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Pocahontas movie essay
Pocahontas movie essay
Pocahontas movie essay
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In an article that echos Robart Bard’s piece “Going Indian”, Pauline Turner’s article on “Playing Indian in the Nineties” highlights the juxtapositional messages that are imposed in the 1995 films Pocahontas and The Indian in the Cupboard. The piece uses several examples to highlight the way both films support the idea of looking beyond differences and critiquing the objectification of human beings while reinforcing opposing notions in underlying scenes throughout both films or in the form of promotional material. The author poses questions that bring to light the contradictions found in these films by connecting it to his own life and family. The piece ends with a reflection on these themes and a call to action in the future. Starting with …show more content…
The segment starts off by outlining the importance that the film’s hit song “Colors Of The Wind” has on the moral of the story and how it promotes more of the same Western coming-of-age stories. It outlines the way the film sexualizes Pocahontas and how this led to Disney being able to create a New Age Pocahontas that embodies American millennial dreams for “wholeness and harmony while banishing our nightmares of savagery and emptiness”(198). The piece goes on to acknowledge that even though the film had minor contributions and advice from real Native American people, the film still strongly reinforces the stereotypical viewpoints of Indigenous people. The article ends by connecting the film to The Indian in the Cupboard and how it bombardes its audience with “consumables and impoverished caricatures while being admonished to treat other cultures, other creatures, and the land with respect”(202). The article ends with a call to action that encourages the audience to take a transformative step from the ambivalent messages of these films by rejecting the products and ideals these film market. Overall, Pauline Turner’s critique on both films reveal that many of the same concepts people have about Native Americans are still present today. It outlines contradictions and it shares way to try and overcome such
To conclude with “The General History of Virginia” and Disney’s version of Pocahontas, the two stories had two different opinions and views. Although, Disney’s portrayal of Pocahontas was perceived as an offense to the Native Americans, no one really knows the actual events that took place during that time. People will continue to think that John Smith’s version was a bit hysterical, while the Native Americans will take the Disney movie Pocahontas to an offense. John Smith and Disney both gave their own versions of their story. Others will continue to do the same.
In chapter six of her book Making the White Man 's Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies, Ange Aliess explores the topic of how Western have begun to change recently. The changes that she references in the film Dances With Wolves are also present in the film Winter in the Blood as well as in the 1491s shorts, even though the 1491s are a comedy group and not a Western genre. Aleiss describes the ways in which Native Americans reacted to Native portrayals in the film Dances With Wolves, and they tended to see the film’s better sides in contrast with critics. In Winter in the Blood, there are many stereotypes that are explored in ways that make the characters seem more real and less stereotypical as the backstories are revealed, despite
The Disney film Pocahontas can be viewed as a false portrayal of American history. Although it may have been made for entertainment purposes, Pocahontas is regarded to be a coming of age film for children due to its didacticism. The life lessons that one could possibly take away from the film are considerably positive, but the depiction of Native American and European cultures is deceitful. Most Disney films involve “epic romances,” in the case of Pocahontas one is not necessarily needed to convey the message of the film. Even though historical films cannot always be accurate to actual events, this film manages to stray away from the actual historical story of Pocahontas entirely. Due to this, children are presented with false information that they perceive to be true. Adults on the other hand might just perceive the fictionalized account as source for their children to learn sugarcoated lessons and not historical facts. While distorting historical facts, Pocahontas fulfills the typical Disney film mold as it incorporates multiple moralities for its audiences.
The depiction of minorities, specifically women and Native Americans, in Western film has changed drastically from the early 1930's to the late 1980's. These changes represent the changing views of American society in general throughout the 20th century. In the early part of the century, women and Native Americans were depicted as a burden. Women were viewed as a form of property, helpless and needing support. These minorities were obstacles in the quest for manifest destiny by the United States. Western films during the early 20th century represent the ignorance of American culture towards minorities. As time progressed, society began to develop compassion for Native Americans and men began to see women as equals. The movie industry perpetuated the views of society throughout the last century. When Native Americans were seen as an "obstacle" in westward expansion, film directors supported these views on screen. As society began to question the treatment of Native Americans and women, the film scripts responded to these changes. By looking at western films over the last 60 years, the correlation between societal attitudes and film plots has changed the views of Native Americans and women. The two have worked together to bring the portrayal of Native Americans from savage beasts to victims, and women from property to equals.
As the history of Native Americans illustrates, the population has long been mistreated and considered inferior due to colonialism. The documentary talked about the distrust
The genius of the film is that it synthesizes a multitude of cultural and musical elements and still manages to function rhetorically on separate but parallel levels of communication. The fundamental message for Jamaican audiences was to document, authenticate, and value the Jamaican reality. As Henzel notes in his running commentary, a special feature of the DVD, Jamaicans cheered the film's opening scenes wildly, simply because they recognized themselves and their world in a powerful global medium that had paid them no mind until then. "There is no thrill in moviedom like people seeing themselves on the screen for the first time." The experience and the legacy of colonialism accustoms people who suffer it to literature and film that depicts the lives and perspectives of the colonizers, not the colonized. As Jamaica Kincaid explains in a memoir of a Carribean childhood, all of her reading was from books set in England. Her land and its people were not worthy of literary attention. While finally getting such cinematic attention is a joyful, liberating, and affirming interaction for the Jamaican audience, it has an ironic dimension too in that the downpressed are joyous because at last they see themselves if not through the downpressor's lens, at least on his screen.
