Top 15 Disney films I grew up with, #14

#14: Pocahontas (1995)

Pocahontas is not based on a novel or a fairy tale, or some random story from nowhere. It’s based on a true story about a Native American girl who strove for peace between her tribe and 17th-century British settlers. Here I stress the word “based”. Like Aristocats, this film only scrapes the top fifteen because of its sentimental value to me as a child. That was before I knew a thing about British-American history, or could recognise the numerous plot-holes and poorly developed characters. This movie was Disney trying to follow up the success of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin with a more “au naturale” Disney princess. Sadly, all they really got was a one-dimensional environmentalist who, following the trend, constantly sighs about how she wants “more”, whatever the hell that means in her pretty paradisiacal context.

Pocahontas seems to be one of the only Disney movies in which the historical inaccuracies cannot be forgiven. This is probably because the Disney boldly proclaims it as a historical film, even giving it a date – 1607 – in the opening song and accompanying text, but does an extremely poor job at following up with any historical accuracies whatsoever. They pretty much get three facts right: John Smith sails to America. White people are dicks to natives. Pocahontas saves John Smith from angry tribespeople. I think the writers just stopped there in terms of historical research.

I know it’s a kids’ film, but I will always be disappointed at the lack of effort to make this a good representation of the true story of Pocahontas – who was twelve at the time, had to actually work to learn English and diplomatic skills rather than use magical spirit powers, and did not fall in love with the first white man she saw. Apparently Disney even shunned the living remnants of Pocahontas’s tribe when they offered to help bring some cultural accuracy into the movie. Brother Bear did an excellent job at representing native American culture. Why couldn’t Pocahontas? All they covered was the idea of arranged marriage, which is a pretty culturally generic idea we’ve seen a million times before (hint: Aladdin). Disney sticking feathers on peoples’ heads, putting them in canoes and giving them weird accents is not good enough. The British also don’t accurately represent the British and their attitudes at the time. Virginia with its moose and very high cliffs is definitely not Virginia, unless the state has undergone a drastic environmental change in the last five hundred years. And don’t get me started on how the natives and the British seem to resolve all of their issues at the end, and how the British know nothing about how gold is found, and certainly nothing about this continent that had in fact already been explored by Europeans for over a hundred years. A complete whitewashing of history. Genocide as a concept was handled very well for a children’s audience in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Why couldn’t this movie pull it off?

Historical reality notwithstanding, there were aspects of the film that I enjoyed as a child and still enjoy today. The characters are, as in The Aristocats, two-dimensional and uninspiring, especially the two leads Pocahontas and John Smith. The Native Americans are just generic natives doing generic native things. The villain is a typical fop; an effeminate, rich, greedy white guy who's also kind of a baby. While Radcliffe is not a bad villain, Disney has done the same kind of villain so much better with, for example, Scar in The Lion King, Captain Hook in Peter Pan and Radagast in The Great Mouse Detective.
The songs in this movie range from okay to good, which is more than I can say for The Aristocats. Just Around the River-bend and Colours of the Wind are among my favourite Disney songs, and the natives’ song at the opening credits has always made me want to dance around a totem pole. At times the visuals are stunning too, particularly in Colours of the Wind with its flowing pastels and Savages with a dramatic scale reminiscent of (though incomparable to) the scale of The Lion King. This last song makes me laugh now, because one of the lyrics is “They’re not like you and me, therefore they must be evil” which really, really simplifies the conflict between the races, but is surprisingly quite true. Usually I equate this to Pocahontas. Artistically and musically, it’s pretty amazing, but in terms of the message it sends when compared to actual events, it’s pretty disturbing.

While it has many infuriating flaws, Pocahontas is relatively enjoyable, despite the boring characters. I’d have no objection over renting this out for my hypothetical children, though I would have to not watch it with them because I would just make fun of it the whole time. As kids’ movies go, it’s not bad. It at least sends good messages within its totally inaccurate context. But I would give it a lot less stars now than I would have when I was little. Like most of these lower-ranking flicks, the nostalgia factor doesn't quite make up for the fact that it is, in general, a mediocre film.

(image source: http://www.disneystoryoriginspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/pocahontas1.jpg)