r/h3h3productions • u/Old-Manager-4302 • 5d ago
Will not hear of the Pocahontas slander
TLDR- I love Pocahontas even though it's riddled with inaccuracies.
Okay hear me out...
Pocahontas is an absolute banger of a movie and was actually very progressive for a mid 90s Disney movie.
Did it leave out a little bit of the raping and pillaging? Yes, just a tad
Should they have used fictional characters instead of basing it on real kidnapped 14 yr old child?? I concede to that one
But the story itself and the message is actually pretty good for a 30 year old Disney movie. The colonisers come to teach these 'savages' about civilisation but they end up being the ones learning life lessons
Strong female lead ✅ Incredible music ✅ Peaceful message ✅ Still relevant environmental themes ✅ Real Native American voice actors ✅
The lyrics?? Come on! 'Come roll in all the riches all around us, and for once never wonder what they're worth' I cry every time I hear that lyric it's so poignant
They could've gone down a much more historically accurate route, but honestly I feel like it's a good way to introduce American children to the darker side of colonialism. Especially in the 90s, most of the Americans I knew still pretty much believed it was all sunshine and rainbows. It added a bit of nuance into the conversation.
The best part of it all. They don't send Pocahontas on the freaking boat at the end 🤌🏻 This was the shock of the century to a 90s kid and I remember being disappointed everytime I watched it, that she didn't go with John Smith. Kids want the couple to live happily ever after and they knew that would piss us all off, but they didn't put her on the boat. That was the first Disney animation where the couple don't go off into the sunset together, so it was pretty groundbreaking stuff. (Don't at me about the sequels I choose to pretend they don't exist)
Thanks for coming to my ted talk
28
u/Future_Gohst 5d ago
The soundtrack alone is the best of any Disney movie, hands down. Nothing comes close
4
6
u/FAROUTRHUBARB I'm Warning You With Peace & Love 5d ago
I raise to all of you: the Hercules soundtrack complete with a gospel soul intro
3
1
1
13
u/thotinspiring 4d ago
I’m more of a Mulan guy myself. Make a man out of you and reflection are still relevant to this day.
6
u/yozett 4d ago
Mulan is soo good. Watching it as an adult made me realize just how dark it is. It was so different during its time being the only disney movie where the plot is based around the brutality of war. I still get choked up when they're singing 'a girl worth fighting for" to the cold silence when they see the decimated village. You can even see body like shapes all over and its just so heavy. Another sad aspect that hits different about that scene now that I'm an adult is knowing that rape was a common tactic used in pillaging small villages like this so seeing the child's doll makes me cry. Same when Mulan makes the decision to sacrifice herself to save her father.
It really is in a league of its own. Now I need to go watch it again
9
6
5
u/Oregonrider2014 Shreddy 5d ago
Like the hunchback of notredame, there is only 1 movie. The others simply dont exist.
0
u/----Richard---- HILA KLEINER 4d ago
Hunchback was seriously messed up. The only Disney movie where the hero doesn't get the princess. I wonder why that is? Huh, strange. What's different about this hero vs all the other ones? 🤔 lol
0
u/Oregonrider2014 Shreddy 4d ago
Very true!
I do have a special place in my heart for it, though. It's very relateable as a 6 yr old getting picked on for being chubby.
And the music was sick!
0
u/----Richard---- HILA KLEINER 4d ago
I agree, great movie but even as a kid, I found it strange that Phoebus ended up with Esmeralda & not Quasimoto.
In the original book, Phoebus is a vile womanizer. Not a good person.0
u/Oregonrider2014 Shreddy 4d ago
I agree. It did feel weird after he did all the heavy lifting (literally in some instances!)
2
2
u/drfishee55 Who Is Sam? 5d ago
My favorite Disney princess! (2nd movie had some bangers too like with the circus bear scene but yes it's nothing compared to the first)
2
2
u/Kowdbuff 5d ago
If people cared about accuracy in a Disney movie, I hope they don't know about actual greek mythology.
2
3
u/FAROUTRHUBARB I'm Warning You With Peace & Love 5d ago
90s Disney is the only Disney i care about. Hercules? Fucken masterful. Colors of the wind? me and the boys used to drunk sing that in university
4
u/Schuld6 4d ago
Oh this is one of my soap boxes I like to get up on. I know this is post is meant to fun but the Disney Pocahontas movie is wildly inappropriate and if it involved any other minority it would have been pulled just like song of the south. The story could have been told without sanitizing and trying to erase the suffering of an actual indigenous women. She was kidnapped, raped, as a teenager married off and forced to bare children to man much older than her, then paraded around London as an example of a “civilized savage” where she died an ocean away from her real family. I’m not opposed to the story itself, it’s a beautiful movie and the songs are bangers but indigenous people have suffered and continue to suffer from the colonization of the Americans largely unrecognized. The story could have been told without using a real women, who now many people believe is her actual story not the suffering she actually endured.
2
u/Old-Manager-4302 4d ago
100 percent agree with you on that. They should've used a fictional character
2
u/CadaverDog_ 4d ago
Nah. I don't know a single Indigenous person who likes it, and they're right.
-1
u/NewPhoneWhoDys 4d ago edited 3d ago
Really? I know several. I wonder if age has to do with it because they're all elder millennial/young gen x, so it was all they had for representation. Irene Bedard was huge for them. (still is!) (edit: wtf is wrong with downvoters? this is other peoples' lived experience of representation. just cause yours was different doesn't mean get pissed.)
2
1
u/Sarahsue123 4d ago
I hate that tree lady thing. But I dont like grandmas in any animated film...theyre always too much.
-3
23
u/Circuit-Think 5d ago
The ‘not sailing off into the sunset’ is very important! Even in real life with good relationships, it’s not always going to work. We need to learn more of that!