Aloha Summer

  For the section on the "Angry Hawaiian," "Aloha Summer" was one of the films we decided to watch. Although the film was mainly a coming of age story, it featured a prominent, antagonistic portrayal of a Hawaiian character that implied racism towards "haoles." In a nutshell, all I can really say was that the movie was overall very cheesy. There were some good points in it and it was in turn very interesting, but the logic of the film was really off, especially where love was involved.

  Apart from it just being interesting, I really liked the idea of featuring several characters of different ethnicities interacting with each other positively. Sure, it has its moments of friction (namely with said antagonist), but the film really put an emphasis on the friendships that were made between them. Before this, there weren't that many films that had given a lot of screen time or shown a lot of interactions between whites and non-whites (or giving some backstory to supporting non-white roles), so it was very refreshing to see. The topic of the film was also very relatable, so it was pretty interesting to watch.

  However, the "angry Hawaiian" character's portrayal was something I had a problem with. Yeah, he threw some racist remarks and implied some racial disgust towards the tourists which makes him as a character pretty "bad." But what I think people tend to overlook that he was also reacting angrily due to  his protectiveness over his sister, which is something I think anyone would be angry with, especially if  a player was going to try and use her. Having a sibling myself, I think I would have been just as mean and angry towards someone I thought was trying to take advantage or could potentially hurt my sister. So to me, using his supposedly "unfair angry protectiveness" to justify his own death is wrong. It only annoyed me even more when his sister, after his death, decided to marry the guy that her brother had tried so hard to keep away. What was more ridiculous was the fact that this reformed player somehow got an attitude adjustment within a short time span of interacting with her.

  All in all, I think the film did a poor job in development of the character relationships, as well as creating the overall perceptions of some of the characters.