So, I have a pitch for a movie. It's about this young girl, and she's the daughter of the tribal chief of a group of indigenous people living in pre-colonial times. And she's about to come of age and her dad is like 'time to come of age, honey. You need to do the thing and take your place in the leader-archy'. "It suits you." And she's like 'eh, I'm not too keen on your particular vision for me, dad'. She likes water, it's like a metaphor for freedom, and she's like 'hey water, is there something more for me out there?' And then she sings a song about the water. She has this grandmother character who is special because she's got a spiritual insight that nobody else in the tribe has, and she's like 'hey, maybe your dad is being too restrictive. Maybe there is something more out there for you'. But then a conflict comes from over the sea, and grandma's like 'well, you know what? hey, maybe that's your destiny, and you need to go meet it'. And our heroine is like 'okay, yeah, that sounds legit'. Turns out she has this treasure obsessed antagonist who is really obsessed with being shiny. So she gets in a boat and goes out to meet her destiny. And after some trials and tribulations and hanging out with some guy who is pretty disrespectful to her TBH, she kind of f*cks up by way of overestimating her own abilities and nearly gets the guy she's paling around with killed, and then she's like 'you know what? Maybe I can't do it. Maybe I can't fix the conflict'. And so she's kind of sad, and she talks to her spirit grandma like 'I have no idea what I'm doing', and spirit grandma's like 'no, honey, you got this'. And she realizes what her destiny is and ultimately our heroine saves the day, not through violence or might, but with her compassion, and then her dad was like 'oh okay, honey, I guess you were right', and then she takes her place in the leader-archy and helps her people into a new era of hope. The end. That's not been done before has it? ♪ "Have you ever heard the wolf cry
to the blue corn moon" ♪ The 90s was a weird time for representation of Native American people. There's a documentary on Netflix called Reel Injun you should check out for a better overview. "I'm greeted with open smiles and looks of appreciation." "In short, I have become a celebrity." We'd be here all day if we did even a brief overview of all the media trends leading up to that. But suffice to say that by the 90s the trend was... sympathetic? to the Native American plight. But also, you know, white Americans, don't want to feel like 'the bad guy', which is why almost all of the 90s crop of movies that involved Native Americans had *good* white protagonists, helping the natives out against the *bad* white people, who are greedy and bad and like money. Not like the *good* white people who just want to be free, and live one with the nature and the spirits of the nature, and 'hey, maybe we're not so different'. ♪ "Savages, savages, barely even human" ♪ That brief resurgence of the Western in the 90s was a reflection on America's changing understanding of its own history. White America was in a process of coming to terms with its relationship to the people who were here, you know... first. Enter Pocahontas, which effectively ended that 90s era of 'Why can't we just all get along' colonialist Hollywood narratives. Oh, there continued to be smatterings of that kind of movie here and there in the years that followed. But by the time Pocahontas came out people were kind of sick of it. "My bark is worse than my bite." Disney was expecting Pocahontas to be the smash hit that would break through the glass ceiling cracked by Beauty and the Beast. That Best Picture Oscar glass ceiling, because Best Animated Picture was not a thing yet. Inside of the Disney studio, the faith the filmmakers had in Pocahontas caused minor chaos, with animators begging to jump ship off of the Lion King in favor of Pocahontas, which was widely considered within the studio to be the superior of the two. The more legit and artistic, see? "See how I glitter." Heh. So Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who were CEO and studio head respectively at the time, were somewhat surprised that the reaction to the film was mostly indifference, disappointment and harsh criticism from Native American groups who were annoyed at basically every aspect of the film. And it's easy to see where that criticism comes from. Pocahontas is basically peak 90s neoliberalism. It has all of the required merchandiseable Disney things. "Cool!" "She's beautiful!" "She's so tall!"
