet paintings and other kitsch artefacts (see Pearson 2005;Smith 2008). Rodger's published play My Name is Gary Cooper, which first premiered with the Auckland Theatre Company in 2007, deals centrally with the film Return to Paradise, and the emotional figure of Gary Cooper, turning him into a literal father figure in the play.…”