Hawaiian Perspectives on Video Games: Oppression, Trauma, Politics, Pedagogy

Abstract

This thesis deals primarily with imag(in)ing Hawaiʻi in video games. The displacement of our people, natural resources, language, culture, religion, history, sounds, values and practices have become so normalized that it seeps into various aspects of modern pop-culture of Westerners and Japanese alike. These people and their structures have continued to be infatuated with the brochure version of Hawaiʻi while making efforts to prostitute our culture leaving lasting impacts on the cognition of Hawaiʻi. Recently, video-games have become participatory in this form of oppression and have attempted to, on multiple occasions, strip us of our power and authority to self-determination because foreigners’ depictions of Hawaiʻi have become the foreground image. However, acknowledging that the highest form of critique is creation, this piece focuses on de-constructing foreign imag(in)ings as well as re-constructing appropriate cultural protocol for depiction of this place, Hawaiʻi.