Pocahontas and Co

The United Colours of 'Pocahontas': Synthetic Miscegenation and Disney’s multiculturalism 

By Leigh H Edwards

Aims

-Author asks why is this revisitation of first contact appears now (1995)?

-What is its cultural relevance in the 20^th century and why was it commercially successful?

-She examines miscegenation specifically as this is central to the story line. 147

The True Story

• Pocahontas is based on the “Indian Princess” Matoaka who married a white man and became a Christian. 
• When colonial settlers came to Virginia she was a young child and would acted as a mediator between her father, the chief of Powhatan and the settlers. 
•  Story is written and recorded by three settlers.  
• John Smith claimed she saved him when the chief ordered him to be beaten. 
• This is later contested. The stories of settlers should not be taken as fact because of the major cultural misunderstandings of the time and language barrier. 
• Pocahontas/Matoaka was a child then and apparently “intervened”. There was no romantic relationship between them. 
• Later she was captured and baptized as Lady Rebekah, she had a short life, she was received as the court in London as an Indian princess and died of tuberculosis a year later.

Disney's development of the story

Over time the story of Pocahontas has become about multiculturalism and not about the clash of two cultures or colonisation. Disney has changed it to reflect the pertinent racial tensions of the 20^th century. This relates to bi-culturalism and multi-culturalism. Multi-culturalism is easier to digest as it suggest cultural homogenisation of minorities and their assimilation into the dominant group while bi-culturalism suggests two groups with right to governance which threatens white dominance.

“The version of multiculturalism it conveys is the assimilation of American Indian cultures into the dominant Euro American one.” 148

Liberal Pluralism 

• Native Americans as the same but different skin colour. 
• American culture is fair, democratic and accessible to all. 
• Idea that all cultures are represented in society masks conflict and otherness.

Steady as the Beating Drum

 “The cultural work this liberal pluralism does in Pocahontas is to keep American Indians de-realized in the American imaginary, locating them in an ahistorical past and avoiding attention to their present historical situations which are still dominated by colonial power relationships 150.” 

 

Romantic depiction of American Indians and the assertion of peace in this film can only be done because they are colonized and no longer a perceived military or political threat. They are depicted as residing only in the remote past, allowing Disney to portray Indians as noble. Disney’s portrayal of race relations in Virginia as peaceful is because America displaced and appropriated (stole) resources from American Indians. 

Miscegenation

• The coupling of two people from different ethnicities. 
• Miscegenation is removed from the narrative. John Smith returns to England. An interracial union is never realized. 
• There are 2 opposing colonial views about miscegenation: one is a tool for peaceful race relations (assimilation) versus racial mixture as a threat to white purity. At the time it was frowned upon and even illegal.

Animation: 

Pocahontas is the “visual compilation of non-white ethnicities” 

• Asian forehead.
• Slanted eyes. 
• Thick lips
• African American jaw line
• white body proportions

However, she is visually Other from other native American characters who have rounder face, hair in bangs, larger eyes (she is unique).  She is more Caucasian looking than her peers and therefore superior.

SYNTHETIC MISCEGENATION:

• Miscegenation in this film is symbolic and not part of narrative; presented only through visual markers. 
• So Pocahontas represents miscegenation: she is already multicultural and therefore prevents need for actual miscegenation.
• Pocahontas the cultural mediator; her job is to meadiate and educate both peoples about each other. 
• But this is dependable on Smith falling in love with her and her which reinforces the idea that native woman can be assimilated into Western culture through miscengentaion.
• She is understood as assimilable and therefore acceptable because she can become civilized.

The creator/illustrator consulted books on classical Western beauty to create a woman that every man could fall in love with. She is created from Western constructs of beauty. Her beauty must overcome her race/savageness/otherness.

Imperial gaze when she first meets John Smith: he goes to kill her but is arrested by her body/beauty. She materializes from the mist of waterfall, oneness with landscape.

Exoticized female body. Racialized sexual Barbie doll. Had she not been so alarmingly beautiful John Smith would have shot and killed any Indian he comes into contact with. Therefore, her beauty becomes critical to the story line and thus she becomes a sexual object for colonial male.

 

Western Gender Roles

- Mothers necklace as symbol of marriage and Pocahontas’s rightful place in society. 

- transferable property 

- Generational path 

- embedded  estern gender roles 

- true marital practices of Powhatan women were different

- they were allowed to choose their own men 

- be chiefs 

- not a European patriarchy

Pocahontas and John Smith:

-assimilation into his culture through being a parallel character to John Smith. 

-Both want peace and both save each others lives in an act of self sacrifice. 

