Disney’s princess thing
Since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came out in 1937, Disney has made major advances in many areas. Moana showcases three of them: hair, water and princesses.
Let’s begin with the first two: Set in the Polynesian Pacific, the animated film moves from a lush island to a constantly undulating sea, and every curl of the characters’ hair and every ripple on the ocean is so lovingly constructed that Moana is the most visually beautiful movie Disney has ever made.
It’s also the most selfreferential. Not only with in-jokes, but in addressing head-on the phenomenon that is the Disney Princess Industrial Complex.
Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) is the daughter of a chief, and her island is imperilled by an environmental threat. Against the wishes of her father, she sets out on a canoe (accompanied by Heihei, a rooster who’s a few brains short of a bucket) to right the wrong and save her home. Along the way, she runs into shape-shifting demigod Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson), who snidely calls her “Princess.” Moana clarifies that she is not a princess, she is “the daughter of the chief.”
“Look,” Maui says, “if you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess.”
That’s the most accurate description of Disney princesses ever. For Disney, “princess” has just been shorthand for “girl at centre of movie,” probably because women and girls have had to earn the right to even be at the centre of a movie — and being a princess was, for a long time, the only way for a woman to be seen as having a story worth telling.
Disney has been shifting away from that. Most of its modern princesses are actually anti-princess. Merida (Brave, 2012) and Jasmine (Aladdin, 1992) resist the strictures their roles place on them. Tiana (The Princess and the Frog, 2009) marries a prince and then opens her restaurant anyway. And Elsa (who is a queen for most of Frozen, 2013) literally flees from power. Being a princess became a burden to be shouldered, not a goal to be achieved by marrying the right guy.
Moana has a more complex relationship with what a princess is. She wants to serve her people and believes she would lead well. Leading well, though, would leave her personally unsatisfied. But leaving the island would hurt the people she loves, and she’d be abandoning a part of herself. For Moana, being a princess is neither goal nor burden — but at the same time, it’s both.
A lot of females have that sort of relationship with the structures and strictures of femininity. Maui’s dismissive definition shows how irrelevant the notion of “princess” in the Disney sense has become. Moana isn’t a princess, and she is, and it doesn’t matter — just like how it doesn’t matter how women embrace, reject or ignore traditional symbols of femininity.