All language subtitles for BBC Oceans Apart Art and the Pacific 2 of 3 Polynesia

..Seven, six, five, four,
three, two, one...

In the 1940s,

Western powers began nuclear testing
in one of the world's most beautiful

and unspoiled places.

Over the next few decades,

hundreds of bombs were detonated

in the islands and atolls
of the Pacific,

causing immense environmental
damage.

But the tests were just the latest
chapter in a long and complex story

about how the West destroyed a world
it had long seen as paradise.

For centuries, we have projected our
fantasies onto the South Seas,

imagining this remote corner of the
world as a place only of pristine

beaches, perennially ripe fruit and
hula girls in every direction.

But fantasies have one thing in
common.

They aren't true.

This particular fantasy was created
in the late 18th century,

just as Captain Cook began exploring
the Pacific.

Cook's voyages took him to Tahiti,
Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand.

They marked the beginning of a
seminal cultural encounter

that was both creative
and destructive.

In this series, I'm exploring the
impact of that and later encounters,

between the people of Oceania and
those who went on to colonise them,

but opened our eyes to a new world
of images,

reinvigorated Western art

and irrevocably changed the
global imagination.

And I won't be telling it alone.

In these programmes,

indigenous people from all over
Oceania will have THEIR say,

reflecting on the cultural legacy
of these encounters.

TRANSLATION:

This episode tells the story of the
Polynesian islands,

a group of sophisticated and at
times violent societies,

how Europeans encountered them,

destroyed what they didn't
understand

and appropriated what was left,

objectifying Polynesian women

and reimagining this vast maritime
continent

as little more than a holiday
destination.

The Pacific Ocean is the world's
largest feature.

At over 60 million square miles,

it covers a third of our planet's
surface.

Westerners long saw it as a vast
blue wilderness,

but for this great ocean's
inhabitants,

it was just as rich and complex as
the land.

And it inspired some very unusual
artefacts.

At first sight, this might look
like, I don't know,

an abstract sculpture, made by some
obscure surrealist in 1920s Paris,

but it isn't a sculpture and it
isn't abstract.

It is, believe it or not, a map.

The traditional mariners of the
Pacific didn't have sextants

and compasses,

and so, to navigate their canoes
safely from one island or atoll to

another, they needed to rely on
subtle signs in the water,

on the movements of birds and fish

and, above all, on their own
memories.

And this chart, which is called a
mattang,

was one of their favourite tools.

It is fashioned from 28 sticks

that have been lashed together

with string,

and those sticks form lines

that plot out the directions of
swells and currents

in a particular stretch of ocean.

And either side, these two little
cowrie shells probably represent

two islands in the middle of the
Pacific,

and you can see here and here how

those landmasses disrupt the pattern
of the currents.

This exceptionally beautiful object

proves that to the people who lived
in it,

the Pacific was not some vast,
wet emptiness,

it was a terrain and one's life
depended on understanding it.

At the heart of the Pacific is
Polynesia,

more than 1,000 islands bounded
by Hawaii in the north,

New Zealand in the south,

Easter Island in the east,
and Tahiti in the centre.

They are separated by vast
distances,

but united by a culture and by their
love and respect for the ocean.

TRANSLATION:

To understand this maritime culture,
I have come to its mythical heart,

the island of Raiatea.

It is seen as the cradle of
Polynesian civilisation.

According to one story,

an enormous fish made of earth

started its life here
and then broke into pieces.

Those pieces then spread
into the Pacific and formed the

Polynesian islands.

And the most important site on the
island is this,

the Marae Taputapuatea.

It has been here for more than
1,000 years,

and was once the Pacific's
most sacred place.

It contains a series of large
rectangular courtyards,

paved with black volcanic rock.

Around their edges run altars carved
from coral.

These spaces hosted all kinds of
ceremonies.

This courtyard was the beating heart
of Raiatean society.

It was a temple, it was a law court,

it was a town hall, it was a
theatre,

it was a kind of place where all
kinds of rituals and activities

took place, and at its centre is
this huge basalt stone

now covered in graffiti.

This was a place where young priests
received their investiture, as the

elders of the community sat around
the edges watching on.

But it was not just for the people
of Raiatea.

Positioned next to a sacred pass
through the lagoon,

the marae was an important staging
post in the Pacific, and Polynesians

travelled thousands of miles
to come here,

to pay their respects
and to worship.

