美国国家公共电台 NPR In 'Moana,' New Voices Both Uphold And Challenge The Disney Tradition

In 'Moana,' New Voices Both Uphold And Challenge The Disney Tradition

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"Moana," Disney's newest animated² film is named after an imaginary island in the Pacific. Like so many other Disney films, the soundtrack is a big part of the story. But it's tricky³. Especially when the movie is about a different culture, the music can end up being cliche⁴ or even insulting to some. Tim Greiving has more on how the team behind "Moana" tried to get it right.

TIM GREIVING, BYLINE⁵: Think about the classic Disney animated movies, and you may just start humming songs like this one.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR")

CLIFF EDWARDS: (Singing) When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are...

GREIVING: Or this one.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BARE NECESSITIES")

PHIL HARRIS: (Singing) Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities. Forget about your worries and strife⁶.

RON CLEMENTS: It goes all the way back even to "Steamboat Willie" and the "Silly Symphonies." Music and the animation⁷ were just like peanut butter and jelly or something. It seemed like they go hand in hand.

GREIVING: Ron Clements directed "Moana" alongside John Musker. Both men started working at Disney as animators in the mid-'70s. By then, songs had taken a backseat and the division was struggling. But in the late '80s, Disney turned to Broadway and the result was a pretty big splash.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PART OF YOUR WORLD")

JODI BENSON: (Singing) Up where they walk, up where they run, up where they stay all day in the sun - wandering free, wish I could be, part of that world.

GREIVING: The 1989 hit "The Little Mermaid⁸" helped to revive Disney animation and created a template that continued through "Beauty And The Beast" and "Aladdin" to the company's last release, "Frozen." Three of those four hits, beginning with "Little Mermaid," were the work of lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken.

ALAN MENKEN: We were coming off a big hit, "Little Shop Of Horrors." People clearly wanted us to be doing what we do but aiming it towards a totally different form.

GREIVING: Menken says there's a reason why Broadway and Disney Animation were such a good marriage.

MENKEN: Howard was that rare breed who basically was a dramatist and a writer who understood how to integrate songs into works, the perfect person to come over and to help reinvent the form.

GREIVING: The creators of "Moana" wanted to build on that formula, so they went looking for the brightest star on Broadway today. And the choice was obvious, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the smash hit "Hamilton." Turns out, he was bitten by the Broadway bug⁹ on a trip under the sea.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: When I was 9 years old, I saw "A Little Mermaid" (ph). And when Sebastian the crab¹⁰ began singing a Caribbean calypso number in the middle of a Disney movie - my life has sort of never been the same since.

GREIVING: Miranda, whose family hails from the Caribbean, made sure the songs in "Moana" advanced the story in the musical theater tradition. But he also had to address another Disney legacy¹¹. The studio has taken flak in the past for appropriating other cultures in misguided - and sometimes insulting - ways.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ARABIAN NIGHTS")

BRUCE ADLER: (Singing) Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place where the caravan¹² camels roams, where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face. It's barbaric. But, hey, it's home.

GREIVING: Disney had that song rewritten following an outcry after the film's initial release. But Miranda says he didn't take this challenge lightly.

MIRANDA: If you're making a movie about a part of the world, like - for many people, that will be their only exposure to that culture. So you should know something about that culture when you write it. I think anyone should be able to write about anything, but your biggest tools are empathy and research, emphasis on the research.

GREIVING: The filmmakers did as much of that as they could, says director Ron Clements.

CLEMENTS: We met so many great people, and not just anthropologists and linguists¹³ and archaeologists but villagers and chiefs and sailors and navigators. And one of the elders in Tahiti said for years, we've been swallowed by your culture. One time, can you be swallowed by our culture?

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TULOU TAGALOA")

OLIVIA FOA'I: (Singing in foreign language).

GREIVING: The score for "Moana" was composed by Mark Mancina who also arranged the songs for "The Lion King." He says he tried to be careful there, too, turning Elton John's pop songs into showtunes with the help of South African musician Lebo M.

MARK MANCINA: I couldn't have made "Lion King" sound African without working with Lebo. You know, we brought him in, and we did the same thing with this movie. I worked with Opetaia. He came and stayed with me several times.

GREIVING: Opetaia is Opetaia Foa'i, a Samoan musician who helped Mancina and Lin-Manuel Miranda make sure the "Moana" songs were steeped in the culture of Oceania.

OPETAIA FOA'I: You can't fool people, you know. If something's real, something's true, we all sense it. If something's fabricated, we know it, too. Put it this way, my ancestors would be happy with this movie. And that's saying a lot.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE KNOW THE WAY")

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA AND OPETAIA FOA'I: (Singing in foreign language).

