Pocahontas

In 1995, Disney released its first animated movie based on a historical figure. Despite some criticism, the movie was fairly successful at the box-office, and was followed by a sequel two years later. More recently, in 2005, Terrence Malick offered his own interpretation of his story. These three movies are but some in an endless line of representations of the Native American girl, even though the sources that attest of her, are few and contradictory. What makes her so popular? In this paper, I will use the Annette Kolodny's theory (the Lay of the Land) to offer some suggestions.

As fairy tales in disguise - or even propaganda disguised as fairy tales - stories such as Pocahontas and The Little House presented us with a sickly unfair world. I lived in this world, not only passively, but also actively, by passing on these stories and participating in our social relationship to a culture that is completely made of consumerism and utilism. As if a culture only has the value we assign to it (it is all about "is it nice or not nice?", "do I have to pay for it?" and "what can I get out of it?"). Without realising it as a child, I participated in a system of colonialist perspective and control.

The Disney Studio has reaffirmed its reign with the financial and popular success of its latest animated feature, Frozen (2013). With its media machinery, economic empire and canon of films that continue to be popular with audiences, Disney has reflected and shaped to some extent American popular culture and ideology, leaving memorable images in our memory. What may come to mind is the beautiful white Disney princess.
The representation of race relations, imperialism, and the intersections between national and minority identities has been a very sensitive issue within Disney films. The depiction of African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos has suffered from mere absence to racial stereotypes, sometimes leading to controversies. However, with the Civil Rights movements’ heritage and the advent of multiculturalism in the 1990s, a new wave of films has offered a new perspective on these portrayals. The shift began in 1995 with Pocahontas, followed by Atlantis (2001), and most recently The Princess and the Frog (2009).
In this paper, I intend to examine the evolution of these representations of race from 1995 to the present, focusing on the film texts and their historical and cultural context, production history, and critical reception. I will argue that the messages of tolerance, the idealization of ‘Otherness’ and the promotion of the melting pot were accompanied and slowly replaced by the dilution of race and a revival of whiteness (Tangled, Frozen). These problematic portrayals were found in films that also dealt with sensitive historical issues in the United States, such as Jim Crow laws (The Princess and the Frog). It is through the most constructed of all moving images of race, minorities’ identities in animated films, that the most telling aspects of race relations, imperialism, and history as the subject of Hollywood iconography and American popular culture can be found.

John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624) canonized a settler colonial narrative activity that I call kinshipwrecking—a conventional mode of storytelling that destroys and moves to supplant traditional Indigenous kinship structures and obligations. Smith’s archetypal refusal of Indigenous kinship is arguably the most important element of his text, and yet it has been treated as an afterthought in most previous scholarship. His Historie depicts the process of colonization as a war between English patriarchal governance and Indigenous kinship systems—the latter of which are portrayed as power structures that must be infiltrated (through alliance or adoption) and exploited by the English and destroyed/transformed from within. The colony Smith wrote about is today remembered as the first permanent English settlement on Turtle Island, and Settlers in what some now call Canada and the USA continue to live their lives within the legacy of Smith’s archetypal and systematic rejection of Indigenous kinship. Using Mattaponi oral history as a counter narrative that both challenges and contextualizes Smith’s in/famous tale, this article considers the Settler mythology of Pocahontas and Wahunsenaca (Powhatan) through the lens of Indigenous customary or traditional adoption practices.