"And her hair's so long!" We've aged up the historical figure into a sexy Barbie doll. Middle-aged pudge man, John Smith- "Jooooohn Smiiiiiiiith!" -has been chiseled into a golden haired Adonis voiced by Mel Gibson, and it plays into basically every Native American stereotype that even by the 90s had reached parody levels. This movie is so parodic in levels of Disney-ness I'm surprised Miko didn't have like, a cute snarky one-liner, that they then printed on millions of shirts, that went on to fill millions of cubic landfill feet. The subject of the Disney Company and its portrayal of indigenous peoples in service of the Disney brand is massive. So I'm going to have to omit a lot of stuff in the service of streamlining this thing, so I apologize for that, I'm gonna have to leave a lot of stuff out. I should probably also mention that talking about issues of indigenous people as an American is somewhat fraught, because Americans are kind of obsessed with this idea of blood quantums, especially since that is actually how a lot of tribes determine tribal membership. And a lot of white people have this tendency to claim some obscure Native American ancestry like it makes them an expert, or it makes whatever they say or do regarding Native American representation 'totes okay'. "I can remember my grandparents you know, they, ya know, talking about our- you know, we had some degree of Indian blood and that was, for me, a point of pride." You don't even know what tribe you're supposed to be descended fr- I'm not trying to qualify anything I say, except as a student of media studies. I am just one well-meaning idiot trying to contextualise Disney's portrayal of indigenous people and how that has changed over the years. Eisner and Katzenberg thought they were ushering in a new era of artistic credibility. Instead the film feels more like... a mistake. "See how I glitter." But now in the era of Moana, much as I still think Pocahontas, well, sucks- "I've never been a... popular man." "I like you." -my feelings on the film and its place in 'the discourse' have softened a bit. Pocahontas was in many ways a mistake, in the same way that Song of the South was a mistake. I think history will only look more and more unkindly upon Disney's Pocahontas. But a mistake need not necessarily be a bad thing. As a wise Megamind once said, "There's a benefit to losing You get to learn from your mistakes." So the question is with this little stealth remake they've done with Moana, has Disney learned from the mistakes of Pocahontas? "Here at the studio. we have many artists who achieved national reputation as painters, in addition to their accomplishments in the field of animation. These men know the value of hen rise advice to be yourself." In 1962 during a screening in his home in the hills of Los Feliz, Walt Disney watched Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird starring, Gregory Peck. "In the name of God. Do your duty," After the film was over Disney lamented to his family 'That's the kind of film I wish I could make'. Disney had so successfully solidified his brand that he had branded himself right into a corner with fun light-hearted family fare, and because of that he could not make the kinds of movies that were revolutionizing the film industry. Disney was experiencing a creative styming, at least on the movie side of things, that would follow him until his death a few years later. The Walt Disney studio is the only major movie studio that has a specific brand attached to the sort of movies it puts out, and with that brand is a certain set of expectations. This problem was especially obvious with several of the Renaissance era Disney movies. There was a desire to expand and tell more complex narratives, but the studio was still really constrained by that Disney brand. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the best example of this. ♪ "Like fire, hellfire" ♪ ♪ "And as I ring these bells tonight" ♪ "God have mercy on me." "I'm losing to a bird!" "Sanctuary!" "Pour the wine and cut the cheese!" But Pocahontas is up there too. ♪ "They're not like you and me
which means they must be evil" ♪ The filmmakers originally envisioned a more, shall we say, historically rooted film. But the studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg pushed it to what he considered to be more commercial. Pocahontas was originally closer in age to the historical Pocahontas. It was even kicked around for a while that the Powhatan characters, yes, would speak entirely in native Powhatan, and Pocahontas would have to go through the process of learning English. Malick style, baby. "Wind. Wind." But in the end most of the decisions that dragged the movie down into mediocrity were born out of Katzenberg's desire to force a Best Picture contender like Beauty and the Beast. Pocahontas was aged up, and it was turned into a Romeo and Juliet inspired love story, with the language barrier being transverse via... listening with one's heart. "Listen with your heart." Then there's Pocahontas' design, a trope as old as the hills. By the time Pocahontas came out the only other Disney princess arguably as sexualized as Pocahontas was Princess Jasmine, and the year after that Esmeralda. "Look at that disgusting display." "Yes, sir!" Funny that. "Well, how you doin'? Heh..." According