In this day and age, many are led to believe that Pocahontas was a beautiful, mature woman who saved John Smith’s life and married him out of pure munificence and love. A good amount would be surprised if they were told otherwise. In the movie, Pocahontas was portrayed as a beautiful, mature woman at the time of her marriage with John Smith. However, she was married to John Rolfe at a very young age. Disney’s Pocahontas certainly did not help the cause of correctly informing the children and adults. The movie did not accurately depict the real experiences Pocahontas had to go to through and how she actually lived her days. In order for the movie to be “child friendly”, many changes had to take place from the actual story of Pocahontas. To further illustrate, Pocahontas was not a voluptuous young woman at the time of meeting with John Smith, but in reality she was ten to twelve years old, while John Smith was confirmed to be in his thirties. Disney interpreted Pocahontas as a woman in her twenties when they found each other, but this is not an accurate nor correct portrayal of Pocahontas. Her first encounter with John Smith was made to believe that she saved his life. In …show more content…
This movie is great entertainment for small children, albeit it does not give the correct depiction of how Pocahontas actually lived her life. For the movie’s sake, the producers and directors changed her age, her body, and gave her a motive for her actions that basically comes down to falling madly in love with an English colonist. Due to Disney’s “politically correct” Pocahontas, many of the children and adults who watched or will watch this movie will be falsely informed about the real events that took place in her life. She did not get to have the "happily ever after" that most Disney Princesses get, but instead a doleful and lonely life, followed only by a death filled with
The book is written in narrative flow and shows Pocahontas’s development from a little girl to a grown woman. The author is showing how big of an impact a woman made to her people and culture. Even at the age of nine she was a main concern of her people because her father was Powhatan, the paramount chief. At that time she experienced strangers who came to her father’s kingdom in big ships. As the story progresses, she is more and more as a greatly influential person. Townsend portrays that she is the one who saved John Smith’s life. She also explains who Kocoom is and his relationship ties to Pocahontas.
Back in 1995, as a 20 year old woman, I was, absolutely, still in love with everything Disney. I was still very much enamored with the romance and fairy tale aspects of all their stories and movies. So when the Walt Disney Company released the animated feature “Pocahontas” in the summer of my 20th year, I had to see it. At the time, I thought I had hit the jackpot with this movie. “An American legend comes to life” is the tagline to get viewers interested in this movie. [1] A heroin, whom was a beautiful Indian and a love story, who could ask for more from a Disney movie, I thought to myself. Now, being ignorant of the true facts about the Indian woman Pocahontas and even about Indian culture and history itself, I took this story more
interest in Kacuom, the man her father wants her to have an interest in. Pocahontas's rebellion
In “The True Story of Pocahontas,” the authors, Dr. Linwood “Little Bear” Custalow and Angela L. Daniel “Silver Star,” accurately describe the true story of Pocahontas. Many people to this day do not know her true life, only the stories broadcasted on television. Throughout chapter four, the authors describe the rocky relationship between John Smith and his Englishmen and the Powhatan people.
As young children we are often misled to believe that the stories and movies we are exposed to are presumably based on factual history, but are in reality myths, keeping the truthful, important, and fair facts hidden. Amonute is an accurate example of learning the real events that occurred in a person’s life while the typical myth of Pocahontas saved an Englishmen from being killed by her father. In the beginning of the book we are briefly introduced to Pocahontas, the Powhatan people and the English colonists. As the book continues we follow Pocahontas when she is kidnapped, her married life, and her trip to London where she got sick because of foreign illnesses and died. Camilla Townsends “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma” wants Pocahontas’ true story to unfold because she is worthy of respect for her bravery and sacrifice and because “everyone subverted her life to satisfy their own needs to believe that the Indians loved and admired them” (Townsend, pg. xi). I also believe that the author was trying to argue that even though the Englishmen believed that the Native Americans were uncivilized and lived like savages, that instead they were wise people.
Disney’s Pocahontas is inaccurate. First in John Smith first and second record holds no account of a fight breaking out. It was simply they were taken as hostages/ guests. And secondly, the age differentiates in real life and in the movie. One would say the young women in the Disney movie is at least 17. But in reality Pocahontas is born on
A major contrast between the Disney Stories and movie of Pocahontus, was that they had failed to mention her kidnapping. Pocahontas’ kidnapping was unjust and surprising as it was by the community of the man who would be her husband and later the father to her child, although Pocahontas had already been married since the age of twelve or thirteen to a man named Kocoom. Pocahontas’ early marriage was then ended when her warrior Kocoom had then disappeared, for reasons unknown. After this disappearance, Pocahontas later then married to John Rolfe as she had the choice to choose any man she wanted without the fear of being judged and called cold for her remarriage.
