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Pocahontas| 49 Dear Diary: Again I ask, what would the Indians do without us? Disney’s Peter Pan solved the mystery of whatmadetheIndiansred?AndnowDisneyhasonceagaincomethroughwithPocahontas. What a babe! And even AIM guy Russell Means has said Pocahontas is the best movie about Indians ever made. What a pal! Hey Diary, I see Mattel is making a Pocahontas “Barbie,” complete with patented big boobs and tiny waist. Note to Self: Send assistant to buy Pocbie. I’ll dress her as stewardess, fashion model, or . . . candy stripper. Yum. What’s for din-din? Love ya loads, Hollywood Pocahontas t t t Jeff Berglund I would like to title my review “Pocahontas Disneyfied, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love and Ignore Genocide.” The subtitle is a deliberate nod to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, one of the twentieth century’s preeminent films, an absurdist critique of nuclear buildup and our nationalist tendencies toward annihilation of others in the name of freedom and progress. These tendencies are supported by the rhetoric of freedom and democracy, which is further sustained by our national amnesia, a nationalist failure to recognize and “own” our serial history of genocidal tendencies, foremost of which is the bloody legacy of conquest of indigenous peoples in the name of Manifest Destiny and “civilization.” Whoa.WhatdoesallofthishavetodowithDisney’s1995blockbusterPocahontas?Thisallsounds pretty serious. This is a Disney princess movie, after all. Are you sure that’s what’s really going on? Truth be told, it’s the question I keep turning over in my mind, though I know the answer—this is what is going on. See, we’re all vulnerable to Disney magic, even those of us 50| Jeff Berglund who know history, even those of us who know the legacy of conquest in the Americas. Wait a second, was Pocahontas about genocide and conquest? Well, directly, no. But, ultimately, yes, it’s all about genocide and the processes by which we’re lulled into ignorance and complacency about the truth of the past. The millions who watched Pocahontas, and continue to watch it on DVD, have been lured into thinking they’re watching a love story, a multicultural adventure story set during the time of this nation’s founding in seventeenth-century Virginia. The fact that you and practically everyone else were, and are, reeled in by the love story and the mesmerizing beauty and spunk of the heroine and her suitor means that you likely give in and drink Disney’s magic Kool-Aid. Well, okay, not exactly Kool-Aid, but the film is a sugary concoction, filled with pretty images, a motherless heroine, cute animal sidekicks, comic relief, a raving mad villain, gorgeous vistas, catchy,inspiringsongs(therecipientoffourAcademyAwardsformusic),avisionofmulticultural harmony and friendship, and on the surface, somewhat positive and corrective portraits of Native peoples, particularly when you compare them to Disney’s vision of Indian peoples in 1953’s Peter Pan and its horrifying musical number “What Makes the Red Man Red?” (See the review in this chapter.) While Peter Pan traded in racist, minstrel-style stereotypes, it never purported to “bring an American legend to life,” a first for Disney in 1995 just as their growing Princess franchise was being deliberately cultivated. Much was made of their effort to tell a story rooted in history, rather than in the archives of primarily European fairy tales. American history has always given a prominent position to the story of Pocahontas, for the story as it’s been rendered by mainstreamaccountsisoneofanintraculturalbroker,particularlyasafigurefortheNewWorld’s recognition of the value of the explorer-colonizers. The story of Pocahontas has functioned as an example of early cultural intermarriage, on two different levels: first, for her intervention in the execution of Captain Smith (the subject of the Disney film), and then later, through her marriage to John Rolfe (detailed in Disney’s sequel with a catchy title, Pocahontas II). While I am not interested in examining the myriad critiques of the flattening of the complexity of the historical figure—Paula Gunn Allen’s Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat does all of this very effectively—I do want to draw attention to the way that Disney exploits this historical basis as a means of authorizing its version of history. These claims to legitimacy through a basis in historical fact are one central ingredient of Disney’s nutritionde ficient confectionary. By now I hope you know that after consuming sugary Pocahontas you need to mentally floss, rinse well with antiseptic truth-telling cleaner, and fortify with...

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