Pocahontas: Fact Or Fiction

476 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Portrayal of women in movies

While popular and widely watched the movie Pocahontas is an innaccurate portrail of a signifigant historical event. The Disney Corporation is not known for it’s accurate portrails of historical events and when producing the animated film Pocahontas, Disney did not fail in it’s nonchalant attitude concerning historic fact.
Cartoonists at disney must have been watching adult films when they first penciled out the figures of Pocahontas and John Smith. The young Indian princess was only twelve years old at the time of her first encounter with John Smith, yet she is portrayed as a hard body honey in her twenties.
In order to match the beauty of their female character, cartoonists depicted John
Smith as a perfectly sculpted young man with locks of bright blonde hair; however, he was merely a foul English seaman in his early thirties with dark dingy hair. Pocahontas did not look like Tia Carrera and John Smith was certainly no Fabio.
At the begining of the movie John Smith is portrayed as an Indian hater and proclaimed to be the best Indian killer ever. In all actuality he was the greatest link that the English had between the Indians and themselves. His strict military discipline and negotiation proved to be very valuable tools. The Indians respected him and while he was in charge of Jamestown was melting pot that brought the knowledge of two very different civilizations together. ...

Show More
Related

  • Comparison of Three Prominent Women in American History (1616-1768)

    1530 Words  | 4 Pages

    Simon Van De Pasee was a young Dutch Artist who painted the famous painting of Pocahontas, the only painting of her when she was alive. Pasee portrayed Pocahontas as a aristocrat. He did not try to make her an Anglicize Pocahontas; she is still recognized as a Native American in his Painting. During this time Pocahontas was a daughter of a powerful Indian leader in the New World, whom married an Englishmen named John Rolfe and moved to England. Looking closely at the portrait, it seems as if Pocahontas appeared grave, her cheeks are sunken and her hand is skeletal. (Horwitz p 3) It seems as if Simon Va De Pasee wanted people to see Pocahontas before she became deathly ill, which with his painting he did give a brief history of her. Before Pocahontas met John Rolfe, Jamestown was going through a period of starving. Pocahontas would give the English food and warned them attacks her father was planning on the English. In 1614, Pocahontas would convert to Christianity, changed her name to Rebecca and have the...

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Virginia And Massachusetts Colonies

    926 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the early stages of North American colonization by the English, the colony of Jamestown, Virginia was founded in 1607 (Mailer Handout 1 (6)). Soon after the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded in 1629 (Mailer Handout 2 (1)). These two colonies, although close in the time they were founded, have many differences in aspects of their lives and the way they were settled. The colonies have a different religious system, economic system, political system, and they have a different way of doing things; whether that be pertaining to making money, practicing religion, or electing governors. Along with the differences, there are also a sameness between these two colonies. Each colony has been derived from England and has been founded by companies

    Read More

  • Love And Hate In Jamestown by David A. Price

    1630 Words  | 4 Pages

    As a young child many of us are raised to be familiar with the Pocahontas and John Smith story. Whether it was in a Disney movie or at a school play that one first learned of Jamestown, students want to believe that this romantic relationship really did occur. As one ages, one becomes aware of the dichotomy between fact and fiction. This is brilliantly explained in David A. Price's, Love and Hate in Jamestown. Price describes a more robust account of events that really did take place in the poorly run, miserable, yet evolving settlement of Jamestown, Virginia; and engulfs and edifies the story marketed by Disney and others for young audiences. Price reveals countless facts from original documents about the history of Jamestown and other fledgling colonies, John Smith, and Smith's relationship with Pocahontas. He develops a more compelling read than does the typical high school text book and writes intriguingly which propels the reader, to continue on to the successive chapters in the early history of Virginia.

    Read More

  • The Chesapeake and New England Colonies: A Comparison

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Chesapeake region of the colonies included Virginia, Maryland, the New Jerseys (both East and West) and Pennsylvania. In 1607, Jamestown, the first English colony in the New World (that is, the first to thrive and prosper), was founded by a group of 104 settlers to a peninsula along the James River. These settlers hoped to find gold, silver, a northwest passage to Asia, a cure for syphilis, or any other valuables they might take back to Europe and make a profit. Lead by Captain John Smith, who "outmaneuvered other members of the colony's ruling and took ruthlessly took charge" (Liberty Equality Power, p. 57), a few lucky members of the original voyage survived. These survivors turned to the local Powhatan Indians, who taught them the process of corn- and tobacco-growing. These staple-crops flourished throughout all five of these colonies.

    Read More

  • Hollywood versus History: New World

    1250 Words  | 3 Pages

    The main characters of the film were John Smith, Pocahontas and John Rolfe. Usually it is hard for films to portray c...

