"Pocahontas." Directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg.
Produced by James Pentecost. Songs composed by Alan
Menken; lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. Associate producer,
Baker Bloodworth. Screenplay by Carl Binder, Susannah
Grant, and Philip LaZebnik. The Walt Disney Company, 1995.
Reviewed by Pauline Turner Strong
Anthropology
University of Texas, Austin
pstrong@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu
Disney's "Pocahontas" is easily caricatured--as
politically correct, historically incorrect,
ethnographically sensitive or suspect, sexist, feminist,
exploitative, what have you. There is more than enough
basis for each of these labels but, as the co-existence of
contradictory caricatures suggests, this complex film
should not be so easily dismissed. Disney's heavily
promoted feature not only, as advertised, "brings an
American legend to life"; it also takes considerable risks
in doing so. These are not financial risks, to be sure:
Disney's powerful marketing machine can count on the
American public's perennial fascination with "playing
Indian" as it hawks polyester "buckskin," plastic beads,
and endless trinkets laden with Pocahontas's image. Rather,
the risks are artistic, intellectual, and ethical.
"Pocahontas" not only retells the romantic story of
Captain John Smith's rescue from an executioner's tomahawk
by an adoring Pocahontas, but seeks to challenge its
audience to see ethnocentrism and androcentrism, spiritual
alienation, commodification, and exploitation as barriers
to the dream of interethnic harmony--of "getting along
together"--Smith and Pocahontas represent. In short,
"Pocahontas" risks being taken seriously and evaluated
against its makers' lofty--and generally
laudable--intentions.
To what extent does the animated film successfully meet
the challenges of its own message, as articulated in its
dialogue, lyrics, and promotional material? (The latter are
available in a press packet and online at
http://www.disney.com; the lyrics, on the soundtrack,
currently second on Billboard's chart.) In pursuing this
question we can go beyond an appraisal of "Pocahontas" that
measures the film against an uncertain historical truth
--particularly elusive in this case, as scholars such as
Reyna Green, Philip Young, Philip L. Barbour, and Mary V.
Dearborn have pointed out. "Pocahontas" may be the first
"real-life figure" to be featured in a Disney film, but the
pre-Disney Pocahontas was already a highly mythologized
heroine known only through colonial representations--from
the beginning a product of Anglo-American desire and
discontent. The Disney Studio has drawn upon various
versions of Pocahontas--and Indians more generally--in the
American imagination, giving new life and ubiquitous
circulation to those deemed resonant with contemporary
concerns. That is to say, the animated Pocahontas is
necessarily located within the entire colonial tradition of
noble savagism: the natural virtues, cultural critique,
and self-sacrifice she embodies are those found in
Montaigne and Rousseau and Cooper and Kirkpatrick Sale.
This is not to say, to be sure, that Pocahontas is entirely
a product of Western colonialism, but that we only "know"
her within that arena--which, after all, is tantamount to
not knowing her very well at all.
Given all this, the most productive question to bring to
the film may be one of appropriateness: how appropriate is
the filmmakers' selective construction of Pocahontas
vis-a-vis their own aims? How salutary is the relationship
between Pocahontas as a sign vehicle and the message she
embodies? Significantly, this is a two-way relationship:
just as the animated Pocahontas may be (in)appropriate as a
vehicle for the film's message of tolerance and harmony, so
too the message may be (in)appropriate to the Pocahontas
story, however construed. If we take the producer of the
message and its young, semi-captive audience into account,
as we must, the question becomes even more complex, for the
big-screen Pocahontas can not be understood apart from the
proliferation of her image in the lucrative summer-to-fall
kiddy marketplace.
Outside of promotional material, the film's message is
articulated most fully in "Colors of the Wind," the song
that the filmmakers believe "perhaps best sums up the
entire spirit and essence of the film." (Throughout this
review, quotations not attributed to the film are taken
from the press packet.)
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.
In Disney's "Pocahontas," as in John Smith's and John
Barth's, the heroine is both spritely and sensual. However,
unlike Smith's and Barth's Pocahontas, Disney's is, above
all, a teacher. Not, as one might expect, a teacher of the
Powhatan language and standards of diplomacy, for the
time-consuming process of learning to translate across
cultural and linguistic borders is finessed through
Pocahontas's mystical skill in "listening with her heart."
Rather, Pocahontas is a teacher of tolerance and respect
for all life. Disney's Pocahontas is not a cultural
interpreter but first and foremost a "child of nature"--an
unfortunate impoverishment that produces a truly awkward
moment in the film. "She was just speaking English!"
observed my ten-year-old daughter, as Pocahontas
momentarily, before her mystical transformation, had
difficulty communicating with Smith. "That's because they
were translating her own language into English so we could
understand it," replied her seven-year-old sister. A few
Algonquian words are sprinkled through the film, but
"Pocahontas" gives no sense of the intelligence,
dedication, and humility needed to "learn things you never
knew you never knew." In becoming part of the series
Ariel/Beauty/Jasmine/Pocahontas, this most famous of
cultural mediators (to a North American audience) is
removed from the series Malinche/ Pocahontas/ Sacajewa/
Sarah Winnemucca. Magic and love conquer all cultural
distance for Pocahontas and John Smith.