Nothing could prepare you, or at
least nothing could prepare me,

for the haunting power of this
place.

It's hidden away in a remote corner
of the Pacific, derelict, desolate,

almost deserted,

apart from a few scuttling crabs,

and it feels almost impossibly
remote and yet...

..for Polynesians living all
over the place,

thousands of miles away from each
other, in New Zealand, Tonga,

Fiji and Samoa in the south,
in Easter Island,

in Tahiti and the Society Islands in
the east, and in Hawaii,

all the way in the north,
this place,

this very spot was the centre of the
universe.

The capital, the spiritual home,

the Jerusalem off an entire maritime
continent.

But what was it that was
worshipped here?

The Polynesians had many gods,

with many different names
and attributes, and sometimes

they took unusual forms.

At first sight, this might look like
some kind of broom handle,

but it was once an object of immense
and perhaps even terrifying power.

For most of the year, it was hidden
away, wrapped up in leaves,

but during important ceremonies,

this object was brought out of
hiding and worshipped with the same

reverence that people in other parts
of the world bestowed

on monumental marble statues.

It is a figure of Oro,

the Tahitian war god, and it's made
from a simple wooden core that is

wrapped up in coconut husk fibre.

It's almost abstract, but if you
look at it closely,

you can just make out that these
fibres

have been arranged to form two
ears,

two eyes, a nose
and a grimacing mouth.

Now, it might be diminutive in size,

but this figure was believed to
dictate the outcome of battles,

the fates of chiefs and,
over the years,

countless people were sacrificed
in its honour.

To understand the full extent of
Polynesian culture,

we need to travel north, to the
islands of Hawaii.

Many of Hawaii's early inhabitants
had come from Raiatea,

settling here around 400AD.

But gradually, they developed a
culture of their own.

Hawaii was, in many respects,

even more advanced than the islands
around Tahiti,

and the proof of that is
beneath my feet.

I am walking along a one-mile-long
wall

that marks out the edge of a large
man-made reservoir.

It was originally used by indigenous
Hawaiians to trap,

cultivate and catch fish.

It was, in other words, a fish farm
and, astonishingly,

completely astonishingly,

it was originally built as much as
800 years ago.

There was nothing like it anywhere
else in the world at the time,

and although it may not
look like it today,

this was once world-leading
technology.

Hawaiian society was as complex as
its engineering projects.

Communities were highly stratified,

run by hereditary chiefs known
as ali'i.

This hierarchical society produced a
singular art form.

It began in a place like this.

Teams of men, roaming the forests,
with nets in hand.

They were under orders from their
chiefs

to look for something precious.

They were hunting for a handful of
birds

that were native to the
Hawaiian islands.

Now, one of them was the i'iwi,
the scarlet honeycreeper,

the other one was the 'o'o,
the honeyeater.

Now, what they would do in the case
of the 'o'o, for instance,

was to cover a branch with glue,

wait for it to land and get stuck
and then very, very carefully,

remove just the tiny number of
yellow feathers from its body

and then, if they didn't eat it,

they would release it back
into the wild.

Now, over time, they would trap
hundreds and hundreds of birds

and collect thousands and thousands
of feathers,

and then they would do something
remarkable with them.

These unforgettable faces belong to
Kukailimoku, the land snatcher,

the island eater,
the Hawaiian god of war.

They are at least 250 years old,

perhaps much more, and they've
both been made in the same way.

An armature has been fashioned from
wicker and then covered

with fibre netting, and you can just
see the fibre netting down here.

Then, invaluable feathers, tens of
thousands of them, have been tied,

bundle by bundle onto the netting.

The eyes are mother-of-pearl shells,

the teeth have been extracted from
the mouths

of some very unfortunate dogs,

and this head is covered
with human hair.

It once belonged either to a dead
ancestor

or to the chief who commissioned it.

All of the materials are symbolic
in one way or another,

but none more so than the feathers.

The Hawaiians believed that the gods
were born covered head to toe

in feathers and that, like birds,

they could move effortlessly from
Earth up to Heaven.

But they are terrifying.

Their goggle eyes stare out at us,
their mouths grimace,

but they were supposed to be
unpleasant.

Heads like these, which are known as
aumakua hulu manu,

served many different functions,

but arguably the most important job
occurred on the battlefield.

