Pocahontas Diversity

Disney not only fictionalizes accounts from American history, but romanticizes them as well. Since the film is directed towards children, many of them do not learn the real history of Pocahontas before watching the film thus believing the scripted story to be factual. The European men in the film all look like individuals whereas the Native Americans all look the same making it harder to differentiate between them. This could symbolize the idea that all Native Americans are the same in personality and behavior. Pocahontas was the only one in the film that stood out from the pack, she was the exception. Great emphasis is put on imagination and emotions to assist in decision making as the older neoclassical approach of using intellect is rejected.

interest in Kacuom, the man her father wants her to have an interest in. Pocahontas's rebellion

The history of the real Pocahontas is unsettling. So, wouldn’t it have been better if the movie hadn’t been made? In the future, fiction will merge with fact. Despite the Pocahontas being revolutionary, providing a new and unique message, the story of Mataoka should not be warped. Mataoka’s early life, life in England, a comparison of the movie and real life, and how the movie effects real people all show that although Pocahontas was a great movie, it also made a sad time in history seem

“Savage” starts off by depicting the Native Americans as devilish Red and barely human. Lines like “What can you expect from filthy little heathens? Here's what you get when races are diverse! Their skin's a hellish red! They're only good when dead! They're vermin, as I said and worse!” contribute to that depiction. In Disney’s Pocahontas, John Ratcliffe was portrayed as Governor Ratcliffe, a greedy and ruthlessly power-hungry man who was the main antagonist of the film. Some of Ratcliffe’s dialogue during the song helps viewers, especially young children, help develop the mindset that human with a different skin color other than white, must be obliterated. The lyrics denounce the mixing of both races and the term savages perpetuate the idea that Native Americans are uneducated and uncivilized. Despite the are alluding to each other as savages, the British have depicted the Native Americans much more heavily. These lyrics create a very strong negative portrayal towards the American Indians.

In a scene where Pocahontas and John Smith had their first face-to-face encounter, John Smith who is holding his gun up ready to shoot but instead lowers his gun upon laying eyes on Pocahontas, obviously taken aback by her beauty. This shows how native American women romanticized by the media and portrayed as being mesmerizing to men. Movie-makers had taken a more sexualized approach in creating Pocahontas’s appearance as can be seen by how Pocahontas wears a mini dress that bears much skin and she was given a voluptuous figure with a tiny waist, adding how her hair was placed to attract attention throughout the movie (van Wormer, & Juby, 2015)(Ono, & Buescher, 2001). In the case where Pocahontas sings the famous Colours of the Wind soundtrack, Pocahontas dances in a sensuous way moving very closely to John Smith despite how they just met. This gives off the meaning that Native American women are very open, exotic and a sexualized image (Hopkins, 2005)(R, & Berger, 2004)

Meanwhile in the powhatan tribe in the new world Pocahontas daughter of chief powhatan dreads being wed to kocoum , a brave

The book is written in narrative flow and shows Pocahontas’s development from a little girl to a grown woman. The author is showing how big of an impact a woman made to her people and culture. Even at the age of nine she was a main concern of her people because her father was Powhatan, the paramount chief. At that time she experienced strangers who came to her father’s kingdom in big ships. As the story progresses, she is more and more as a greatly influential person. Townsend portrays that she is the one who saved John Smith’s life. She also explains who Kocoom is and his relationship ties to Pocahontas.

[1] Disney’s Pocahontas has understandably received a lot of flak about the historically inaccurate story that is told about the legendary Pocahontas and Captain John Smith. There is a good reason for that. The movie does little that can be construed as historically accurate, yet Disney claims that was never their intent. Disney, in their previous movies, has been attacked for being racist and unsympathetic to racial minorities. Their answer was a movie whose sole purpose, as stated by Disney, was to promote racial tolerance. The question is, then can a movie promote racial tolerance when the issue is built on false history, history that if told accurately would depict the exact opposite?