Disney’s classical animated movies are known to and loved by many people all over the world, but preferably by the Western socialized population. Because of its incredible impact on children and adults, Disney can be seen as a socialization factor and hence, plays a particular role within the American movie factory Hollywood. Especially in the last two and a half decades, in a range of Disney movies, culture plays an important role occurring in characters, setting and songs. Simultaneously, Disney released more and more classical animated children’s movies which similarly raised its acceptance in the society and intensified the alleged magic around Disney. Therefore, in the following essay I want to investigate Disney’s utilization and representation of foreign cultures and its awareness for the associated responsibility. To explore potential (mis-)representations of the cultural other in these movies, Milly Buonanno’s examination about Americanization and the relation of ‘us’ (the Western society) and ‘the other’ in media flows is taken as basis. But in contrast to Buonanno, who is interested in "the transfer of programmes in geographical space” (2008: 102), I want to investigate how the cultural other is represented in Disney’s full-length classical animated movies, which levels of representation are how utilized, and how ‘the other’ is embedded in a whole media concept as a certain kind of flow. Of course, my findings are not universally valid, but can be regarded as thought-provoking impulses. A paramount example at the end of this analysis will be the movie Pocahontas which is based on a real happening in the America of the beginning 17th century, but rearranged and adjusted into the Disney ideology and aesthetics.
For a better understanding of the following analysis, firstly, I want to define my understanding of culture within this essay. With the word ‘culture’ I mean “the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society” (Oxford Dictionary) or ethnic group. Furthermore, if I use the terms ‘other’ or ‘foreign’ in combination with culture, I mean different from the American culture of European descent due to several characteristics like appearance and values.

This address reflects upon the ethical responsibility of ethnohistorians to consider the ongoing impact of historical depictions of indigenous peoples, in text and image, and our handling of those depictions. The essay draws in particular upon the historical mistreatment and misrepresentation of indigenous women, using Pocahontas and Malinche as examples of distorted icons, referencing the hidden history of the sixteenth-century trade in indigenous sex slaves in the Caribbean and Mesoamerica, and arguing that the Armed Freedom statue atop the US Capitol Building is an allegorical icon of the highly problematic, deeply rooted, gendered, and ethnoracialized construction of "America."

This paper compares and contrasts two Indigenous figures in Mexican history and American history. La Malinche aided conquistador Hernan Cortés during his conquest of Tenochtitlan in the sixteenth century in a way similar to Pocahontas who ‘rescued’ Capt. John Smith the following century. Both women are among the earliest Indigenous figures to become mythologized in their respective nations’ history, yet the legacy they left behind is different; La Malinche’s legacy is more contentious than Pocahontas’s. This paper explores the similarities their stories share and the role they play as mediators, mothers, and symbolic figures. It includes a careful study of the many ways Pocahontas and La Malinche have been remembered since, from artistic portrayals to comparisons with biblical figures. Finally, the paper analyzes the nuances in each of their legacies and proposes one way of interpreting why the two figures have come to be regarded differently over time.

Este artigo trata de uma parte da minha pesquisa de doutorado que está em fase inicial e vem apresentar um esboço de análise que terá como foco um dos objetos de estudo da pesquisa: o filme Pocahontas produzido pela Disney, em 19951. Nosso objetivo é discutir como o mito de Pocahontas foi reconfigurado pela Walt Disney, nos filmes Pocahontas (1995) e na sua continuidade em Pocahontas II (1998). A década de 1990, nos Estados Unidos, é de relevância para a análise, não só pela emergência da globalização, do neoliberalismo e do multiculturalismo, mas também porque esta década também é conhecida como a do “renascimento dos Estúdios Disney”, ou Disney Renaissance, com lançamentos de uma série de animações com destacada qualidade gráfica e estilo com grande sucesso de público. Mas por que justo neste momento a Disney se propõe a reconfigurar esse mito 400 anos depois? Um mito que foi construído segundo a lenda de que Pocahontas, a filha do chefe da tribo indígena Powhatan, ficou conhecida por ter salvado a vida do capitão inglês John Smith, em 1607, na colônia da Virgínia.

Il nome Matoaka forse dirà molto poco, ma se diciamo Pocahontas la storia si fa più chiara: questa è la vera storia delle "principessa" indiana e del Capitano John Smith, decisamente lontana da quella così romantica raccontata dal cartone animato Disney del 1995

This article examines promotional material linked to Pocahontas, Child of the Forest (Edwin S. Porter, 1907) and Pocahontas (director unknown, 1910), placing them in the wider debates about colonialism, film exhibition, authenticity, and the role of film as an educational medium in the early 1900s. Since its emergence, cinema played a pivotal role in promulgating the ideas of assimilation into dominant, white Protestant values. As American society was becoming increasingly heterogeneous, Pocahontas, an Indigenous woman central to the national mythologies of the United States, offered a problematic model of cultural integration.

