Despite her legendary status, the Indian princess is all but ignored.
Why the fascination with Pocahontas?
"She sings good," said the 4-year-old redhead from Raleigh, N.C., who owns a well-worn DVD of the Disney movie.
Although I didn't dress in fringed, faux deerskin, I came to Jamestown expecting what Rachel expected: Pocahontas. She is, after all, the only reason many Americans have even a vague notion of the first permanent English settlement in North America.
But as Jamestown commemorates its 400th anniversary this year, the former colony is all but ignoring the singing Indian maiden and her purported rescue of colonist John Smith. It's all part of an effort to be historically accurate and to acknowledge that Jamestown's history included slavery and the taking of Indian lives and land.
P.S. The girl below is supposed to be dressed as Pocahontas.
4 comments:
Writerfella here --
Home again, home again, jiggledy-jig. Back in the BatesMotel, for a couple days at least.
And what if the same poor 4-year-old child went to a Sesame Street affair dressed as Big Bird, and then found the same things: even though she may believe that Jim Henson's Big Bird is real and that the real big bird she saw at Lake Virginia is a phony, the production ignored Big Bird. What, there is no Big Bird and he isn't in love with Big Birdette in the pantomime Big Oak Tree? Can't be...we saw it on TV.
As the great SF writer Damon Knight once taught writerfella, the fallacy in some people's logic best is illustrated by parallel comparisons. And writerfella opines that someone who is not an educator or a child psychologist or a parent or even a child themselves hardly is the best judge of what a 4-year-old child should think or not think. Instead, their thesis revolves more around their own principle that says what a 4-year-old child should BE ABLE to think or not think...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
The problem with your feeble analysis is that children know there is a real Pocahontas but there isn't a real Big Bird. Thus, the movie Pocahontas misleads them but the TV Big Bird doesn't.
So you hypothesize that I might be wrong because I'm not an educator, child psychologist, parent, or child. Ignoring the fact that nonfiction writers are educators of a sort, so what? I hypothesize that I'm probably right because I've studied stereotyping a lot more than you have.
Writerfella here --
And perhaps most of that time spent studying stereotypes was spent LOOKING INTO A MIRROR! Now, THERE is a genuine stereotype!
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Another pathetic nonresponse to a legitimate answer. I guess you daydreamed that I asked you a "wife-beating" question again. Or do you have a different excuse this time for your failure to address my points?
Let us know if you have anything to say about the girl who whose knowledge of Pocahontas comes from the Disney movie. Anything intelligent to say, that is.
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