GREIVING: Foa'i wrote the song "We Know The Way" and contributed rhythmic¹⁴ chants and input¹⁵ throughout the process. The songs in "Moana" feature Foa'i's vocal¹⁶ group, Te Vaka, as well as a larger choir¹⁷ from Fiji. If these songs go on to become part of the great Disney songbook, Lin-Manuel Miranda says the effect is enormous.

MIRANDA: They stick to your life at the moment you most need them. And when you're a little kid, it may be the first time you've been transported in quite that way. You know, tickets to theater are expensive, but anyone can go see a Disney movie and have that same rush of all the elements coming together to make a really musically transporting moment.

GREIVING: And just as he heard something of himself as a kid in "The Little Mermaid," he hopes today's young audiences will hear sounds that evoke¹⁸ another culture, or their own, in "Moana."

For NPR News, I'm Tim Greiving in Los Angeles.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 animated   

adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的

参考例句：

• His observations gave rise to an animated and lively discussion.他的言论引起了一场气氛热烈而活跃的讨论。
• We had an animated discussion over current events last evening.昨天晚上我们热烈地讨论时事。

3 tricky   

adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的

参考例句：

• I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手，你能帮我吗？
• He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题，只做了个笼统的表述。

4 cliche   

n./a.陈词滥调(的)；老生常谈(的)；陈腐的

参考例句：

• You should always try to avoid the use of cliche. 你应该尽量避免使用陈词滥调。
• The old cliche is certainly true:the bigger car do mean bigger profits.有句老话倒的确说得不假:车大利大。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 strife   

n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争

参考例句：

• We do not intend to be drawn into the internal strife.我们不想卷入内乱之中。
• Money is a major cause of strife in many marriages.金钱是造成很多婚姻不和的一个主要原因。

7 animation   

n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作

参考例句：

• They are full of animation as they talked about their childhood.当他们谈及童年的往事时都非常兴奋。
• The animation of China made a great progress.中国的卡通片制作取得很大发展。

8 mermaid   

n.美人鱼

参考例句：

• How popular would that girl be with the only mermaid mom!和人鱼妈妈在一起，那个女孩会有多受欢迎！
• The little mermaid wasn't happy because she didn't want to wait.小美人鱼不太高兴，因为她等不及了。

9 bug   

n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器

参考例句：

• There is a bug in the system.系统出了故障。
• The bird caught a bug on the fly.那鸟在飞行中捉住了一只昆虫。

10 crab   

n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气

参考例句：

• I can't remember when I last had crab.我不记得上次吃蟹是什么时候了。
• The skin on my face felt as hard as a crab's back.我脸上的皮仿佛僵硬了，就象螃蟹的壳似的。

11 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

12 caravan   

n.大蓬车；活动房屋

参考例句：

• The community adviser gave us a caravan to live in.社区顾问给了我们一间活动住房栖身。
• Geoff connected the caravan to the car.杰弗把旅行用的住屋拖车挂在汽车上。

13 linguists   

n.通晓数国语言的人( linguist的名词复数 )；语言学家

参考例句：

• The linguists went to study tribal languages in the field. 语言学家们去实地研究部落语言了。 来自辞典例句
• The linguists' main interest has been to analyze and describe languages. 语言学家的主要兴趣一直在于分析并描述语言。 来自辞典例句

14 rhythmic   

adj.有节奏的，有韵律的

参考例句：

• Her breathing became more rhythmic.她的呼吸变得更有规律了。
• Good breathing is slow,rhythmic and deep.健康的呼吸方式缓慢深沉而有节奏。

15 input   

n.输入(物)；投入；vt.把(数据等)输入计算机

参考例句：

• I will forever be grateful for his considerable input.我将永远感激他的大量投入。
• All this information had to be input onto the computer.所有这些信息都必须输入计算机。

16 vocal   

adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目

参考例句：

• The tongue is a vocal organ.舌头是一个发音器官。
• Public opinion at last became vocal.终于舆论哗然。

17 choir   

n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱

参考例句：

• The choir sang the words out with great vigor.合唱团以极大的热情唱出了歌词。
• The church choir is singing tonight.今晚教堂歌唱队要唱诗。

18 evoke   

vt.唤起，引起，使人想起

参考例句：

• These images are likely to evoke a strong response in the viewer.这些图像可能会在观众中产生强烈反响。
• Her only resource was the sympathy she could evoke.她以凭借的唯一力量就是她能从人们心底里激起的同情。