This is not to say that it is entirely implausible that
Pocahontas teach Smith tolerance and respect for all life.
One of the more subtly effective moments in the film is the
animated sequence corresponding to the passage of the song
quoted above: "the footsteps of a stranger" are the tracks
of a Bear Person, a concept as unfamiliar to most viewers
of the film as to John Smith. "Colors of the Wind" not only
challenges racism, but also humanism or androcentrism, and
this passage offers a striking popular expression of the
vastly expanded consciousness available through embracing
cultural relativism.
In another couplet of the same song, Pocahontas again
contrasts Smith's mode of thought with her own:
You think you own whatever land you land on
The earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know ev'ry rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name.
She then invites or, better, seduces Smith to
Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sun sweet berries of the earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once, never wonder what they're worth.
Alan Menken's tune is so memorable and Stephen Schwartz's
poetic devices so effective that these words will be
imprinted on our collective memories even if Vanessa
Williams's pop version of the song does not win an Academy
Award. It is the clear exposition of colonial materialism
and possessiveness in scenes and lyrics like this that won
Russell Means's tribute to "Pocahontas" as "the single
finest work ever done on American Indians by Hollywood" by
virtue of being "willing to tell the truth." I, too, am
pleased to find a critique of capitalist appropriation
embedded in the film, even if it is enunciated by a
Pocahontas whose licensed image saturates the
marketplace--along with that of her father Powhatan who,
even more ironically, is modeled after and voiced by the
same Russell Means who has demonstrated against the use of
Indian images as sports mascots. It is also good to see
John Smith presenting the gold-hungry Governor Ratcliffe
with a golden ear of corn as the true "riches" of
Powhatan's land, but it is a superficial "truth" indeed
that excludes that other sacred indigenous plant,
tobacco--which became the salvation of the Virginia
economy thanks to John Rolfe, the husband of a mature,
Christian, and Anglicized Pocahontas never seen in the
film. Is this story reserved for "Pocahontas II"? Likely
not, for the tale of Pocahontas's capture by the English
as a hostage, transformation into Lady Rebecca Rolfe, and
early death in London does not resonate as well with an
Anglo-American audience's expectations as the story of
Smith's capture and salvation by an innocent, loving, and
self-sacrificing child of nature.
Of course, resonating with expectations is what creating a
"timeless, universal, and uniquely satisfying motion
picture experience" is all about. In imagining Pocahontas,
the filmmakers relied not only on consultation with native
people, but also on what resonated with their own
experience and desires. As lyricist Stephen Schwartz
comments on the composition of "Colors of the Wind": "We
were able to find the parts of ourselves that beat in
synchronicity with Pocahontas." But there is a significant
tension between this process and "walk[ing] in the
footsteps of a stranger." This is not the Pocahontas we
never knew we never knew, but the Pocahontas we implicitly
knew all along, the Pocahontas whose story is
"universal"--that is, familiar--rather than strange and
particular. This is a Pocahontas whose tale, like that of
Simba in "The Lion King," fits into the mold of an
individualistic Western coming-of-age story, progressing
from youthful rebellion to self-knowledge and mature
responsibility through courage and love. A Pocahontas who
speaks what is known in anthologies as "the wisdom of the
elders," and communes with a Grandmother Willow who,
although kindly, reminiscent of "Babes in Toyland." A
Pocahontas who, despite a tattoo and over-the-shoulder
dress loosely consistent with the sixteenth-century
Algonquians depicted by John White, has a Barbie-doll
figure, an exotic model's glamour, and an instant
attraction to a distinctively Nordic John Smith. In short,
Disney has created a marketable New Age Pocahontas to
embody our millennial dreams for wholeness and harmony,
while banishing our nightmares of savagery without and
emptiness within.
Just as the dream of tolerance and respect for all life is
voiced in song, so too is the nightmare of savagery and
emptiness--the first figured as feminine in the lyrical
"Colors of the Wind", the second as masculine in the brutal
"Savages."
What can you expect
From filthy little heathens?
Their whole disgusting race is like a curse Their skin's a hellish red
They're only good when dead
They're vermin, as I said
And worse.
They're savages! Savages!
Barely even human. Savages! Savages!
Drive them from our shore!
They're not like you and me
Which means they must be evil
We must sound the drums of war!