When Hawaiian men went into battle,

they held these war gods above them
on a pole,

in order to intimidate
their enemies,

and the scarier their head was,

the more likely they were to gain a
psychological

and indeed spiritual advantage.

Feather work had many applications
and today, indigenous Hawaiians are

still using this old technique.

Feather work has been a part of
Hawaii's culture,

a part of our history from the very
beginning.

As our ancestors travelled
throughout the Pacific

and they inhabited islands,

it came with them,

and when they landed here
and adapted to the surroundings

that we have
and the birds that we have,

they refined their work and there is
nowhere else that you will find

this type of intricate feather work.

TRANSLATION:

I've been around feathers
all my life,

and my tutu started teaching me
when I was five years old.

I knew that it was my kuleana,
it was my responsibility,

and so now that my tutu and my
mother have passed,

I continue their work.

Feather work, when we look back in
our history, was very important,

very symbolic.

Feather work was only worn by our
ali'i, or our kahuna class.

The ali'i were our rulers,
our chiefs, our chiefesses.

The kahuna were the religious folk,
our scholars and teachers.

Some feathers in particular,
like the yellow,

coming from the 'o'o or the mamo,
were very few in number,

so, typically, if you saw feather
articles like capes or lei

that had those feathers,

typically, those articles belonged
to those of a higher rank.

So someone like Kamehameha, our
first king,

his cloak was entirely yellow.

Stories say that it took as much as
ten generations

just to collect enough feathers to
be able to produce this cloak.

The Bishop Museum in Honolulu houses
a centuries-old feathered cape

that is particularly special.

It contains an estimated half a
million feathers,

extracted from 80,000 to 90,000
birds,

and would have taken years to make.

It is one of the masterpieces of
Hawaiian feather work.

At the end of the 18th century,

it was presented to someone the
Hawaiians must have regarded

as a great leader -
not a local chief,

but a British mariner
called James Cook

whose arrival in Polynesia would
change everything.

When Cook and the crew of the
Endeavour first entered the Pacific

in 1769, the South Seas were largely
unknown to Europeans.

Cook's voyage was shaped by the
values of the Enlightenment.

On board the Endeavour were
scientists and artists,

to record not only the
flora and fauna,

but the culture of the last unknown
corner of the world.

And on reaching Tahiti,

his crew's first task was to make
a measurement.

It had taken them eight months to
get to Tahiti.

Now, they had come here to observe
the transit of Venus,

a rare astronomical event that they
believed would enable them

to calculate the distance between
the Earth and the sun,

the so-called astronomical unit.

They made their observation with
little success, it must be said,

on 3rd June,
but in the meantime,

they fell head over heels in love
with their new surroundings.

Tahiti is indeed a special place.

Its jagged peaks are covered in lush
vegetation, and the climate is warm

all year round.

The British found everything they
could want here - fresh water,

abundant seafood, and fruit unlike
anything they had tasted before.

On board the Endeavour was the
gentleman naturalist

and Fellow of
the Royal Society Joseph Banks,

and he was amazed by this
exotic wonderland.

Joseph Banks thought Tahiti
was paradise.

He called it, "The truest picture
of an Arcadia

"of which we are going to be kings
that the imagination can form."

Now, he wasn't the first to think
this.

The few Europeans who had come to
Tahiti before him

had compared it to the Garden of
Eden.

They called it the new Kythira.

Now, all of them were doing
the same thing.

They were all constructing a myth.

But arguably the most appealing
feature of this new Kythira

were its inhabitants.

Polynesian attitudes to sex were
quite different

to those of 18th-century Britain.

Banks and his companions found the
local women were not only beautiful

but amorous, and they took
full advantage.

This view of Polynesia as an exotic,

erotic paradise is a myth
that still endures.

But it was first expressed in art
in the 1770s,

when Cook returned to Tahiti
on a second voyage to the Pacific

and brought a gifted painter
with him.

His name was William Hodges.

Hodges wasn't supposed to be
on the voyage.

Joseph Banks had already signed up
another artist, Johann Zoffany.

He'd also insisted that a whole
new part of the ship

be constructed to accommodate him
and his 15 associates.

Now, Cook begrudgingly agreed,

but the new additions made the ship
so top heavy

that it was deemed unseaworthy.

When the new deck was eventually
dismantled,

a furious Banks withdrew from the
expedition

and took his staff with him.

