Response on Hastings' article

 More information about the film can be viewed here.
 This week we had the pleasure of reading and discussing an interesting conference article written by Waller Hastings on Disney’s movie Pocahontas. The movie was under controversial criticism by many critics arguing it being a positive or negative portrayal of American history and Native American.

                                     

 Hasting argues in the article that although Disney claimed Pocahontas is its first historically accurate film, there exists a lot of transformation and distortion that contradict Disney’s claims. It is important for audiences to understand these differences and the power of Disney.

  

  Hastings is able to create strong arguments in his writing, including finding contradictions in Disney’s claims. For example, the exaggeration in visual scenery and changes in main characters’ ages are the opposite of Disney’s “research” of Virginia and characters’ in the history.

     

    In fact, Hasting believes that the story of Pocahontas has become a legendary tale that has multiple versions of story instead of factual depictions of historical events. Disney’s effort in portraying the event as “correctly” as possible is itself an inefficient approach. Furthermore, Disney emphasis on their effort of truthfulness, though genuine, is laughable for many critics.                                                                                                              

   

   When the motivation of a company is to create entertainment and make money, accuracy is not part of audiences’ expectation and that is why Disney was able to escape many criticism by setting the background story of a movie to “ a kingdom far away”. However, Disney entered a dangerous realm when it tried to create extra attraction for consumers who care for history. In that case it will be the parents who want their children to get educational benefit.

   The motives behind Disney for the creation of Pocahontas can be diverse: make the movie more educational, create racial equality…etc In the end, children will not remember the history but only the Pocahontas Disney presented to them. As many critics claims, Disney has the responsibility to be educational and accurate, I doubt it will ever be part of the standard in film industry. Externality, or side-effects, created by Disney’s films on children can be influential but in the current system there is no way of quantifying the influence nor judging the minor mistakes Disney has made in its movie.

After all, Disney is doing its best to attract customers to buy its product. Although the majority of consumers in late 20^th century might be white population, as the income gap decreases Disney will concern more for critics’ claim and others raising ethical group consumers. It is a sad way to put it, but in the business world, the so called “moral high ground’ is not always advantageous.

     Thus, Disney, critics and consumers all play roles in social progression. Folks in Disney are part of society and if the society is racially biased, how can people in them not be? To ask Disney to change is to ask society to change. The problem is that younger children who are watching Disney movies might not understand the underlying messages in them, and the traditional biased trend can carry for a while in media and it is our job to correct the trends and create progress.