“I only hope we never lose sight of one thing, that it was all started by a mouse.” Thanks for clarifying that Walt.
Unfortunately however, at this crucial 2016 intersection of race and representation in the magical world of Disney, and with their upcoming Pasifika adventure film Moana, I am more inclined to believe it all started with Uncle Remus and Song of the South. Yes that film. Disney’s first live-action “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” Musical Drama; two-time Academy award winning (one honorary) controversial 1946 plantation race relations film.
Disney’s Song of the South has never officially, in its entirety, been released for purchase in the United States, or in its colonized occupied territories (here is a book about it if you’re interested). But somehow Song of the South is miraculously the inspiration and backdrop for the Splash Mountain theme park attraction at Disneyland that opened in 1989. Uncle Remus, Song of the South’s titular character, is Disney’s endlessly happy; laughin’; large; plantation loving; mythological in status, storyteller. Bringing endless joy and happiness to those rooted in plantation life, both slave and slave owner, with “the best tales in the whole United States of Georgia!” (see Song of the South [SoS] at 11:00)
Disney’s racism and depiction of stereotyped characters did not begin with Song of the South. Six years before its release, audiences were gifted with the now deleted blackface centaur scene from Fantasia. Reaching farther back into history, Disney’s 1930 Silly Symphony, black and white film short, Cannibal Capers, gave us dancing blackface native African/Island cannibals. After the introduction of Disney’s version of Uncle Remus, audiences in 1953 sang along to the musical number, What Made the Red Man Red from The Adventures of Peter Pan (Red Man = Injun, in Disney talk). In the years that followed, consumers received multiple renditions of those now infamous siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp (1955) and The Aristocats (1977). Wait, I missed one. Should we talk about those jive talkin’ southern Jim Crows in 1941’s Dumbo?; or how the “barbaric” indigenous of Agrabah will “cut off your ear if they don’t like your face” from Aladdin, before they chose to change it?; or how about those barely even human “Savages” discovered in Pocahontas?
What is important to remember as we visualize and critique this historically oppressive beast that is Disney, it’s that “oppression is not an Olympic sport” as my academic peers have personally pointed out. I’m not attempting to prove whose been oppressed the most, implicitly or systemically. Even more so, as a son of Oceania with Nigerian children, I stand firmly with #blacklivesmatter, #nodapl, #freewestpapua, and all dispossessed and oppressed people the world over.
Now that we’ve begun and three trailers for Moana have been officially released, I have a question: was the Non-Plastic Maori (NPM) right?
I ask because in 2014, the NPM cautioned Māori and other indigenous Pacific Islanders in this article, that Pasifika peoples should be both watchful and worried, especially when considering the track record of Disney. This caution comes despite having the first draft of Moana written by Disney/Marvel’s upcoming Thor Ragnarok’s Director, indigenous Maori, Taika Waititi. For those of you impressed at this, Disney’s indigenous approach to film writing, Taika is one of five writers. Jared Bush, Ron Clements, John Musker, and Pamela Ribon are the other four. For context, they are all white Americans. Best case scenario, if equally shared, 1/5th of Moana will be from an indigenous Pasifika perspective, that’s only 20%. And can we please remember that Ron Clements and John Musker are the two directors responsible for the racist debacle that was Aladdin, including the (mis)handling of Disney’s first and only African American/Black princess Tiana, who was subsequently turned into a frog for the majority of her film, The Princess and the Frog (2009).
I’m wondering if they were involved in Disneyland’s unbelievable and culturally shoddy 2015 remodeling of the attraction, the Enchanted Tiki Room, wherein Disney (dis)assembled and (re)imagined Oceanic ancestor Tangaloa as a fruit bearing tree, tikified Goddess Pele and demi-God Maui, and topped them all off by (trans)forming the motto found on the National Coat of Arms for the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, into a jolly song performed by Rongo, with a fake (non)Hawaiian creole accent. For this full Enchanted Tiki Room experience see this video. I could also tell you about the cultural appropriation and whitewashing of the Samí in Frozen, or the problematic and conflicting Critical Race Theory found in Zootopia, despite Disney working with Dr. Shakti Butler of the World Trust, “but that’s another tale, for another day” (SoS 56:13).
In the same year the NPM cautioned readers, the Fiji Times published this article, claiming the iTaukei (indigenous Fijians) of Korova had not received compensation for Disney’s use of their indigenous canoe design. Keep in mind that the iTaukei from Korova genealogically hail from Moce, Lau, a location of some of the greatest camakau (canoe) builders in Fijian oral history. That’s a pretty big deal, culturally and historically.
We are now less than two months away from the official release of Moana here in occupied Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, and a plethora of voices in favor, and against Disney, have been swinging since its debut trailer.
Let’s recap.
In June, Labour MP Jenny Salesa declared that the depiction of Maui in Disney’s Moana is unacceptable and perpetuates a negative Pacific Islander stereotype found in this news article. It’s important to note that Salesa was not the catalyst for the Moana debate, but definitely added fuel with the surrounding news coverage. Salesa’s comments came rather abruptly after professional lawyer and retired professional rugby athlete Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu, posted this on his Facebook account in which he said, “Maui looking like after he fished up the Islands, he deep fried em and ate em.” These combined responses encouraged critical approaches from Pasifika scholars and Pasifika students.
