Pocahontas Stereotypes

Stereotypes are a form of prejudice everyone will once experience in their lifetime. Stereotypes are centered around an individual's race, gender, social class, religion, and age. They have been known to be elements people use to make judgments and subjectify people to one key feature. As Gordon Allport states, “ To state the matter technically, a noun abstracts from a concrete reality some one features and assembles different concrete realities only with respect to this one feature”(364). Mr.Allport’s words can be summed up to say stereotypes have been used as key fundamentals to associate one feature or aspect of a person with a group that represents it, typically in an unfavorable way.

There are five sociological concepts I am going to explain. And I will be using scenes from the Disney movie Pocahontas as examples. The five are: norms, role conflict, values, ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.

I’m not the Indian you had in mind; a video that was written and directed by Thomas King challenges the stereotypical image that America has towards Native Americans. King is also the author of a short novel “A seat in the Garden”. This short story also challenges the established perspective that American society has towards the Native Americans. There are various stereotypes and perspectives that a majority of the public has toward a particular group. For example some of the common stereo types that are seen throughout the media are that all Asians are good at math, women are primarily sex objects, All Africans like fried chicken, and all Mexicans are gangsters. These stereo types are not completely true for an entire group, yet they

Pocahontas is a Walt Disney Pictures animation released in 1995 following the Disney Princess franchise. The movie is about Pocahontas, a native American lady whose home is invaded by Englishmen who wishes to exploit the land’s resources and to “civilize” the people living there. However, one of the Englishmen, John Smith, fell in love with Pocahontas. This essay studies the stereotypes of native American and them being essentialized in the media as being savages, sexism and also over romanticization, as represented in the movie.

Racism towards Native American tribes and individuals have been found throughout mainstream media. From nationally broadcasted sports games to popular Hollywood movies, Native Americans people have been stereotyped and/or culturally appropriated. Many examples of these stereotypes are blatant and have been portrayed for in the media for decades.

The lack of accurate representation of Native Americans in our everyday lives has left members of society without more than a stereotype to draw from when thinking about characteristics of Native Americans. Native Americans have “relative invisibility” in mainstream media and this lets the few inaccurate portrayals, such as a sports team’s mascot, have an overwhelming amount of power in forming stereotypes (Fryberg, Markus, Oyserman, Stone, 2008, pg. 208). Many members of society have a very narrow view of what they understand a Native American to look, dress, and act. These ideas mostly come from what they see in media through the caricatures used as mascots, childhood cartoons, and similar

My argument uses the umbrella term of systematic oppression to allow me to describe the many side effects that violence and misrepresentation has had on Native Americans. It involves suicide rates, alcoholism and how this has pushed Native Americans into the cycle of poverty that is giving rise to more stereotypes. The thesis later focuses on my counter-argument of how Native Americans denounced the two main stereotypes of “The Drunken Indian” and “The Poor Indian” because of their entrepreneurial skills and creativity. These characteristics have allowed them to come out of this intergenerational grief pattern and become more confident in their culture and identity.

Although this course is about global women’s movements, the overall argument in which I intend on taking for the purpose of this book review is that besides women, First Nations men are also victims of oppression. In addition to oppression, first nations are often stereotyped by society. Rice’s book does a good job on reflecting this idea once again, through the use of first person point of view stories. It allows the reader to really understand how these stereotypes affect the everyday lives of First Nations people. Before getting into how stereotyping affects the lives of these people, we will begin with looking into oppression and how it relates to the textbook.

Another issue is how Native Americans internalize the stereotypes that are forced upon them. In a study conducted by Fryberg, Markus, Oyserman, and Stone (2008), they found three common stereotypes of Native Americans in mass media: Spiritual people who are in tune with nature, warriors, or people with stereotypically bad outcomes, such as alcoholism. It is important to note that not all of these stereotypes are negative, and in fact a few of them are positive. What Fryberg et al. (2008) found, however, was that regardless if the stereotype was seen as positive or negative, all three of those variations caused harm in the form of “students’ feelings of personal and community worth, and achievement-related possible selves” (p. 216). It did

When European settlers arrived, they had a pre-decided vision of what women ought to behave like based on the European women, which the indigenous women didn’t align with. Indigenous women were comprehended and characterized in ambiguous and conflicting terms. They could firstly be viewed as “noble savages” where they were seen as classic Indian Princesses, virginal, childlike, naturally pure, beautiful, helpful to European men, and open and willing to

Until fairly recently the popular culture of American literature and film did not attempt to study the true representations of Indians in North America. Instead they chose to concentrate on the romanticized/savage version of Native people: which is an idealistic view of a Native with long, beautiful flowing hair riding on a horse obsessed with chanting and praying to the savageness of a rowdy, wild Native causing unnecessary mayhem to the white people. This portrayal of Native people in mass media had led to the stereotyping of Natives, which in turn had ricocheted into real life. Not only do non-natives succumb to these ideals, but Natives do as well.

However, it is important to understand that this stereotype is more problematic than beneficial. The Noble Savage is a stock character that has been popularly used to portray Indigenous characters in various forms of media, and thus limits representations of Indigenous people. The stereotype is limiting because it focuses on a single story and allows it to become the dominant stereotype for which many understandings of Indigenous people and cultures are built (Kemper, 2014, Yellow Bird, 2004). Furthermore, it removes Indigenous people from civilized society, as the character takes on mythical elements.

In comparison, Native American women are depicted in the media more often, in what is called the ‘Pocahontas paradox,’ which romanticizes and demeans Native American women (Brooks, 2006). The stereotype of the Pocahontas, draws on how Native American women are viewed as either strong or exotic, but now the two stereotypes have combined into one representation. There have been various studies examining the Pocahontas stereotype, which stems from the popular Disney film and how this animated character has affected the perception Native American women. For instances, Pocahontas was created into a doll and printed on various items, the stereotype became commodified and placed Native American women in a Western, capitalist box. The Pocahontas doll,

Since the beginning of the colonial process, Indigenous bodies have been seen as disposable. The dehumanization of the Indigenous body and the creation of the other, has allowed for the destruction of Indigenous Femininity. A system rooted in epistemic violence created by the colonial era. Continues to affect how Indigenous women are treated in modern societies. The demotion from “Indian Queen”, an exotic and powerful presence in colonial societies, to the “Dirty Squaw”, a figure depicted as lazy, and troublesome. Indigenous women have struggled to be seen as human people, rather than sexual object in the minds of the white settlers. A systematic dehumanization though through the process of epistemic violence. Which continues to affect how Indigenous women are treated today.

Google definitions calls it, “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing”. So, definition aside, stereotypes destroy people by giving all of them a basic template to be viewed through. Are you an asian man? stereotypes already know everything about you, what you do, what you are good at, bad at, etc. A survey conducted on Survelum.com involved 85 people of varying backgrounds and ages, stated that a majority of them believed in stereotypes, that irish people are alcoholics, black people are good at sports, asians are the smartest, etc. That can clearly be very damaging. A young Japanese boy gets a D+ on a math test, and stereotypes tell him he is the only asian kid ever to be bad at math. A black kid automatically gets picked first in basketball just because of that, he is black. And they can be a LOT worse than that. In 1968, Jane Elliott, a teacher, told her class that blue and green eyed kids were smarter, while brown eyed kids were dumb. Over a short period of time, grades for the blue and green eyed kids skyrocketed, while the grades for the brown eyed kids plummeted. That is what stereotypes and labels can do. THIS is the problem. However, every problem can be