Pocahontas

Postcolonial prostitute or poster child for Native Spirituality?

Disney’s Pocahontas as “colonized”

•  According to Lori Rowlett, there are 4 elements in the Pocahontas story that reveal the “colonized” nature of the Disney story… –  A) she falls in love with a conqueror –  B) she saves conquerors from her own

people –  C) she wholeheartedly embraces the

conqueror’s culture –  D) Her body, and her reproductive

powers, are co-opted by the conquering culture

•  Are all 4 of these elements really found in the Disney film (as opposed to narratives about the “historical” Pocahontas)?

Savages, savages…

•  According to Rowlett, “the English troops and the Native American warriors are shown as morally equivalent” in this scene. Rowlett p. 70.

•  According to Pinsky, however, “by this time in Pocahontas even a child can see that this is a false, belated symmetry. There is no moral equivalence in this battle.” p. 163

•  What accusations do the Europeans make about the Natives? What accusations do the Natives make about the Europeans? Does the film privilege one set of accusations over the other?

•  What visual “pun” does Disney use in this scene as a commentary on European accusations?

Disney’s factual “errors” •  According to Rowlett:

–  Pocahontas portrayed as older than historical Pocahontas –  Pocahontas looks more Asian than Native (?) –  No romance with John Smith –  Native spirituality is “absurd hodge-podge” - no anthropomophized

trees or pet animals •  According to the Peter and Rochelle Schweizers (authors of “Disney:

The Mouse Betrayed. Greed, Corruption and Children at Risk”): –  No conversion to Christianity –  No mention of Ratcliffe’s true fate at the hands of Natives –  No mention of fate of Pocahontas’s real mother or the marital

practices of her real father –  Pocahontas transformed from Christian convert to “cover girl for

Native American philosophies and present-day ecological concerns.”

•  How do these “errors” help shape the film’s “message?”

•  Does it matter (why and to whom?) that the film is not “historically” accurate?

Pocahontas a “love addict?” •  “In Disney’s cartoon and in its recent

sequel, Pocahontas appears as something of a love addict. She is madly in love with Smith in one episode, then he leaves and Rolfe comes along. She is wildly smitten again…Consequently, Disney, Hollywood and other producers of popular culture promulgate and reinforce over and over again the idea that a young woman’s pathway to happiness lies in being swept away by a strong male who will marry her.” Rowlett p. 74

•  Does Pocahontas teach girls to be “love addicts?”

•  Does Pocahontas teach girls that their path to happiness lies in marriage?

•  Does Disney generally teach this message?

Pocahontas reinforces imperialistic structures?

•  “In the Disney cartoon, then, when Pocahontas leaves her people in favor of seeking her fortune with a white man in a foreign culture, the stamp of approval is given to the ‘couple’ as the primary unit of society rather than the community, which would have centered on the mother’s kin group.” Rowlett, p. 75

•  Does Pocahontas leave her people to seek her fortune with a white man in the Disney film?

•  Would Pocahontas’s historical community really have put the emphasis on her mother’s kin group?

•  Has Disney’s Pocahontas been given “words to speak in praise of [colonizing powers] as conquering heroes”? Is she “worth saving and assimilating because she recognizes the specialness of the conquerors, making her the mirror which magnifies their own glory”? Rowlett, p.75

Colors of the Wind

•  “What they created was a script about religious conversion - but not to Christianity. In the Disney version, it is Captain John Smith who experiences a politically correct religious conversion… Captain John Smith embraces animism, and it defines the entire film…This is not simply a movie about tolerance, but about achieving tolerance through a particular spiritual channel.” Schweizer & Schweizer, pp.155-156. True?

Pocahontas’s missing conversion

•  “It takes a historical icon that has been used in the past to legitimate their view of America - Pocahontas’s conversion representing native recognition of the superiority of Christianity, and with it the justification of European conquest ‘to build a great nation, under God’ - and turns it against them.” Pinsky pp. 154-165.

•  Is Pocahontas anti-Christian by omission? •  Is Pocahontas pro-Native American spirituality? •  Does Pocahontas advocate a “post-Christian era of religious democracy?”

John Chapman, The Baptism of Pocahontas, 1840