Why should Pocahontas be seen as a good movie?

Just like any other Disney classic movie, Pocahontas is an animated musical film that is based on a well-known story.

However, since it is a history-based tale, Pocahontas received a lot of negative criticism for being historically inaccurate. Popular animated Disney films that had been made previously were almost all fictional, such as Snow White, The Jungle Book and Aladdin. The mistake that Disney made was not necessarily being “historically inaccurate”, but rather using famous historical figures as characters of their story.

The Jungle Book is based on Rudyard Kipling's novel

Objectively speaking, as an animated film, Pocahontas is actually appropriate and even potentially meaningful to young audience. It is almost certain that the Powhatans did wear things like raccoon pelts, and paint parts of their bodies in red, as this is how John Smith described them in both of his journals, with one speaking highly of the Powhatans and the other clearly being over-exaggerated about his adventure. The physical characteristics as described by Smith remain the same in the second story, and there would be no reason of him lying about them at the first place.

On the other hand, the depiction of Native Americans in many films in the 20th century was based on stereotypes that could be false. For example, many natives in movies would wear headbands; at first it was simply because they would help actors keep the wigs on, but later caused a misconceptions to people that wearing headbands is a tradition for Indian warriors. Many other bigger stereotypes, of course, are based on practices of certain Native American people, but obviously not all of them wear war bonnets and are blood-thirsty male warriors that like to scalp.

the poster of an old western movie

Disney avoided objectifying the natives. In Pocahontas, the native characters are full of personalities, and they used a girl as a main character, which was even more unusual in the film industry, because female Native American characters had rarely appeared in any movie. It is also shown in the movie that both Native Americans and Europeans think people from the other side are "savages", which is good, especially for younger audience to know from different perspectives, and that conflicts come from misunderstandings. A lot of older movies depicted Native Americans as the bad guys because they were produced and seen by dominantly white people who would not think too much about if it was correct, and I think Disney tried to change that.

As you can see, Disney did a much better job making films that are related to other cultures after receiving a lot of criticism on Pocahontas. Movies such as Mulan, Moana and Coco are even well-received by the people with Chinese, Polynesian and Mexican background. If it weren't for Pocahontas, who knows if that would be possible?

Bibliography

AMERICAN INDIAN HISTORY: A Documentary Reader. Camilla Townsend. WILEY-BLACKWELL. 2009.

Reel Injun. Neil Diamond. National Film Board of Canada, Rezolution Pictures. 2009.