This is so disgusting. You can LITERALLY buy brown skin with PI tattoos and a grass skirt for $44.95. This is exactly why so many Pacific Islanders have been critical of Disney’s Moana – because this is the result. This is not “just a cartoon”, this is our culture and how we are represented. C’mon…
Hey look lmfao it’s the exact fucking thing I’ve been saying this movie would lead to for months 🙂
Despite all of the recourse to ‘representation’ politics, we have to fundamentally recognise that this ‘representation’ of/ for Pasifika people comes in the context of global capitalism. What that means is that anything we are, anything we have, will be taken from us, stripped of any meaning which doesn’t directly contribute to producing capital, and then mass produced until it’s no longer profitable to do so.
This is where the politics of capitalist ‘representation’ get us. Literally brown skin suits. This is the culmination of the historical process which saw the mutilated body parts of my exterminated ancestors preserved, stolen and mass-marketed to Europeans in the 19th century. Now for kids.
– That’s official merch, too.