ABSTRACT
About forty years ago on a visit to the rather remote Tonga islands, I was astonished and dismayed when I noticed, among the locally produced wood carvings offered to visiting cruiser tourists on the beach market of Nuku’alofa (the capital of Tonga) a figure of King Kong. Since there are no monkeys on Tonga, or for that matter on any Pacific island, I perceived the carving as an astonishing and annoying instance of cultural pollution in such a tradition-bound society. However, when I complained about that to a native anthropologist, he just brushed away my objection, claiming that King Kong had become part of Tongan culture, having been introduced to the islands through the motion pictures. At the time I found it hard to accept that response. Today, I am engaged in the study of tourism to the cowboy towns and festivals of the American West – not in the United States, but in Thailand, where the local “cowboy culture” has become an increasingly popular tourist attraction.