The eastward crossing of the Atlantic by Native Americans during the early modern period remains an understudied topic in the history of European imperialism. This overlooked phenomenon is all the more surprising since “these Americans were the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ most persistent and accessible wonders .” Besides becoming “instant celebrities” who attracted huge crowds, these exotic visitors facilitated peace alliances and contributed to capturing investors’ interests in Northern American settlements . Furthermore, the meticulous staging of their visit by European governments served to showcase successful colonial policies. Depending on how well they served expansionist goals, these visiting Indians were celebrated and remembered very differently. In this article, I compare the contrasting legacies of two Native American princesses who sojourned in Europe at that time: the Powhatan princess Pocahontas, who stayed in London in 1616, and the Missouri princess, Ignou Ouaconisen, who visited Paris in 1725. Despite many similarities between their stories and purpose of their European sojourns, these two Native American princesses diversely impacted the collective imagination. Since the 17th-century, the legend of Pocahontas has largely been used to legitimize British imperialism and, later, to ease American white supremacist consciousness. I argue that the seemingly innocent Disney direct-to-video sequel, Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998), participates in this tradition and communicates a dangerously simplified representation of “otherness,” conveying a message of English culture’s superiority. However, the factual and fictional documents accounting for the visit of Ignou Ouaconisen reveal a more complex relationship between 18th-century French and Native Americans. In this article, I contend that the comparison between a 20th-century American fairytale on film and an 18th-century French chronicle – through different means of relating historical facts – uncovers enduring stereotypical representations of Native American women and imperialistic (colonial and postcolonial) issues at stake.

O filme Pocahontas (1995) é uma importante chave interpretativa para compreender a sociedade estadunidense da década de 1990, bem como, a maneira pela qual os Estúdios Disney a representavam. Ele traz em sua trama questões pertinentes a demandas sociais e culturais dos Estados Unidos na década de 1990, como o envolvimento do homem com a natureza e as formas pelas quais os nativos-americanos se relacionavam com ela, resgatando um dos mitos fundadores dos Estados Unidos. Enveredamos pelos caminhos da trajetória do mito Pocahontas, para conhecer sua historicidade e a forma como esse mito foi entendido ao longo do tempo até chegar a sua ressignificação pela narrativa Disney da década de 1990. Buscamos compreender a história que faz o filme e a história que o filme faz. Lidamos com o filme tanto como fato histórico, quanto como uma forma de se compreender a história contada em sua narrativa. Procuramos entender a construção do mito Pocahontas e sua representação no filme, a imagem construída ao longo dos séculos (sempre relacionada a uma característica diplomática e pacificadora daquela personagem) transformada numa protagonista mulher, forte e transformadora, mediadora e ambientalista. O filme é um projeto de brancos mas também de índios dentro de uma guerra cultural de disputa de narrativas, dois projetos paralelos circulando "no interior" e "ao redor" da obra, construindo uma narrativa do passado a partir de uma seleção de outras narrativas que compõem aquele resultado.
ALMEIDA, Raija Maria Vanderlei de. O mito Pocahontas na Disney renaissance:  das narrativas de um mito fundador aos dilemas identitários dos Estados Unidos na década de 1990. 2020. Tese (Doutorado em História Social) - Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidad de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2020. doi:10.11606/T.8.2020.tde-07082020-195745. Acesso em: 2021-05-12.

The Red Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s was not universally endorsed and accepted by all Native communities, particularly in areas where other forms of indigenous accommodation and resistance to settler colonialism had already developed long-term strategies. The situation in the U.S. South was complicated by issues of race, and must be understood in the historical context of, first, slavery, and subsequently, Jim Crow. In these systems, activism by non-White populations carried different meanings within the wider political economy of the region. Understanding the push and pull factors of a desegregating South is required to explain Virginia’s mid-century indigenous political landscape. Attention should be given to the various and multiple reasons for Native community action in each specific context, especially to race-based civil rights activism within a state where the Eugenics Movement, Racial Integrity, and the ‘one drop rule’ had historically loomed large. Like other states across the South, the Commonwealth of Virginia officially recognized eleven tribes of ‘Virginia Indians’ between 1983 and 2010, an outcome of post-Red Power indigenous political activism. Virginia tribes’ political positioning during the civil rights era requires an analysis that historically situates their long-term alliance building and strategic essentialism as alternative approaches to those that were promoted by Red Power.

