I was asked to write this review by the moderator of H-World, a newsletter
for scholars and teachers in the field of world history. So it is written
for a predominantly non-Native audience. If you think it is appropriate
and would contribute to the discussion please feel free to post it on
native-l or nat-edu, preceded by this explanation.
"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 possessive-
ness 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--particu-
larly 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.