Fans Call for the End of 'Pocahontas'

A year after a Disney Cast Member went viral for asking The Walt Disney Company to stop profiting from Pocahontas (1995), fans again criticized the film’s inaccurate portrayal of Native American history.

Pocahontas

Pocahontas tells a fictional story based on a real-life Native American woman. “Pocahontas — along with her playful pals Meeko and Flit — relies on the guidance of her loving and wise Grandmother Willow when English settlers arrive on the shores of their village,” the official Disney movie description reads.

“Her chance meeting with the courageous Captain John Smith leads to a beautiful friendship that bridges the gap between two cultures, and changes history.”

Modern Criticism

The present-day Disney movie description disregards the romance between John Smith and Pocahontas, given that it isn’t historically accurate. Walt Disney Animation Studios corrected its mistake in Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998), but many wish the House of Mouse hadn’t told her story at all. Fans debated the Disney film in a Reddit thread this week.

“There’s a ‘both sides’ element to it that isn’t right,” said u/AerynPfaff. “The Native Americans weren’t ‘just as bad’ for standing up to colonizers. In that sense (and of course the historical sense) there’s a lot of white washing going on.”

“Pocahontas was a real person, she was barely 14 and raped by colonisers before being married off to another,” u/AmphibianNo8598 wrote. “Colonisation is horrible and trying to make it a fairytale just isn’t right, you don’t have to be American to understand that.”

 

“They took a real historical figure with a tragic past who was brutalized and died young and made her into a fairy tale,” u/Krillins_Shiny_Head agreed.

Fans are primarily correct. Pocahontas died of a mysterious illness at 20 and confided that she’d been raped by a settler years after her young marriage to John Rolfe. Given the target audience, none of this is addressed in the Walt Disney Animation Studios film.

Should ‘Pocahontas’ be banned? Share your thoughts with Inside the Magic in the comments.