✹ Shiny in movie - Moana
26th March 2021
This week, I have discovered a song while I was searching for a techincal tutorial on Youtube. The song named ‘Shiny’ singing by Jemaine Clement.It was in a Disney movie called 'Moana' the story about the daughter of a chief of a Polynesian village, who is chosen by the ocean itself to reunite a mystical relic with the goddess Te Fiti.
I listened to it once and can never stop repeating it for quite a while. The lyrics are so catchy. And it gave away quite a clear sense of how shininess can be as a character in the movie. This song is about Tamatoa, a villainous giant crab that covets all things shiny and valuable. In an effort to exude beauty and superiority, Tamatoa displays his collected treasures atop his golden shell. He lives in the underworld sea where Moui and Moana travel to to get the sacred Hook back for Maui.
The song starts by addressing that Tamatoa has been transformed from a normal crab when he was young into this ‘glam’ ‘beautiful’ giant crab and that transformation makes him happy.
“ Well Tamatoa hasn't always been this glam
I was a drab little crab once
Now I know I can be happy as a clam
Because I'm beautiful baby “
The next goes,
“Did your granny say listen to your heart?
Be who you are on the inside?
I need three words to tear her argument apart
Your granny lied
I'd rather be shiny…“
Saying that 'Being who you are' isn’t enough for him, seem like he tried but it didn't work out for him - maybe he got treated badly by others? Maybe it made his life harder than he wanted? Instead, he’d like to express himself as shiny, glam and valuable in order to feel ‘superior’ to other creators in the sea.
Tamatoa also uses his shininess to attract small fishes in the scene, with the lyrics that go
“ Don't you know
Fish are dumb, dumb, dumb
They chase anything that glitters
Beginners
Oh, and here they come, come, come
To the brightest thing that glitters
Mmm, fish dinners
I just love free food
And you look like seafood “
For me, it implies the idea of powerful people who tried to take advantage of poor people, Big fish eat smaller fish. Small fishes got attracted to shiny objects like Tomato himself does. Endless greediness continues this cycle, without thinking about himself as a small normal crab when he was young he might have done the same as he has been treated.
In the end, he, too, got distracted into shiny stone that Moana uses to help Moaui from getting kill by him.
From this, I think shiny objects which are accumulated by Tamatoa imply the endless greediness of oneself. Like human, he wants to be superior than others by expressing his power through his body and his possession ,eventually that change how he sees himself . Unfortunately, that greediness has tricked him into a trap and let the opponents at the end.