    Read More

  • Many Differences Between Disney's Pocohontas and John Smith's The General History of Virginia

    692 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Historical Inaccuracies In The Disney Movie 'Pocahantas'

    143 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the Disney movie Pocahantas there are some historical inaccuracies. For example her age is said to be around 11 years old when she met John Smith in 1607. In the Disney film they bumped up her age to go alone with John Smith's age. In the movie John and Pocahanatas meet almost instantly after he lands in America. According to the History books Pocahantas meets John when he gets captured by her brother Opechancanough.

    Read More

  • Correlation Between Tempest and the New World

    985 Words  | 2 Pages

    The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles by John Smith, portrays the enormous troubles the settlers were faced with by the Native Americans. He explains how he was captured by Indians and also saved by a young Native American girl, Pocahontas. He vividly describes the ceremonies and rituals of the Natives performed before his execution. However, the execution never occurred due to the tremendous mercy showed by the king’s daughter who blanketed John Smith’s body her own. Pocahontas went on to persuade the Native Americans to help the settlers by giving them food and other necessities. Despite her efforts to reach peaceful grounds, her people were still bitter and planned an attacks on the colony. Nevertheless, Pocahontas saved them once again by warning the settlers of attacks. Pocahontas went on to marry an Englishman and traveled to England. She resembled the prosperity and good that was to be found in an untamed land.

    Read More

  • An Analysis of “Disney’s Politically Correct Pocahontas”

    1207 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kilpatrick contends that Disney was ineffective in developing the essence of Pocahontas and was solely concerned with creating a visually stimulating, condensed, romanticized film. “Pocahontas was a real woman who lived during the pivotal time of first contact,” according to Kilpatrick. The film took historical figures and created fictional characters by turning an adolescent girl into a mature, sexualized woman, a mercenary into a “blonde Adonis” and evil villains out of English settlers. Kilpatrick’s

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis

    1267 Words  | 3 Pages

    at.” Despite his failure, he is still an Indian man, searching for a proclamation of his

    Read More

  • Essay About Jamestown

    539 Words  | 2 Pages

    One way the settler skills had to do with the deaths in jamestown is the people who were brought were mostly

    Read More

  • Martin Luther King Jr.

    1465 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...f the most prestigious acts for American equality. He was a determined, charismatic man who used good to fight evil despite the anguish. He never gave up on the nonviolent techniques he studied on Gandhi. After his death there were many breakthroughs in civil rights. He may not have been alive to see the promised land, but in many aspects he brought the country there. He like many before him paid the ultimate price for his devotion to righteousness, "If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive."

    Read More

  • Gandhi Was One of the Greatest Men to Ever Live

    1167 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...crowds of people were gathering in order to hear his words. He seems to be was a person whom the Indians saw in him, perfect and universal man. He had a simple, altruistically and uncorrupted personality. In his political duties he was a firm realist, consistently working towards a goal of liberation; while on the other hand, he was an idealist, living ever in the pure happiness of the spirit.

    Read More

  • E M Forster and the British Raj in a Passage to India

    1325 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... his visits to India. He had firsthand knowledge about the decay of the British Empire. He observed the disharmony that the fervent missionaries caused among the Indian people, the social apartheid shown by the English towards the natives, the arrogance of the British officials and the atrocities committed by them led to the dissolution of the British Raj in India.

    Read More

  • Gandhi`s Passion Towards Helping Indians

    1138 Words  | 3 Pages

    At age 13, Gandhi was married to a girl of the same age named Kasturbai. After the death of his father, Mohandas’s family sent him to England to study law but he became interested in the philosophy of non violence. He returned to India in 1891, but he did not succeed in the practice of law and he went to South Africa. There he became involved in efforts to end discrimination against the Indian minority. He developed his creed of passive resistance against injustice, “Satyagraha,” meaning truth force, and was frequently jailed as a result of the protests that he led. Soon after launching his monumental Satyagraha “Hold fast to the Truth” movement, he gave up his pleasures vowing to focus all the heat of his passion towards helping India’s emigree and indentured community, win freedom from racial prejudice and discrimination. Gandhis’s passion turned each prison cell he occupied into a self proclaimed “temple” or “palace” even as he taught his self sacrificing yogic spirit to relish the “delicious taste” of fasting, taking pleasure in every pain he suffered for the “common good.” He founded the Natal Indian Congress which commanded an Indian medical corps that fought in the Boer War. Their willingness to endure punishment and jail earned the admiration of people in Gandhi's native India, and eventually won concessions from the Boer and British rulers. By 1914, when Gandhi left South Africa and returned to India, he was known as a holy man: people called him a “Mahatma” or "great soul." Thus his passion to help people thrust him in becoming a leader.      Gandhi’s greatest achievement was to unify India by making himself the symbol of unity. It was Gandhi’s person more than the slogans of nationalism and liberation, that united Hindus and Muslims again...

    Read More

More about Pocahontas: Fact Or Fiction

Open Document