Walt Disney links - In Defense of Pocahontas: Disney's Most Radical Heroine 

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20 years after the movie’s release, its character and premise still feel notably progressive.

In 1938, Walt Disney released the first-ever feature-length animated movie, a project that had been labeled “Disney’s folly” thanks to the industry’s belief that its outsized ambitions would prove catastrophic. Instead,

became the most successful film of the year, grossing $8 million and launching a new cultural phenomenon into the world: the Disney princess.

may have blazed a trail for animation, but it took a while for Disney to acknowledge the potential for anchoring ambitious projects around female characters. It was 12 years before the studio would base another full-length picture on a heroine with the release of

(1991) came more than half a century after Snow White scored Disney seven miniature honorary Oscars at the 1939 Academy Awards, but it was only the sixth Disney film out of 32 to focus primarily on the story of a female character. However it was also a colossal hit, grossing $425 million on a $25 million budget, and the movie’s success inspired the studio to look for another ambitious romance with a bold and compelling heroine. The result was Pocahontas, a dramatic retelling of one of the earliest American stories about a Native American woman and her encounter with an English sailor named John Smith.

When Pocahontas was released on June 23, 1995, the criticism it received for taking historical liberties with Pocahontas’s age and relationship with Smith largely overshadowed the fact that Disney had, for the first time, based an entire picture around an adult female, let alone a woman of color. It was also the first time the studio had produced a film about a real person. The movie might have fudged some facts to allow for a compelling romantic story, but it had a progressive attitude when it came to interpreting history, depicting the English settlers as plunderers searching for non-existent gold who were intent upon murdering the “savages” they encountered in the process.

The film also seemed to embrace an environmentalist message, with Pocahontas showing Smith the absurdity of relentlessly taking things from the Earth instead of seeing its potential. It was a radical story about female agency and empathy disguised as a rather sappy romance, and amid the controversy that arose at the time thanks to the subject matter, many of the film’s best qualities have been forgotten. But 20 years later, its impact can be seen in the new wave of animated Disney films like

itself remains a graceful and well-intentioned entry in the Disney canon.

s release in 1989, the ‘70s and ‘80s were lean times for Disney. The two decades before had seen some of the studio’s most iconic pictures, but films like

was a box-office bomb. From 1961 through 1988, Walt Disney Studios largely focused on stories about talking animals, from

(1973), which reinvented the archetypal English characters as anthropomorphized foxes and bears. In 1984, Roy E. Disney, Walt’s nephew, launched a campaign called “SaveDisney” in which he argued that the studio was losing its magic. After the catastrophic release of

, Roy Disney was put in charge of Disney’s animation department in 1985, and he helped spearhead the company’s creative and financial renaissance of the 1990s.

, the 1989 story of a princess named Ariel who falls in love with a human and decides to trade her voice for the ability to live on land, was a film very much in the old Disney mold—a romantic fairytale with child-friendly humor and compelling supporting characters. 1991’s

was an animal story given a more epic scope, with the Africa savanna framed as a kingdom and the cub Simba depicted as a young Prince Hamlet whose father had been murdered by his uncle.

spurred studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg to push for another romance, and directors Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg wanted to pursue a story that had its origins in early American history, while also incorporating the

-esque elements of two people from very different backgrounds falling in love. But unlike the naive and uncertain Ariel and Belle, Pocahontas would be far more confident—“a woman instead of a teenager,” as supervising animator Glen Keane put it. As the producer Jim Pentacost says in Disney’s 1995 documentary about the making of the feature, “Pocahontas is the strongest heroine we’ve ever had in a Disney film.”

“Pocahontas is the strongest heroine we’ve ever had in a Disney film.”

—as expressed by several Native American groups, including the Powhatan Nation, which traces its origins back to Pocahontas herself—is that over time, she’s come to embody the trope of the “Good Indian,” or one who offers her own life to help save a white settler. “Her offer of sacrifice, her curvaceous figure, and her virginal stature have come to symbolize America’s Indian heroine,” wrote Angela Aleiss in an op-ed in

. Aleiss goes on to criticize how female Indian characters are defined by their male relationships, are “tossed aside by the white man” for a woman of his own race, and have nothing in their appeal beyond their “on-screen pulchritude.”

