Facing the Pacific: Polynesia and the U.S. Imperial Imagination

by Jeffrey Geiger

The enduring popularity of the myth of the South Seas attests to the pleasures that Pacific islands have long afforded the consuming gaze of the west, connoting solitude, release from cares, and self-renewal away from urbanized modern life. Facing the Pacific is the first study to offer a detailed look at the United States' intense engagement with the myth of the South Seas just after the First World War, during the 'long 1920s', when at home a popular vogue for all things Polynesian seemed to echo the expansion of U.S. imperialist activities abroad. Engaging in a new take on psychogeography, Geiger looks at a variety of literary and cinematic texts that helped to invent a vision of Polynesia for U.S. audiences. This is the story of an interconnected group of writers and filmmakers whose mutual fascination with Pacific islands drew them together, and would eventually drive some of them apart. Key figures discussed are Frederick O'Brien, author of the bestseller White Shadows in the South Seas; filmmaker Robert Flaherty and his wife, Frances Hubbard Flaherty, who collaborated on Moana; director W. S. Van Dyke, who worked with Robert Flaherty on the MGM adaptation of White Shadows; and Expressionist director F. W. Murnau, whose last film, Tabu, was co-directed with Flaherty.

Hardcover

First published June 1, 2007