Pocahontas Was a Mistake, and Here's Why!

theoretical terms that have become politically charged in recent years, particularly cultural appropriation. As a theoretical term, cultural appropriation is neither bad nor good. It simply describes a sociological phenomenon. It can have harmful or positive effects on certain groups, but the term itself is neutral. Cultural appropriation is the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of another culture. That's all. That's what I mean when I say that cultural appropriation is a neutral term. For example, the fact that he wears a Claddagh ring is a form of culture appropriation. I'm not Irish. I studied Irish when I was at university; in fact, I'm a minor in Irish studies.

But I don't know if I have Irish ancestry, maybe so or maybe not. If I do, it is so far back in the line of ancestry that it will be completely irrelevant. So this is actually a form of cultural appropriation. "Beat him!" If you're American and want a more subjective understanding of what cultural appropriation in movies is, one of my favorite examples is from a 2003 Bollywood movie called Kal Ho Naa Ho. "I'm crazy about you, pretty woman." This movie takes place in New York (it was filmed in Toronto). And yes, this is a form of cultural appropriation.

I like to use this example because unless you're really into anime, most Americans have a seasoned media that has American culture on the other end of cultural appropriation. Americans are so used to being the dominant media producers that we're not used to seeing what it's like to be portrayed by a culture that doesn't care if its product sells in American markets. The fact that cultural appropriation is, in theory, a neutral term leads to a lot of false equivalencies, i.e. why this form of cultural appropriation is okay, but Gwen Stefani dressing up as a sexy warrior is not okay.

Well, it's a complex topic and t

here

are a lot of intersections about race, class and gender, but

here

's a general rule: if it's a culture that was historically exploited by colonialism and you appropriate a historically colonizing culture, there's no harm, no lack. No one gets mad at Mexico for appropriating elements of German culture (unless you live in Los Angeles and that's all you hear on the radio). If it's a historically colonialist culture appropriating a culture that was exploited by colonialism, then people start to get a little cranky. Obviously there are intersections and complexities, but for the sake of simplicity I'll leave it there for now.

But I think most people would agree that, unlike something like Pocahontas or even Slumdog Millionaire, a movie that almost every Indian I've talked to isn't a fan of, this kind of cultural appropriation is basically harmless This is what I mean by cultural appropriation as a neutral term. Not all cultural appropriation is equal. So I think the real question people want to answer is where is the line between positive examples of representation and harmful cultural appropriation, and that's the problem: there really isn't a line. So you can have a movie like Moana, which had a much higher proportion of Pacific Islanders working behind the scenes and in the caste and Native Americans did it for Pocahontas.

But the movie still reads as appropriate to some because the story is still typical Disney. -and the department heads were mostly old white men. As long as there is a multinational corporation that appropriates some element of another culture to sell things, no matter how respectful or well-researched it may be, there will always be some level of appropriation. So, regarding the lesson Disney learned from the backlash against Pocahontas, one would think that the lesson Disney would have learned regarding representing indigenous people is...don't do it. But it was not like that. We've had four more Disney features with indigenous protagonists since Pocahontas, two of which involved said protagonists turning into large mammals to learn a lesson.

I'm not going to go into that, I'm just saying it happened. Twice. "I don't speak bear." First was Emperor's New Groove, which had been in development for years and was originally a big, very important, portentous musical in the vein of Pocahontas called Kingdom of the Sun. But then that vision was discarded. Most of the creative team was replaced and the film became a buddy comedy with barely a semblance of the original setting on top. "Butler." "Chef." "Theme Song Boy." "Oh yeah!" The Emperor's New Groove has almost no relationship to the culture it takes place in, other than the llama being the only domesticated animal there and sometimes the topography.

The Emperor's New Groove is so completely divorced from the culture in which it takes place that discussion of appropriation rarely comes up in relation to this film. Brother Bear, the other film where the arrogant protagonist turns into a large mammal to learn a lesson, has more to do with the culture it's appropriating than Emperor's New Groove or even Pocahontas, taking the concept of spirit animal to a very literal level. literal. But what fascinates me about Brother Bear in this context is not so much how he appropriates culture in his story, with the idea of ​​the spirit animal turning Joaquin Phoenix into a literal animal, but the way he mixes the native language with a European style of music.

You Tuber on the side did a great video essay titled How Disney Uses Language. This essay has a little segment about Brother Bear and his use of whatever his favorite language is to the music of the Bulgarian women's choir because it sounds vaguely, you know, ethnic. So they used music that most people hadn't heard of and that had nothing to do with the context of the movie to make the scene sound, I don't know, more magical? The point here is that Brother Bear stood back and got away with it because most people couldn't distinguish between a Bulgarian women's choir and Iñupiaq music.

Both are supposed to sound equally strange. So even though Brother Bear uses Bulgarian music to try to convey an Alaskan sound, it's okay, they were actually on the right track by using the native language. Part of the reason Brother Bear was a big step back is because there was a lot of chaos in the Disney Company at the time, with Roy Disney basically staging a coup against Michael Eisner from outside the company, so the result was that the last moments of traditional animation in the mid-2000s were a bit lazy and sloppy. But if we really want to take a look at the way Disney portrays indigenous people, especially indigenous women, the real change is not Moana, but Nani from 2002's Lilo and Stitch. "Hey!