But Pocahontas as a character is much more complex than Aleiss allows. She does throw herself on John Smith as he’s about to be executed, emphasizing the value of human life and the destructive nature of war, but her move is reciprocated minutes later, when Smith then positions himself between Pocahontas’s father and the furious head of the English settlers, Governor Ratcliffe, and gets shot in the process. The injured Smith decides to return home, and begs Pocahontas to go with him, but she chooses to stay with her tribe in her homeland. Instead of sacrificing something for love (like Ariel giving up her voice, or Belle her freedom), Pocahontas puts her identity and heritage first. It’s a bold ending, and one that deliberately subverts real history, which saw the real Pocahontas marry a different Englishman, John Rolfe, and travel to London with him, where she was feted as an example of the “civilized savage” before dying at the age of 21 shortly before her husband was due to sail back to Virginia.

Powhatan Nation has a page on its website in which it also criticizes Disney for propagating the “Good Indian/Bad Indian” theme and basing a movie on what is largely believed to be a lie told by John Smith to enhance his own mystique. “Euro-Americans must ask themselves why it has been so important to elevate Smith’s fibbing to status as a national myth worthy of being recycled again by Disney,” the page says. “Disney even improves upon it by changing Pocahontas from a little girl into a young woman.” But an animated feature about the relationship between a 10-year-old (as Pocahontas is believed to have been at the time she met John Smith) and an adult male would presumably have horrified audiences. “We had the choice of being historically accurate or socially responsible,” Glen Keane said.

“This is also the first time ... that a human face has been put on an Indian female.”

The animator Tom Sito has written about the efforts the creative team went to to try and accurately portray Native American culture, saying, “Contrary to the popular verdict that we ignored history on the film, we tried hard to be historically correct and to accurately portray the culture of the Virginia Algonquins. We consulted with the Smithsonian Institution, a number of Native American experts, Pocahontas’s descendants, the surviving Virginia tribes, and even took several trips to Jamestown itself.” The lyricist, Stephen Schwartz (best-known for his Broadway smash,

) also traveled to Jamestown to research Native American music and history while working on the movie’s songs.

When asked about whether he thought the movie accurately portrayed history, the Native American actor Russell Means, who gave his voice to Pocahontas’s father, said he was shocked by how revolutionary the plot was: “The Eurocentric males are admitting why they came here—to kill Indians and to rob and pillage. That’s never been done before. This is also the first time, other than on

, that a human face has been put on an Indian female.”

While its interpretation of history attracted considerable criticism, less was written about the fact that Disney had, for the first time, provided an independent and fearless heroine with a strong sense of self. Pocahontas, whose marriage has been arranged by her father to a warrior named Kocoum, expresses doubt that he’ll be a good match for her, stating that he’s “so … serious.” She seeks guidance from her elders, but also knows herself well enough to intuit that she’s too unconventional for such a husband. Compared to Belle, who’s imprisoned by the Beast before eventually seeing his good side, or Ariel, who falls in love with Prince Eric at first sight, or Cinderella and Aurora and Snow White, all of whom seem to accept that their marriages are pre-ordained, Pocahontas has a remarkable amount of acuity when it comes to choosing a romantic partner—to the point where she’s able to let him go rather than sacrifice her happiness.

Disney had, for the first time, provided an independent and fearless heroine with a strong sense of self.

Her strength and bravery are traits that Disney also gave to the character of Mulan, who disguises herself as a man so that she can go to war in place of her elderly father. But after the release of that movie in 1998, Disney wouldn’t produce a movie about a female hero until 2009’s

, the success of which spurred a new series of stories about gutsy heroines: 2010’s

, which took over a billion dollars at the box office and became the highest-grossing animated film of all time.

It’s maybe overstating things to say that there would be no Elsa or Rapunzel or Merida without Pocahontas, but to overlook her status as the first truly empowered Disney heroine is to miss a real turning point for female characters in the 20th century. In an essay for

, Kaitlin Ebersol aligns the phases of Disney heroines with the various waves of feminism in the 20th century and beyond. “By the 1990s, a third wave of feminism, which dealt specifically with feminine sexuality, had arisen in response to failures of the second wave,” she writes. “The third wave began destabilizing former contracts of body, gender, and sexuality, and encouraged every woman to define femininity, beauty, and orientation for herself ... These newer princesses reflected society’s drastically altered beliefs about who women are and how they should act.”