Thomas King uses an oral story-telling style of writing mingled with western narrative in his article “You’re Not the Indian I Had in Mind” to explain that Indians are not on the brink of extinction. Through this article in the Racism, Colonialism, and Indigeneity in Canada textbook, King also brings some focus to the topic of what it means to be “Indian” through the eyes of an actual Aboriginal versus how Aboriginals are viewed by other races of people. With his unique style of writing, King is able to bring the reader into the situations he describes because he writes about it like a story he is telling.
Whereas Clements spoke about cultural survival in a more familial setting, the speaker in “Real Indian” by Chrystos expressed her cultural survival and the loss of it through the lens of mainstream America. The speaker who is standing in front of a tobacco shop compares herself to the Indian dolls
Native Americans have faced countless stereotypes in Hollywood movies since the birth of film. Although, natives have made major advancements in the film industry to control how they are seen as well as, show various stories to represent their people but they continue to progress. Native Americans have gone through various changes throughout time regarding how they are portrayed in the media. The movie discusses four different eras that show distinctly different natives at each era. Each era we progress in any way until we reach the Renaissance era, this shows how the natives get their voice back.
During this era, the Native Americans were so fascinated by the nature of America, that they revolved their whole life around nature With nature being one of their main focuses, they were able to create amazing myths and stories about the nature of their land. In the movie Pocahontas, there are many examples that could connect with the “Cherokee Myths’. When Pocahontas is singing the song “Color of the Wind”, the lyrics very much relate to the “Cherokee Myths”
Appearing in the 1903, The Souls of Black folk had emerged, a collection of 14 proses, written by one of the single most intellectual blacks in America, W. E.B. DuBois (Oxford Companion). This dynamic collection of essays reflect on African American history, sociology, religion, politics, and music. DuBois begins saying “The problem of the 20th century is the color line (5). This quote pronounces DuBois bases for his collection, that is being different form the others (Whites) makes you feel like you are being shut out from their world by a vast veil; hence the color line(8). On the other had we have Birth of a Nation, which comes out later in 1915 (TCM). Ironically it becomes the top selling film in White America during that time, but degrades everything that DuBois and another activist stood for. While DuBois hopes to educate White and Black America on their boundaries, the color line, the film’s director, D.W. Griffith, undermines these ideas. Defiling images of African Americans by distorting the perception of Blacks using stereotypical examples such as the mammies, mulattos, and bucks, Griffith tries to justify that blacks were inferior to Whites. In spite of the many controversies that are expressed in the film, it had become a known as the most innovative, American Epics and was a top seller during its time because of Griffith’s technical breakthrough and format. While comparing and contrasting these two pieces I hope to reveal to you this why this ‘double consciousness’ exist, even todays society as a result of these stereotypes displayed in “The Birth of a Nation.”
Disney’s intentions were more than to captivate young children. They were ultimately to retell the original story of Pocahontas and the settlers and to address social issues of lifestyle and acceptance depending on race and the way they are being treated, proving that marriage isn’t all that important and addressing familial gender roles in society based on having a mother figure. Since 1995, the story of Pocahontas serves to entertain the young minds of children, but none the less the messages for seen in the movie, are mentioned to stress the issues of a series of systems in which maintain the imbalance of power among society’s social organization.
It has been a while since a movie depicting wrongful images of Native American has been developed. This would continuously happen about 70 years ago in cookie cutter Western films in which Indians would often be represented as barbaric, savage, and non-human. With time, these films became bland and repetitive; as a result of this, less and less money was profited with every passing Western film made. Propitiously enough we have abandoned this form of filmmaking and although Native Americans still don’t receive the ideal representation in Western movies, they are no longer presented as the villain all the time. There has recently been a resurgence of this treatment of Indians within
In the animated film “Pocahontas” by Mike Gabriel, the character John Smith makes physical, cultural and emotional discoveries, driven by his wonder and passion for an unknown and exotic environment, which provides him with an enhanced understanding of the world and people around him. When Smith arrived at Virginia, the background music was alchemistic and eerie to emphasis his alienation and the physical discoveries that confront him. However, Smith had no expectation of discovery “I’ve seen hundreds of new worlds... What could possibly be different about this one?” Smith discovers the culture of “Native Americans”, but judges them from the perspectives of his own experience and culture. He thinks the names of Native Americans are
The following outline reveals how the power of inequality is created through stereotypical female characters, overlooked traditional beliefs, different job occupations, and sexual objectification. With this in mind, I assembled a collage with images, words, and colours that convey these themes. The overall atmosphere of my analysis is established through a fiery red background colour. The colour red depicts the feelings of tension, fear, love, and frustration that are recurrently circulating among the female characters in the film.