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This is another study on Disney. I’ve made some posts on Disney before, but this time I have decided to write something related to Disney’s most popular genre: fairytales and princesses. I will be focusing on the film Pocahontas (1995) and its merchandise. This movie was aimed to address the criticisms on the portrayal of the “Other” in Disney texts, much like how The Princess of the Frog (2009) was an attempt to provide a narrative with a non-White main character. I have personally found studying Disney to be extremely fascinating, in which I have learnt to read Disney texts differently than I had back when I was a child. I hope you do, too! This post will focus on the issues on race and gender presented in the Pocahontas movie and merchandise.

Part One: The Movie

If you’ve read my post, Racial Codes found in The Lion King, you may remember that I mentioned that movies can hold harmful implications on society with the content it presents. For example, The Lion King (1994) distinguishes the protagonist and antagonist apart through the use of color symbolism, in which the idea of White as good and other colors as bad may become internalized in young audiences. Thus, as a result of the criticisms against the depiction of the Other in the previous productions Disney made, Disney executives and animators were more cautious in creating the movie Pocahontas, which introduced the company’s first non-White subject. The initiation of a non-White subject was also tied to the rapid pace of globalization that started to take place, in which Disney tried to ease racial tensions and boost global consumption of its products. The company hired local Native American consultants to advise the production to keep the Native American culture portrayals positive. However, the narrative doesn’t actually reflect history. It wasn’t intended to. Custalow McGowan who worked on the production stated that “they had said that the film would be historically accurate. I soon found that it wasn’t to be.” Instead of following the original story, Disney molded it to fit its “happily ever after” narrative, which was guaranteed to sell. Historically, Pocahontas and John Smith were never lovers. Moreover, although Pocahontas did end up marrying an Englishman, the Europeans ended up wiping out the Natives, which Disney’s version does not include. Hence, Disney rewrites history in its text.

Furthermore, to explore the representation of the Other in Pocahontas, it is most important to analyze the protagonist. Although Pocahontas has colored skin, she takes the role as a mediator between the Natives and English. Pocahontas, thus, carries a ‘racially and socially ambivalent and less militant brown identity’ that is used to assure white viewers of their domination. Thus, Pocahontas exhibits Whiteness in her. Hence, the character is also referred to as the White man’s woman. Expanding on the portrayal of the Other, Disney stayed relatively committed in providing positive depictions of the Native Americans. For example, the movie renders the Native Americans’ spiritualism with wisdom. But Disney inevitably falls back into the hegemonic, White ideologies, which entails both orientalism and colonialism. It is important to understand that the notion of orientalism involves the depiction of the Other in the eyes of the European as something foreign, alien and exotic; orientalism doesn’t really depict the Other but to define and shape the Europeans, in which we see the Native Americans in this film used to define James Smith. He, James Smith, is hieratically above them, as in his initial encounter with the Natives, Smith views the indigenous people as equivalent to barbarians. Hence, despite the improved depictions of the Other in the movie Pocahontas, this text eventually ends up self-serving the western narrative, and with it, the ideology of White supremacy.

Part Two: The Merchandise

Like the movie, marketing strategies in licensing and merchandising Pocahontas hold harmful attributes in the internalization of people’s identities, especially in terms of race and gender. The advertising schemes of the animation dominated all aspects of peoples’ everyday lives; from Burger King packages to local bookstores exhibiting sneak peek books in display areas. To promote the character, Pocahontas was made visually pleasurable. In other words, the character design was initially aimed to make the character fit for the mass production of goods. Among the Pocahontas merchandise, perhaps the Pocahontas figure, other wise referred to as the “Native American Barbie” doll, is one that best illustrates the social implications Disney merchandise has on society. Borrowing the existing Barbie model, the product reflects the “commodification of femininity in the U.S. and elsewhere,” where people have criticized the doll’s body for appearing rather pornographic. This carries serious problems to the internalizations on body images for girls and women alike as they may become or feel pressured into meeting the standards of the ideological forms the doll perpetuates. Moreover, adopting the Barbie model involves inserting Pocahontas into a formula suited for the mainstream U.S. culture, which diminishes Pocahontas’ Native American-ness and renders her closer to White. While the physical, tangible good may just appear as a character figure, it is important to note that mass-produced goods sell a myth. In other words, purchasing this Pocahontas doll figure not only involves one paying for the item itself, but also the social concept and ideology embedded in the tangible product. Thus, buying the product translates into buying the ideology of femininity and White supremacy, in which “Pocahontas products and discourses tend to collapse race, gender, ethnicity, and class through the recyclable, reproducible, and replaceable Pocahontas images, rendering these aspects of social identity and experience epiphenomenal to the overall act of consumption.” Therefore, Disney merchandise entails social issues of race and gender that is perpetuated by its products.

Additionally, another social problem found in Disney commodities involve the promotion of appropriated versions of other cultures. As mentioned before, the film Pocahontas was created as an attempt to address the criticisms on the presentation of racial stereotypes in its previous films. However, despite the studio’s efforts, critics argue that the character perpetuates ideologies of White supremacy. The story was appropriated to suit Disney and U.S. culture, and hence, was different from the original Pocahontas tale. It was never intended to be historically accurate, and thus, Disney’s practices in altering history exemplify the interchangeable nature of identities and Disney’s impact on sociocultural issues. The same applies to the Pocahontas doll as “when Disney imported the figure of Pocahontas into mainstream commodity culture and reshaped it, new meanings were ascribed to the figure of Pocahontas and most older meanings were lost.” Buying Disney merchandise, the complementary goods to the motion pictures, implies the purchase of the altered representations of both culture and history of other regions. Hence, Disney has appropriated and perhaps even ‘sanitized’ a large number of histories and cultures, such as in the following works Mulan (1998) and Hercules (1997), in which the narratives and characters are remodeled to perpetuate the ideologies (such as White supremacy) that are marketed to the buyers of its merchandise. Thus, as consumers (of both films and merchandise), we must learn to read the myths both the film and merchandise embodies.

References:

  • Buescher, Derek T and Kent A. Ono. “Deciphering Pocahontas: Unpackaging the commodification of a native American woman.” Critical Studies in Media Communication1 (2001): 23-43.
  • Edgerton, Gary and Kathy Merlock Jackson. “Redesigning Pocahontas: Disney, the “white man’s Indian,” and the marketing of dreams.” Journal of Popular Film & Television2 (1996): 90-98.
  • Hurley, Dorothy L. “Seeing White: Children of Color and the Disney Fairy Tale Princess.” The Journal of Negro Education3 (2005): 221 – 232.
  • Haddock, Shelley A, et al. “Images of Gender, Race, Age, and Sexual Orientation in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films.” Journal of Feminist Family Therapy4 (2003): 19-42.
  • Kutsuzawa, Kiyomi. “Disney’s Pocahontas : Reproduction of Gender, Orientalism, and the Strategic Construction of Racial Harmony in the Disney Empire.” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies4 (2000): 39-65.