Not only was Pocahontas a radical reimagining of the Disney heroine, the movie she starred in was itself attempting to both re-explore history and to encourage empathy as a guiding quality for young viewers. If

when it comes to thinking about the treatment of animals, Means has said, “

teaches that pigmentation and bone structure have no place in human relations. It’s the finest feature film on American Indians Hollywood has turned out.”

Tom Holland is the third actor in 10 years to be cast in the role, and the tepid reaction suggests that audiences are losing interest as a result.

The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it.

This afternoon, in announcing her support for removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asserted that killer Dylann Roof had “a sick and twisted view of the flag” which did not reflect “the people in our state who respect and in many ways revere it.” If the governor meant that very few of the flag’s supporters believe in mass murder, she is surely right. But on the question of whose view of the Confederate Flag is more twisted, she is almost certainly wrong.

Roof’s belief that black life had no purpose beyond subjugation is “sick and twisted” in the exact same manner as the beliefs of those who created the Confederate flag were “sick and twisted.” The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history. These words must never be forgotten. Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked. It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage.

For centuries, experts have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete. That moment may finally be arriving. Could that be a good thing?

The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977.

For much of the 20th century, Youngstown’s steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a homeownership rate that were among the nation’s highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War  II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced the shuttering of its Campbell Works mill. Within five years, the city lost 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in manufacturing wages. The effect was so severe that a term was coined to describe the fallout:

The chief justice’s opinion upholding Obamacare aims to fulfill his promise to serve as an impartial umpire.

Chief Justice John Roberts tossed a bucket of cold water on the arguments against tax subsidies under the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, and the deadly threat to Obamacare melted away like the Wicked Witch of the West. Writing for a 6-3 majority, Roberts, like the consummate A student he is, offered an excellent third-year administrative law exam answer to the questions the challengers posed.

There had been speculation that the crucial votes to save the Act would come from Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, and that they would have to be lured across the Court’s liberal-conservative line by soothing words about the prerogatives of the states. But federalism was the dog that didn’t bark Thursday.

\'Israel Cannot Absorb 3.5 Million Palestinians and Remain a Jewish and Democratic State\'

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid on a pro-Israel Obama and a recalcitrant Netanyahu

Last week, I spent an illuminating hour with Yair Lapid, the former Israeli finance minister and now a leader of the opposition. Lapid, a voluble former television broadcaster, is the head of the Yesh Atid party—the name translates as, “There is a future.” This, of course, is a very Jewish thing to name a political party, for a large number of reasons I’ll let you figure out.

Lapid is a leader of the great mass of disillusioned centrists in Israeli politics. He could conceivably be prime minister one day, assuming Benjamin Netanyahu, in whose previous cabinet he served, ever stops being prime minister. Now functioning as a kind of shadow foreign minister, Lapid argues that Israel must seize the diplomatic initiative with the Palestinians if it is to continue existing as a Jewish-majority democracy, and he is proposing a regional summit somewhat along the lines of the earlier Arab Peace Initiative. Lapid is not a left-winger—he has a particular sort of contempt for the Israeli left, born of the belief that leftists don’t recognize the nature of the region in which they live. But he is also for territorial compromise as a political and moral necessity, and he sees Netanyahu leading Israel inexorably toward the abyss.

When it comes to treating pain and chronic disease, many doctors are turning to treatments like acupuncture and meditation—but using them as part of a larger, integrative approach to health. 

Back in the 1990s, the word “alternative” was a synonym for hip and forward-thinking. There was alternative music and alternative energy; there were even high-profile alternative presidential candidates like Ross Perot and Ralph Nader. That was the decade when doctors started to realize just how many Americans were using alternative medicine, starting with a 1993 paper published in

. The paper reported that one in three Americans were using some kind of “unconventional therapy.” Only 28 percent of them were telling their primary-care doctors about it.

