Article
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-story-moana-and-maui-holds-against-cultural-truths-180961258/
In our efforts to preserve cultural heritage, pop culture can have both positive and negative outcomes. Movies and television in particular can help foster efforts centered on the protection of heritage and serve as an entry point for viewers to learn more about particular cultures and their sites/objects/traditions. Encouraging such interactions with and exposure to new or “foreign” cultures is a starting point, but certainly viewers have to have a desire to learn more. And, often, there are issues with the accuracy of cultural presentation in such popular culture modes. In recent years, much has been written about the Disney film Moana. Disney executives, in part after coming under fire from Native groups in response to earlier films such as Pocohontas, went to great ends to insure the historical, cultural, and visual accuracy of the film. And yet, some activists have still critiqued the film for, among other things, broadly treating all Polynesian/Pacific cultures as one and the same. For this forum I’d like you to consider such representations of culture in films and television. First, read this article from Smithsonian Magazine. Then consider the following. 1) Should filmmakers and other content creators be held responsible for not only the historical but the cultural accuracy of their productions? 2) Is this a net positive or negative? Or rather, does encouraging knowledge, even if in a cursory way, end in a win for greater public awareness and knowledge of cultures outside their own? and 3) Do you think Disney adequately addressed past criticisms with their efforts on Moana?