Highly Structured Tourist Art: Form and Meaning of the Polynesian Cultural Center

Abstract

The Polynesian Cultural Center in La'ie, Hawai'i, is a popular and profitable ethnic theme park established by the Mormon church. The center's management claims the park is a living museum that preserves the traditional arts of several Polynesian societies. But the center's commercial purposes, large tourist audiences, and manner of presentation clearly place it in the category of a tourist attraction. As such, the center has been criticized by anthropologists and other experts for its superficiality and lack of authenticity. Aesthetic analysis of the center, however, reveals a theme and variation form that unifies the center's components into a single, complex work of tourist art. When examined as a unified artwork, the center exhibits an aesthetic that is distinctly Mormon. Its messages are the fundamental tenets of Mormonism. Although religiosity is hardly uncommon in fine art and even folk art, in tourist art it is remarkable. The present study leaves aside the continuing controversy over the center's authenticity versus its commercialism to introduce an aesthetic interpretation of the center's form and meaning. Inso doing, the study offers insight into an unexpected capacity of tourist art to carry deep religious meanings.