Everything I Need to Know About Early America I Learned from Pocahontas

So I watched Pocahontas this week and I've come to the conclusion that if you ignore the blatant historical/cultural inaccuracies throughout this movie it actually makes for a plot full of substance with a very positive message behind it. I mean it's teaching about the power of love and the courage to stand up for what you believe in no matter what opposition you may be faced with. It also teaches that we shouldn't solve all our problems and differences with violence but that there is always a peaceful path if we are willing to take it. What a great message to get across to your audience.

It's a shame all of those stereotypes about Native Americans and early settlers get in the way.

Anyhow, this movie is full of mind blowingly awesome artistic nuggets. So let's talk about those for a minute...

These Disney artists do some fabulous things to show off the grandeur of the New World. They have so many shots of the landscape that are drawn from either a worm's eye or bird's eye view both of which make the trees look so magnificent and by comparison make the people look so insignificant. And when there is a scene drawn from straight on the people are so small that they become hardly noticeable. It serves so well to bring the audience's attention to how great and untamed the land is.







Something else I find so interesting is how stylized everything is. Just look at the angles and dimensions of the above images. I don't know about you, but I've never seen patterns like that on trees in actual nature before. The stylization actually brings to mind the artwork of Sleeping Beauty. Which I think is interesting because it feels like both of these movies are trying to accomplish the same thing with their art style: they want the story being told to feel like they came from a time far in the past. And if you think about it, that illuminated manuscript feel of Sleeping Beauty would have still been very prominent in the early 1600's when Pocahontas is supposed to take place. (Am I making sense here? It's late and I should probably be in bed so hopefully this sounds like more than the ramblings of a crazy person.) As an example of the point I'm attempting to get across look at the image below from Sleeping Beauty and compare it with the above image. Do you see the similarities?



The line work in this movie is also pretty astounding. Everything's so angular and geometric. Sort of like they're trying to mimic the artwork of Native Americans. The same idea was implemented in Aladdin. In that movie they were trying to mimic the art styles of the Middle East and since calligraphy is such a big deal over there all the characters' line work was done with a subtle calligraphic flare. In Pocahontas there are so many angles it's crazy! Even down to the lines in character's hair.

Oh, and talk about fantastic contrast and silhouetting!



I LOVE the sequence for the song "Savages." I especially love the use of colors to get a point across. It's interesting that for the English settlers they are colored as orange on blue and the Natives are colored as blue on orange. The fact that they use the same set of colors for both sets of people shows that these people are the same, they have the same misconceptions about each other and the same rash thinking in order to solve their problems. I also love how the colors become more and more intense as the song progresses until it reaches its climax and suddenly everything shifts to such calmer tones. In fact, I think this sequence shows perfect examples of everything I've mentioned in this post so I insist that ya'll watch it and admire it for how epic it is.

And finally, here are the things I learned about Native Americans and early settlers from watching this movie:

• Natives can hear spirits in the wind that tell them what to do and also give them the ability to speak and understand English.
• Natives also know what the colors of the wind are and how to paint with them.
• Natives are relatives of the rainstorm and the river
• The early settlers came to the New World seeking gold and NOTHING else.
• Jamestown was a successful settlement that didn't mysteriously vanish.
• Thanksgiving happened exactly how they taught me in elementary school.
• A four month journey on a disease and rat infested boat is a man's only chance of survival after being shot in the abdomen. (I laugh out loud at that part every time I watch it.)

P.S. Did you know Christian Bale does a voice on this movie?!?!? I seriously flipped out when I discovered this and told everyone I know. No one else was as impressed with it as I am. And that's lame. You should all think it's amazing.