Moana Essay

Women are generally associated with traits such as gentleness, empathy and sensitivity. Moana, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, is a film about a sixteen year old Polynesian girl who disobeys her father’s wishes and travels across the ocean to restore the heart of Te Fiti in an attempt to save her island from destruction. Despite portraying gender equality in Moana’s society, gender roles are shown through characters actions. The beginning of the movie starts out with Moana’s grandmother telling the story of how Te fiti’s heart was stolen by Maui. Maui was considered a trickster and demigod. He claimed that he took Te fiti’s heart for mortals so that he could make them happy. The demigod wanted to be considered a hero by humans and be in control of creating new life. Since Te fiti is a mother island and has the power to create life, Maui sees feminine traits as powerful showing that he wanted to be more feminine by stealing her heart. Additionally, Maui stole Te Fiti’s femininity when he stole her heart. A heart is a symbol of love and emotion. For Te Fiti, all of her power revolved around her emotion and feminine traits. Moana and Te fiti …show more content…
Disney portrays princesses to wear dresses and have an animal side kick, whereas Moana is like that as well but doesn't carry any other characteristics of being a princess. Men see females as princesses which causes them to doubt feminine power. Dr. Vishwanath Bite says this is a break in “ … the cliché projection of the woman as a princess” (805). After Maui calls Moana a princess, she gets angry and nearly offended. Maui said Moana was a princess because she wore a skirt, however Maui was wearing a skirt too. She is not a princess because of her outfit, the outfit she wore fit in with her cultural clothing. If she was a princess because she wore a skirt, then everyone in her village, including the men, would be princesses. This breaks the stereotype that all Disney movies has a princess in