Episode 88: Hyper Exploiting Paradise

We're with Anthony Banua-Simon, director of the documentary Cane Fire, to talk about the colonization and exploitation of the Hawai'ian people first by corporations, then by the US military, followed by Hollywood, and finally by tourism. Few places hold as large a place in the American imagination as Hawaiʻi. For many people, Hawai'i represents paradise. It is the exotic. But maybe above all the other ideas about Hawaiʻi, it’s at the center of so many fantasies of escape. In order to sustain any fantasy, we have to perfect it in our minds and turn it into a curated object. Part of doing that is learning to ignore any complications or contradictions that could break the spell. In the case of Hawai'i, those complications are the people—those pesky people, always getting in the way when capitalism is trying to have a good time. Watch Cane Fire: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/cane-fire/umc.cmc.77a7aja56b4olltstnkm3ts21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zI6-HX8P9k https://means.tv/programs/cane-fire https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/cane-fire?frontend=kui Learn about Anthony's other projects: https://anthonysimon.net/ https://anthonysimon.net/The-Experiment-Station We're also excited to announce that our long promised merch is here!! We know it's tough sometimes to express your leftist feelings in public. Your ratty Che Guevara and CCCP t-shirts are better left at home. Now you can fly your crypto-leftist flag and still be completely under the radar with our personal love letter to Juan José Arévalo, philosopher and socialist president of Guatemala, and the airline he nationalized. wetwired.printful.me/ Subscribe on Patreon to support making this show, get premium only episodes, and listen to our entire back catalog. patreon.com/wetwired Music: Airglow - Spliff and Wesson (CC-BY)