Cook's last-minute replacement was
William Hodges.

Hodges was only 27 when he got the
call,

but he was the most talented of all
Cook's artists

and over the course of his journey,

he represented things that people
had only imagined before -

the first-ever painting of an
Antarctic iceberg,

and the verdant landscapes
of New Zealand.

But Hodges' Tahitian rhapsodies made
the greatest impact,

and this is one of them.

Welcome to Paradise.

This is William Hodges' grand vision
of Tahiti, and what a vision it is.

The mountains rise improbably
into the sky,

the hazy sunlight gilds the rock
faces,

and a tropical breeze caresses
the vegetation.

Hodges has structured this painting
like a classical landscape -

those decadent paintings of Ancient
Greece and Rome

that proved so popular
throughout the 18th century,

but he's made some significant
changes.

The cypress trees have become palm
trees,

and the Mediterranean muses
and nymphs

have been replaced by
Polynesian princesses.

So, down here we have three naked
Tahitian girls.

This one over here, she is swimming
backstroke in a river,

and this one is thrusting her
extravagantly tattooed buttocks

right out at us.

So, this was clearly supposed to be
a deeply appealing image,

a doubly fertile Arcadia, untouched
by grubby European hands.

This was the first great painting of
a Polynesian paradise,

a vision that proved
extremely enduring.

And yet, as with many classical
landscapes,

there is nevertheless a note of
caution here,

because just above those women is a
carved effigy of a dead ancestor,

is a funeral bier
and a shrouded corpse,

and I think Hodges is reminding us
of that famous Latin phrase,

et in Arcadia ego -
even in paradise there is death.

Hodges' warning was apt

because, in reality, Polynesian
society was by no means a paradise.

It was just as flawed and violent as
everywhere else.

And Cook's crew knew as much at
first hand,

from a young Polynesian man with a
tragic past.

His name was Mai.

He had been born on Raiatea
in about 1753,

not far from the famous
Marae Taputapuatea.

Mai was ten years old

when a group of warriors from a
neighbouring island

called Bora Bora invaded Raiatea.

In the ensuing battle,

Mai's father was killed and the
family's land was taken.

Mai's surviving relatives bundled
him into an outrigger canoe

and paddled 100 miles south
to Tahiti.

As he grew up, Mai became determined
to have his revenge.

When he was old enough, he returned
to fight the Bora Borans.

He got caught up in a battle
between two canoes,

he lost four more relatives
and was captured,

but then, on the second night of his
imprisonment, he escaped,

he stole a canoe and he paddled
through the dark

to another island called Huahine.

It was here that Mai,

now in his early 20s, encountered
Cook's second voyage.

After some negotiations, Mai secured
himself passage to Europe.

Mai, or Omai as he came to be known,

arrived in London on 14th July 1774.

He was the first Polynesian
to reach Britain.

Mai came here for one reason
and one reason alone.

He wanted to obtain guns and a ship
so he could return to Bora Bora

and kill the people who had murdered
his father.

But in the meantime, he became
something of a London celebrity.

Backed by Joseph Banks,

he was whisked into high society and
was introduced to King George III.

He also learned how to ride a horse,

how to play chess and cards,

and even became the subject of a
West End play.

Mai also inspired a wave of
portraiture,

the most famous of which was made

by the President of the
Royal Academy of Arts himself.

This is Joshua Reynolds' portrait
of Mai,

and quite some portrait it is.

It is a full-length, life-size
painting,

almost two-and-a-half metres high,
a format traditionally reserved

not for Polynesian stowaways but
for royalty and aristocracy,

and Mai, it must be said, is every
inch the patrician here.

First, his face.

Now, according to Captain Cook, Mai
was an exceptionally ugly man.

You wouldn't know it from this
painting, though,

because Reynolds has depicted him
almost like a film star.

Second, the body,

because Reynolds has shown Mai with
his right arm outstretched

in the so-called adlocutio pose.

That was the grand, authoritative
pose

that Roman generals and
emperors adopted

when they were in
the middle of an oration.

It's a pose that we see in
countless classical statues,

most famously of course in the
Apollo Belvedere.

And yet, Mai was like no patrician
the British had ever seen,

because he was ultimately a person
of colour

and a person from the other
side of the world,

and Reynolds has gone to great
lengths

to emphasise how truly exotic
he was.

