Pocahontas Film Response

I had never seen Pocahontas before, and was not expecting to love it going into this viewing, and my expectations were pretty much met.

I'm going to switch up how I usually do my film responses because so much of this movie drove me crazy. My stream of consciousness notes are pretty negative. So I'm going to go through the individual bullets I have in my notes and talk about each point.

1. "She dreams of a man? WTF"
     - Pocahontas talks to her tree grandmother about how she is having a recurring dream and is confused about what it means. Later, it comes to light that the tree grandmother thinks the dream is about a man. Pocahontas, ostensibly, has SO much to worry about in her life (like survival!). I am certainly not anti a good romance in a Disney movie. But this just didn't make sense! Disney is implying that despite needing to, you know, survive, Pocahontas primarily cares about having a man in her life and frankly, that drives me crazy.

2. "Language barrier. A+"
      - This is clearly a positive bullet point. I did find it cool that Disney tried to display the language barrier that existed between the colonists and the Native Americans. I know it would have been too difficult to keep up throughout the entire movie, so I do not fault them at all for dropping it, but I appreciated that they included it at the beginning.

3. Why John Smith?
     - John Smith seemed like a cool guy. At first he is ignorant like us all, but then wakes up to become a truly #woke icon. However, the viewers only saw this second part when he was with the other colonists. The interactions with Pocahontas appeared to be her mostly deriding him for his ignorance before she is randomly in love with him? I didn't like the lack of foundation this relationship was given. I understand timing presents an issue, but I felt we needed something more.

4."All this happened because of me and now I'll never see John Smith again."
     - ^THIS. Pocahontas's betrothed literally just died and her world is potentially falling apart and the only thing she cares about is JOHN SMITH? This definitely does not help the feminist perspective of Disney films.

5. "Kill scene. Just no."
      - This was probably my biggest issue in terms of the race portrayal. I loved the message present throughout the interactions with John Smith and Pocahontas. Yo - colors of the wind! Everyone's unique and beautiful! The colonists were haters just because the Natives didn't look and act like them! However, I thought this scene could should have been done differently to better serve that overall message. The most likable character in the whole movie, I felt, was poor little Thomas (a colonizer). I disliked that the filmmakers made HIM the one to shoot the Indian, only AFTER the Indian attacked the colonists. Because it was Thomas, I wasn't as appalled with the white men as I was, say, when they were tearing down the entire forest. I should feel worse that they murdered people, yet I don't because it was Thomas who shot the Indians and only because he was trying to help after the white men got attacked. Furthermore, the colonists didn't turn against Governor Ratcliffe until he shot John Smith. If Disney wanted to truly send a message of the horrible atrocities committed, it would have shown a less sympathetic man shooting the Indian completely un provoked and the white men turning against Governor Ratcliffe after this (which I would have thought was a hefty burden for a children's film, but that would only be slightly different from what they did end up presenting).

5. THANK GOD she chose to stay
     -      I'm glad Pocahontas chose to stay. I don't think every woman needs to stay to be strong and independent (I loved that Jane chose to go with Tarzan), but the entire movie was all about how Pocahontas was dreaming of John Smith, so it would have felt a bit like a slap in the face to females everywhere had she ALSO chosen to leave her family behind in order to go with him.

My favorite characters: Thomas, Kocoum. I also liked Pocahontas's friend, Nakoma and her pets, Meeko and Flit.