Strong stuff, this: the ideology of ignoble savagism at
its dehumanizing extreme, representative more of colonial
sentiment after Powhatan's heir Opechancanough's war of
resistance in 1622 than that of the earliest years of the
Jamestown colony. Still, in the context of the film,
appearing as the English prepare to attack the Powhatan
people, it is extremely effective, serving to underscore
the brutishness of the English colonists rather than that
of the Indians. Already, in the opening to "Colors of the
Wind," ignoble savagism has been gently invoked and
dismantled:
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?
Who is the savage? Certainly not Pocahontas, with her
knowledge of the spirits of this land. So the colonists'
rhetoric of savagery turns against them...at least Powhatan
leads his people in a similar chorus:
This is what we feared
The paleface is a demon
The only thing they feel at all is greed Beneath that milky hide
There's emptiness inside
I wonder if they even bleed
They're savages! Savages!
Barely even human. Savages! Savages!
Killers at the core
They're different from us
Which means they can't be trusted
We must sound the drums of war.
As in "Colors of the Wind," Powhatan's portion of this
song purports to offer a portrait of the English colonists
from an Indian point of view, portraying them as greedy,
soulless, untrustworthy killers. Given what has gone on
thus far in the film, and what we know of subsequent
history, the accusation strikes home. But this passage,
too, ultimately rebounds against those who utter it. John
Smith is laid out, the executioner's tomahawk is raised,
Smith is about to be mercilessly executed for a murder
another young sailor committed...and Pocahontas saves him
by throwing her body upon John Smith's, successfully
pleading with her father for his life. The savagery of
intolerance is vanquished through the power of love.
So the story goes, in Smith's telling, at least. It may be
that this was all an elaborate adoption ceremony in which
Smith became a vassal of Powhatan, who ruled over an
expending collection of villages. It may be that
Pocahontas was playing a traditional female role in
choosing between life and death for a sacrificial victim.
The incident may not have happened at all, except in
Smith's imaginative self-fabrication--particularly
plausible since this is the second time such a rescue
appears in his journals. Disney is not to be faulted for
repeating the story as it is commonly known, nor perhaps
even for opposing violent male savagery to self-sacrificing
female love. After all, both Powhatan and Smith are shown
as capable of self-sacrificing love. But what about the
litany "Savages! Savages!"? Does this not level the English
and the Algonquian people to the same state of brutishness
and ethnocentrism, portraying the prejudice of savagism as
somehow natural rather than having cultural and historical
roots? And what about disseminating this song on the
soundtrack, outside the context of the film, where it may
have a very different impact upon an impressionable
audience? For many Native Americans and other colonized
peoples, "savage" is the "S" word, as potent and degrading
as the word "nigger." I can not imagine the latter epithet
repeated so often, and set to music, in a G rated film and
its soundtrack. It is even shocking to write it in a
review. Is "savage" more acceptable because it is used
reciprocally? But then does this not downplay the role the
colonial ideology of savagism played in the extermination
and dispossession of indigenous people?
The filmmakers are quite aware that they are in risky
territory here, and characterize the episode as dealing
with "one of the most adult themes ever in a Disney film."
The theme is "the ugliness and stupidity that results when
people give into racism and intorlerance," and it is
refreshing to have it out in the open, especially from a
studio with a history, even recently, of racist animation.
But I believe a more responsible treatment of the
theme--one more consistent with the filmmakers'
aims--would be more nuanced, distinguishing between English
savagism and Algonquian attitudes towards their own enemies
(whom they generally aimed to politically subordinate and
socially incorporate, rather than exterminate and
dispossess). This could be done by telling more of
Powhatan's subsequent dealings with Smith, whom he treated
as a subordinate 'werowance' or chief. Lacking that, I
believe the circulation of the song "Savages" should have
been limited to the film, where its offensiveness is
tempered by its relevance to the narrative.
That "Pocahontas" raises a number of difficult and timely
issues--not all of which could be discussed here--is a
tribute to its seriousness and ambition. Indeed, the film
begs to be read as a plea for tolerant, respectful, and
harmonious living in a world torn by ethnic strife and
environmental degradation. That "Pocahontas" is rife with
tensions and ironies is also a testimony to the limitations
of serious cultural critique in an artistic environment
devoted to the marketing of dreams. That our children are
surrounded with Pocahontas hype while being called to
treat other cultures and the land with respect requires us
to clarify for them the difference between consuming
objectified difference and achieving respectful
relationships across difference. In other words,
"Pocahontas" provides a valuable teachable moment that we
can further by encouraging our children--and ourselves--to
take it seriously when Pocahontas sings,
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends.
---------------------------------------
Reviewed by Pauline Turner Strong
Anthropology University of Texas, Austin
pstrong@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu
This review is copyright (c) 1995 by H-Net. It may be
reprinted for educational or scholarly use. For other
permssions, please write H-Net@uicvm.uic.edu
--This review first appeared on H-WORLD@msu.edu, June 30,
1995.