Pocahontas
Pocahontas
I wanted to talk about this because I do find it to be a rather interesting topic. I plan on talking about the "real" Pocahontas, a little bit of how her life was, and how Disney and the Mainstream changed her story. I also want to add some of my opinions too.
A lot of people often ask who was Pocahantas or was she even a real-life person. And the answer is yes she was, in fact, Pocahantas was actually the Disney movie to be about a real-life person. To begin with, Pocahontas wasn't even her real name. Her real name was Amonute or Matoaka which was a more private name. Pocahantas was her nickname meaning "playful one" or "ill-behaved child".
She was born around 1596 and was the favorite daughter of the powerful Cheif Powhatan, the ruler of the Powhatan tribe, and around 30 other Algonquian - speaking tribes in and around the area. It was believed that Pocahantas was a happy, witty child, and because she was the daughter of the chief she may have been treated better than her peers. However, she still had to learn skills such as cooking, farming, building a house, and making clothes.
She married an Indian Kocoum and they had a child together. But in 1613 she was captured by a Communist Samual Argall, who forced her to leave her family. During her captivity, she was encouraged to convert to Christianity and change her name to Rebecca after getting baptized.
She ended up getting married to a tobacco planter, John Rolfe in 1614 at the age of 17 or 18, and in 1615 they had a son together.
Pocahontas' story was so much different from how John smith, Disney, and the mainstream tried to tell it. Her story was actually really sad. It's debated on whether or not she and John Smith were ever in a relationship because she was only 10 years old when she "rescued him". The part of her rescuing him is up for debate as children weren't allowed to attend the ritual ceremony, and Pocahantas was a child.
When researching her story, every article was different because they all had their own versions of what happened. That just goes to show that no one truly knows what her life was like.
I personally feel like her story should have been left alone. I didn't like how Disney made the story seem like a flowery love story and how they made it seem like her people were somewhat the villains who were causing this war because they didn't want Pocahontas and John Smith to be in love. They were making it seem like it was a Romeo and Juliet type of story when that was far from the truth.
Or how they portrayed John smith to be this sweet innocent guy who would never harm anyone. Just like how they portrayed Christopher Colombus and how he helped the natives and discovered America when in fact he did the opposite by killing hundreds of Natives and stealing from them. Yet he was made out to be some type of hero. But that's another story.
Going back to Pocahantas I get changing a story to make it "kid-friendly". But there's something about taking a deep story and making it into something that it's not to meet your satisfaction that always rubbed me the wrong way.
To sum up, as I was saying before I feel like the movie should have never been made. Most of the movie was false and they left out a lot of things that actually happened. However, I do think it would have been better if it wasn't a child movie and they based it on real-life events.
Comments
Post a Comment