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Wait... Did Pocahontas "both sides" things?

Boogiepop

Boogiepop

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,966
I literally haven't seen the movie since it was first in theaters, so my memories of it are super vague. I obviously already knew just conceptually the main romance of the film is super problematic considering the real history (and it's even worse that they made a sequel about her going to England)... but I was listening to Disney songs, and the song Savages came on. And at first I was like "oh hey, they actually went further than I remembered in showing how racist and awful they were in 'settling' America." But then it switches over to the other side showing the Native Americans being essentially identical and... that's just not a good look. Like, the message of "hate is illogical and can come from both sides, and is fostered by a lack of understanding and seeing the other side as something other than human, etc" can be a perfectly fine moral and all... but essentially going "Yeah, but the Native Americans were bad too" is just... really, really bad.

How much of that extends beyond this one song, exactly, anyway?
 
AztecComplex

AztecComplex

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,371
Welcome to 1995. Pocahontas is a bad movie all around. I knew this from the moment I saw it in theaters. My dad talked to me as we walked out of the theater of the realities of what happened to the natives when the English arrived and how this movie completely botched it through and through.
 
Griselbrand

Griselbrand

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,245
I think the Lindsay Ellis video on Pocahontas touched on that particular song briefly. It's been a while since I've seen it.

But the phrase 'See how I glitter,' is seared into my mind.
 
Perzeval

Perzeval

Prophet of Truth
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
10,574
Sweden
There ya go.

boogie2988_middle_by_digi_matrix-db3h3ud.gif
 
BigWinnie1

BigWinnie1

Banned
Feb 19, 2018
2,757
Its worse because the actual story of pocahauntus is pretty good and also sadly touching by the end.
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
Member
Oct 25, 2017
50,057
Never saw the movie, but isn't it also based on John Smith's accounts? As in, John Smith is more of a hero than a miserable lying asshole, and Pocahontas doesn't get kidnapped?
 
Typhon

Typhon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,116
Colors of the Wind pretty thoroughly shit all over the English. So..no?

You think I'm an ignorant savage
And you've been so many places
I guess it must be so
But still I cannot see
If the savage one is me
How can there be so much that you don't know
You don't know
You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name
You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew, you never knew
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carlsojo

carlsojo

Member
Oct 28, 2017
33,879
San Francisco
I never really read too much into it.

The bad guys are clearly the settlers (with the governor PUSHING them hard) and they're the ones driving the conflict. The Native Americans meeting the conflict doesn't seem like a "both sides" thing to me at all since they've been dragged into a war they didn't want at all.

But okay yeah let's pick it apart and watch a 30 minute video about how it's everything wrong with the 90s.
 
BigWinnie1

BigWinnie1

Banned
Feb 19, 2018
2,757
Regulus Tera said:
You mean how she was kidnapped by Englishmen, forced to marry to a white man, and then died in her early 20s?
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Her tale is way more complicated tham that. Her pops and Smith agreed to an aliance while Smith controled Jamestown and she and other Natives had open right to come and go through town and she also brought them food when crops got short.

She got captured and ransomed a year to end the war with England because the English wanted to push further than Jamestown but the residents didnt want to fuck up their peace with the natives. It was worse because Smith got fucked by an explosion amd went back to England and her tribe thought him dead amd didnt trust the rest of the English to keep there word.

English May have killed her first husband and in er second husband was English. Wierd shit happened she found out John Smith was in England and went to see him.

Smith found out and did a full court press to make sure no one mistreated her in England and Sold her father as a king of empire and that she should be given all the comforts of a foreign princess during her stay in England.

We do know she died awhile after from some sickness in England and John Smith was one of the last people to speak to her.

Her whole life is complicated and worth having a movie about it. Because its heartwarming in the beginning, tragic in yhe middle and melocholic by the end. Its a great story
 
BigWinnie1

BigWinnie1

Banned
Feb 19, 2018
2,757
L Thammy said:
Never saw the movie, but isn't it also based on John Smith's accounts? As in, John Smith is more of a hero than a miserable lying asshole, and Pocahontas doesn't get kidnapped?
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Not really John Smith plays up pocahontas as being a hero alot in his writing. He lied to puff himself up but he always wrote about and treated her with respect.
 
samoyed

samoyed

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
15,191
The visuals and Colors of the Wind were good but yeah, it was not a morally upright story.
 
