Disney

Pocahontas, the Disney version, is a good example of culture clashing between reality and the fiction of the indigenous people. Pocahontas is portrayed as a beautiful young woman who sings to the trees  and nature and her best friend is a raccoon and a humming bird. Her lifestyle seems really great and is only made better when the handsome John Smith waltzes into her life. She is portrayed as a care-free girl who turns heroine when she protects Smith, her love, from being killed. However, we know this is a false representation of what her life was actually like, it greatly romanticizes her life and the other people of her tribe.

However, I will have to say something that I actually applaud Disney for, they showed the animosity that the Europeans felt towards the Native Americans. They should they weren’t favored and that not everything was Thanksgiving like between them. They showed something real, maybe not in the best way, but they attempted to especially during the song ‘Savages’.  

I’d like to add one more point children do look up and see Pocahontas and her tribe as the stereotypical Native Americans and maybe this is their first impression of them. However, I think that’s a little bit farfetched, to blame Disney for a child’s first impression of a culture, especially when it’s in cartoon form. Most children know that cartoons aren’t real and sure children pretend to act like what they see, but they know it’s pretend…that’s why it’s called make believe.  I highly doubt that children run around believing Sebastian, from The Little Mermaid, is an actual representation of a crab. I don’t think they will believe that a real crab has a Jamaican accent, leads a choir essentially, sings great and talks…it just doesn’t seem likely to me.