He is wearing this bizarre white
garment

that includes Polynesian bark cloth,

a Roman toga
and a Middle Eastern turban.

He's gone barefooted, and the hands
I mentioned earlier, well,

if you look at them closely,

you'll see that they are covered
in black tattoos.

Common practice in Polynesia, maybe,

but virtually unheard of in
British high society.

And let's not forget
the background -

the background's always very
important in portraits -

because Reynolds has tried
his very hardest

to create a Polynesian setting
for his Polynesian sitter,

although, in truth,

it looks a little bit more like the
Lake District than Raiatea.

He has clearly never seen a
palm tree before in his life.

But taken together, I find this

a tremendously successful
and persuasive painting,

because what Reynolds has done
is taken Pacific culture

and European culture and brought
them together,

and in the process, he has created
yet another Polynesian myth.

If Polynesia is paradise, well, this
is its ideal inhabitant.

A Savage maybe, according to
18th-century views,

but, my, what a noble savage.

Mai eventually got his wish.

He returned to Polynesia on Cook's
third voyage

and launched an attack on
his enemies.

But he fell ill and died before he
could win his land back.

And Cook would face a violent
encounter of his own.

After dropping Mai at Tahiti,

Cook's crew sailed north across the
Pacific to Hawaii.

They visited the islands twice,
and on their second visit,

things turned deadly.

Cook and his crew were anchored just
off the coast of Hawaii

to repair a broken mast.

They'd been here only days earlier

and had been treated almost like
royalty,

but this time things were
rather more fraught.

An unknown group of Hawaiians stole
one of Cook's small boats.

A confrontation ensued,

and Cook made a fatal
miscalculation.

He landed with nine marines.

His plan? Well,
it was to kidnap the local king

and to take him hostage until the
stolen property was returned.

The king, it must be said,
went willingly,

but as he was led along the beach
to waiting boats,

a crowd of angry Hawaiians
gathered round.

In the melee, Cook shot one of them
dead, and as he turned to the sea

to launch his vessels, he was
clubbed over the head, stabbed,

held under water and repeatedly
beaten and stabbed again until dead.

It was a sordid and entirely
avoidable end of a life

that continues to divide opinion.

By the time of his death,

Cook had made three voyages
across the Pacific.

He and his men had imposed
themselves on societies

across Oceania,
often with unnecessary violence.

And yet, he had done more than
anyone else of his generation

to map the mysteries of the globe.

These voyages fired the Western
dream of a pristine paradise,

a lost Eden,
unsullied by outsiders,

but the very promise of that
paradise

contained the origins of
its own undoing.

In the decades following
Cook's death,

more Westerners arrived in
Polynesia.

Whalers and passing merchants were
among the first to come ashore...

..with destructive consequences.

Europeans brought many things with
them to Polynesia.

They brought disease - syphilis,
gonorrhoea, tuberculosis, smallpox -

diseases against which the locals
were almost defenceless.

They brought guns, they brought
alcohol, they brought tobacco

and, together, these things

spread through Polynesian society
like wildfire,

and communities duly went
up in flames.

In the 100 years since Europeans
first arrived,

close to 90% of the Polynesian
population died out,

and all the while, indigenous
beliefs were under attack.

Europeans also brought Christianity.

Missionaries poured into the
Pacific,

hoping to convert the heathens,

and they were phenomenally
successful. By the mid-19th century,

the vast majority of Polynesians
were already Christians,

and this had a huge
impact on the culture of Polynesia.

Clothing changed, tattooing died
out,

and the great religious artworks,
which were now dismissed as idols,

were thrown on one fire
after another.

But a few survived.

And one is particularly special,

not only for its importance
to Polynesians,

but for its influence on
Western art.

This, in my view,
is the David of Pacific art.

It is arguably the greatest
surviving masterpiece

in all of Polynesian sculpture.

And it goes by the name of A'a.

This breathtaking object was made on
the island of Rurutu

hundreds of years ago, we don't know
exactly when,

and was revered by the locals.

But when, in the 19th century,
they converted to Christianity,

they gave it away to missionaries as
proof

that they had abandoned their old
beliefs.

The London Missionary Society
brought it back to Britain and

instead of burning it, they put it
on display as a trophy of victory,

and today, it is here in the
British Museum.

Western artists soon recognised A'a
as a masterpiece of world art.

