Watching Moana with the nieces and nephews I have to say I am coming around to the view I heard from @leah_boustan that it is actually like an uber-traddy story just cleverly disguised as a narrative of individual transgressive heroism.

Moana discovers who she is (actually, tellingly, "who we are") not by looking deep inside herself but I finding an ancient cave full of the signs and rituals of the deep past and in participating in those rituals literally reignites the living fire of tradition.

The presentation of her pre-heroic life is very unlike many other Disney princesses. She actually doesn't have any problem; she successfully makes her peace with a life governed by convention and "place in life." She reconciles herself to it.

You expect the story to be one where she breaks free of convention and in doing so liberates her people. And when she FIRST sails out that seems to be what will happen.

But it doesn't work out at all. Her individual rebellion is broken and she conforms.

This conformity is not only never condemned, but the music seems to celebrate it, albeit with a tinge of sadness about grandma.

But even when she leaves the island, how does her inspirational grandmother tell her to introduce herself?

Spoiler: "of Motonui." Even off the island, her grandmother is telling her that her identity-in-rebellion is circumscribed by her place in the community.

But the validating principle which allows her to nullify her family's lifeway is that there is an *older* and *more original* tradition. "Who we are" is "who we are as far back in our history as can be known." https://twitter.com/JeffreyASachs/status/1293705063102382080

Yes, there's a competition between two received sets of values, norms, and stories.

But one of them is presented as inferior *because it is novel*. It's not even presented as wrong: the decision to hide the boats never gets condemned and musically doesn't seem negative.

Her father's decision to restrict her rediscovery of the past is condemned. But the casualties of voyaging were real and until the ocean presented the heart to someone isolation *was* the best option!

Even the climactic reveal at the end is deeply conservative! The great enemy is simply a violated tradition! The *natural order* was perverted and ruined, such that an in essence *good* deity *appeared* wrathful, because Maui transgressed against the tradition.

Wrong. Her attempt to use a new boat fails; she literally uses an old boat, sails with the help of an ancient demigod, to return an ancient artifact, to comply with an ancient moral order. The entire story is *undoing novelty*. https://twitter.com/AlexNowrasteh/status/1293707508582887425

"Make things back to what they were" is basically the goal of the entire adventure.

With a side order of "rediscover that your ancestors were a million times more amazing than your contemporaries"

Tamatoa's song is basically a satire of self-expression-as-heroism and I think we should all acknowledge that it's basically a critique of post-materialist+neoliberal decadence is all I'm saying

I like this reading as well. https://twitter.com/bdunbar/status/1293709897624883201