Recently I mentioned
paying a compliment late, and that directly related to Moana.
I had read many
complaints about how the culture is represented in Moana, and
problems people had with it. This made me reluctant to see it, but then someone
I follow who has some Polynesian ancestry tweeted about it, and some of the
things that she liked about it. It reminded me that there can be multiple
views. Going back to yesterday, we can both appreciate and be critical of
things. We should.
It was a good reminder
for me that even when you are trying to do better you will make mistakes. That
doesn't completely eliminate the value of the effort. There is some comfort in
that.
If you are interested in
more about the controversy, this is a pretty good article:
This does not include all
of the complaints I have seen, and am going to go over a few. It can be okay to
disagree with any of them, but it is important to listen, and not automatically
discount something just because it didn't bother you.
The ocean
is an important part of the movie, and it will be polluted with highly
disposable merchandising from the movie. That is true. That is more about a need to step away from conspicuous
consumption than any one individual movie, but Disney is a big part of that.
The movie
does what it wants with what for some people is sacred religion. I had not thought of that. I think of those
stories as a mythology, and one that has developed a little differently among
the different islands, which I would think of as a reason for being able to
assume some liberties. However, it not being sacred to me doesn't mean that it
can't matter to anyone else, nor that their reverence should not matter to
others. There may be a need for more sensitivity there.
These
movies are always about casting off tradition and breaking with the past. There is a point to that, though that happens
with European-centric characters too. Of course, in this case Moana was going
against the rules of her father to go back to an even earlier tradition.
Another point was made
about romance being de-emphasized with heroines of color that ended up leading
to a pretty interesting discussion. Beauty standards are often held against
non-white women, and it does affect who gets love scenes across a wide spectrum
of entertainment. However, there has also been a tendency to counter sexist
tropes by having current princesses get rescued less and be less about the
prince.
That of course is a
reminder that you can't represent everything in a single movie. We need to have
many movies, and they need to not all be the same movie so that we can see many
different things and understand many different situations better.
Representation itself will be the main topic tomorrow.
For now, I have finally
seen Moana and I really liked it. I ended up being more taken with the
environmental aspects. If you remove the heart from great power, and the power
to create, that can become both a source of violent danger and something that
will slowly poison all life. It can easily happen due not to any bad intent, but
simply due to a quest for glory (or money) that doesn't get well thought out.
That there is hope for restoration, and how beautiful that restoration was, is
again something that was a hopeful sign for me.
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