Thursday, January 18, 2007

Maui Fever is Making Me Sick

I have not yet seen an episode of MTV's "Maui Fever", but I have seen pictures of the "cast" (do they refer to people on reality shows as a "cast"? If not, perhaps they should--reality shows are starting to look as scripted as sitcoms) and I must say: that group of kids that supposedly live on Maui look nothing like an accurate representation of the demographic of Hawai'i.
Undoubtedly, there
are white surfers in Hawai'i, but the fact is that the show seems to feature only blonde and brunette Caucasians, and no one of Asian (East or Southeast) or Pacific Island descent.

Is MTV trying to cater to its overwhelmingly white demographic? If so, why not just show Laguna Beach for 20 hours a day instead of ten? With the cast that it currently has, "Fever" is nothing more than Laguna Beach/The Hills with a new backdrop.

There are many issues in Hawai'i that I feel never came up on Laguna Beach, but unfortunately, they will never come up on "Fever" either because the producers didn't allow themselves the chance because they picked such a homogeneous bunch of twentysomethings.

Even the "hit"[1] movie "Blue Crush" failed to accurately portray the Hawai'ian island community. I'm not complaining for the sake of it--if you're going to make a movie specifically ABOUT Hawai'i, correctly depict the people that live in the state.

I'm not saying that there should not be any Caucasian people in Hawai'i shows(I am from Hawai'i, and I am half-white), but look at the census numbers: the people that live in Hawai'i are overwhelmingly non-white. Instead of featuring 5 blonde girls, 3 white guys and one token Hawaiian, it really should be the other way around. Not because that's the way I feel it should be done, but because that's the way it should be accurately be done.



[1]Hit is relative, I guess. If you were to ask me (and you are, because you've made the conscious decision to read this blog), I would say it is utter garbage and that it makes me want to move somewhere where there is no beach and no surf culture (Montana? Tennessee? England? Iran?), but if you were to ask my sister (which you didn't, because, again, you made the conscious decision to read this blog) she would say that it is absolutely wonderful and makes her want to surf up at the North Shore, at Sunset, and in Fiji and Tahiti.

I just googled it, and it grossed 40 million dollars and cost 30 million to make. Is a 10 million dollar net a success? I guess even that is relative...a movie might cost 200 million to make and may gross 210 million. Is that any more of a success? All I know is that Titanic grossed 600,788,188 dollars and cost 200 million to make. I don't know where that leads us, but I can safely say that Titanic was more of a success than Blue Crush (I don't know what the societal implications are of that at this point in time).