Pocahontas Pros And Cons

Pocahontas (1995)
In 1995, Disney released their 33rd animated feature, Pocahontas, another film that featured Native Americans, but this time being the main focus. While generally receiving mixed to positive reviews and being a box office success, the film was harshly criticized for its historical inaccuracies and deemed offensive for seeming to have a bigger focus on the negative treatment of Pocahontas and her tribe by the Englishmen. Many critics argued that the film presents damaging stereotypes of American Indians. One of the native critics, Chief Roy Crazy Horse, claimed that Disney refused his tribe's offers to help create not only a more historically accurate, but also a more cultural film adaptation of the story. The lyrics of the

song “Savages” in the film received much criticism, especially accusations of racism. There is even a line in the song “Virginia Company” that says “we’ll kill ourselves an injun, or maybe two or three”. Many Native American groups were furious with this adaptation and proposed to boycott the film. They were angry in the fact that the version of the Pocahontas story Disney told was more from a white perspective, even though Disney claimed it would be a more authentic telling. Pocahontas herself is portrayed as an eighteen year old woman instead of twelve or thirteen as she was at the time of this historic period. On a positive note, however, the Native American characters in the film were all voiced by actual Native American actors, including Irene Bedard (Pocahontas) and Indian activist Russel Means (Powhatan). The film was also not without its supporters. Means himself described the film as one of the best American Indian pieces ever done by Hollywood. It was “viewed positively by some American Indians, who saw it as a genuine step on the way toward reappropriating the imagery” (Bird, 1996:7).