Savages!” (songlyrics.com). There was an imaginary form of ideology being represented for the real conditions of existence by the Native American’s during this time (Althusser 155). “The starting-point is the simple one that ideology is read from film texts, consciously or unconsciously, and the relationship between each text and its culture are traceable to ideological roots.” (Turner, 1999, p.171) Pocahontas gives viewers a different picture of the Native Americans role during this time. In addition to Native American’s being criticized and misrepresented from their actual history, they were also portrayed as a Willow tree, Meeko, and Flit, whom were all objects in nature or animals. Because all Native American characters were the animals and the objects in nature, their heritage and people get pushed to the edge of society because they are made out to be different [to be objects and animals]. They are marginalized because they are different from the westerners. This impacts the ideology of social exclusion and misrepresentation of a social group. The Native American’s are misinterpreted through society today due to movies like Pocahontas portraying their people as animals, objects, or misinterpreting their role in history with negative connotations in the text. “Importantly ideological approaches reject the view of the film text as ‘unitary’ in meaning; that is, as making only one kind of sense, without considerations, exceptions, or variations in the

John Smith's tales of the Indian princess, Pocahontas, have, over time, encouraged the evolution of a great American myth. According to this myth, which is common knowledge to most Americans, Pocahontas saved Smith from being killed by her father and his warriors and then fell in love with John Smith. Some versions of the myth popular among Americans include the marriage of Smith and Pocahontas. Although no one can be sure of exactly what happened almost four-hundred years ago, most historians agree that the myth is incorrect. Pocahontas did not save John Smith's life from "savages" and never showed any affection for him. The events of her life differ greatly from the myth Americans have created.

Not only that, but he has supposedly told multiple stories of a prominent woman aiding his rescue (Powhatan Nation, n.d.). Pocahontas’s tale is one of three (Powhatan Nation, n.d.). Further discrediting the claims, Smith’s character described by his fellow colonists was anything but dependable: nothing but an abrasive, ambitious, self-promoting mercenary soldier (Powhatan Nation, n.d.). “The New World” narrates accounts of confused love, comparing the elegance of Pocahontas to an ethereal embodiment. After his brush with death, Smith is welcomed into the tribe as a temporary guest.

. , brother"(Pocahontas ). The ravages of the Native myth are dissolved in the film closure when the oppressor turns into rescuer and welcomed as a

Pocahontas, also once called Matoaka was a Powhatan indian who brought peace between the colonists and native Americans by befriending them. As a young girl, Pocahontas saved the life of John Smith when he got captured by her father and about to be executed. Eventually, she became friends with John smith and would bring food to the settlers from her tribe as well as saved their lives many times over. Even though Pocahontas befriended the English settlers, once Smith returned to England the relationship between the Powhatans and settlers began to crumble and would never be the same. Pocahontas was born about 1595 in Virginia, near Jamestown, and died in March 1617 in Kent England.

The literary sources of John Smith and Mary Rowlandson differ from the film, for they both describe the Native Americans as being crazy and dangerous people who will attack for no reason. In John Smith’s writing, he explains how “they (the Native Americans) charged the English..”, and Smith gives no reason for this random attack. One may think that this could not be the whole story, for the Native Americans must have been provoked in their charge, or the story of their meeting must have been exaggerated. Rowlandson explains throughout her literature journey of how she was taken randomly, separated from her loved ones, and starved until the brink of dying. The readers may believe her capture to be a work of nonfiction, but they can’t deny the one sided view that comes naturally is one’s own telling.

Barnett explains, "a number of unlucky Pocahontas figures populate the frontier romance, saving white beloveds only at the cost of their own lives" (93). Fortunately, Pocahontas's life was spared despite her willingness to sacrifice, although her later affiliations with a white man and Europe led to her death from disease. The notion of females rescuing white men and assimilating with their culture have traditionally been connected, which resulted in greater Indian deaths due to their exposure to a foreign culture from which they had not yet learned to protect themselves.