Cultural Representation in Moana
Disney’s latest film Moana has been praised for its representation of a female lead character. The film opened at the box office on and has since made 234 billion dollars. While the film has been a huge success, Moana struggles to represent cultural authenticity. Despite the intensive research to portray the Polynesian culture correctly, it fails to represent the wide everyday life of Hawaii’s economy and living conditions. The question lies with why Disney chose to represent Moana in a particular way? Tina Grandinetti, a Hawaii-born, Melbourne-based writer; spoke to The Daily about this.
Produced by Brooke Taylor & Quan Tran
