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Essays on Films

The New World (2005)

Reel American History, a companion History on Trial site to the Pocahontas Archive, contains a project on The New World (2005) that contains, among other things, at least a dozen issue essays and a dozen scene analyses .

Pocahontas (1995)

Robin Pertusi: Disney's Pocahontas: Didn't They Know Not to Mix Fact with Fiction?

When most people think of Disney their minds flash to princesses, palaces, and all fantasy-filled things. If there were a story about distress, it resulted in happiness, as with all the best Hollywood endings. It was as if Disney could do no wrong. That is, of course, until their 1995 release of Pocahontas, their first animated film to be based on an actual person, let alone a Native American one. Didn't Disney know not to mix business with pleasure? . . . .

Gaelyn Rosenberg: Pocahontas: Branded into Popular Culture

Pocahontas reached her selling point in 1995--after, of course, her life was mercilessly translated into the popular Disney Pocahontas. She was calculatedly packaged into videotape, sold across the world, commodified, all the while perpetuating an unlikely image that remains -- undoubtedly -- far from the truth. Pocahontas is no longer the real historical figure, Matoaka, as we once knew her to be. The film characterizes Pocahontas as a "wise," "spirited," Native American princess, whose "courageous" disposition is worn upon her sleeve, tattooed across her delicate yet prominent features. . . .