to an interview with Glen Keane from 1995, 'We're doing a mature love story here, and we have to draw her as such. She has to be sexy. This is a Disney version. This is not a documentary'. This may seem, ehm, harmless, but these media trends mirror very real problems in the real world to this day. Even now, Native American women are twice the national average in reported rapes and sexual assault, and those are just the ones that get reported. Media trends of sexualizing indigenous women do not exist in a bubble. But the worst hangover I get from Pocahontas is how it reinforces this comfortable lie that white Americans are fed from birth: that things were a little tense at first, but ultimately the whites and the natives got along and everything's fine. Like seriously, the movie both-sides-es the whole issue. Yeah, the English had guns and smallpox and decades of driving the natives off their lands, 'but the Powhatans were jerks too, you guys'. ♪ "Savages, savages
killers at the core" ♪ ♪ "They're different from us
which means they can't be trusted." ♪ Wait, wait, wait, wait, the Indians calling the Europeans savages? Mind. Blown. The studio purported a desire to honor Native Americans, and I'm sure there is some truth to that. But at the end of the day the film's just kind of reinforces this myth of the founding of the country that we are force-fed from birth, like a goose being fed for 'pâté'. But not everyone reads it like that. According to Russell Means, 'this film is the finest feature film ever done about American Indians in the history of Hollywood. It's so revolutionary, it shocked me when they showed it to me. The first thing that shocked me was the truth. The Eurocentric males are admitting why they came here: to kill Indians and to rob and pillage. That's never been done before. This is also the first time other than on Northern Exposure that a human face has been put on an Indian female. Here is this young woman who is wiser than her father or any man in the village, and she causes peace to reign. It's beautiful'. Without going too deeply into it, uh, let's just say that Russell Means is somewhat controversial in the activism world. Russell Means was the actor who played Pocahontas' father in the film. He was also a Lakota Sioux activist for Native American rights and a leader of the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, helping to organize the standoff at Wounded Knee in 1973. According to the LA Times Russell Means brought instant legitimacy and authenticity to Pocahontas. 'I haven't abandoned the movement for Hollywood', said Means, 'I've just added Hollywood to the movement. The entertainment world is a powerful venue for revolution, particularly now that there are 500 channels on the horizon, and the global market is so big'. Many of Means' former activist colleagues did not agree with his interpretation on the media, or that he was helping to champion that causes he purported to champion by the media he was participating in. But my point here is that the legacy of Pocahontas is more complicated than thing good or thing bad. So, cultural appropriation! RIP comment section. I'd like to take it back a few dozen steps and talk about some of these theoretical terms that have become politically loaded over the last few years, particularly cultural appropriation. As a theoretical term, cultural appropriation is neither bad nor good. It just describes a sociological phenomenon. It may have deleterious or positive effects on certain groups, but the term itself is neutral. Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of another culture. That's all it is. That's what I mean when I say cultural appropriation is a neutral term. For instance, the fact that I wear a claddagh ring, this is a form of cultural appropriation. I'm not Irish. Studied Irish when I was in college, I actually have a minor in Irish studies. But I don't know if I have any Irish ancestry, I might, I might not. If I do, it's so far back in the ancestry line is to be completely irrelevant. So this is actually a form of cultural appropriation. "Hit it!" If you happen to be American and want a more subjective understanding of what cultural appropriation in movies even is, one of my favorite examples is from a 2003 Bollywood movie called Kal Ho Naa Ho. "I'm crazy about you, pretty woman." This movie takes place in New York (this was filmed in Toronto). And yeah, this, this is a form of cultural appropriation. I like to use this example because unless you're super into anime, most Americans have an experienced media that has American culture on the other end of cultural appropriation. Americans are so used to being the dominant producers of media that we aren't accustomed to seeing what it's like to be portrayed by a culture that does not care if their product sells in American markets. The fact that cultural appropriation is in theory a neutral term leads to a lot of false equivalencies, i.e. why is this form of cultural appropriation okay, but Gwen Stefani dressing as a sexy warrior is not okay. Well, it's a complex issue and there is a lot of intersection over race and class and gender, but here is a general rule of thumb: if it is a culture that was historically exploited by colonialism appropriating a historically colonizing culture, no harm, no foul. No