Karlo Mila, Pasifika poet, explained just why Maui is so wrong in this article; indigenous Cultural Anthropologist and Director of Cultures and Languages at Brigham Young University of Hawaiʻi, Tēvita Kaʻili, explained to the Huffington Post, that “The specificity of Mauiʼs tale is unique to Oceania, but the generality of his legend is universal to all societies.” Kaʻili then links the ethos of Maui to Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela among others. See where I’m going here? A youtube video by AUT Bachelor of Communications student and self proclaimed “obese Polynesian,” ʻIsoa Kavakimotu, called both Eliota and MP Salesa wrong in this YouTube video. Following ʻIsoa’s video was this documentary created by a group of Auckland University Students, Tuākana Arts Mentors, and Scholars, that shared a variety of views in response to Moana’s trailers.
Fast forward three months post Salesa and Fuimaono-Sapolu’s arguments, and Pasifika scholars and activists alike have continued to resist Disney interpreting and telling of Pasifika stories and their selling of flayed Pasifika skin in military infested backyards and playgrounds. The most recent response, outside of Facebook, came from Director of Vaʻaomanū Pasifika at Victoria University of Wellington, Teresia Teaiwa, who offered an honest and vulnerable response to e-tangata, Disney, and Moana, by admitting her own complicity in her youth, being taken in by the magical enchantment that is Disney. In a empathic way, Teresia provides a real experience and relatable emotions towards Disney that encompass her past, present, and future. She spoke to so many of us in Oceania, while at the same time sharing the challenges that come with being a professor, wherein one is “supposed to teach how to think, not what to think.” As an educator in Pacific Studies myself, I too admit to such challenges with students. Especially when one is #woke and not only sees, but has the ability to search for and recognize the subterranean forces of racism, supremacy, and oppression that create and influence the ever evading, implicit bias.
Native Hawaiian and award winning filmmaker of Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawaiʻi, Keala Kelly, said to Civil Beat in Hawaiʻi that, “The cultural imperialism of Disney mirrors the military imperialism of the United States and the other industries it uses to erase our indigenous belonging: tourism and real estate. Disney’s Aulani Resort, and now its “Moana,” secures its place in the economically enforced ethnocide and culturcide that is steadily replacing us with settlers.”
Keala’s position is a staunch reminder of the real, deeper issues at play in Ka Pae ʻĀina o Hawaiʻi, that connect to U.S. Public Law 103-150 (107 Stat. 1510) aka The Apology Resolution. Essentially, America admitted to illegally overthrowing the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, and yet Hawaiʻi continues to remain under American occupation. Presently, congress is attempting to strip Kānaka Māoli (Native Hawaiians) of their right to achieve full sovereignty by pushing for Kānaka to be federally recognized in a similar, if not identical ways, as the indigenous people and tribes of America.
After numerous accusations of blackface flooded the internet across the Pacific and U.S.A. for Disney selling a Maui Halloween costume with consumers referring to it as polyface. Indigenous Kaiako at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Tina Ngata, declared the costume to Civil Beat, as “the most ill-conceived merchandise idea of the year (perhaps decade).” Two days later, Associate Professor of American Indian Studies and Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Vince Diaz, agreed here that, not only was Disney’s now cancelled skin suit and pajamas modern blackface, but that Moana is Disney’s “primitivist desire for noble savagery, now dressed up in a story of a would-be anti-heroine” and is additionally, “a brave and amazing navigatress/princess…in synergistic touch with the power of nature, in particular with the ocean.” Diaz continues –and this is where Uncle Remus comes in– that Moana is “in the company of a buffoonish, but ultimately lovable caricature (Disney Maui) of an actual pan-Polynesian demigod and revered ancestor (Maui the Real).”
Do you see the relation? Do you see how it’s all the same? Was there really anything to be happy about in pre-Reconstruction? or in the days that immediately followed it? Post Reconstruction allowed the 13th Amendment to continue the practice of slavery as long as they were “criminals.” This is masterfully covered in Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13TH and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Reflectively so, is there anything to be happy about when your ancestral Gods or demi-Gods and ancestors are transformed into a Pacific amalgamation of a sidekick and buffoon?
Maybe we should all just wait for the movie to be released before we start critiquing as suggested in this commentary. Or maybe we should all just shut our mouths and be thankful for having a part to play. Right? Whatever you say massa Disney? Nope. Not me. I am here to fight the postcolonial delegitimization! See this declaration.
What seems to be absent from the consciousness of so many voices creating the “cognitive dissonance” that Teaiwa speaks to in her piece, is that, with both of these characters (Remus and Maui), their image and personality is finalized and approved of, by the white oligarchy of Disney, and in the case of Moana, “Sho ʻNuff” (SoS 55:56) you can include directors John Musker and Ron Clements to that group once again.
