Some Native Hawaiians have taken issue with the title of Cameron Crowe's new film, "Aloha," because the movie appears to lack any connection to the history and culture behind that meaningful word.
"Aloha" stars Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone in a romantic comedy about a military contractor (Cooper) who's relocated to Hawaii and reconnects with a lost love while falling for an Air Force member that's assigned to him.
Ty Kawika Tengan, chair of the ethnic studies department at the University of Hawaii's Manoa campus, believes Hollywood and others have corrupted the word aloha to use as a commodity and/or a slogan.
"It gets so divorced from important indigenous Hawaiian context," Tengan told The Associated Press. "It's romanticized, literally, into a romantic comedy."
Aloha is commonly used as a greeting or to convey love but it can also be used to show compassion, mercy or grace, according to the AP. The word combines the two Hawaiian words "alo," meaning the front of a person, and "ha," meaning "breath."
"When we are in each other's presence with the front of our bodies, we are exchanging the breath of life," Janet Mock explained on her MSNBC Shift show, "So Popular."
During filming, the movie was untitled. State Film Commissioner Donne Dawson would not have made Crowe or the producers change the title but "would have seen it as an opportunity to counsel them ... and then allow them to figure it out for themselves," she told the AP.
"Aloha" also has come under fire for its lack of native people in the movie that features mainly a "whitewashed" cast. In addition to Cooper and Stone, the film also stars Rachel McAdams, Alec Baldwin, Bill Murray, Danny McBride and John Krasinski.
The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) recently blasted the film's casting in a recent press release to the New York Post.
"Caucasians only make up 30 percent of the population [of Hawaii], but from watching this film, you'd think they made up 99 percent," MANAA's Guy Aoki, a former resident of Hawaii, said.
"This comes in a long line of films - 'The Descendants,' '50 First Dates,' 'Blue Crush,' 'Pearl Harbor' - that uses Hawaii for its exotic backdrop but goes out of its way to exclude the very people who live there. It's an insult to the diverse culture and fabric of Hawaii."
"Aloha" premieres in theaters on May 29.
