Mahana, you ugly, get out of that tree!

For our Young Women's activity last night, we watched Johnny Lingo. It was the newer version from a few years ago, not the short version put out by the church in the 60's. We've always talked about that movie in terms of Mahana's experience, how she was treated badly by her father and the village, and made to believe she was nothing. Then Tama comes along and offers 8 cows for her, revealing to her and the village that she is much greater than anyone thought. I like the message that we shouldn't base our self worth on the opinions of others. I think it's an important message for the young women in this day when so much of what others think of us is based on superfluous things rather than the salient. Too much consideration is given to labels and clothes and cars and where you live or other meaningless details while not enough is given to the truly important things like honesty, character, and integrity. But in watching the movie last night, I realized another point of view.

Now it's been several years since I've seen the original version of Johnny Lingo, so I don't remember it much. But in this newer version, a lot of time is given to Tama and his life. He is likewise treated badly by the people of the island. He is passed from house to house, each one worse than the last. He's picked on by the boys of the island and made to feel, by all, that he is a curse brought to that island. He eventually leaves the island to escape what is sure to be a difficult and meaningless life and ends up in the home of Johnny Lingo. He eventually learns that he is in fact the son of a chief of another island, and he was always loved and missed and important to them. He also proves himself to Johnny Lingo, eventually being rewarded with all that he has, as well as the illustrious name. He is not a nothing, or a curse, as he was told all his life. We think of this as a movie showing the true worth of Mahana, but I think it also shows the true worth of Tama, a perspective I'd never thought of before.

When he goes back to the island to get Mahana, he goes back not as Tama, but as Johnny Lingo. He is rich and handsome and all the women of the island swoon over him. All, that is, except Mahana. She calls him a peacock and wants nothing to do with him. To her, riches meant nothing. She was more concerned with the worth of the person rather than the outside trappings. Character, not clothes; integrity, not riches were of value to her. She understood that the inside was truly what mattered. It wasn't just that she was revealed to be beautiful in the end, it was that she recognized where a person's true value lay, and she possessed the same values herself. Tama recognized that she was different and that she put more value on the truly important things rather than what was generally thought of as important. I think that is what made her worthy to be an 8 cow woman, not the beauty that was hidden by years of neglect and abuse. It was the beauty on the inside that was finally allowed to surface that made her a truly beautiful woman in the end. So the lesson of this movie was not just that we should never allow our self worth to be determined by others, as both Mahana and Tama learned, but also that we should never judge others on the outside trappings of life, but rather on the character and integrity they show.