Historically, Uncle Remus, was the brain child of journalist/writer Joel (Joe) Chandler Harris. An imaginative, deified, representation of a post Reconstruction African American/Uncle Tom. Joe wrote a slew of books about Uncle Remus, the Br’er animals, and Tar-Babies (that’s racial code for African Americans). See Toni Morrison’s book Tar Baby and former Governor Mitt Romney’s use of the epithet and quick apology for more context. Disney “magically” secured the film rights –as Disney does– to Harris’ work and promptly created Song of the South. According to Robert Bone’s 1975 analysis of the character, “Uncle Remus, the creation of Joel Chandler Harris, is one of many masks employed by the Plantation School to justify the restoration of white supremacy” (Bickley, 139).
The first volume in Harris’ anthology is, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1880). In the introduction, Remus is described as having “nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery” (47). Really? English scholar Robert Cochran declared that the Uncle Remus’ books are indeed, “at best a ridiculous idealization of a slave-based plantation society and at worst a bold exploitation of African American culture” (Cochran, 22). I couldn’t agree more. Disney then romanticized and deified Harris’ slavery loving Uncle Remus through song and film accompanied with animation. Well “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!”
Maui/Māui on the other hand, unlike Uncle Remus, is an actual indigenous deity, albeit a demi-God, deity nonetheless. Maui is a tangible, traceable, genealogical ancestor to many in Oceania, which is the indigenous counter narrative to Disney’s U.S. Moana teaser trailer, by whom Maui is the greatest “of all the Pacific Islands.” We know this because Maui is also a storyteller, like Remus, and is shown detailing his accomplishments to Moana. Kaʻili explained in his article that Maui historically frees society from oppression; fishes up the landscapes (islands) of/for the seascapes (Moana/Oceania); snatched fire from the selfish Gods to share with the people; receives his power from Hina, the (grand)mother/sister/wife (depending on the cultural region); and, “He [Maui] resisted and fought against all forms of injustices, from ageism to xenophobia. Through his wisdom as a grand-master trickster of Oceania, he transformed society from inequality to equality.”
But Disney decided to de-deify him, to Uncle Remus status, bringing back if not perpetuating, that “ridiculous idealization” of a “noble savage” that Diaz so eloquently mentioned, and at worst created a bad exploitation of Oceania. Disney even has the impudence to now call him the “once-mighty demigod Maui.”
To be clear, there is a difference between Disney’s Moana and Disneyʻs approach to race, blackness, and the history of American chattel slavery in Song of the South. Disney’s Moana approaches race and culture through their depiction of “natives” and the history of colonization. But what remains consistent between the two is white supremacy. White supremacy consistently conflates blackness and nativeness, and does so when it’s convenient. It treats them differently when it’s convenient. Disney went to the bank with Uncle Remus because it was convenient. Now they are going to the bank with Maui, because it’s convenient. Disney is cashing their checks in the same apologist, buffoonish, revisionist, racist, and convenient way.
The late film critic Roger Ebert was once asked about Disney’s “holding out” of releasing Song of the South on home video. He responded by saying here, “Any new Disney film immediately becomes part of the consciousness of almost every child in America, and I would not want to be a black child going to school in the weeks after “Song of the South” was first seen by my classmates.”
The interview of Roger Ebert was in 2000 and it’s not just America watching movies anymore. According to Box Office Mojo, Disney has eleven of the top twenty-five grossing films of all-time, worldwide. With all of them earning over one billion dollars. For context, the only films in that list pre-dating Ebert’s comments, are Jurassic Park (1993), Titanic (1997) and Star Wars Episode I (1999). You see, both Frozen (2013) and Zootopia (2016) are there with combined domestic earnings of $742,006,257. Worldwide earnings combined? $2,300,076,293. Their domestic earnings account for only 31% of their total haul. Clearly, any new Disney film released, immediately becomes part of the consciousness of almost every child in the theater attending world! Well, Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!
Considering Ebert’s comments, do our Pasifika communities at home and in the diaspora want our/their children to be the ones defending Disney's revisionist interpretation of Oceania and our/their ancestors in such classrooms? Having children of my own, I do not. Weaving systemic oppression is difficult, especially when the oppressed are often engaged in the oppression Olympics. Despite the varying levels of oppression, it truly is the same machinery. Regardless of Disney’s projected financial reality, I resist and reject these appropriations and stereotypes of my family’s combined Oceanic and African cultures, genealogies, realities, ancestors, and stories. But like Teaiwa, I also have to teach my children how to think, not what to think.
So Disney, in the words of your own mammy Aunt Tempy, “you ain’t pullin’ no wool o’er my eye” (SoS 59:49).
Citations
- Bickley, Bruce, ed. Critical Essays on Joel Chandler Harris. Boston: Hall, 1981.
- Cochran, Robert. “Black Father: The Subversive Achievement of Joel Chandler Harris.” African American Review 38, no. 1 (2004): 21-34.
- Harris, Joel Chandler, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. 1880. New York: Penguin, 1982.