My Artifact:
In Disney’s Pocahontas, the relationship between Pocahontas and John Smith is presented as a romantic connection when in the true story of Pocahontas, Missing Matoaka, they were never romantically involved, in fact, John Smith kidnapped, raped, and sexually assaulted Matoaka countless times. Disney’s version leans on stereotypes throughout the whole movie. it comes across as racist, and ignorant and is far from the reality of what happened. Pocahontas was around eighteen or nineteen years old, had a slim figure, and had on a sexy outfit. The lead of the film saw pictures of what Matoaka looked like but decided that she wasn’t the hot teenage look he wanted. Instead, he drew her “With sexy hips and breasts that he [the writer] claimed were “impressive.”” They were sexualizing a ten-year-old girl. In the real version, Matoaka was only ten years old, looked like how a ten-year-old should look without having curves and huge breasts, and would never have worn an outfit like that. In their culture, they wore little to no clothes when the weather was hot, which the Europeans unfortunately saw as an opportunity and took advantage of. Most women and girls were raped and sexually assaulted. Women had to offer themselves up to protect their children. It is absolutely devastating that those women had to go through that after feeling safe on their own land for years prior.
Paragraph 1 of my Pocahontas essay.
Curricular Competencies Reflection
Comprehend and Connect: What did you learn during this assignment or task and how did you grow in your reading, listening, or viewing skills? How will you take what you learned and use it towards working on reconciliation?
During this assignment I grew in collecting information to make an outline for my paragraph and using quotes in my writing. After finishing this essay and learning about how much they changed Matoaka’s story for viewers pleasure, I now can recognize how much indigenous story’s can be taken out of proportion and not being listened to.
Core Competencies Reflection
My strategies for collecting relevant information for specific tasks include…
When writing my essay I started by looking for quotes in the movie that I could use to prove the point I was trying to convey. I then used that information to help guide me with how I was going to write the essay and the point of view I would be writing from. I went to various websites to find information about the true story of Matoaka’s life, and that helped me with creating the structure.