O presente artigo tem por objetivo refletir a respeito do sucesso de recepção dos chamados filmes "hollywoodianos", a partir da análise detalhada do filme "Pocahontas",lançado pelos estúdios Disney em 1995, e sua possível releitura contemporânea presente no filme "Avatar" de James Cameron, lançado em 2009.O artigo é dividido em quatro partes: na primeira, apresenta-se brevemente o conceito de "jornada do herói", baseada no livro A Jornada do Escritor  de Vogler (2011);na segunda, é apresentada uma análise detalhada do filme Pocahontas, seguindo as etapas e os arquétipos da jornada; na terceira parte faz-se o cruzamento entre a análise apresentada com o roteiro de Avatar, onde são apontadas suas principais semelhanças e diferenças. Na parte final, é elaborada uma última reflexão a fim de esboçar uma possível resposta ao questionamento principal: qual é a razão dos sucessos de recepção desses filmes?

Popular Culture plays a “significant role in shaping our perceptions of others.”  This brings forth the idea of audience consumption because the way the media influences the perception of races could be interpreted by the audience as true no matter how problematic the representation is. Disney is an example of a medium which reiterates problematic representations, which, going back to audience consumption, is very harmful because children are the main audiences

For nearly two decades, the North American society has been romanticized by Disney with Pocahontas and her love story with John Smith the colonist.  But Disney’s portrayal of Pocahontas’ story has the Powhatan People angry at its inaccuracies and outright lies, are inconsistent with the brief mentioning of her role in such academic works as "America, A Concise History," and are further from the truth when actually recounting the oral and written stories as recorded by the National Parks Service as a historic momentum when visiting areas of tribal land or what used to be tribal land.  There are numerous conflicting stories regarding Pocahontas and what really happened, what her story really was, but not one of them is consistent with the romanticized version Disney has portrayed to American and led everyone to fall in love with.

Resumen Los mitos desarrollados a lo largo de varios siglos a partir de los personajes históricos de la Malinche y Pocahontas han tenido en ciertos aspectos un desarrollo dispar, que es un reflejo de las políticas coloniales de los imperios español y británico, así como de las diferentes posturas postcoloniales que surgen en los Estados Unidos y en México tras su independencia. Este artículo analiza las similitudes existentes entre estos dos personajes históricos y trata de explicar la divergencia que se produce en el desarrollo de sucesivas narrativas tanto "históricas" como ficticias de las que son el eje central. De dicho análisis se concluye que los extremos norte y sur de la frontera norteamericana elaboran un discurso diferente a partir de realidades históricas plausibles en cuya base se encuentran las señas de identidad de las naciones mexicana y estadounidense. Palabras clave: historiografía, convención narrativa, Malinche, Pocahontas, plausibilidad. Abstract The myths developed over several centuries on the historical figures of the Malinche and Pocahontas have had different developments that reflect the colonial

As Jamestown celebrates its 400th anniversary, the dramatic rescue of John Smith turns out to have been part of an elaborate piece of statecraft, misunderstood by the English colonists.
View online:
http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/htmlsite/1106/1106_feature.html

ABSTRACT The Red Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s was not universally endorsed and accepted by all Native communities, particularly in areas where other forms of indigenous accommodation and resistance to settler colonialism had already developed long-term strategies. The situation in the U.S. South was complicated by issues of race, and must be understood in the historical context of, first, slavery, and subsequently, Jim Crow. In these systems, activism by non-White populations carried different meanings within the wider political economy of the region. Understanding the push and pull factors of a desegregating South is required to explain Virginia’s mid-century indigenous political landscape. Attention should be given to the various and multiple reasons for Native community action in each specific context, especially to race-based civil rights activism within a state where the Eugenics Movement, Racial Integrity, and the ‘one drop rule’ had historically loomed large. Like other states across the South, the Commonwealth of Virginia officially recognised eleven tribes of ‘Virginia Indians’ between 1983 and 2010, an outcome of post-Red Power indigenous political activism. Virginia tribes’ political positioning during the civil rights era requires an analysis that historically situates their long-term alliance building and strategic essentialism as alternative approaches to those that were promoted by Red Power.