Wednesday, June 1, 2011

i don't believe it, not for a minute

when arguments break out about how disney movies are corrupting the minds of the young, about how they are creating girls who want to be princesses and sit around and do nothing all day, i am always on the side of disney. cinderella does not just sit around waiting for her prince, she sneaks out and gets him. belle sacrifices herself for her father and won't settle for the most gorgeous and desired man in her town because the beast isn't a monster, gaston is. when people claim that disney movies give children unrealistic ideas about the world, uh, fiction has been doing that since the dawn of time. if your child can't tell the difference between fiction and reality, well then, that's not disney's fault.

but there are some movies that have always made me ask, "why?" do whatever you want with movies about fairy godmothers and evil witches, but why take a historical moment and then completely warp it? at jamestown, we watched a movie about the early settlers. part of it talked about john smith, pocahontas, john rolfe and that whole story. my brother turns to me and whispers, "they got it wrong. pocahontas was never kidnapped, and she fell in love with john smith." which of course, is completely untrue.

it's common knowledge that the history they teach in grade school is about as close to what really happened as those stories that claim the elephant got its trunk because an alligator tried to eat its nose. people tend to have that moment in their first "real" history class when they find out that all the heroes they've learned about their whole lives were pretty much the biggest jerks on the planet. i don't know why they think children can't handle the truth, but they like to gloss over all the sticky areas. many people live their whole lives believing in the distorted version of american history. but while our school system is sugar-coating everything for us, they try to stick to the big facts as much as possible. while the perspective is skewed, the events actually happened.

i never understood why disney had to rewrite history with movies like pocahontas. if you don't want to say what really happened, then don't use real people. the story would be just as good if the names were changed. and that's really all they would have to change. everything else could be left exactly the same. children would be just as willing to accept that some native american they've never heard of fell in love with a settler as they are to accept pocahontas did. why mess with their heads?

i've found it true that people want to believe what they were told as children. they'll learn the truth later, but it's the lies that stick with them. they choose disney over history books and their fifth grade social studies teacher over their college professor. so why not just go ahead and let them in on the truth that not everyone was perfect from an early age? i'm sure they're smart enough to understand.

*Take It On the Run - REO Speedwagon 

5 comments:

  1. anonymous hippopotamusJune 1, 2011 at 3:46 PM

    i never thought of it that way. I guess i'm better at separating fact from fiction than I thought...because i never really mixed disney Pocahontas with real Pocahontas (i had to use the spell check to spell Pocahontas because apparently i have absolutely no idea how to spell it :D)

    anyways this was a pointless comment..and it sounded a lot better in my head...whatever. good night!

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  2. that's just cause you used to ditch history according to mrs radar and probably didn't know pocahontas existed in real life. i remember in elementary school one of my teachers was joking that they'd make the social studies test spelling her name and we'd all fail. your comment reminded me of that.

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  3. anonymous hippopotamusJune 3, 2011 at 9:09 PM

    stupid! i never ditched history...i was terrfied of mrs radar. and her problem wasn't that i ditched her problem was that i failed. and i was soooo into history in elementary school..i remember going home and telling mommy and daddy that california still wasn't a part of the us...but it was almost a part of it. lool and i sincerely believed that. :D

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  4. lol i was referencing that open house when she told daddy you were always ditching and you were like, "i have never missed a single class!" and i thought it was hilarious. and um, i think that last part shows that despite your "being into history" it never really clicked with you lool.

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  5. anonymous hippopotamusJune 5, 2011 at 2:54 PM

    by being into it...i meant intrigued...i found it interesting when i thought it was actually happening now. :D andoh yeah i remember that...stupid lady! i sat in the front row too..right in front of her desk..

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