Cranster

Cranster

Prophet of Truth
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,788
In hindsight it did, but in the end it's a kids movie and a white neckbeard is literally the villain.
 
Tfritz

Tfritz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,288
the ending implies that the native americans and the english put aside their differences and make peace. astute history buffs may recall that hundreds of years of genocide followed in real life.
 
BigWinnie1

BigWinnie1

Banned
Feb 19, 2018
2,757
Tfritz said:
the ending implies that the native americans and the english put aside their differences and made peace.
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They were only really at piece for a few years John Smith and her pops ran the place. After John got fucked up and had to leave, the wnglish told her John died and tensions flared up a few months after that
 
Aaron

Aaron

I’m seeing double here!
Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,077
Minneapolis
carlsojo said:
I never really read too much into it.

The bad guys are clearly the settlers (with the governor PUSHING them hard) and they're the ones driving the conflict. The Native Americans meeting the conflict doesn't seem like a "both sides" thing to me at all since they've been dragged into a war they didn't want at all.

But okay yeah let's pick it apart and watch a 30 minute video about how it's everything wrong with the 90s.
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Nah fam, while the movie does portray the Native Americans as being less in the wrong than the settlers, it still carries a "can't we all just get along?" message targeted at both camps. A major source of conflict in the story is that Pocahontas' father refuses to listen to her and sit down with the settlers, when by all historical accounts the natives were very accommodating. It also ends on a kind of "and so, racism was solved!" note that obviously doesn't reflect history.

It's well-intentioned and probably about as "woke" as mainstream media could get in the mid-90s, but it still goes easier on the white folk while putting some fault on the Native Americans than a more accurate retelling would.

It's worth discussing because while the movie is 20+ years old, kids are still watching it, they're still making merchandise off of it, etc.

Hollywood Duo said:
One wonders why they ever even made that movie in the first place.
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Katzenberg wanted an Oscar. That's it. Beauty and the Beast getting the nomination for Best Picture got it in their head that a more serious film would win them one and give them way more credibility as a studio.

Ironically a lot of the changes they made to make the movie more marketable (Pocahontas originally was 12 years old with no romantic subplot between her and John Smith, and the Native Americans only spoke in Powhatan, with Pocahontas learning English over the course of the movie) probably worked against them because it just ended up feeding into a formula.
 

Deleted member 48897

User requested account closure
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Oct 22, 2018
13,623
Dishwalla said:
it's probably safe to say this is the one Disney cartoon movie that won't be remade in live action.
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And yet in comparison to Beauty and the Beast (stealth Linsday Ellis fan thread? stealth Lindsay Ellis fan thread), if there's a movie that does need a retelling to be more in line with contemporary understanding of the issues, it's this one.

On the other hand, even now with stuff like Saving Mr. Banks and Christopher Robin, their handling of cases of actual real human beings who existed in history is...self-serving in a way that I'd still fear the worst about such an adaptation.
 
Garlador

Garlador

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
14,131
Aaron said:
Katzenberg wanted an Oscar. That's it. Beauty and the Beast getting the nomination for Best Picture got it in their head that a more serious film would win them one and give them way more credibility as a studio.

Ironically a lot of the changes they made to make the movie more marketable (Pocahontas originally was 12 years old with no romantic subplot between her and John Smith, and the Native Americans only spoke in Powhatan, with Pocahontas learning English over the course of the movie) probably worked against them because it just ended up feeding into a formula.
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My college instructor worked at Disney and it was FASCINATING talking to him about that era of Disney. Katzenberg was credited with "saving" Disney, but, hoo boy, did SO many of the animators resent him because so much of what he got credit for were things he was actively fighting against that they fought hard to keep or include.

