Even the problematic 'Savages' has similar beats to 'Beauty and the Beast's' 'The Mob Song' and 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame's' 'Hellfire'. Even 'Steady as the Beating Drum', 'Just Around the Riverbend' and the cut 'If I Never Knew You' are beautiful pieces and hold their own in the Disney library. 'Colours of the Wind' is up there with 'Part of Your World', 'Belle' and 'A Whole New World' as a Disney Classic. Musical god Alan Menken wrote the songs for 'Pocahontas' - his fourth animated Disney film - and teamed with Stephen Schwartz, the music is to die for. The film wanted to be 'Beauty and the Beast' and resonate with adult audiences, but the film has too many cute animal side scenes with Meeko, Flit and Percy, and just misses the mark for both kids and adults.
His character is a good reference point for the tone issues in this movie even in his two songs, he goes from talking about glitter and gold to saying, "They're savages! Savages! Barely even human!" He misses the mark, as does the rest of the movie.
His villain song 'Mine, Mine, Mine' talks about how he wants us to see how he'll glitter. In a wild move John Ratcliffe, a literal racist, is one of Disney's more campy villains, more akin to Ratigan when he should be more like Judge Frollo. While all are threatening, that's met with high-level goofy or campy moments. Also, humanising villains is all well and fine, but when it comes with dehumanising the oppressed, it becomes problematic.ĭisney villains - especially in the 90s - were extremely campy: Jafar, Gaston and everyone's favourite gay uncle Scar.
We get the Native Americans singing lyrics like, "They're different from us, which means they can't be trusted,' which proves maybe how tone-deaf the studio was with Native American history. The movie also has the problematic approach of attempting to depict the British colonisers and Native Americans as similar "savages". With all this in mind, it's hard to not criticise the historical missteps the movie takes, most notably ageing up 'Pocahontas' and making her more sexually appealing in the same vein of 'Aladdin's' Jasmine for mass appeal (this is something animators actually have said about her). Katzenberg was determined to go for gold - winning that Oscar was the only option, and it was all hands on deck, and animators left what the then was considered the less prestigious 'The Lion King', as 'Pocahontas' was the one that was considered to be the animated film to define the studio. In 1991, 'Beauty and the Beast' became the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture, and remains the only hand-drawn film to do so. I don't care for historical accuracy in my Disney films - I don't need to see Belle fighting in the French revolution (or do I?) - but the chairman of Walt Disney Studios at the time, Jeffrey Katzenberg, wanted this to be the defining version of the 'Pocahontas' story - an epic, an animated 'Titanic', if you will. While the animation and songs are knockouts, everything else is. It's more a cinematic misstep, and as more and more time passes, we look less kindly on it. 'Pocahontas' was truly the first animated film where the intent was to depict the Native American culture and the film was to be tied to that identity. In the animated world, Disney stayed away from non-white stories, and when films took place in other countries, the culture had extremely little impact on the story such as 'The Jungle Book' and 'Aladdin' - even 'The Lion King', while featuring African phrases, isn't viewed as an African story.
Disney has always had "issues" depicting other cultures - most famously with 'The Song on the South', which since its release in 1946 has had no kind of home video release in the United States.
Disney, unlike any other studio, is an easily identifiable brand with a coherent image that spans anything that they slap their name on, thus making it an easy target. No film could ever truly reflect any group of people, but representation not appropriation is the key. In the current Hollywood climate, where accurate cultural depictions are unlikely, authentic and truthful portrayals are the goal. Cultural representation in mainstream media is an ongoing battle.