Abstract
Despite Disney’s presentation of Moana as a culturally accurate portrayal of Polynesian culture, the film suffers from Western ethnocentrism, specifically in its music. This assertion is at odds with marketing of Moana that emphasized respect for and consultation with Polynesians whose expertise was heralded to validate the film’s music as culturally authentic. While the composers do, in fact, use Polynesian musical traits, they frame the sounds that are unfamiliar within those that are familiar by wrapping them with Western musical characteristics. When the audience does hear Polynesian music throughout the film, the first and last sounds they hear are Western music, not Polynesian. As such, the audience hears Polynesian sounds meld into and then become the music that defines a typical American film. Thus, regardless of Disney’s employment of Polynesian musicians, the music of Moana remains in the rigid control of non-Polynesian American composers. Rather than break new ground, Moana illustrates a musical recapitulation of white men’s control and marketing of the representations of marginalized people. Moana’s music is subject to appropriation, an echo of how colonial resources were exploited in ways that prioritize benefits to cultural outsiders.
Highlights
Disney has a long history of telling other people’s stories in feature-length cartoons
This paper argues, that Disney went beyond synthesis and into imperialism and appropriation in the way in which they used Polynesian musical traits, where they put them, and who got to sing them
The arguments presented in this paper provide an avenue for widening the discussion of the potential impact of Disney films by focusing on their musical facets as interpreted by an academic with expertise both in music and sociology
Summary
Disney has a long history of telling other people’s stories in feature-length cartoons. The purpose of this article is to explore Disney’s use of music in Moana (2016) as a tool that pushes a colonial agenda under a patina of cultural authenticity. While Disney films all include scores that situate their stories within their narrative context, Moana presents an especially clear distinction between what Disney markets as its respect for Disney’s portrayals of non-European cultures began early in their animated features such as Song of the South (1946) and. Beginning in the 1990s the narrative point of view changes and the Disney corporation began adapting non-western stories, and began marketing their works as multi-cultural. (Giroux and Pollock 2010) version of a non-Western part of the globe, using music as an important tool to closely control that “other.”
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