Like The Rescuers Down Under was supposed to star an Aborigine child, but Katzenberg demanded it be a white boy. "Part of Your World" in Little Mermaid was almost scrapped because Katzenberg felt kids were unfocused during a test screening and that meant it was boring. SOOO many of Disney's "top talent" were put on Pocahontas as the "Oscar film" that he openly talked down about the B-team making a "silly talking animal movie"... that turned out to be The Lion King.

But Pocahontas itself was just... whew. They could do a whole movie about the making of that movie and how ill-conceived most of it was.
 

Deleted member 48897

User requested account closure
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Oct 22, 2018
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Garlador said:
My college instructor worked at Disney and it was FASCINATING talking to him about that era of Disney. Katzenberg was credited with "saving" Disney, but, hoo boy, did SO many of the animators resent him because so much of what he got credit for were things he was actively fighting against that they fought hard to keep or include.
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Hahahaha, it's fucking telling that Dreamworks' big name animated feature is the meme one
 

Deleted member 24907

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
5,354
Trying to Disney-fy the European invastion of North America and the subsequent genocide that came from it was peak "we'll get away with anything" media giant bullshit.
 

Deleted member 19066

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,826
Can you imagine animators on the Lion King wanted to work on Pocahontas instead because everyone thought it was gonna be a huge, prestigious hit?
 
FeliciaFelix

FeliciaFelix

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,778
Pocahontas is not trash but it's not top shelf Disney. It gets dull. I remember liking it ok but not loving it. I recently watched it on Netflix and it's slow.

Edit: Didnt the VHS od Lion King come with the whole Colors of the Wind sequence as a promo?
 
Vic Damone Jr.

Vic Damone Jr.

Member
Oct 27, 2017
16,609
The movie was factually incorrect yet so many claim it as fact. Crazy when you find out how much of a asshole John Smith was.
 
jph139

jph139

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,385
There's an undercurrent of "the European settlers deserved a seat at the table" in all foundational narratives for the United States that it's impossible to tell a story like this accurately.

So much of our foundational stories (Pocahontas, the first Thanksgiving, Squanto...) claims that if everyone simply talked it out and decided to share we would all get along. It ignores the basic fact that European settlers were invading and encroaching on societies in the midst of an apocalyptic collapse. There's no "maybe we can compromise" in that scenario.

But imagine a Disney movie where you treated the English like you treated the Huns in Mulan. Wouldn't fly.
 
Garlador

Garlador

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
14,131
jph139 said:
There's an undercurrent of "the European settlers deserved a seat at the table" in all foundational narratives for the United States that it's impossible to tell a story like this accurately.

So much of our foundational stories (Pocahontas, the first Thanksgiving, Squanto...) claims that if everyone simply talked it out and decided to share we would all get along. It ignores the basic fact that European settlers were invading and encroaching on societies in the midst of an apocalyptic collapse. There's no "maybe we can compromise" in that scenario.

But imagine a Disney movie where you treated the English like you treated the Huns in Mulan. Wouldn't fly.
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Well, yeah, because in this scenario the Huns would've won.

... and they'd also be the ones making the movie and watching the movie.
tumblr_mazbpmsejo1qlt206o5_250.gif
 
NineConsonants

NineConsonants

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
5,210
Yeah the truth is that both sides were made of people and people on both sides do have the potential for things like greed and genocide. But only one of the groups sought to actually commit genocide and take over the other side's land. So trying to "both sides" it only downplays what happened.
 
CortexVortex

CortexVortex

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
4,074
Yes but I still really like the movie. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's the brilliant songs but damn, I still enjoy it
 
kegkilla

kegkilla

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Oct 27, 2017
106
User Banned (Permanent): Antagonistic and inflammatory posts across multiple threads. History of similar infractions.
AztecComplex said:
Welcome to 1995. Pocahontas is a bad movie all around. I knew this from the moment I saw it in theaters. My dad talked to me as we walked out of the theater of the realities of what happened to the natives when the English arrived and how this movie completely botched it through and through.
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Lmao @ going to see a G-rated Disney family movie and expecting some sort of exposition on white men slaughtering the natives. Whole lotta brains in your family.
 
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