Short Review: Colonialization--Pocahontas (1995) (film analysis)

              Most young adults and children who were born within the last 20 years are familiar with the film, Pocahontas-- a Disney movie that was directed by Mike Gabriel, Eric Goldberg and written by Carl Binder, Susannah Grant and produced in 1995.  This film was about a young daughter (Pocahontas) of the Native American Tribe chief Powhatan, and an English soldier who shared a romance when the English colonists invaded the Native’s land in the 17^th century. Even though the main focus was the romantic relationship between Pocahontas and John Smith, there was a huge story that followed. The British believed that the Native Americans were hiding a large collection of gold and they wanted to claim it for themselves. The captain of the British sailors was very mean, rude, and ignorant who always wanted everything for himself. He had referred the Native Americans to Indians and created many prejudice thoughts and ideas against the Aboriginals. He had brainwashed his people to think that the Aboriginals were savages and horrible people and that they all must be destroyed.

Pocahontas. In the real life story, Pocahontas was brought back to the British land and kept as a prisoner for many years and married a British, “successful tobacco planter, John Rolfe” (Lewis, 2011).
This film is a perfect example of Colonialism—it was the colonialization of the “New World” by the British; they had come over to the land of the Aboriginals and had implanted themselves in their land and settled there.  The British had enforced their laws and customs which pushed the Aboriginals away from their own traditions. The British, destroyed the Aboriginal’s land, took the people as slaves and prisoners while beating them, and mocked their culture. This example of colonialism had a negative connotation in the beginning because it had created many stereotypes and prejudice about the Aboriginal people in today’s society by calling them savages, primitive, and the red skin people. But we all know that Disney films usually end in happy endings. The captain of the British settlers had become overruled when his people realized that he had painful and selfish intentions and he did not care about his own crew. The Aboriginals were set free and so was

In the end of the film, it shows that the Aboriginals were able to communicate with the British in a civilized manner. Not only did the British learn from the Aboriginals, the Aboriginals also learned from the British. The British shared their new technology for weapons, knowledge to create large ships, and also gave them insight to a whole new world. So even though there was a negative ideology from this film, it created a sense of peace and happiness in the end. All of the thoughts of the British imposed on the Aboriginals had contributed to the socialization of the Aboriginals that led to help others today understand how the social lives in different cultures function. Like I said in the reflection, Edward Saïd relates imperialism with European cultures and how certain practices of ideas, thoughts, beliefs and rituals make meaning out of our world.

Lewis, Jone Johnson. 2011. Women’s History; Pocahontas. Retrieved November 5^th, 2011 from

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/pocahontas/p/pocahontas.htm

http://www.imagesdisney.com/pocahontas.html

Here is a clip of the film that shows how they express their thoughts of the 'Indians'