4. When I was growing up, Disney's Pocahontas was one of my favorite movies. While I knew that Disney's version of the story was not completely true, I never actually researched John Smith and Pocahontas to learn the truth behind the real story. So, when I read John Smith's letter to the queen this week I was surprised at some of the content. First, I did not know that Pocahontas was so young, only 12 or 13, when she met John Smith. His letter depicts that they were "friends" rather than romantically involved. So, with the idea of the romance between the two depicted by the Disney movie, that fact was bizarre to me. Something else that surprised me was that Pocahontas married John Rolfe, converted to Christianity,
Savages!” (songlyrics.com). There was an imaginary form of ideology being represented for the real conditions of existence by the Native American’s during this time (Althusser 155). “The starting-point is the simple one that ideology is read from film texts, consciously or unconsciously, and the relationship between each text and its culture are traceable to ideological roots.” (Turner, 1999, p.171) Pocahontas gives viewers a different picture of the Native Americans role during this time. In addition to Native American’s being criticized and misrepresented from their actual history, they were also portrayed as a Willow tree, Meeko, and Flit, whom were all objects in nature or animals. Because all Native American characters were the animals and the objects in nature, their heritage and people get pushed to the edge of society because they are made out to be different [to be objects and animals]. They are marginalized because they are different from the westerners. This impacts the ideology of social exclusion and misrepresentation of a social group. The Native American’s are misinterpreted through society today due to movies like Pocahontas portraying their people as animals, objects, or misinterpreting their role in history with negative connotations in the text. “Importantly ideological approaches reject the view of the film text as ‘unitary’ in meaning; that is, as making only one kind of sense, without considerations, exceptions, or variations in the
John Smith's tales of the Indian princess, Pocahontas, have, over time, encouraged the evolution of a great American myth. According to this myth, which is common knowledge to most Americans, Pocahontas saved Smith from being killed by her father and his warriors and then fell in love with John Smith. Some versions of the myth popular among Americans include the marriage of Smith and Pocahontas. Although no one can be sure of exactly what happened almost four-hundred years ago, most historians agree that the myth is incorrect. Pocahontas did not save John Smith's life from "savages" and never showed any affection for him. The events of her life differ greatly from the myth Americans have created.
Pocahontas’ story has been changed throughout history. Her story has been subverted because people wanted to make it more interesting so that they could make more money and fame of off it. Townsend explains the choices that Pocahontas and her father made as well as the trajectory of her life by using other people’s accounts of her and how they perceived her. There were no documents recorded from Pocahontas.
Many people believe the 1995 film, Pocahontas, to be the true story of a young Powhatan woman. However, the story lacks facts. Pocahontas isn’t even her real name. Matoaka, the real Pocahontas, faced mush more misery than the movie showed. Mataoka’s life in America, life in England, a comparison between the movie and real life, and how fictional portrayals of real people effect society today will show you that Disney’s inaccuracies could change history.
In a scene where Pocahontas and John Smith had their first face-to-face encounter, John Smith who is holding his gun up ready to shoot but instead lowers his gun upon laying eyes on Pocahontas, obviously taken aback by her beauty. This shows how native American women romanticized by the media and portrayed as being mesmerizing to men. Movie-makers had taken a more sexualized approach in creating Pocahontas’s appearance as can be seen by how Pocahontas wears a mini dress that bears much skin and she was given a voluptuous figure with a tiny waist, adding how her hair was placed to attract attention throughout the movie (van Wormer, & Juby, 2015)(Ono, & Buescher, 2001). In the case where Pocahontas sings the famous Colours of the Wind soundtrack, Pocahontas dances in a sensuous way moving very closely to John Smith despite how they just met. This gives off the meaning that Native American women are very open, exotic and a sexualized image (Hopkins, 2005)(R, & Berger, 2004)
Pocahontas. Americans know her as the beautiful, Indian woman who fell in love with the white settler John Smith and then threw her body upon the poor white captive to protect him from being brutally executed by her own savage tribe. The magical world of Walt Disney came out with their own movie version several years ago portraying Pocahontas as a tan, sexy Barbie doll figure and John Smith as a blond-haired, blue-eyed muscular Ken doll. Although Disney attempts to instill racial tolerance, inter-racial friendship, and nonviolent resolutions in Pocahontas, they contribute to the inaccurate Indian woman stereotype that has evolved from such stories. While it can be argued that Disney has
Disney princesses are fun for all ages, but their target audience is young children and “as children grow and develop, they can be easily influenced by what they see and hear”. Therefore, what they see and hear in Disney movies leaves an impression on them. The first princess, Snow White, was created in a time where each gender and race had a specific role in society. Recently, many believe that Disney has come a long way in regards to gender and race since Snow White, as several multi-cultural protagonists have been introduced subsequently, and gender roles do not appear to be as stereotypical as they once were. However, many of the apparent innocent messages about race and gender in these movies, can be exposed as otherwise. Despite