Watch where you're going !" Pocahontas is hypersexualized, moves in an animalistic manner, falls in love with the first white man she sees, talks to animals, and communicates with the spirits of things like rocks and trees. Nani is completely different from that. She is not sexually available to white men. She's not even sexually available. In reality, she doesn't have a guy who is interested in her. But she can't return that interest because she doesn't have that luxury. She has to take care of her sister, you're not doing anything David, I told you I can't. The most exotic thing Nani wears is for when she works for a literal tourist trap.

But Nani is also not divorced from her culture, and one of the film's most emotionally powerful moments is the night before social services takes lilo away from Nani. Nani sings Aloha Oe to you Aloha Oe was written by Queen Liliuokalani, the last monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii. It translates as farewell. for you and became a symbol of a lost country after the forced annexation of Hawaii to the United States. And this isn't the only reference to Liliuokalani in the film, her opening song also invokes her in the Hawaiian language. It's super subtle for Disney But there's a deliberate intention here to tie the characters' personal struggles to their heritage.

So in a later scene, when Nani sings Aloha Oe - lilo, Nani is using one of Hawaii's most iconic cultural songs? To symbolize what is literally about to happen to her, her family is about to be torn apart by a literal agent of the United States government in case you were wondering. This didn't go well. This is an issue that directly affects indigenous peoples, especially in the United States. We like most countries. We have a long and proud history of separating indigenous families. That the film uses Aloha Oe, a song that has become a symbol of the forced annexation of Hawaii to the United States, about our own grief at the destruction of his family.

That's almost radical. for a Disney movie, and yes. It's also a certain level of ownership, it could be a powerful moment and was received mostly positively. But it's still Disney, that's what I mean by that. It's not really a line. It is a complex topic. Lilo and Stitch had a deleted scene that confronted the racism of white tourists head-on. Hey, speak English, which way to that beach? I'm a little bummed they cut this for so many reasons. It would have helped. the film from the point of view of the story since it was eliminated. The scene is the moment where Stitch decides Hey, maybe these kids are okay, it also points to Lalo's feelings as an outsider being more than just her being a weirdo.

She is a tourist asset in her own country. Oh, Lilo and Stitch begins to scratch the surface of Hawaii's poverty labor market and its dependence on mainland tourists. But you know, they didn't really like it because it's still a Disney movie, which is why I think they cut that scene. So the big lesson learned from Pocahontas No was not to make narratives about indigenous people, but rather not to make these narratives about the characters. White relations with the Emperor, New Groove, Brother Bear and Moana. This is achieved simply by placing the story in the pre-Columbian style.

It was with Lilo and Stitch in the modern era But without white characters except the tourists. I wish Disney had internalized this lesson with The Princess and the Frog, which goes to great lengths to portray the wholesome white family as nice and good. What does Jim Crow mean and what systemic oppression is it? I'm just a nice, rich white patrician here to grab some beignets from my favorite black-owned establishment across the tracks. Anyway, and then came Moana. As I've mentioned before, Moana has a lot in common with Pocahontas, both narratively and conceptually, so there was a lot of embarrassment and anticipation for the film.

This shame was updated to become shame at the announcement of some brown. Brown Body Face Costume for Kids Maui Body and Tattoos Whoa! And yes, well, they did, but yes, Disney. What were you thinking? You know, at the end of the day, Disney will be gone before Moana even came out. I was like, oh boy, The Rock sure looks fun and I love Lin-Manuel Miranda, and I can't wait to book my Disney vacation so I can stay. at Disney's Polynesian Resort I would also be very curious to see if this movie would have been greenlit if Disney hadn't purchased their own private Chunk of Hawaii, check it out.

It's the Moana star promoting Disney's new slice of Hawaii "What are your impressions of this beautiful resort?" At the end of the day, Moana is another cog in Disney's vertically integrated machine. As such, you're only willing to go so far when it comes to authenticity. Instead of focusing on one Polynesian culture, Moana is more of a mix of all of them, which reminds me a little of Mulan, which took place in China, but aesthetically it chose a lot of elements from all over Asia: Korea, Japan, the gang. Everybody here. Moana also avoids the stereotype of the submissive and sexually available Polynesian woman.

But she still plays out the trope of happy natives with coconuts. Disney hired what they called a group of ocean experts. A collection of academics and activists from across the Pacific to help with issues of accuracy and sensitivity. But, as Tina Ingata points out, having brown advisors doesn't make it a brown story. It's still very much a white person's story. No matter how much the story is grounded in the culture it's trying to portray, at the end of the day, it's still a very narrow Disney coming-of-age story. Vicente M. Diez wrote in Indian Country Today before the film came out: "Any altruism associated with this latest business venture will always be outweighed by the proverbial bottom line.

