June 10, 2012

Artist reimagines Disney's Pocahontas

Artist Reimagines Disney’s Version of Pocahontas as a Warrior for the EarthDisney’s Pocahontas gets a warrior makeover by deviantart user joshwmc, who is reinventing all Disney’s animated damsels in distress as fierce, weapon-wielding women, reported The Huffington Post.

The artist also revised the Disney character Pocahontas’s modern-day back story: she “is an environmental activist” who enters into the Disney fighting tournament “to literally fight for nature,” joshwmc writes in his description.
Comment:  The reimagined Pocahontas has feathers, warpaint, a buckskin top, fringe, and tomahawks. The drawing is well-executed but conventional if not stereotypical.

The same applies to her mission: fighting for nature. Wouldn't it be more Native to pray for nature. Fighting for nature with tomahawks, like the axes used to chop down trees, seems counterintuitive.

The article talks about Pocahontas being a role model, an idea this image encourages. But Pocahontas was a little girl, not a princess or a warrior. This drawing is going in the wrong direction, taking a historical figure further and further from reality.

For more on Pocahontas, see Umatilla Model Portrays Pocahontas and "PocaHotAss" Party Canceled.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

DeviantArt, or "tart", is almost universally seen as "the weird part of the internet". (A lot of forced memes are on Tart, such as the Pokemon type meme, Sparkledogs, X grab my Y, and so on.) But hey, anything to deconstruct the Disney princess genre.