Pocahontas – A Post-Colonialist Review

The next movie I decided to look at was Pocahontas. This classic Disney film was made in 1995 and is still very popular today. I deiced to do a post-colonialist review of this movie because of being of “historical facts” I wanted to see how this movie might affect the children who saw this move at a young age.

The movie opens with men in a shipyard signing up with the East Indian Trading Company to head off to the New World to search for gold and fame. One thing I noticed was there were only white people who were signing up for this adventure who were all portrayed as a hero for doing this. Then we are introduced to John Smith, out blond hair, blue eyed, white skinned hero. Somebody asks him what will happen if there are savages there in which he replies “I’ll take care of them just like all of the other savages I’ve taken care of.” This is already giving the audience who is watching this movie as view of the Native Americans as a “radical other” just like we’ve read by reading Said.

After seeing the scene at the harbor t changes to a picture of the Native Americans tribe of their Chef coming home from a battle. Some things we notice about the Native Americans is their communication with nature and the spirits. Being a children’s movie not many children would find this confusing and still see them as an “other” because that is not what we do in our country. This is followed directly when Pocahontas sees the sails of the boat in the background and announces that there is a strange set of clouds coming into the picture. Even though she has never seen them, we get the idea that she is “dumb” for not knowing what they are.

The biggest scene comes when John Smith and Pocahontas meet for the first time and are having a conversation. During this scene Smith and Pocahontas have a dialog in which we can see many examples of colonization. During this scene, Smith implores the ideas of using IRA’s to help Pocahontas learn about his culture. He precedes to teacher her about a handshake, a compass, his helmet and the town of London. This is were Smith makes a mistake and calls her ignorant for not knowing about the town of London in which he states “It’s only because you don’t know any better.”

When Pocahontas is introducing Smith to Meeko, her pet raccoon, Smith gives him a cookie. Meeko enjoys the cookie so much he goes into his bag to find more to eat. This is a good example of changing the entire ecosystem and domestication of the land and animals that are surrounding it. Meeko in fact gets into more trouble by sneaking into the camp to eat more of the colonists food in which he starts to eat dog biscuits. By having the new settlers inhabit all of the animals will need to find new food sources or depend off of the humans. This would be a good example of a RIA because if you take the food away from the people, they will be under your control.