one gets mad at Mexico for appropriating elements of German culture (unless you happen to live in LA and that's all that's on the radio). If it is a historically colonialist culture appropriating a culture that was exploited by colonialism, then people start to get a little cranky. Obviously there are intersections and complexities, but for simplicity's sake I'll leave it there for now. But I think most people would agree that unlike something like Pocahontas or even Slumdog Millionaire, a movie which pretty much every Indian I've ever talked to is not a fan of, this kind of cultural appropriation is basically harmless. This is what I mean by cultural appropriation being a neutral term. Not all cultural appropriation is created equal. So I think the real question people want the answer to is where the line is between positive examples of representation and harmful cultural appropriation, and that's the problem: there isn't really a line. So you can have a movie like Moana, which had a much higher proportion of Pacific Islanders working behind the scenes and in the caste and American natives did for Pocahontas But the film still reads as appropriative to some because the story is still cookie cutter Disney- -and the department heads were overwhelmingly old white men. As long as you have a multinational corporation appropriating some element of another culture to sell stuff, no matter how respectful or well researched, there is always going to be some level of appropriation. So with regard to the lesson Disney took from the backlash against Pocahontas, you would think that the lesson Disney would have taken with regard to depicting indigenous peoples is... don't. But it wasn't. We've had four more Disney features with indigenous protagonists since Pocahontas, two of which involved said protagonists turning into large mammals in order to learn a lesson. I'm not gonna get into that, I'm just saying, it happened. Twice. "I don't speak bear." First was the Emperor's New Groove which was in development hell for years and was originally a large, very important, portentous musical in the vein of Pocahontas called Kingdom of the Sun. But then that vision got scrapped. Most of the creative team got replaced and the film turned into a buddy comedy with barely a veneer of the original setting slapped on top. "Butler." "Chef." "Theme song guy." "Oh, yeah!" The Emperor's New Groove has almost no relation to the culture it takes place in, other than llama being the one domesticated animal down there and sometimes the topography. The Emperor's New Groove is so thoroughly divorced from the culture it takes place in that the appropriation discussion rarely even pops up in relation to this movie. Brother Bear, the other movie where the arrogant protagonist gets turned into a large mammal to learn a lesson, has more to do with the culture that is appropriating than either Emperor's New Groove or even Pocahontas for that matter, taking the concept of spirit animal to a very literal literal-ness. But the thing that fascinates me about Brother Bear in this context is less how it appropriates culture in its story, with the idea of the spirit animal turning Joaquin Phoenix into a literal animal, but with the way it mixes native language with a European style of music. You tuber sideways did a great video essay entitled how Disney uses language this essay has a little segment about brother bear and it's use of any pet language with Bulgarian women's choir music because it Sounds vaguely, you know, ethnic. So they used music that most people hadn't heard of that had nothing to do with the context of the film in order to Make the scene sound, I don't know, more magical? Point here being that Brother Bear kind of took a step back and got away with it because most people couldn't tell the difference between a Bulgarian women's choir and [?] music. Both are presumed to sound equally alien. So even though Brother Bear uses Bulgarian music to try and convey an Alaskan sound which, all right, they were actually on the right track by using the native language. Part of the reason Brother Bear was a huge step back is because there was a lot of chaos going on at the Disney Company at the time, with Roy Disney basically staging a coup against Michael Eisner from the outside of the company, so the result was that the last few gasps of traditional animation in the mid-2000s were just kind of lazy and careless. But if we really want to take a look at the way Disney portrays indigenous people, especially indigenous women, the real shift isn't Moana, it's Nani from 2002's Lilo and Stitch. "Hey! Watch where you're going!" Pocahontas is hyper sexualized, she moves animalisticly, falls in love with the first white guy she sees, talks to the animals and communes with the spirits of things like rocks and trees. Nani is a complete departure from that She isn't sexually available to white men She's not even sexually available at all not really she has one guy who's interested in her But she can't return that interest because she doesn't have that luxury because she has to take care of her sister you're not doing anything David I told you I can't I The most exotic thing that Nani wears is for when she's working for a literal tourist trap But Nani is not divorced from her culture either and one of the most