The Historical Interaction Between the Europeans and Indians in the Disney Movie Pocahontas

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The Historical Interaction Between the Europeans and Indians in the Disney Movie Pocahontas

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been studying the story of the

Native American (Indian) princess, Pocahontas. We have studied both

literature and the 1995 Disney movie. I am going to write about what

methods are used to portray the relationship between these two

civilisations.

Both media portray the same relationship between the civilisations;

this is one of mistrust, misunderstanding and dislike. From the moment

the Europeans landed in "the new world", the natives were not sure of

what to think of them, they looked different, sounded different and

carried themselves differently. This was the same for the Europeans,

they expected to find uncivilised savages, but found totally the

opposite.

The "Survival" literature uses an abundance of methods to portray the

interaction between the two civilisations. This literature is very

biased; it only tells you the good things about the Indians and the

bad things about the Europeans. This is because of the aim of the

text; it is trying to get you to send money to the organisation. If

they made the Indians sound bad, then nobody would want to send money

to help them or other tribal peoples.

Another method that the organisation uses in this piece is emotive

language. Words such as "devastation" in "devastation of the native

peoples" and "brutally" in "many were brutally murdered" are examples

of this. These words and sentences make you feel sorry for the Indians

and make you want to help.

The literature also has a plethora of quotes from the native people

included in it. These quotes s...

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John Smith. Pocahontas was 12 and John Smith was possibly as old as

50!

The things that were left out include diseases that were brought over

from Europe, high deaths rates and the fact that the Europeans often

stole food from the Indians. These were left out as including them may

have made the film unsuitable for the audience it was aimed at.

These differences are here so that the film is more understandable for

the audience it is aimed at, if the film showed what actually

happened, it would be a lot more gruesome, and would have probably

have been rated 15 by the BBFC.

To conclude, both media portray the same story, but they are aimed at

different audiences, if you are looking for all of the information

about Pocahontas, the literature is what you need, if you want an

entertaining movie, watch the film.

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