Visual Splendor Rises to the Surface in Disney’s Live-Action ‘Moana’

Back in the day, critics — and not exclusively on the political left — were up in arms over what Richard Schickel described in the title of his influential 1968 book as “The Disney Version.” The charge was that Disney movies conquered the world with a viewpoint that was strictly patriarchal, bourgeois, and middle American. In short, it amounted to nothing less than cultural imperialism, white privilege writ very large.