Eddie Murphy (the “nutty Samaritan,” somebody called him) made the news several years ago back by giving a transvestite a ride in his Toyota Land Cruiser. Trudging through that West Hollywood night without wheels, clearly she was a charity case. We can appreciate Mr. Murphy’s compassion and magnanimity. Many of us didn’t notice, perhaps, that the 20-year-old object of his good deed was identified as Atisone Seiuli. And Atisone is a fine old Samoan name. Here indeed is a sign of American multiculturalism--this brief encounter between a millionaire African-American actor and a Samoan working boy along the darkened streets of post-modern LA.
While the press identified Atisone as a “transvestite,” she also is a fa’a fafine, or a man who acts like a woman. There is a long tradition of “female” men throughout the Polynesian islands--mahu in Tahiti and Hawai’i, faka leiti (‘lady’) in Tonga, and Samoa’s fa’a fafine. Once these men would have lived quietly in island villages, taking male lovers. Many were skilled at weaving and other feminine craft and some specialized in massage and the healing arts. Nowadays, many fa’a fafine have moved to socially less confined Pacific towns and port cities. And as Islanders have migrated overseas to Sydney, Auckland, Honolulu, and Los Angeles, they have brought their transvestite traditions along with them.
In the Pacific, as in many places around the world with customary cross-dressing, there now is an opposition--even a competition--between local tradition and an expanding global “gay culture” generated mostly in North America and Europe. Cross-dressing boys in Samoa or Tonga can variously identify themselves as either fa’a fafine or gay or both. Each of these labels is associated with a certain personal style and gender identity.
One popular Western import to Polynesia is the drag show, especially drag contests that determine the crowning of “Miss Tonga” or “Miss Apia” (the capital city of Western Samoa). These shows parallel, and parody, women’s beauty contests--also recent imports from the West. One summer, my friend Niko video-taped one of these contests in Tongatabu following around a gang of raucous faka leiti who competed vigorously in both Western and island dress. He wanted to understand how Tonga has become increasingly “gay”--the Westernization of its older, traditional practices of cross-dressing and homosexuality.
I’ve only known one fa'a fafine--a sweet guy who had an office next to mine at Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand. Vailoa was 43 and softly plump, although not nearly as much as his straight brothers and sisters. (Some physical anthropologists believe that onetime seafaring Polynesians possess a “thrifty gene”--the ability to put on a lot of weight quickly. Whatever, all those humpy muscles of 20-something island boys usually melt down into butter by their 30s.) Clearly, though, Vailoa had once been beautiful. An excellent seamstress, he had supported himself by fixing sewing machines. Now, he was back at university for a degree in Pacific Studies. His lofty goal was to return to Samoa to help educate the young.
But one frosty morning, Vailoa was found dead in a city park beat. (“Beat” is New Zealandish for cruisy public toilet.) Always short of cash, Vailoa often walked the five miles between university and his small room in the city center, passing through a large public green space. The official story was heart attack. This is entirely possible. Young, male, educated Pacific migrants die of heart disease in alarming numbers. But, sitting in the church at his funeral surrounded by several hundred of Vailoa’s friends and relatives, I prayed that he might have died of pleasure: Glory, glory, gloryholeia, amen.
The funeral was fantastic. Two enormous choirs of solid Polynesians singing 19th century Congregationalist hymns in high Samoan; stodgy university professors in gloomy gown and mortarboard; and, at the back, a small cluster, a little nervous, of tattooed, buzz-headed, white guys all geared-up in black leather. Anymore, you see, New Zealand is just as multicultural and post-modern as West Hollywood.
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