The first full-length domestic trailer has arrived for Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Moana, the sweeping, CG-animated feature film about an adventurous teenager who sails out on a daring mission to save her people. Along the way, she meets once-mighty demi-god Maui (right).
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While the model featured on Disney’s website is (thankfully?) a person of color who could very well be Polynesian, there’s every indication that this costume is more or less full-body brown face.
“Polynesian culture is not a costume”, one Twitter user wrote.
The film stars Dwayne Johnson (HBO’s “Ballers”, “Central Intelligence”) as the demigod Maui and newcomer Auli’i Cravalho voices the title character, Moana. We finally get to know the titular heroine Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) a little bit better, including the fact that she leaves home and seeks out the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) to help save her island from a still-unknown “great danger”.
That’s not to say Disney shouldn’t make a Maui costume at all, but it could be more respectful to make a costume overlay that puts the tattoos on the child’s own skin color, and they wear a t-shirt and leggings to match.
“This is so disgusting”, an Instagrammer said. This is not “just a cartoon”, this is our culture and how we are represented.
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Disney has yet to respond to the backlash and the costume still remains for sale between $44.95 and $49.95.