Pablo Picasso kept a cast on it
in his studio,

as did the British sculptor
Henry Moore.

Both of them admired non-Western
artists' capacity

to re-imagine human form,

and in A'a, they saw an object of
uncommon power.

A'a was a creator god,

a generator of life and a common
ancestor to the people of Rurutu,

and that is why, in this
extraordinary act of invention,

he is covered with people -

with 30 little humans who make up
all of his features.

His eyes, his ears, his nose,
his mouth, even his nipples.

They are his descendants.

They are his progeny.

But, for me, the most intriguing
thing

about this relentlessly interesting
sculpture is what went inside it.

The whole back can be removed,
the inside is hollow.

So it was clearly designed to
contain something,

and the current thinking is that
this object

originally housed the bones of an
important Rurutan chief.

The skull would have fitted inside
the head,

the rest of the bones would have
filled the body.

So before the Rurutans gave this
object away,

they must have removed those
important relics

and buried them somewhere
or hidden them somewhere sacred,

and they still haven't been found
today.

A'a still has a powerful place
within Polynesian society,

not least on the island
in which it was made,

and its absence is strongly felt by
the custodian of its former home.

TRANSLATION:

In the second half of the 19th
century,

the Pacific became a playground of
imperial ambition.

Missionaries were followed by
colonisers.

The British, who had already
colonised Australia and New Zealand,

took Fiji, the Solomon Islands
and the Cook Islands,

which were named after Cook himself,
while their great rival, France,

took Tahiti, Raiatea,
the Austral Islands,

the Marquesas Islands -

a maritime area the size
of Western Europe -

and in doing so, they transformed a
whole swathe of Polynesia into

something that is still known as
French Polynesia.

The new colonisers change the places
they settled.

They converted wild land into
plantations,

they constructed harbours,

roads and modern European buildings,

and they increasingly encouraged
their citizens

to leave Europe and settle in the
paradise they'd just conquered.

One of these settlers stands out
from all others,

someone who reinvented the
fantasy of paradise

in large part through the
objectification of Polynesian women.

In 1890, Paul Gauguin needed a
miracle.

His wife had abandoned him and taken
his children with her,

his old friend Vincent van Gogh
had killed himself,

his career as an artist had stalled

and he was penniless.

So he hatched a plan which he
announced to his estranged wife

in a letter.

"May the day come, and perhaps soon,

"when I can flee to the woods on a
South Sea island and live there

"in ecstasy for peace and for art,

"with a new family, far from this
European struggle for money.

"There in Tahiti, in the silence of
the lovely tropical night,

"I can listen to the sweet murmuring
of my heart

"beating in amorous harmony

"with the mysterious beings of
my environment.

"Free at last, with no money
troubles, and able to love,

"to sing and to die."

His sentiments were no doubt deeply
felt,

but they were far from original.

Paul Gauguin had bought into an old
myth about Polynesia

that went all the way back to the
time of Captain Cook.

He was dreaming of a tropical
paradise,

a land in which the living was easy,

and so were the women.

In March 1891,

Gauguin boarded a ship called
the Oceania and left Europe,

he hoped, for ever.

He arrived in Tahiti three months
later.

But it wasn't the paradise he had
been expecting.

Tahiti felt far more like Europe
than he had anticipated.

It was filled with French people,
French buildings, French newspapers

and exorbitantly priced French wine.

After three months, he moved out of
the capital to the countryside and

built himself a traditional hut with
reed walls and a thatched roof.

Gradually, and with a great deal of
effort,

Gauguin fashioned his own fantasy
paradise.

He learned a few words of Tahitian,
he got to know his neighbours,

and he spent a lot of time
walking around naked.

In a letter, he wrote, "Bit by bit,
step by step,

"civilisation is peeling
away from me."

Gauguin's experience wasn't as
authentic as he liked to claim,

but it did inspire a number of
intoxicating paintings.

This is his first major Tahitian
canvas, painted in 1891.

It is called Ia Orana Maria,

which means Hail Mary in
the local language,

and combines Christian subject
matter with a Polynesian setting.

It shows the Virgin Mary and the
young Christ as Tahitians,

surrounded by bare-breasted
worshippers and ripe fruit.

And this is his first Tahitian
portrait.

It shows a beautiful woman staring
evocatively into the distance,

as exotic flowers rain
down around her.