emotionally powerful moments in the film the night before lilo is Set to be taken away from Nani by social services Nani sings to her Aloha Oe Aloha Oe was written by Queen Liliuokalani the last monarch of the kingdom of Hawaii it Translates to farewell to thee and became a symbol for a lost country after the forced annexation of Hawaii into the United States And this isn't the only reference to Liliuokalani in the film the song at the opening invokes her as well in the Hawaiian language It's super subtle for Disney But there is a deliberateness here to tie in the characters personal struggles with their heritage So in a later scene when Nani is singing Aloha Oe - lilo Nani is using one of the most iconic cultural songs of Hawaii? To symbolize what is literally about to happen to her her family is about to be ripped apart by a literal Agent of the United States government in case you're wondering This did not go well. This is an issue that directly affects indigenous peoples especially in the United States. We like most countries Have a long proud history of tearing indigenous families apart That the film uses Aloha Oe a song that has become a symbol of the forced annexation of Hawaii into the United States about our own pain over her family being ripped apart That's almost radical for a Disney movie, and yeah It's also some level of appropriation it might be a powerful moment and was mostly positively received But it's still Disney see that's what I mean by there. Isn't really a line. It's a complex topic Lilo and Stitch had a deleted scene that confronted the racism of the white tourists head-on Hey speak English which way to that Beach I'm kind of bummed they cut this out for a lot of reasons It would've helped the movie from a story standpoint as this deleted. Scene is the moment where Stitch decides Hey, maybe this kids alright it also points to Lalo's feelings as an outsider being more than just her being a weirdo She is a tourist commodity in her own country. Oh Lilo and Stitch begins to scratch the surface of Hawaii's poverty job market and its dependence on mainland tourists But you know not really dug because it's still a Disney movie, which is why I think they cut that scene out So the big lesson learned from Pocahontas wasn't don't make narratives about indigenous peoples But rather don't make these narratives about the characters Relationships to white people with the Emperor's, New Groove, Brother Bear and Moana This is accomplished by simply setting the story in the pre-columbian era with lilo and Stitch in the modern era But with no white characters except for the tourists I wish Disney had internalized this lesson with The Princess and the Frog which goes so far out of its way to portray the Healthy white family is nice and well-meaning and what systemic oppression what Jim Crow? I'm just a nice wealthy white patrician here for some beignets from my favorite black owned establishment on the other side of the tracks Anyway, and then came Moana. As I may have alluded to earlier Moana has a very great deal in common with Pocahontas both narratively and in concept so because of that there was a lot of cringe and anticipation of the film This cringe was upgraded to cringe upon the announcement of a little brown face brown body costume for kids of Maui's body and tats which yikes And yeah, well, they pulled that but yeah, Disney. What were you thinking? You know at the end of the day Disney gonna didnee even before Moana came out, I was like oh boy The Rock sure looks fun and love that Lin-Manuel Miranda, and I can't wait to book my Disney vacation So I could stay at Disney's Polynesian Resort I'd also be really curious to see if this movie would have even been greenlit if Disney hadn't just bought its own private Chunk of Hawaii hey check it out. It's the star of Moana promoting Disney's new Hawaii chunk "What are your impressions about this beautiful resort?" At the end of the day, Moana is another cog in the vertically integrated Disney machine. As such, it's only willing to go so far with regard to authenticity. Instead of focusing on a Polynesian culture Moana is more of a mush of all of them Which kind of reminds me of Mulan which took place in China, but aesthetically picked and chose a lot of elements from all over Asia: Korea, Japan, the gang's all here. Moana also avoids the sexually available submissive Polynesian woman stereotype But it still plays the happy natives with coconuts trope Disney hired what they called an oceanic brain trust. A collection of scholars and activists from all over the Pacific to help with accuracy and sensitivity issues But as Tina Ingata points out having brown advisers doesn't make it a brown story It's still very much a white person's story.
No matter how much the story draws from the culture It's trying to portray, at the end of the day, it's still a very narrow Disney coming-of-age story. Vicente M Diez wrote in Indian Country Today before the movie came out, "Any altruism associated with this latest commercial Ad-venture will always be trumped by the proverbial bottom line But more depressingly by an enduring colonial legacy in the Pacific Islands that is further animated in the 21st century by neoliberal and post-colonial Desires for selling and consuming native culture of a very specific type."
