Pocahontas

[osprey_archer]

“They went so hard in this movie,” Julie commented, after we surfaced for air from a rewatch of Disney’s Pocahontas. “The color scheme, the storyboarding, the animation layouts, the music, the lyrics… If only they had gone a quarter as hard on the cultural sensitivity.”

This is, I think, a pretty good summation of the movie. It’s visually arresting and musically glorious (the two qualities come together in the iconic “Paint with All the Colors of the Wind” sequence, which brings together everything Disney learned about animating nature in Fantasia, Bambi, and The Fox and the Hound in a glorious feast), but man, maybe Pocahantas was just not the best choice for their first Native American princess story, maybe focusing that movie on a first-contact-with-white-people story was, in itself, an idea they should have backed away from.

On a more “oh, fandom” note, I looked at the Pocahontas page on Wikipedia (I wanted to see if anyone had written Meeko/Percy fic DON’T JUDGE ME) and I found out that the fandom’s second-most-popular pairing is Kocuom/Thomas. Because of course it is. Nothing says “Ship this!” like a spot of murder!

Comments

[kore]

the iconic “Paint with All the Colors of the Wind” sequence

BOY WAS THAT SONG POPULAR IN NEW MEXICO. I think I heard it in nearly every single retail/fast food place/mall store for a solid year. I never even saw the damn movie and I could probably sing most of the lyrics even today.

[osprey_archer]

I've never been to New Mexico, but nonetheless that seems like exactly the sort of song New Mexico WOULD adopt as its anthem.

[lilysea]

I mean, if they'd wanted a story about a kick-ass Native American woman, Sacagawea comes to mind.

Without her, Lewis and Clark would have died many times over. And she did it all as a teenager wearing her baby!

"Sacagawea was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who, at age 16, met and helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition in achieving their chartered mission objectives by exploring the Louisiana Territory. Sacagawea traveled with the expedition thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, helping to establish cultural contacts with Native American populations in addition to her contributions to natural history.

Sacagawea was an important member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The National American Woman Suffrage Association of the early 20th century adopted her as a symbol of women's worth and independence, erecting several statues and plaques in her memory, and doing much to spread the story of her accomplishments.

In April, the expedition left Fort Mandan and headed up the Missouri River in pirogues. They had to be poled against the current and sometimes pulled from the riverbanks. On May 14, 1805, Sacagawea rescued items that had fallen out of a capsized boat, including the journals and records of Lewis and Clark. The corps commanders, who praised her quick action, named the Sacagawea River in her honor on May 20, 1805. By August 1805, the corps had located a Shoshone tribe and was attempting to trade for horses to cross the Rocky Mountains.

They used Sacagawea to interpret and discovered that the tribe's chief, Cameahwait, was her brother.

Lewis recorded their reunion in his journal:

Shortly after Capt. Clark arrived with the Interpreter Charbono, and the Indian woman, who proved to be a sister of the Chief Cameahwait. The meeting of those people was really affecting, particularly between Sah cah-gar-we-ah and an Indian woman, who had been taken prisoner at the same time with her, and who had afterwards escaped from the Minnetares and rejoined her nation.

And Clark in his:

…The Intertrepeter [sic] & Squar who were before me at Some distance danced for the joyful Sight, and She made signs to me that they were her nation…

The Shoshone agreed to barter horses to the group and to provide guides to lead them over the cold and barren Rocky Mountains. The trip was so hard that they were reduced to eating tallow candles to survive. When they descended into the more temperate regions on the other side, Sacagawea helped to find and cook camas roots to help them regain their strength.

As the expedition approached the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific Coast, Sacagawea gave up her beaded belt to enable the captains to trade for a fur robe they wished to give to President Thomas Jefferson.

Clark's journal entry for November 20, 1805, reads:

one of the Indians had on a roab made of 2 Sea Otter Skins the fur of them were more butifull than any fur I had ever Seen both Capt. Lewis & my Self endeavored to purchase the roab with different articles at length we precured it for a belt of blue beeds which the Squar—wife of our interpreter Shabono wore around her waste.… [sic]

When the corps reached the Pacific Ocean, all members of the expedition—including Sacagawea and Clark's black manservant York—voted on November 24 on the location for building their winter fort. In January, when a whale's carcass washed up onto the beach south of Fort Clatsop, Sacagawea insisted on her right to go see this "monstrous fish."

On the return trip, they approached the Rocky Mountains in July 1806. On July 6, Clark recorded:

The Indian woman informed me that she had been in this plain frequently and knew it well.… She said we would discover a gap in the mountains in our direction [i.e., present-day Gibbons Pass].

A week later, on July 13, Sacagawea advised Clark to cross into the Yellowstone River basin at what is now known as Bozeman Pass. Later, this was chosen as the optimal route for the Northern Pacific Railway to cross the continental divide."

[asakiyume]

I loved that song so much, loved the visuals that went along with it. And then the movie was just ... so ...

*sigh*

[osprey_archer]

It's such a beautiful song! In a movie with so many stunning visual sequences! But the movie as a whole is just... that.

[conuly]

Yeah.

[osprey_archer]

I mean HONESTLY.

[silverusagi]

“The color scheme, the storyboarding, the animation layouts, the music, the lyrics… If only they had gone a quarter as hard on the cultural sensitivity.”

This puts me in mind of Lindsay Ellis' video "Pocahontas was a mistake, and here's why!" :) Disney wanted it to be great, and it just... wasn't.

[osprey_archer]

Apparently (according to Wikipedia) the Disney animators did meet with some modern-day descendants of the Powhatan... and then apparently just kind of went their own way with the story. Why bother talking to people if you're not going to listen???

[anna_wing]

I never saw the cartoon (a colleague of mine got hooked on that song too and sang it at parties and karaoke sessions for years afterwards....), but I did know someone who looked exactly like Pocahontas. I believe she was from Easter Island.

[osprey_archer]

It's such a catchy song! Once you've heard it, it's hard to escape.

[brigdh]

For all "Colors of the Wind" is the famous (infamous?) hit song, it's "The Virginia Company" lyrics that I can still recite despite not having seen this movie in something like twenty years. "In sixteen-hundred seven / we sailed the open sea / for glory, god, and gold / and the Virginia Company". And hey, it's not even bad history – at least, compared to the rest of the movie – especially the one line in the reprise about all the gold going to the company and not the sailors.

[osprey_archer]

All the music in this movie is so catchy. I also sometimes have snatches of "Savages! Savages!" running through my head, not so much the actual words as the beat and, like, the EMOTION.