Here we are in 2017 walking around watching videos on our phones and going Facebook Live from family parties and watching grandmas with their own YouTube channel, yet we still revere television like it is somehow closer to the divine. We don’t watch it like we used to — remember when there were only four channels and a knob to twist and no way to record what aired so if you missed it you missed it? That was “must see TV.” That was when everyone at work was talking about the same show the next morning and television had the ability to affect the minds and hearts of great masses of Americans.
It’s not at all like that anymore. Viewership is so fragmented. Yet we still see the medium as some sort of temple and anyone who appears on television as somehow elevated above the rest of us scrubs.
There are so many lofty expectations piled upon the island-based television series “Hawaii Five-0.” There have been from the beginning. There are for every TV pilot, low-budget film project and Food Network special that comes to town.
It’s gonna make stars out of regular local people.
It’s gonna tell Hawaii stories in a way that’s much more powerful than anything anyone has ever done before.
It’s gonna make Hawaii the wealthy hub of amazing artistic endeavors
so that it becomes the next Hollywood, the next Bollywood, the next Kakaakowood.
It’s gonna finally, finally, finally represent Hawaii’s diverse population in a way that’s real and true.
Yeah, well …
It’s just a television show. Its goal is to entertain. The measurement of its success is that it has somehow stayed on the air for seven seasons. It’s not going to change the world. Or the islands.
So co-stars Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim are walking because they’re not getting paid what the white male stars of the show are paid. It’s too bad but it’s also “yeah, well.”
Yeah, well, the characters they play are not the focus of the main storyline.
Yeah, well, they’re actors of color who got high-profile gigs on a network show for many years. It so happens that they’re playing a color different from their own color, but still, a step in the right direction in a path that is very long.
Yeah, well, Daniel Dae Kim had a successful run on Broadway and is producing a television series that was picked up by ABC for next season. He’ll be fine. Grace Park? Nothing about her is “has-been.” She’ll be on to bigger and better things.
It’s a TV show. It’s a show with all the subtlety and nuance of a teen boy’s favorite video game with shootouts and automatic weapons, attractive women, attractive women with automatic weapons, and lots of car chases. It’s not a social movement or a force for justice or a temple to which those with dreams of stardom can take their prayers and offerings. It’s a TV show that has managed to stay on the air since 2010, which is laudable enough.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