The sitter was so overwhelmed by
Gauguin's decision to paint her

that she insisted on wearing her
Sunday best,

a European-style dress that normally
she reserved for church.

Both of these paintings capture
Tahitians at a crossroads

between old and new,
indigenous and colonial cultures,

but Gauguin established a style that
nevertheless resonated

with his new surroundings -
rich colours,

decorative patterns, and, of course,
mesmerising female subjects.

And yet, his interests weren't
only aesthetic.

Like many Europeans before him,

Gauguin took advantage of the
local women.

Over the course of two visits to
Tahiti,

he slept with innumerable locals.

He married three of them.

One of them was 13 years old,
the other two both 14.

He abandoned one, he
had children with two,

and he infected all three
with syphilis.

He depicted one of these wives in
this extraordinary picture.

It is called Nevermore.

This is a portrait of Pahura.

Gauguin married her when she was 14
years old, and a few months before

painting this picture, when she was
15, she gave birth to his daughter.

Tragically, the baby died after only
a few days, and Pahura sank,

understandably, deep into
depression.

And that depression, I think, is
writ large across her face.

Her eyes, which look swollen from
tears, stare hopelessly into space.

But what I find particularly
touching and also quite alarming

is how young she looks.

She is reacting to this tragedy not
as a woman but as a girl.

After all, what do teenagers,

what do 15-year-olds do when
they get bad news?

They run up to their bedrooms,
they slam the door,

they collapse onto their bed
and they curl into a ball,

and that is precisely what Pahura
is doing.

But this painting, in truth, isn't
really about her.

Paul Gauguin's art is always about
Paul Gauguin.

In 1897, he too was suffering from
depression,

and this image is drenched in his
own misery -

the murky colours, the bright-red
fabric that pulsates like blood,

the skulking women in the background
gossiping or perhaps even plotting,

and, most unsettling of all,

the large malevolent bird perched on
the window ledge,

staring down at the grief-stricken
girl

and cursing her and him for
eternity.

Gauguin, doubtless, got his idea

from Edgar Allen Poe's famous poem

which described a raven appearing
one night at the author's home

and tapping, gently rapping,
rapping at his bedroom door.

And the only thing the raven ever
said, over and over again,

was "nevermore".

A few years ago,

the public voted this the most
romantic painting in Britain.

Well, I must say, I cannot for the
life of me understand

how they reached that conclusion
because, as far as I'm concerned,

this painting is deeply,
deeply disturbing.

This darkness began to pervade
Gauguin's life.

By the time he painted Nevermore,

he was increasingly unhealthy and
felt his life was coming to an end.

In the same year, he made his most
ambitious Tahitian painting.

It is called Where Do We Come From?
What Are We? Where Are We Going?.

Almost four metres wide,

it was the culmination of Gauguin's
personal mythology.

Read from right to left,
it describes the cycle of life,

extending from infancy and youth
through to maturity,

old age...

..and finally, the world that
lies beyond death,

as embodied by this blue idol.

Gauguin wrote, "I believe that this
canvas not only surpasses

"all my preceding ones, but that I
shall never do anything better."

It is indeed is a hybrid
masterpiece,

an unforgettable combination of
ancient and modern,

Oceania and the West.

But this paradise contains the seeds
of its own corruption.

Shortly after completing the
picture,

Gauguin hiked up to the hills above
his home

and tried to take his own life.

He had brought with him a bottle of
arsenic,

but he drank too much of it,

vomited it back up and simply ended
up making himself horribly sick.

Somehow, he made it back down
to town,

where he was treated at a
local hospital.

His life dragged on for another six
painful years,

spending the last two
elsewhere in Polynesia.

He died in May 1903, never returning
to Europe again.

Paul Gauguin was a
complicated person,

and his time spent in the Pacific
was particularly controversial.

Some people think he was a noble
explorer,

one of the first people to properly
engage with Polynesian society and

culture on their own terms.

But others think of him as little
more than a seedy sex tourist,

a man who objectified and exoticised
this part of the world

for his own ends.

It is, as ever, a mixture of both,
but one thing I think is certain -

Gauguin reinvigorated the old myth
of Polynesia for the modern age.

In the 20th century, that myth
became more pervasive than ever,

but it left Tahiti and migrated to
the islands on which

Captain Cook had met his end.

