I try
not to rank Disney princesses outright, because honestly, a lot of them are
pretty great in their own ways, but if I did, I’m betting Moana would be pretty
far up there. This girl is all kinds of
awesome, and I’m thrilled to see her join the fold (premise spoilers.)
First
off, this is more about how the movie positions her than Moana herself, but
like with Elsa in Frozen, I love that
the film recognizes a princess (or daughter of the chief, in this case) as a
precursor to a queen, ie, a future ruler.
Of the Disney princesses who were born with their crowns rather than
marrying into them, there isn’t much time spent on the idea that they’ll one
day be a leader. More often, those
around them think of their future queen-ness only in terms of being the wife of
a king – Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Merida all chafe to varying degrees under the
expectations of their marriage. With
Moana, though, there’s no question about it.
Her father has been priming her for rule since her childhood, she will lead her people one day, and no one
spends a single moment trying to get her to be decorative or obsessing about
when/who she’ll marry.
This
makes her driving conflict a lot more novel.
Because, while Moana definitely wants to lead and serve her island well,
she also feels the pull of adventure, a hunger for the ocean and the unknowns
it represents. As she says, “I’m a girl
who loves my island. / And the girl who loves the sea.” She has both desires within her, and because
the latter has been thwarted at every turn – her father fears the ocean for the
same reasons Moana loves it – that desire has magnified to the point where she
can never be who she was truly meant to unless she’s able to fulfill it.
But
when she discovers the boats of her ancestors and realizes that voyagers’ blood
runs in her veins, she still doesn’t go for the mere thrill of it. That’s part of it, of course – her longing to
see, to experience, to prove she can, to
know what’s out there. But it’s not
only for herself. Even when she gives
herself over to this long-sublimated yearning, it’s in part to help her
people. The island is dying, and per the
legends of her people, the only way to save it is to find the demigod Maui and
get him to return the heart of Te Fiti.
She journeys for herself and
for them. It’s not only an adventure;
it’s a quest.
And I
love that she’s both excellent and inept at it.
There’s no question that Moana is a licensed badass of a Disney princess
– it takes serious guts to sail into the unknown all by herself, she’s terrific
rescuing Heihei from the kakamora, and her big climactic sequence is decidedly
cool. But at the same time, despite her
lifelong dream of sailing the open seas, she doesn’t actually know what she’s
doing and spends a lot of her time on the canoe fumbling. She’s not always as confident as she tries to
be, and Maui, recognizing that, tries to play on her fears in order to sidestep
the mission. I think it’s wonderful that
she’s so flawed and flailing, that she trips as often as she soars, because
it’s so much more satisfying to see her be a hero when we see how imperfect she
is. I always tend to prefer heroes who
are faking it till they make it because, even though they’re in over their
heads, what they’re striving for is too important, so they’re not going to give
up for anything. That’s Moana all over,
and I love her for it.
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