But, more depressingly, by a lasting colonial legacy in the islands of the Pacific that is further animated in the 21st century by neoliberal and postcolonial desires to sell and consume native culture of a very specific kind." And that's why the line between representation and cultural appropriation, especially in animated films, can be so blurred that the legacy of colonialism is present in every facet of every culture on the planet. Colonialism has had an incalculable impact on human civilization, forthat's so hard Analyze exactly the impact of group A being portrayed by dominant cultural group B in Disney films.

But that's why we're here, we're going to fix colonialism. Filmmaker Taika Waititi, a New Zealand native of Maori descent, wrote the first draft. of Moana before leaving the project, although little of Waititi's script, which focused much more on gender and Moana's struggle with being in a family full of children, remained in the film, his departure from the project seemed amicable. He's on good terms with Disney to direct this fall's movie, Thor Ragnarok Waititi said after the movie came out. Waititi left Moana to go make What We Do in the Shadows with Jermaine Clement, who by the way stars in Moana as Tamatoa and And If You Have.

You haven't seen that movie, you should, it's cute. Just let me make my dog ​​bid on the internet why are you bidding? I'm bidding on a table But this is what I think really separates Moana from Pocahontas AND the Emperor's New Groove. In fact, the plot stems from the lessons Moana learns about her own culture from him. Moana's personal journey only truly begins when she discovers that she descends from a long line of travelers we descend from travelers who found their way across the world They call me And that's what I'm left with, racial stereotypes aside, is that Ultimately, the story is not just about a young woman finding herself.

But discovering that her ancestors were incredible things about her and her joy in discovering that we were travelers. Is anyone going to say that we should sacrifice some little girl in New Zealand, Los Angeles, or Hawaii to see an entire character that looks like her just because it's Disney and therefore appropriate? No. That's why there's a push for ethical cultural representation and a lot of these things are subjective, which is why there can never be pure representation, especially in a globalist media economy, an increasingly diverse consumer base wants to see characters that look alike. to them portrayed in Screen Disney understands that it is good business to try to be authentic to the communities they portray, but they should hire more people from those communities.

I'm just saying that the article I found most interesting was by Doug Herman, who writes for Smithsonian Magazine. and that article was about his ambivalence in the film. He liked that he did some things well, but he also played into racial stereotypes. He felt ambivalent about it. He even got frustrated and this frustration gives me some hope because I feel like we are making progress since the days of Pocahontas is no longer a mess, but a mixed bag of things. "When you use a bird to write, it's called tweeting." and that can always be the case because let me say it again for the people in the back.

The legacy of colonialism is embedded in every facet of every culture on the planet, so yes, Disney is not willing to challenge his ideas about American history. Theme park tickets for sale, come to Epcot Center and enjoy the American experience or you Pocahontas fans can march to the world of Pandora, which already exists. Yuck. Again, especially with a multinational hydra like Disney, progress is not always linear, at the end of the day the financial result will always be the most important thing for a company like Disney. But there is money to be made with authenticity. And I think Disney is. coming closer to that than, say, the Enchanted Tiki Room days.

There's a scene that's there towards the end of both films where our heroine gets a pep talk from the spiritual grandmother that I think speaks to the evolution of not just the cultural angle but the ethical storytelling of Disney films, in both films. Our heroine feels depressed and is ready to give up. This is what the spiritual grandmother says in Pocahontas. You have to stop them. I can't Child remember your dream. I was wrong, Grandma Willow and this is what Spirit Grandma says in Moana. It's not your fault. I should never have put so much on your shoulders.

If you're ready to go home, I'll be with you. This is such a small difference, but I find it very telling because it tells me that the filmmakers were thinking about what the kids would take away from the exchange with Moana. In Pocahontas, the spirit grandmother tells her that she is obligated to clean up the mess other people made, but in Moana Spirit the grandmother admits that it wasn't fair to her to put that responsibility on a literal child. And instead of pressuring Moana to fulfill her destiny, she assures her that her family loves her and supports her no matter what she decides.

This is indicative of how taking into account the audience's feelings in this case of children can help strengthen the story. Moana's moment is stronger than Pocahonta's because it is motivated by her character growth. Where Pocahontas, it's her remembering this dream that she had at the beginning. For Moana, it doesn't come from Compass ex machina, but from a place of love and support that creates a moment much more iconic than Pocahontas had. And I don't think this would have happened if the filmmakers hadn't seen the scene in Pocahontas and she thought, Wait, this has already been done and it was a little weak the first time.

We can do better. Moana is far from perfect, but I think the ambivalence of the criticism she received is telling. She tells us that Disney (and by extension all of us) has a long way to go, but that Disney has learned something from her past

mistake

s. The best advice I have given to students who have studied with me has been this: educate yourself here, educate yourself! What you like most about movies will get you called a movie snob. Language can be subtle and poetic, but not all people care about that, like Mary Alice or Jim Bob.

To be sure, we use a visual dialectic. Water is the metaphor. Water is the metaphor. I am pure and free water is the metaphor. I am like the sea, I am wild and I am deep. I have a spree swimming through my guts and blood. Water is the metaphor for me that describes me.