The Tiki Room

     Over winter break my family and I went to Disneyland. This is an annual tradition that we have been doing since I can remember, but what I don't remember is just how offensive and inaccurate one of the most popular attractions is, The Tiki Room. This exhibit is where you go inside and all of these robotic birds and tiki statues sing to you, it is entertaining and has a catchy song. It is supposedly set in Hawaii however there is no distinctions within the attraction from which I could determine that it was supposed to take place in Hawaii.
      In terms of the characters within the ride they are all different birds from different areas of the world. However, all of them except for one, are from different European countries. Last time I checked there was not a major European presence throughout Hawaii in terms of population. All of the birds had names life Pierre who was from France or Andres who was from Germany. The only exception to this mainly European cast was one bird named Jose who was supposed to be from Mexico. Once again there is not a large Mexican population in Hawaii. I expected the characters in the attraction to reflect the groups that mostly reside in Hawaii which include, 38.6% Asian, 24.7% white, 10% native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 8.9% Hispanic, and 1.6% African American. Although the tiki room represented the stereotypical members of both the Hispanic and White population they completely missed the bar when it came to representing the largest demographic, of Asians. In this way I felt that the attraction was inaccurate in relation to the location they were trying to claim where the attraction was.
      I also took issue with another aspect of the exhibit itself. On the walls robotic tiki faces are plastered on the walls and they chant along with the birds towards the end of the show. To me it was a funny addition to the rest of the show, but reflecting back I realize that that could likely be seen as offensive. To me what was being chanted were completely random noises that had no meaning, although I do not know any of the native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander languages, I would venture to guess this was not one of them. Once again Disney has failed to accurately depict the cultures within Hawaii and instead formed an aspect of the show around a stereotype that is incorrect and likely offensive. In addition the way the Tiki masks were shown gave me the impression that Disney had made them appear primitive, which is even more demeaning and frankly unacceptable. I find it shocking that such a wealthy and major company such as Disney failed to pay attention to such basic details such as representation and being culturally accurate.
       Finally what I thought was interesting was how heavily the attraction relied on its sponsor, Dole. After doing some research I realized that the only reason the Tiki room exists is to sell Dole products. For this reason everywhere you look you see the Dole logo, or its food, or just the color scheme all around the attraction. Even the man who was working the ride managed in his speech to talk about how amazing Dole was. I believe Dole was attempting to associate their brand with the magic and happiness of Disneyland, but because of how blatant the advertising was I felt annoyed rather than persuaded to buy their product. If Dole had managed to more seamlessly integrate their own advertising into the ride I believe I would have projected my own emotions that are associated with Disneyland and projected those onto Dole. In addition to their failure to seamlessly advertise I had an issue with their promotional commercial that was played repeatedly while waiting for the ride. The entirety of the video talked about the pineapples that Dole used and how delicious they were, and then they talked about the white founder of Dole and how he revolutionized Hawaii with Dole. The fact that when talking about Hawaii all that was shows was how one white man changed Hawaii for the better, diminishes all of the accomplishments of native Hawaiians. The video made it seem as if this man was the reason for Hawaii's success in pineapple industry, which is assuredly incorrect. In addition, the way this man was able to mass produce and harvest pineapples likely takes an extremely large amount of manual labor. When Dole was first created, I wonder just how ethical the treatment of those workers were?
         Overall after analyzing this attraction more I realized there were many flaws that I had not seen before.