POCAHONTAS
A film review by Fred Edwords
Copyright 1995 Fred Edwords
>From the July 1995 issue of the Interracial Club of Buffalo Newsletter
DISNEY'S FIRST INTERRACIAL CARTOON FEATURE:
NEW SONGS, OLD STORY, TIRED FORMULA
It's as though Disney has been beating around the bush for a long time on this whole mixed-couple thing. First it was a love story between a cocker spaniel and a mongrel in LADY AND THE TRAMP. A sexy songstress and a bunny got it together in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? Then a fish/woman and a handsome prince fell in love in THE LITTLE MERMAID. Finally, it was a young gal and a bewitched prince in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. But never in all this was there a decidedly non-white lead character. That didn't happen until ALADDIN, which, though not an interracial film, was definitely a welcome change of habit.
Not until last month, then, can we say that Disney finally took the plunge. Yet when they did, it wasn't entirely worth the wait. True to traditional Hollywood form, their scriptwriters saw to it that the interracial love affair was a fleeting thing indeed. And the artists made sure that Pocahontas was comfortably anglicized. (She may have had her mother's eyes, but definitely *not* her father's nose. As NEWSWEEK put it, "... tall and shapely in a buckskin minidress, with miles of floating hair: she's Native American Barbie.")
Remember American TV's first interracial kiss? It was on STAR TREK in 1968 and the faces were turned away from the camera so the lips would not be seen. Ditto for Disney's first interracial kiss in POCAHONTAS. Fortunately, however, there is a second kiss at the end of the film that is much more honest. Perhaps those doing the storyboard figured the audience would be softened up by then.
Meanwhile, the tired script offers, as TIME magazine put it, "... a boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl story whose plot is familiar in every weepie affair, from ROMEO AND JULIET to THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY." However, the boy-loses-girl ending is the weakest part of the tale, and totally unnecessary. After Pocahontas saves Captain John Smith's life by placing her body between him and her father's war club, Smith saves her father by standing between him and Governor Ratcliffe's bullet. Smith is wounded. So in the next scene we learn that Smith must be taken back to England.
"Does he have to go?" Pocahontas asks.
"Going back is his only chance," she is told. "He'll die if he stays here."
In other words, the only way to save this seriously wounded man is to break his heart by hustling him away in a primitive sailing ship where he will suffer months at sea in the raging Atlantic Ocean until he can get to England where some quack with no knowledge of sanitation or anesthesia will cut him up, bleed him, and then put leeches on his wounds. Trust me: he's far better off staying with Pocahontas in the wilds of old Virginny!
"Will you come with me?" John Smith asks his lady love.
Pocahontas looks up at her father, who tells her, "You must choose your own path, my daughter."
So Pocahontas thinks for a moment, then says. "I am needed here."
"Then I will stay here with you," Smith responds.
Pocahontas shakes her head. "No, you have to go back."
And that's that. The relationship is over and, in the manner of ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO, the film ends with Pocahontas running after Smith's ship as it sails away, seeking that one last glimpse of the one she loves.
How convenient. Not only does their interracial love have no future, but it is the non-white lover who breaks it off, thus saving the white lover from any suspicion of racism. Both of their motives are made pure -- the union simply wasn't meant to be.
Now, to some, this criticism will seem unfair. After all, the real historic Pocahontas didn't marry Captain John Smith, either. After being abducted by the English in 1612, Pocahontas married a different white guy, John Rolfe, had a son by him, went with him to England, and died there of smallpox in 1617. But if historic accuracy is an issue, then Disney's POCAHONTAS has other problems. The real Pocahontas was only 12 when she rescued John Smith (or performed a *pretended* rescue as part of a tribal adoption ritual for the good captain). The supposed romance never happened, it being an invention of the 1790s, and the legend has grown ever since.
So let's not talk history, or even faithfulness to the original forms of great fairy tales: Disney has never had much regard for either. Let's talk cultural bias. After all, if the studio was willing to change the poignantly tragic ending of Hans Christian Anderson's THE LITTLE MERMAID in favor of a happy Hollywood finish, then why did it break its own tradition this time to give us a tragic POCAHONTAS? In the usual manner of film scripting, they could have merged the character of John Smith with that of John Rolfe and had Pocahontas marry him. Then the reward for her courage would have been complete. But racism can be a hidden and subtle thing. I'm sure most everyone involved with the film felt they had done something truly advanced and enlightened.
Well, they certainly tried. Pocahontas is depicted as intelligent, independent, fearless, assertive, athletic, and, in the words of her father, a young woman who "speaks with a wisdom beyond her years." She's definitely the best Disney female role model since Belle in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Furthermore, the film goes out of its way to be politically correct when it comes to its depiction of Native Americans. And it promotes environmentalism in the bargain. TIME said, "As teacher of the land's bounty with John Smith as her student, Pocahontas becomes the first eco-feminist."
So, despite the fact that Disney Studios couldn't quite shake off all the vestiges of entrenched, unconscious racism, they at least gave us a generally positive interracial romance, a strong non-white heroine, a clear preachment against racial bigotry, and an upbeat ecological outlook put beautifully to music. The rest of Hollywood hasn't given us better, and generally provides much worse. So, despite my caveats, I'd recommend taking the kids and making a family affair of it. We did.
And if you happen to find yourself chuckling a bit at the excessive use of heroic images of Pocahontas perched commandingly atop precarious precipices, or drifting wistfully through the weaving mist, her long black hair blowing engagingly about her shoulders and face in the colorful autumn wind, just remember that this too can be part of the fun. And POCAHONTAS is definitely a fun movie.
-- So long as profit is not your motive, you may distribute this article freely. Permission for publication in print or for profit must be sought though contact with the author. Fred Edwords Phone: 1 (800) 743-6646
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