Pocahontas
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Story Convention
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Clash of cultures
Coming of age romance
Spunky hero/heroine
Edgerton’s analysis
Image Power
Re-telling history
 Shaping images
 Disney version becomes
“the definitive version”
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Global Supertext
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Pochontas as “supertext”
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$80 million investment; $1 billion revenues
Burger King
 Payless Shoes
 Mattel
 Trailer on “Lion King” tapes (50 million)
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Blurred Message
Algonquin advice rejected
 More positive images – sentimental
 Vague environmental themes
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You think you own whatever land you land on,
The earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature…
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Fictional love story
Race, environmentalism,
religion downplayed
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“wrapped in nostalgic fantasy”
Flip-flop of traditional hero
villain roles
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Easy scapegoating of
dominance
History of the “Other?”
Other History
One of the happiest times in the struggle to maintain the little
Colony was during the Peace of Pocahontas. When John Rolfe
married the young Indian Princess, daughter of the powerful
Emperor Powhatan, the colonists enjoyed a peace with the
Indians unequaled before her marriage with Rolfe or after her
tragic, early death at Land's End, England, where she was
buried in the Churchyard. Numerous of her descendants are
members of the Jamestowne Society. And through their
memberships we remember Princess Pocahontas' immense
contribution to Jamestowne. Without the Peace of Pocahontas,
that short interval of time may well have been spent upon
disastrous warfare instead of the building of the settlement that
would begin the Nation.
Remaking Pocahontas
The White Man’s Indian?
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Social construction of beauty standards
and race
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Indians “look and sound” like whites
Pocahontas: “aerobicized, Native American
superbabe”
“The finest creature the
human race has to offer”
History Lessons
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Pocahontas seen as “peace offering” to
Algonquin protest of “Disney America”
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Visits to Jamestown up 60 percent