-Both Dive 

-her assimilation means the fostering the colonial project through the cultural mediation of settlers and Indians. 

Diving 360 shot

Assimilation

-Assimilationist is exemplified in the scene when she suddenly is able to speak English. To make it worse they use spirit voices to guide her to understanding therefore it is her own culture encouraging her to know English/learn Western ways.

-The Powhatan language became extinct in the 18^th century so they used fragments of its remains and mixed it with other indian language to create a hybrid which reflect pocahontas’s hybrid multiethnic representation.

My name is Pocahontas

-Bark: symbol of portable culture. Commodified culture.

- Colours of the Wind: The quick, reductive tour of American Indian culture associates Indian culture with nature and down plays cultural difference which is grounds upon which assimilation can easily occur. 

-They sing the multicultural anthem: "if you walk the footsteps of a stranger.. you’ll learn things you never knew you never knew."

Reciprocal Savagery 

The ideal of savagery which was used in colonial take over to justify extermination is ignored. Replaced by the idea that it does exist yet it is reciprocal. 

The film critique English greed, and celebrates technology they bring (never mind the technology and resources the English appropriates. (they were on par technologically)

The film celebrates Indian culture for its connectedness to nature as a salve for English weariness. Pocahontas’s tour of her culture connects all peoples together “anchoring the idea of liberal universalism”.

The film conveniently ends before:

-English attacks on Powhatans 1610, 1622, 1644.

-Powhatan attack on Jamestown

-resulting in major land loss and removal of Algonquin speaking iwi to reservations.

Cultural misunderstandings

Western POV: one man could speak for all and possess collective land. 

Russell Means who is Lakota was consulted to authenticate the film. He is quoted praising the film and Disney assumes that his singular voice can stand in for the opinions of all native Americans. For example: consulting Means is possibly similar to quoting David Rankins for a Maori perspective. Many disagree with his ideas.

The films producer conceived of this idea on Thanks Giving Day, which is majorly problematic.

Round Up 

• Normalises imperialism, and dehistoricizing the true context and conflict over land.
•  Decontextualizes “peaceful co existence” omits the issue of racial assimilation and the power of hierarchies. 
• symbolic miscegenation
• brown barbie
• assimilation and liberal pluralism

Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney’s Cartoon Heroines

By Celeste Lacroix

Aims

- woman of colour are positioned in Disneys consumerist framework. 

- analysis of 90s era of Disney in relation to whiteness.

- The Little Mermaid 1989; Beauty and the Beast, 1991; Aladdin, 1993; The Lion King, 1994; Pocahontas, 1995; The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1996

Disney Consumption  

• consumption of visual world and material world of Disney merchandising

Whiteness and Other

• Orientalism and Whiteness is reinforce by Disney’s animations.  
• European (lead) male as rational, civilized and objective through the exoticisation of the oriental other.
•  Invisible Whiteness overrides these animations as the central ideological force that ensures how the narrative is constructed and thus how it restores harmony.  
• “centering the white experience as normal and natural 219.” 

Visual Maturation 

• characters not as individuals but embodiments of ideologies  
• characters physical traits
• personality traits
• development of love relationships

Orientalisation of Women

 

Lacroix points out the problems with the costume department. 

The contrast in constume/personality and physicality of white women versus the women of colour .

 

Sexual and exotisation of Pocahontas, Jasmine and Esmeralda

Sexual depiction in Jasmines character. She can be portrayed as sexually enticing and her relationship with Jafar can be read as plausible in the stereotypical context of a harem. 

The Taboo of Miscegenation and Racial stereotypes

-women defined by their male counterparts (ariel wilful but wants to become part of his world, belle is emersed into the world of the beast)

-white women are not characterised by their race. Belle is French, Ariel is Mer but that doesn’t define her choices in the narrative nor affect her personality.

-women of colour personality confined within racial stereotypes

-Pocahontas is seen as noble savage, her ethnicity is inescapably linked to her personality.

- Esmeralda is physical and resourceful as a result of her circumstances (she has to be streetwise because lives a gypsy life.)

-This article points out that Esmeralda and Phoebus fall in love but do not marry. There is no miscegenation evident in the 90s Disney film series. Unlike the white princesses, Belle, Cinderella, Snowhite who fall in love and marry their prince charmings.

Round Up

• Analysis of 90s Disney movies. 
• Construction of Whiteness through expousing the Other 
• the differences between white female leads and coloured female leads
• sexualisation of Pocahontas, Esmeralda and Jasmine
• the characterization, iconography and personalities of the female leads

 

Next Up

Our very own Disney film. Hooray.