The Happiest Place On Earth? A critical look at the representation of the Pacific Islands in Disney’s Moana

Abstract

The media is a large space that media corporations can utilize not only to reach out to the wider audiences but also to influence them by imposing images and ideas to be consumed by its viewers. Because of the larger global audiences of the mass mainstream media, ideas and images of social groups that have been imposed repetitively in the media have the potential to become fixed prejudiced ideas in society. Minority groups tend to be the victims of prejudiced ideas and undesirable representations within the mainstream media, including the Pacific Island nations, therefore, when the entertainment and media conglomerate Disney first announced the making of their new Pacific Island princess in the film Moana (2016), a lot of discussion was generated around representation and the authenticity of the film. The Pacific Islands, like many other minority groups, have been frequent victims of negative stereotypes in the mainstream media before, however with the growing presence of the Pacific Island cultures in the mainstream media over the past decades, it is clear that the representation of Pacific cultures and its peoples is developing over time from the Western outsider/tourist perspective to a now more Pacific based depiction. Part of this shift in representation is due to the growing number of Pacific Island journalists, news reporters, academics, online media platforms and channels, actors and actresses who are able to express the narratives about the Pacific from the Pacific itself. While this is a positive development for the Pacific peoples, it is still evident that Pacific peoples and cultures continue to be misrepresented both on traditional and new media platforms, thus when Moana was introduced, Pacific peoples were both skeptical as well as excited to see how the small island nations and peoples will be portrayed. Disney’s latest film Moana offers a timely opportunity to reexamine the politics of Pacific representation. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the significance of issues such as representation, authenticity and the cultural appropriation of the Pacific Island cultures in Moana. These issues, I believe, are significant factors that contribute to the ongoing effects of colonialism, particularly in the diaspora where the Pacific Island cultures are a minority. While there has been an arguably constructive shift in societal attitudes toward minority groups over the past decades, Pacific Island peoples, like other nations that have been colonized, continue to battle the long lasting effects of colonialism in societies outside of their homelands. Pacific Island identities and representations are not only frequently misrepresented in social communities, but also in text and in online communities where non-Pacific peoples have been the authors. The misrepresentation also carries on through the ongoing process of globalization where larger media corporations have developed and strengthened prejudiced ideas on an international scale. Thus, with a global impact of the mainstream media, it is important that the representation of a minority group is as correct as possible. Moreover, although not all depictions of the Pacific Islands intend to be negative, there will always be varied responses to the way a culture has been represented especially in the media, thus the mixture of anticipation, excitement and doubt towards the release of Moana.