Collide Issue 30: The Middle

14 • Collide • March 2016
n
the town of Honolulu, Hawaii, 11-
year- old Ho’onani is a hula dancer
yearning to be a part of the boy’s hula
dance for her school’s performance.
The problem isn’t that Ho’onani’s
dancing skills aren’t good enough,
but it is because Ho’onani is a girl
trying to get on an all-male group.
In the 2015 documentary “A
Place In The Middle,” directors
Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson use
Ho’ onani’s story in order to challenge
gender norms that are in
place in today’s society. The story
is told through the perspective of
Ho’onani, a girl who identifies herself
as a mahu. The concept of
mahu in the ancient Hawaiian tradition
is defined as one who does not
identify with one gender or the other,
but rather places themselves in
the middle, identifying with different
traits from both genders.
“This film is told through the
young person’s point of view. It’s in
her voice and it’s her experience. It’s
not experts talking about the concept
of the gender spectrum. It’s just
her experience,” co-director Joe Wilson
said.
“A Place In The Middle” is a spin
off of Wilson’s 2014 documentary
“Kumu Hina,” which follows a
transgender hula dancer as she petitions
her future husband to immigrate
from Tonga to Hawaii. Hamer
and Wilson have been long time
advocates for the LGBT community,
having previously shot a documentary
about a gay teen from a small
town in 2009.
“For many years, we have been
working on the issue of how to raise
visibility of the LGBT people- youth
in particular- and find ways to overcome
prejudice and discrimination
that they continue to face,” Wilson
said.
While filming the documentary,
a mutual friend from Hawaii introduced
Wilson and Hamer to Kumu
Hina, who quickly learned that she
was a respected and revered figure in
her community, despite seeing herself
as mahu.
“Hina just invited us to become
more involved in helping to share
her story because she realized, too,
that there’s a lot of things people
can learn by seeing an indigenous
perspective on how gender is embraced
and respected in many other
cultures,” Wilson said. The film explains
that mahus were once highly
regarded in the Hawaiian culture.
But once Christian settlers came to
the island and condemned their type
of people, mahus became something
of a taboo.
“The term mahu- you know, just
like the term in English ‘queer’ had
been used negatively- mahu has
also been used like that over many
decades. So just now over the last
couple of years Hina and a couple
of other mahu are now working to
reclaim the word. It’s a slow process
but we’re in that period now where
the stigma is still there, but little by
little the cracks are peeling that negativity
away,” Wilson said. “A Place
In the Middle” is now being used as
a tool for schools in Hawai’i to talk
about the concept of mahu to the
young and old alike and to break the
stigma surrounding it so that conversations
can begin to take place and
the term’s historical significance can
be restored to what it was before.
The Western world can definitely
learn a thing or two from this film,
as it is there that the harshest stigmas
and stereotypes are present.
Even though this film is focused on
one particular culture, aspects of it
can also relate to the general idea
"When you realize that those people that we"re
always taught were the other are just like us,
then it just becomes normal. The prejudice and
the other things just kind of dissipate in a natural
way," Wilson said.
that certain ideologies can hinder
a full understanding of people who
may be deemed as different than the
norm.
“When you realize that those people
that we’re always taught were the
‘other’ are just like us, then it just becomes
normal. The prejudice and
the other things just kind of dissipate
in a natural way,” Wilson said.
A Unique Perspective
Sophomore biblical studies major
Ashli Lomeli’s father came out
to her as transgender when she was