Saving Cinderella by Faith Moore

Author:Faith Moore [Moore, Faith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2018-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

Part III

“I’ll Make A Man Out Of You”: Historical Heroines

Chapter Seven: Pocahontas

We didn’t know, at first, that Disney’s renaissance was over. When we went to see Pocahontas, in 1995, we were expecting another romantic, funny, tour de force. A year after Aladdin had come The Lion King — not a princess movie, but fantastic nonetheless — and we’d become spoiled. Pocahontas came out the year I turned 13 and I was deep into Beauty and the Beast for the second time, thanks to the Broadway production that came out when I was 12. I remember being a little wary of this new movie based, as it was, not on a fairy tale romance but an historical event. But the poster of the statuesque girl, her hair blowing in the wind, surrounded by magical swirling leaves gave me hope that this movie would be just as magical as the others. I — along with everyone else — was destined for disappointment. Pocahontas is a preachy, sanctimonious, ideology-driven disgrace. But, worst of all — and most telling, for our purposes — Pocahontas and John Smith do not live happily ever after. What on earth was going on? I’ll tell you what: the princess critics — that radical but vocal minority — had swayed the studio. Pocahontas is not a princess, she’s a puppet.

Disney studios purposely set out to tell a story that flew in the face of the “traditional” princess narrative. With Aladdin they had set up the revisionist notion that traditional princesses were husband-hunting damsels in distress, and now they were intent on following through. And they were sure this would translate into another major blockbuster. They set their A team to work on Pocahontas, relegating their B team to a film they thought would do less well: The Lion King. Jim Pentecost, the film’s producer, said “Pocahontas is the strongest heroine we’ve ever had in a Disney film.” Supervising animator, Glen Keane, said Pocahontas had more “depth” than Ariel, Jasmine, or Belle. “Pocahontas is more of a woman instead of a teenager,” Keane continued. Eric Goldberg, the film’s director, said, “We wanted her to be a very spiritual person, somebody who has a connection with nature all the time and whose thoughts run deeper than might seem on the surface.” In other words: she isn’t shallow, she’s not only after a man, and she can hold her own against anyone — particularly a mansplaining capitalist like John Smith (Ugh!).

But, to the studio’s confusion and dismay, the movie was not the smash they were expecting. Contemporary critics hated Pocahontas. “What's this?” wrote Peter Travers in his 1995 review in Rolling Stone. “A Disney musical with the usual first-rate animation and hummable tunes but without the big laughs, the cute talking animals, the magic props and the happy ending. It's practically un-American.” Travers went on to complain that the movie’s “preachiness” and the fact that it was “somber history instead of the typical sweet fable” were what did it in. Roger Ebert

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