Lene

Jaedyn Randell

Māori dub voice actor of Moana Moana reo Māori premieres 11 September 2017

Coca-Cola Urn by Ai Weiwei (艾未未). 1994. 

Ai Weiwei is a contemporary artist and activist, utilizing artistic mediums of sculpture, architecture, photography, film, and installation to convey his charged political beliefs. Throughout his life, Ai has been overtly critical of the Chinese government’s stance on human rights and democracy, personally investigating incidents of governmental scandal and corruption, such as the Sichuan earthquake student casualties. In 2008, Ai was arrested and held for 81 days without any official charges, allegedly for “economic crimes.” Ai’s assistant, Wen Tao, has remained missing since Ai’s detention.

Artistically, Ai’s work bears western influence, notably from the time he spent living in the U.S. Upon returning to China, he helped establish an experimental artists’ village in Beijing and co-published a series of books about modern artists. Ai has published numerous documentaries and exhibited visual art and architectural installments all around the world. The asteroid 83598 Aiweiwei is named after him.

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Moana for us represents many things — harmless entertainment, some might see it as a documentary providing a missing piece in a cultural identity puzzle. Some see Moana in a pedagogical role, a teaching tool that will help others learn more about us. And some of us see Moana as an extension of the Disney moneymaking apparatus and evokes a painful ongoing pattern of colonialism, imperialism, exploitation, homogenization, cultural theft and appropriation in the Pacific.

All are true and problematic all the same.

But there is a danger when we say that we must take one side or the other. This absolutist point of view is divisive, and to unjustly label family and friends employed by Disney or those who work in cultural entertainment as cultural prostitutes is detestable.

The bigger truth is this: we live in a complex age of inevitable consumerism and capitalism. This is the world that is imposed on us, so we occupy this world as involuntary or voluntary participants, as colonized people, in colonial settler roles, as transnationals, and as members of diasporic communities around the world. Capitalism is demanding and unforgiving. Engagement for many of us is out of necessity.

On the flip side, we can also be critical of Disney’s capitalistic aims and side-eye their claims of doing justice to our stories, without having to be dismissed as “haters.”

Ultimately, what saves Disney’s Moana from the shit-show train wreck it could have been is the work of the Oceanic Story Trust and the breakthrough performance of its star, Auli’i Cravalho.

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With that said, as we go to the theaters, I hope we will make a conscious choice for just one time, as I know many of us will see it multiple times, to transcend being mindless consumers and become resisting spectators, and recognize that the eye candy we see on the big screen are really just surface, readily accessible manifestations of deep cultural treasures that Disney, nor any outsider, can never touch. These treasures can only be felt by the heart and by our own lived experiences.