Why Moana Made My Heart Ache

When we are introduced to Moana’s village, the music changes. It becomes lively, upbeat and beautiful. They talk (or rather sing) about tradition and how there is so much they need to do. There’s so much that they are expected to know, there’s education and storytelling and a past that is sung in a beautiful lilting tune. You see people, working together for a greater goal. We see Moana pulling away from the tradition and trying to forge her own way while also accepting her role in the village and understanding her people. We see a grandmother who passes down history in the form of stories.

And I cry when I watch it.

If you have seen the movie, you might have cried at certain moments too. But the one that got me badly, and I’m talking tears streaming down my face and ugly sobbing, was when the Grandmother sat with Moana and spoke with her about their people. When Moana found out about the history that came before her time. When she found out about where she actually came from and why her heart would sing towards certain parts of the world.

I was crying, not because the movie hit me in the feels, but because I’m envious. The anger in me wasn’t directed at the movie but at what I know has happened in my world.

I understand Moana’s pull to something that she doesn’t understand. However, the difference is that me not being able to understand isn’t going to be explained away through an eccentric grandmother. While Moana talks about the fact that her people explored and found land, it is obvious that this was a time before colonization and western society taking over. This was a time and space where oral history was key, where knowledge was passed down through generations and where things could be forgotten if they weren’t spoken about. I wish that still existed.

I had a recent discussion with someone where the topic of ‘but if the Europeans didn’t come over, you wouldn’t have everything that you have now’ and my answer to that is simply ‘why do you assume that this wouldn’t have happened without Western society? Why do you assume that this was the best case scenario?’

Also why do you assume that I enjoy everything that is around me now? Are we living in the same world where information is spread at such a rapid rate that we actually have to mindfully filter or we will go insane? Where social media and technology has the capacity to ruin someone’s life? Where we have managed to ‘educate’ ourselves back into kids having the measles and Nazis being a thing again? I’m not sure I see the very thing I’m writing on now as a blessing or something to be grateful for. I see the positives in it, I won’t lie. I wouldn’t have met my partner without it. But if it has improved society? That’s highly debatable.

It’s hard to not be resentful of what might have been. It is not like there was not society before the explorers conquered the world. It has become rapidly obvious that Indigenous cultures all around the world had their own set up when it came to civilization. They had their own societal systems, their own beliefs, their own forms of transactions and because it was not like what the explorers had known, it was immediately dismissed. This is an incredibly frustrating realization. There are things that were destroyed because they were unknown. So, as you can see, I can’t see the point in being grateful to those who came here because I want to know what might have happened. I am caught up in the ‘what ifs’ of this world because there is no way to know.

That is why Moana hurts as much as it does. I absolutely love the story, it is one of my favourites but I feel like that life is something we’ve managed to miss. It’s something I don’t know and another thing I don’t feel connected to. People talk about knowing the past so that you can accept it and move into your future. I can name explorers, I can recite legends from the round table. But there was no connection for me. That’s what stings. I’m so envious of her connection to her people and her world because in the world that I’m in, I won’t get taught like that.

That lack of connection is hard for people to understand, probably because those that have it probably take it for granted. Movies like this make it increasingly obvious what history and stories are missing. Some people even state that you can’t get stuck in the past, in traditions as that is not moving forward. But I do wonder, how does one move forward when you’re not sure what is behind you? How can you know what has already happened when no one knows anymore?

Moana is one of my favourite Disney Pixar films of all time, I’m so happy that it exists. But it brings so much more to light than just being a film about the first Polynesian Disney princess and I hope people realise that.