Pocahontas: Film Adaptation of a Literary Text
As we know today, many literary texts have been translated into films, such as H.C. Andersen’s Snow Queen to Disney’s Frozen. Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist has several film versions, as does Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Film analysis is a strategy use to analyze a film from all perspectives and angles. If a film is an adaptation, one should analyze how a film has been translated or transferred from a novel or literary text. As we analyze the film, we ask whether the film is based upon a whole or part of a story. Furthermore, we ask whether the book has been translated faithfully, literally, or loosely from the original story in a text. As one might say, “The movie butchered the text,” meaning that it did a poor job of translating the text. Instead it lost or distorted the way it was intended to be told. When a film is viewed, especially with younger students, reviewing film vocabulary is one of the best ways to teach before considering analyzing. This is to help the students use the language we use in analyzing the film. Such vocabulary as immersion, shots, distancing, takes, high and low angle shots or medium shots, lighting, special effects, animation, realistic, cinematic, theatrical. With that terminology and these definitions in mind, we begin to analyze the film and literature. Is the film loosely adapted to the text or is it closely adapted?
To teach film adaptations effectively in the classrooms, one should start by focusing on how to identify major parts or elements of a film and the text, then focus on “what’s different” in the text and or film. Closely analyze what the film shows that the book does not show. How the film is closely or loosely adapted to the text? Discussions among students are important as they use the vocabulary words to discuss their findings.
In the Disney animated film, the story of Pocahontas is translated loosely from the historical figure because the facts are unavailable or not what some people claim. As for the Native Americans, facts about them are a little distorted from the truth and there is some stereotyping that was displayed by the director. Overall, the intention of Disney may have been to profit from the movie at the expense of the Powhatan tribe. Unfortunately, the movie did not do as well as they figured it would. In a continuation of the story, Disney released “Pocahontas 2” to tell more about Pocahontas.6 Again, some critics claim that there are some misconceptions about her and still not enough truth. Unfortunately, the truth we may never know. What is important is that students are taught to become aware of Pocahontas. There are so many books about Pocahontas and they contain some similarities concerning her history, often questioned by someone who disagrees with the story.
The Disney film Pocahontas is a musical as it is intended for children as an audience, like most Disney films. How and why it is animated the way it is can only be answered by the director. How much emphasis there is on the truth is generally questioned. As stated by the author of Film Adaption, James Naremore, “We want to know why it took the direction it did, we need to look at the factors that influenced its development, in particular, from the most general to the most immediate: (1) The nature of narrative, (2) the norm of cinema, (3) methods of academic literary and film students, and (4) the exigencies of the academic profession. Each of these factors has shaped the writing and teaching that has gone under the rubric “Film and Literature.”(Naremore, 2000).7
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