After at least half a dozen viewings of Moana over the years since its release two and a half years ago, I have finally found out why I love it so much! And it all has to do with Aristotle.
Okay, maybe I need to take a few steps back.
Hi, my name is Tom, and welcome to the first of ten major posts under my research fellowship, tentatively titled The Open Endings. Throughout the following nine weeks, I will be conducting research on a vast variety of popular culture phenomena through the lenses of storytelling and philosophy, to hopefully uncover some major truths about what we gravitate to most in society, and what the implications are for such gravitation.
As such, I will be posting every Friday for the following nine weeks about a different genre, and while there may be smaller, less formal blogs throughout the week, Fridays are when you – and I, honestly – can expect the most thoughtful and complete musings until I eventually publish a paper on my findings – hopefully.
Anyways, back to Moana.
Moana is the third of what may be commonly referred to as a “New Trilogy” of Disney animated features. While this New Trilogy has never been defined, seemingly universal love has been sent in the way of Disney’s last three non-Pixar, non-straight to TV princess flicks:
- Tangled (2010)
- Frozen (2013)
- and Moana (2016).
This Spring, as I received my acceptance letter for a research fellowship, I was simultaneously watching Moana for a Story Structure course I was taking, which already had me alert to the idea that there was something special going on in the movie. Of course, the primary reason for analysis in that class was to talk about the presence of two key thinkers and their thoughts: Christopher Vogler’s famous teachings about Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, and more importantly, Aristotle’s six traits of literature. But as I thought about my summer research, I identified something about Moana‘s tightly knit story structure that goes beyond what Vogler and Aristotle once taught.
The titular Moana is not only an active player in the plot of her debut movie, but her personal growth is deeply rooted in pushing the narrative forward.
As we watch Moana grow up in the movie’s first act, we can see multiple major forces all trying to tell her what to be, what she is, or what she isn’t. Her father pushes her to stay on the land and set a good example for her people, her grandmother implies that her destiny is to save the world with only an illusion of choice, and through a vision, her ancestors show her that they were once voyagers, and that she too may be able to live out her dreams of being out on the ocean. Finally, after setting off on her journey to return the Heart of Te Fiti to its rightful owner (plot stuff), the demigod Maui tells her that she isn’t a hero, and that he “Won’t die so she can prove she’s something she’s not.”
The film easily places itself as a piece about morals regarding Who We Are, with each of the main songs being centralized around a character’s pursuit of finding out who they are, or relishing in who they already believe they are. By the end of the film, Moana has taken in the extraordinary world, and has a revelation about how she alone can define who she is, no matter how people may potentially react. She carries this thought into her final mission, wherein she must eventually use the knowledge to teach the BBEG, Te Ka, that she may also choose who she wants to be.
So, if Moana’s own mental strife is the key to success in her movies, how do the other two movies I mentioned fair? To my hunch, they both fit into this new mold perfectly.
While I won’t get as specific with these two, they follow similar patterns. In Tangled, every single obstacle which Rapunzel faces is a direct result of previous actions taken by her, or more frequently, her new companion Flynn Ryder. Flynn, revealed halfway through the movie to actually be known as Eugene, is a crook who goes through the steps to reconsidering his dastardly actions, and by the end of the movie, is ready to sacrifice himself to save Rapunzel. What becomes clear through watching his reactions to each new problem that he causes for his love interest is the idea that he is now seeing what his less than righteous acts directly cause for people other than him. Through each of these, Eugene gets closer and closer to who he becomes in the final act, eventually having the sensible power to act selflessly and without worry of his character.
As for Frozen, we follow two princess sisters after their parents die. Elsa, the elder sister of three years, develops ice powers at a young age, and as such is isolated from both the outside world, and her younger sister Anna. It is through her forced isolation that Elsa resolves to be who she wants to be – a girl who is unafraid of her powers – but at the cost of her permanent isolation. As Anna attempts to reconnect with her sister throughout the film, she is driven by her unconditional love for the only family she has left. By the end of the film, after Anna is frozen by a spell that can only be undone by “an act of true love”, it is neither of her love interests that releases her, but her sister Elsa, revealing that familial love is just as strong as any other form. Without Anna’s consistent outreaches towards her older sister, Elsa would not have learned this lesson, and the implication is that Anna would have perished.
Through thorough analysis, we can see these three princess films solidly weaving together Aristotle’s first two attributes of storytelling: Plot and Character. Instead of placing one above the other, it is my belief that the refusal to make a choice between having one higher than the other is key to why these movies are so beloved. Unlike genre-defining movies of the past, i.e Cinderella or Snow White, a character’s direct involvement in what is wholly considered their story makes such stories all the more believable.
To be clear, in his essay Poetics, Aristotle defines six key aspects of literature, or more specifically, what he knows as drama. This work is commonly accepted as the very first work of literary criticism, and it is therefore fitting that the meta-conversations I am continuing about literature fit so nicely with the start of the conversation itself. That being said, in the following order from most to least important, Aristotle lists and talks about the important aspects of all genre.
- Plot
- Character
- Thought
- Diction
- Melody (what he knew as a Greek Chorus, no longer frequently relevant)
- Spectacle
While Aristotle’s six defining features of dramatic story elements seem to reign true as overarching categories, the notion that they are ordered perfectly is highly debated. Upon first studying the work, I had identified myself in the camp of placing character before plot. However, upon my discoveries in Moana, I posit that we may come to more conclusions in storytelling at large if we accept that these six should not be ordered as important or not important, but that all should be acknowledged and considered simultaneously and in conjunction with each other.
I plan on working with this idea as the summer goes by, and I look forward to hopefully finding that the idea has further merit when used for genres other than drama, which is quite easily transferred to film, especially that of somewhat regal and royal stories that bear similarity to what Aristotle was watching.
So next week, we will continue this conversation of story structure and philosophy in our new genre, The Classics. We will be looking at films which have made big splashes in the medium and continue to be discussed today, no matter how old they are. Think Star Wars: A New Hope, Pulp Fiction, The Godfather, and Fight Club.
Happy watching, and remember: every ending is open to discussion.
