Why, if it made her happy (and afforded her countless new luxuries to boot), should Pocahontas’ second life be cause for sorrow, Kilcher didn’t say.
Producer Sarah Green echoes by more diplomatic means Kilcher’s contention that Pocahontas’ conversion was more pragmatic tragedy than heartfelt acceptance of redemption. Asked why, after her profession of faith and baptism, the film still shows Pocahontas praying to native spirits, Green replies, “We didn’t have time to go into her choice to convert but I imagine that she melded those two [her native religion and Christianity]. That’s often what happens in native cultures, they meld what they know as their spirituality with a new spirituality.”
It’s a strange defense for a movie that spends a good 40 minutes focused on waving grass and watery sunsets to claim there wasn’t enough time to explore documented background about its central character. Perhaps it was a marketing decision, since a noble savage clad in buckskin is much more likely to draw that lucrative teen male demographic than a Christian lady in starched collars.
Green finishes by espousing the view of our founding that has been popularized in university classrooms: “They’re [the English] over there stamping out this other culture in order to take that land that they believe God gave them.”
Then there are those who not only reinvent history but reinvent the present as well. Veteran Native American actor Wes Studi (Into the West, Streets of Laredo and Dances with Wolves) links Malick’s questionable take on history to a positively irrational take on current events.
Apparently, he sees a beleaguered kinship between Native American groups of the past and terrorist groups today: “There’s a war going in Iraq and Afghanistan and they’ve been criminalized—our adversaries. The people that we’re attacking have been criminalized for their behavior. And that’s exactly what happened here in the United States beginning with the development of America.”
“Because we [Native Americans] lived here and were defending our land, we were criminalized…they’re attacking us [the Indians in the film] just like they’re attacking Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve been there, we understand that. Can we empathize with it? I think so…We’ve been in those shoes. We’ve been attacked by America. We know what its like and I think the worse thing they [the administration] do is criminalize. It’s like we [the United States] are the big boss and we can criminalize your action rather than honor it as an opponent to us.”
Before I could ask whether by “criminalizing” the Islamo-fascist culture Studi was referring to the administration’s decision to criminalize the insurgents’ tendency to strap bombs to themselves and murder innocent people, studio nymphets came and whisked him away.
No matter. There’s history and then there’s fantasy. And I think most people already know by now which one Hollywood specializes in.