It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and how it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Tasha Robinson, here with Scott Tobias, Keith Phipps, Genevieve Kosky. Here on the next picture show, we believe that no film exists in a vacuum and that all culture is more interesting in context. So every other week, we get together to talk over a classic film and consider how it relates to a current movie.

This week, we're looking at two Disney animated features that take the same approach and tell the same story, more or less,

even though they were made nearly 20 years apart and originate in extremely different cultures.

Genevieve, your parents say that you shouldn't read this next part because it wouldn't be fitting for a girl,

but you want to stand up for your independence and read it anyway?

I will, but only to bring honor to my family.

Disney has a long history with reclaimed fairy tales and female protagonists who stand up for themselves, but the studio takes its favorite tropes to a new level with Moana, the new CGI movie about a chief's daughter who escapes her South Pacific

Island to track down a missing demigod and save her people from a slowly spreading curse.

In a lot of ways, Moana does what Disney always does. It starts with the local myth, in this case,

a series of folk tales about the South Pacific demigod Maui, and that it builds that myth into

a familiar, accessible, kid-friendly story about a young

character coming of age and saving the day. Disney's 1998 movie, Mulan, which is largely

traditional hand-drawn animation with some early CGI touches, does the same thing with an ancient

Chinese folk tale about a young woman who disguises herself as a young man and goes to war in her

father's place. Both of these movies follow similar story patterns.

Both of them are musicals, and both of them are part of Disney's slow, experimental work to diversify its character stable.

And they're both trying hard to repair Disney's longtime reputation as a studio that really didn't know what to do with non-white characters or cultures, apart from using them to represent villainy or local color.

Just looking at how both films handle non-European cultures is pretty enlightening,

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