And this is why the line between representation and cultural appropriation especially in animated movies can be so blurry the legacy of colonialism is baked into every facet of every culture on the planet colonialism has had an incalculable impact on human civilization that is why it's so difficult to parse out exactly the impact of group A being portrayed by a dominant cultural group B in Disney movies But that's why we're here we're gonna fix colonialism y'all Filmaker Taika Waititi a native of New Zealand of Maori descent wrote the first draft of Moana before leaving the project although little of Waititi's script, which focused way more on gender and on Moana's struggle in being in a family full of boys Remained in the film, his departure from the project seemed amicable. He's on good enough terms with Disney to be directing this fall's, Thor Ragnarok Waititi said after the movie came out Waititi left Moana to go make What We Do in the Shadows with Jermaine Clement who incidentally stars in Moana as Tamatoa and And if you haven't seen that movie, you should, it's cute. Just leave me to do my dog bidding on the internet what you're bidding on? I'm bidding on a table But here's the thing that I think really separates Moana from Pocahontas And the Emperor's New Groove for that matter the plot derives from lessons Moana learns about her own culture Moana's personal journey only really kicks in when she finds out that she is descended from a long line of voyagers we are descended from voyagers who found their way across the world They call me And that's the thing that sticks with me racial stereotyping aside is that ultimately the story isn't just about a young girl finding herself But discovering that her ancestors did incredible things and her joy at discovering that We were voyagers is anyone going to say that we should sacrifice some little girl in New Zealand or Los Angeles Or Hawaii seeing a well-rounded character who looks like her just because it's Disney and therefore appropriative? No. That's why there's a push for ethical cultural representation and a lot of this stuff is subjective that is why there can never be a pure representation especially in a globalist media economy an increasingly diverse consumer base wants to see characters who look like them portrayed on screen Disney gets that it's just good business to try to be authentic to the communities they are portraying but they should hire more people from those communities, I'm just saying but the one article I found the most interesting was Doug Herman writing for Smithsonian Magazine and that article was about his ambivalence on the film He liked that it got some stuff right but it also still plays into racial stereotyping he felt ambivalent about it Frustrated even and this frustration kind of gives me some hope because I feel like we're making progress from the days of Pocahontas It's no longer a hot mess but a mixed bag.
"When you use a bird to write with It's called tweeting." and that may always be the case because let me say it again for the people in the back The legacy of colonialism is baked into every facet of every culture on the planet so yeah Disney's not about to challenge your ideas on American history They've got theme park tickets to sell come down on to Epcot Center And enjoy the American experience or you fans of Pocahontas can march on down to the world of Pandora Which is a thing now. Ugh. Again especially with a multinational hydra like Disney progress isn't always linear at the end of the day the financial bottom line will always be the most important thing for a company like Disney But there is money to be made in authenticity And I think Disney is edging closer to that than for instance the days of the Enchanted Tiki Room There's this one scene that's there towards the end of both films where our heroine gets a pep talk from spirit grandma that I feel speaks to the evolution not just of the cultural angle but of the ethical storytelling of Disney movies in both films our heroine is feeling down and out and she's ready to give up here's what spirit grandma says in Pocahontas You have to stop them. I can't Child remember your dream. I was wrong, grandmother willow and here's what spirit grandma says in Moana. It's not your fault. I never should have put so much on your shoulders if you are ready to go home, I will be with you.
This is such a tiny difference But it is so telling to me because it tells me that the filmmakers were thinking about what children would take from the exchange with Moana. In Pocahontas, spirit grandma tells her that she's obligated to fix the mess that other people made, but in Moana Spirit grandma concedes that it wasn't fair for her to put that responsibility on a literal child. And rather than pushing Moana to fulfill her destiny She reassures her that her family loves and supports her no matter what she decides. This is indicative of how taking into consideration the feelings of your audience in this case of children can actually help make the story stronger. Moana's moment is stronger than Pocahonta's is because it is motivated by her character growth. Wherein Pocahontas, it's her remembering this dream she had at the beginning. For Moana, it comes not from compass ex machina, but from a place of love and support creating a much more iconic moment than Pocahontas ever got And I don't think this would have happened if the filmmakers hadn't looked at the scene in Pocahontas and thought: Wait this has already been done, and it was kind of weak the first time. We can do better. Moana is far from perfect but I think the ambivalence of the criticism it received is telling. It tells us that Disney--and by extension all of us--has a long way to go But that Disney has learned some from the mistakes of its past. the best advice I have ever given to students who have studied under me has been just this educate yourself here, educate yourself! What you love most about cinema, will get you called a movie snob the language can be subtle and poetic but not all people care about that like Mary Alice or Jim Bob to be safe we use a visual dialectic Water is the metaphor
water is the metaphor I'm pure and free water is the metaphor I'm like the sea, I'm wild and I'm deep. I've got a spree swimming through my guts and gore. Water is the metaphor for me That describes me
Another point I really like from this video.
Here's the most important bit:
This hits especially hard for me because my family raised me with the viewpoint Moana conveys, whereas my wife's family raised her with the viewpoint from Pocahontas, which has caused her significant problems in her life.