# Hawaiian sunset

# Peeping from the sea... #

Blue Hawaii...

..with Elvis as your personal guide
to America's exotic Eden,

our Polynesian paradise.

In March 1959, Hawaii became
America's 50th state

and was soon a fully fledged
tourist destination,

with modern commercialism fuelling
the old craving

for a tropical paradise.

Walking through the streets of
Waikiki today,

one can see how old ideas have been
repackaged for our pleasure,

an age whose fantasies are
inhabited,

indeed dominated, by sun,
sea and sand.

When most people think about Hawaii,

they don't think about its complex
history, its society, its religion,

its culture, its art.

No, they think of luaus, they think
of hula girls,

they think of surfing,

they think of tiki bars
and brightly coloured shirts,

and that is because, in the popular
imagination at least,

Hawaii has become almost exclusively
a venue for leisure.

The Polynesian paradise is now part
of global culture,

peddled not just within America
but all over the world.

Some of it might be harmless,

but it has one pernicious feature

that goes all the way back to the
time of Captain Cook -

the myth of the Polynesian woman.

The cultural currency that's been
portrayed is one of paradise,

and that you can go to paradise

and you'll be presented with an
exotic, beautiful woman.

We haven't really been able to break
from that myth that came with

the sailors, with the very first
encounters.

I am Angela Tiatia,

and I am a visual artist based
in Sydney, Australia.

In Foreign Objects, I really wanted
to create a room

that was almost like a museum,

but that the objects were all
collected from eBay.

So I would search under terms such
as "exotic nudes" or "savage nude",

and seeing what would come up
in my search.

So a lot of the objects that I found
were of the female form,

and they portrayed the female body
as quite sexual and passive,

and then I noticed that these
objects

were not made by Pacific islanders,

but they were informing people
outside of the Pacific

what our bodies looked like
or how we behaved.

So prior to me being an artist,
I worked as a model for 20 years,

and then I moved on to doing
acting work.

I'd get a script or a job where I
have to be the dusky maiden,

and so it's this thing of being
part of the mythology

and the creation of the mythology,
of the dusky maiden,

knowing that I'm implicit,
knowing that I'm perpetuating it,

and having this complete loss in
control purely because of economics,

but I'm doing this because I need
the money.

And also that whole thing of the
dusky maiden,

what is she actually saying to
the world?

That she sexually available
to the gaze

and to the pleasure of the
Western male.

But what does that say
to us, as Pacific woman,

that that's all that we're good for?

Now we're seeing that push back of
the Pacific woman,

the Pacific artists,
the Pacific writers,

the Pacific poets who
are pushing back,

and then using those forms of media

to offer this different idea of
representation,

this different idea
of the Pacific body,

of the Pacific woman,

to say that there is a much broader
experience

and that the myth needs to
be exploded.

Old myths die slowly.

Not far from Waikiki is the
Polynesian Cultural Center,

a theme park and museum that's been
open since 1963,

with the slogan "go native".

It contains six villages

representing the major Polynesian
cultures -

Hawaii, Samoa, New Zealand,

Fiji, Tahiti and Tonga.

Visitors from all over the world are
encouraged to participate in

indigenous crafts and performances,
from weaving workshops

to traditional dancing.

HE SHOUTS

And every night, it stages an
elaborate show

telling a story of Polynesian
culture through dance,

music and buttock-searing
fire dances.

MUSIC PLAYS

This show, this theme park is
undoubtedly spectacular,

and it's tremendous fun as well,

but something about it nevertheless
makes me feel uncomfortable,

Because what it's doing is taking a
whole set of cultures,

indeed an entire ocean continent,
and lumping them together,

exoticising them and so turning
complex societies

into little more than a
song-and-dance routine.

But perhaps there's nothing new
here.

From the time of Cook's
first voyages,

Polynesia has been reduced to what
the West wanted it to be -

an escape from social and ethical
conventions.

Although we are now well into the
21st century,

the West's fantasy of paradise,
as envisioned by Banks,

Hodges and Gauguin,
has never been stronger.

It is a vision that belies the
complexity of Polynesian culture,

much of which was swept aside,

but which indigenous people are now
beginning to reclaim and revive.

In the final episode,

we explore the spectacular islands
of New Zealand

and their inhabitants, the Maori,

a people who, against all the odds,

have kept hold of their culture

and are now an integral part of the
modern nation.