Bacon's Rebellion

Hollywood Does It Again

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Anyone who has seen the animated movie “Pocahontas” will recall how politically correct the encounter between the English and Indians was portrayed. Rather than exploring the encounter of two mutually uncomprehending cultures, the writers depicted the Indians as noble savages and the English (with the exception of John Smith) as arrogant, violent buffoons. If there was anything remotely virtuous about the founding of the first permanent, English-speaking colony in the New World, it couldn’t be found here.

Now comes New Line Cinema with a real-actor version of the Pocahontas-John Smith story: “The New World.” And Virginia Indians aren’t happy about it. In a press release floated on PR Newswire (it’s not clear who released it), Karenne Wood (Monacan), chair of theVirginia Council on Indians and a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Virginia, complained that the movie reproduced the discredited story about the young Pocahontas saving Smith from execution by throwing her body across him. Over and above that flaw, Wood said, “Our women appear as either princesses or squaws, and our men are either noble or warlike.”

The press release continues: “Particularly offensive to Virginia Indian women is the characterization of Pocahontas as the object of Smith’s physical desire, even though she was only 11 or 12 when they met, and Smith was closer to 30. The role is played by a 14-year-old actress.”

As a backdrop to the criticism, Virginia’s Indians are frustrated, too, by the way the film is tied to the promotion of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown’s founding, while they have yet received the federal status enjoyed by some 567 other Indian tribes.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t comment — other than to say, “The New World” can’t possibly be worse than “Pocahontas”…. Can it?

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

Comments

4 responses to “Hollywood Does It Again”

  1. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    Two great books on how Indian and Western Cultures meet and mutually incomprehensible are by T.R. Fehernbach. One is ‘Comanches, Death of a Nation’ and the other is ‘Fire and Blood, History of Mexico’. Really eye-opening, super scholarship.

    Also, shows how only one Culture can exist at a time-space. How Culture ‘commands’.

    The Federal Recognition for Virginia tribes comes with very unfortunate PC racism for folks that have been assimilated Virginians for 300 years.

  2. Willis Avatar
    Willis

    Movies aren’t accurate reflections of reality. Te expect this particular movie to be seems unreasonable, in my opinion.

  3. Jim Patrick Avatar
    Jim Patrick

    The headline “Hollywood Historically Accurate!” would be newsworthy; but mangling history is the industry’s modus operandi.

    In the filmmakers defense, anyone with a child can testify that -on the threat of a toy being discarded, even an unused toy or a toy the kid didn’t know existed-their instinct is to fling themselves bodily upon it, protecting the toy as if it’s the last and most cherished item in the world.

    Five minutes later they’ll forget the incident. It makes the child-Pocahontas-saves-Smith believable to a parent.

    Seriously (the above is tongue in cheek) why is anyone disturbed over what people -and we-have accepted for decades?

    James Young says Shenandoah “captures both the natural beauty of the Commonwealth as well as the character of her people“; Dave Juday bought into the movie’s version of the Valley’s settlers; Rick Sincere says it’s the best movie set in Virginia; etc. More recently on the Rebellion, JAB said it was a great movie, and another commenter ‘loved’ both the movie and the stage version.

    OK, it’s skewering a lot of good folks; but a point is made. Shenandoah is apparently good entertainment, a good story; but it has nothing to do with the Valley, Virginia, or The War. Nothing.

    Not the location, the scenery, the places, the characters, accents, religion, dialogue, plot, costumes, weapons, units, or anything else. Randomly assigning Valley place-names to Cinderella would get a movie as accurate.

    Yet an empathy to the name ‘Shenandoah’ makes many of us (Virginians) see it positively. That sentiment isn’t shared by Valley history buffs, just as enthusiasm for Pocahontas or The New World isn’t shared by Virginia Indian history buffs.

    If the Commonwealth wants to promote Jamestown (accurately), then they –meaning we– will have to pay for it.

  4. Jim Patrick Avatar
    Jim Patrick

    JAB – Your comment about racism’s well taken, but there’s more to the issue than that.

    Virginia Indians were a pre-existing government structure. Powatan’s Confederacy included almost all Virginia tribes. That organization coexisted with the Colony and the Commonwealth for a long time, as did its sub-units (tribes) before gradually eroding away.

    It may be untidy, but there’s a good argument for admitting, or re-recognizing, tribal political subdivisions in Virginia. Untidy or not, there’s a fundamental validity and fairness in that. Obviously this would be fought tooth and nail by existing jurisdictions, and has nothing to do with Federal recognition.

    For tribal recognition the Fed’s impose the ante-bellum one-eighth rule. [For Yankees and small children, that means before the Civil War, a person was ‘colored’ by a single black, or Indian, great-grandparent] This is a purely racial measure; unrelated to genealogy, laws of descent, or of title. See “consanguinity” in the Manassas threads.

    Unanswered is what Virginia’s Indian descendents want, what “the federal status enjoyed by … other Indian tribes” consists of, what its effects are, and what its unplanned results could be.

Leave a Reply

ADVERTISEMENT