Mass culture in America – probably elsewhere but I don’t know – has a tendency to pull anything innovative from the fringes into the mainstream. So it was with Tiki. What was hip and cool in the 1950s was subject to commodification and marketing in the 1960s. Style for sale!
Here are just a few examples of Tiki that wasn’t cool anymore.
In 1963, Disney opened the Enchanted Tiki Room. It was the first Disney attraction to be fully air conditioned and it was the first use of Audio-Animatronics technology. It featured four “talking” macaws, which represented ethnic stereotypes of Ireland, Germany, France, and Mexico. Hawaiian and Maori gods were used for decoration.
Dig the sounds? You could buy albums.
In 1971, Disney went a step further, opening the Disney Polynesian Resort in Florida. Rooms were in long houses. It was just like the South Pacific.
A third, and here final, indignity came with The Brady Bunch. Three episodes in Season 4 (1972) took place in Hawaii. There was a tiki amulet. And a bad guy who wanted it. Suspense!
The photos in this posting got my friend riled up. “I hated the Brady Bunch. I hated to Partridge Family. I hated the Monkees. They all sucked. You know when TV died? It died when Leave it to Beaver went off the air. That’s when.”
My friend’s hero, Eddie Haskell
Be that as it may – and I think that my friend kind of missed the point as I was holding up The Brady Bunch as something not good – I wondered what he thought of the images here.
