(This is a tad late, sorry!)
 |
| Faces of woe! |
The third last Disney princess, Pocahontas (1995), isn’t really a “princess” – and it’s the only one here based on an actual historical person. It’s pretty loosely based – they’ve changed her age, love interest, home, story, appearance – ok, they’ve just kept her name and ethnicity, and the names of a few other people in the already biased historical account, and changed EVERYTHING. And naturally, they’ve changed it into an interracial love story, where Native Americans are all lumped in one easy-to-digest conglomerate, with a glowy happy ending and talking animals (and their latest innovation – a talking tree), where people prove their love to each other and good American morals prevail. Why, Disney?
Well, the music’s catchy at least. Pocahontas was one of the three movies in the Disney Sing-a-Long book I had as a kid (the other two were The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast – I’m sure a lot of you had the same book!), and I am not ashamed to admit that I listened to it in the car for a good 3 years in primary school, and frequently sang along, despite only watching the film itself once. Disney does songwriting well.
Here are my Pocahontas nails, inspired by the armband in the movies – the colours I used are Camouflage Colours Naturale, and Revlon Raisin Rage, an ancient polish that’s been lurking in the depths of my Helmer but I think I’ll be wearing it more often – it’s a lovely deep red creme.
The red looks like blood….which is pretty fitting actually.
Disney at least gave us this gif http://static1.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/This+is+my+only+Pocahontas+gif+but+I+felt+I+_71832dbf1379b9a606afa41224ddede1.gif
The value of this movie has suddenly gone up a thousandfold in my estimation.
Hehe… I love your snarky take on Disney. They certainly don’t have a monopoly on offensive appropriation of Native American cultures (*cough* Twilight), but are they ever good at it! Your interpretation is much subtler and more tasteful than the source material, though 😉 (Damn that catchy music!!)
Which bit of Twilight *isn’t* offensive? 😛 I feel bad giving Twilight a hard time, but… surely they’ve earned enough money not to care, right?
These are beautiful, Michelle! I love the way you went with this, and the colours you chose are fantastic.
Thank you! 🙂
i think i held my breath the whole time i read this. pocahontas is my FAVORITE of all time. the nails are perfect! and i’m glad you didn’t hate it too much 🙂
By itself it’s one of the better Disney princess movies… it’s really just the based-on-historical-people aspect that makes it bad!