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The movie “Aloha” brought some negative reactions from Hawaii

The people of Hawaii reacted negatively for the use of the “aloha” greeting in the new Cameron Crowe’s movie supporting that this is a discrimination of their local civilization and culture.

The synonymous to the greeting movie, “Aloha” is brought to the big screen by Sony Pictures and before the release there are is a reaction storm. The protagonists are Bradley Cooper, Rachel Mc Adams and Emma Stone and the movie is scheduled to premiere in Honolulu in the next few days but the crowd is already complaining just by seeing the trailer of the film.

The trailer shows a love story that takes place in a American military base.

A local activist called Walter Wright, said: “They are using “Aloha” as a title, a sacred word whose meaning they are altering and they are about to get a lot of money out of that.” Janet Mock comes to add on relevant statements she made on MSNBC: “Aloha is more than just a greeting in Hawaiian. Is has various meanings, including love, compassion, forgiveness and clemency. It comes from two words. The first one is Alo which means the front part of the human body and the second one is ha which is breathing. When we meet someone and say Aloha, we basically exchange our life breath”.

In 2013, while the movie was being filmed, no one had come up with the title so the people had no reason to react to anything.

Of course even now that the title is given, we consider it debatable whether the crowd should disapprove or not. What if naming the movie “Aloha” is not as discriminative as the people of Hawaii think it is? Maybe this is a good chance for them to spread their culture all around the western world where the movie will be seen. Even this article is a proof of the point made above. By transferring the words of a person we explained what the word aloha means for the Hawaiian people and how it is used. And the cause of that was the movie itself.

So after all, maybe naming the movie “Aloha” will turn out to be positive for Hawaii since it will attract the interest of the viewers.

And even if it doesn’t let’s not forget that Hollywood is Hollywood and movies have to sell. So if altering the meaning is found to be necessary for the movie to sell then that’s what Hollywood will do. It’s neither the first nor the last time. Hollywood has also altered the stories and historical facts of Greek history and myths. The final results that came on the big screen had nothing in common with the original story. Yet, this was a very good reason for those who were interested to learn more, to search for the truth behind all those artistically directed action scenes.

So no worries Hawaii, your culture will remain intact no matter what. The people who want to learn about it will just have one more reson to do so.

Published : Oct 1 2015