I was in high school at the time, and I knew about alternative medicine from my father, a family physician. He’d learned Transcendental Meditation back in medical school, and when I was a child, he began studying Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India. He never stopped practicing conventional medicine, but he added new things. At home, if I had a persistent sinus infection, he’d put me on antibiotics. But if I had a low-level cold, he’d advise me to drink ginger tea, inhale eucalyptus steam, and eat turmeric with honey. And the school I attended started and ended each day with a group meditation.

In a surprising move on Thursday, the United States’ highest court ruled that policies even inadvertently relegating minorities to poor areas violate the Fair Housing Act.

The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that policies that segregate minorities in poor neighborhoods, even if they do so unintentionally, violate the Fair Housing Act. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that so-called “disparate-impact claims”—claims that challenge practices that adversely affect minorities—can be brought under the Fair Housing Act. However, the court warned against remedies that impose outright racial quotas, a sign that disparate-impact claims must be brought cautiously.

In writing the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy acknowledged that the disparate-impact standard has worked to combat systemic discrimination. “Much progress remains to be made in our Nation’s continuing struggle against racial isolation,” Kennedy wrote. “In striving to achieve our ‘historic commitment to creating an integrated society,’ we must remain wary of policies that reduce homeowners to nothing more than their race. But since the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 and against the backdrop of disparate-impact liability in nearly every jurisdiction, many cities have become more diverse. The FHA must play an important part in avoiding the Kerner Commission’s grim prophecy that ‘our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate but equal.’”

The justice’s famously whimsical approach to language has culminated in his frustrated declaration that, with the Court’s upholding of Obamacare, “Words have no meaning.”

“Words have meaning,” Antonin Scalia insisted in 2013. “And their meaning doesn’t change.”

That notion is something most linguists and lexicographers will, at minimum, quibble with. It is also, however, a foundation of Scalia’s originalist approach to Constitutional interpretation. “I mean, the notion that the Constitution should simply, by decree of the Court, mean something that it didn’t mean when the people voted for it,” the associate Supreme Court justice explained to

magazine’s Jennifer Senior—“frankly, you should ask the other side of the question! How did they

How indeed. Scalia is someone who loves words—not just as sources of literary performance (alliteration! puns! Kulturkampf! argle-bargle!), but also as sources of semantic stability. Words, Scalia believes, root us, collectively and epistemologically. So his famously saucy approach to language isn’t just about bringing literature to legalese, or about the schadenfreudic delights of sending reporters scrambling to dictionaries and thesauri when he issues a scathing dissent. It’s also a philosophical declaration about the unchanging nature of old truths, whatever document may enshrine them. As the speechwriter Jeff Shesol wrote in the

last year, “His approach has always been to reach for a dictionary; find, in one edition or other, a definition that drives toward his predetermined decision; and express, eyes wide with disbelief, utter amazement that anyone could even think of seeing it any other way.”

Inspired to make a meaningful donation, I wondered: What is the best charitable cause in the world, and was it crazy to think I could find it?

Last winter, William MacAskill and his wife Amanda moved into a Union Square apartment that I was sharing with several friends in New York. At first, I knew nothing about Will except what I could glean from some brief encounters, like his shaggy blond hair and the approximation of a beard. He was extremely polite and devastatingly Scottish, trilling his “R”s so that in certain words, like

, the second consonant would vibrate with the clarity of a tiny engine.

MacAskill, I soon discovered, was a Cambridge-and Oxford-trained philosopher, and a steward of what’s known as

, a burgeoning movement that has been called "generosity for nerds."

Effective altruism seeks to maximize the good from one\'s charitable donations and even from one’s career. It is munificence matched with math, or, as he once described it to me memorably, “injecting science into the sentimental issue of doing good in the world.”

The U.S. Supreme Court upholds Obamacare in a 6-3 decision, deferring to the intent of legislators.

The Affordable Care Act survived its second major challenge at the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday. In a 6-to-3 decision, the justices ruled that the Internal Revenue Service can continue to provide health-insurance subsidies to middle-class people living in all states.

, was whether the subsidies should go to residents of the roughly three dozen states that use the federal health-insurance exchange, in addition to those who live in states that run their own exchanges.

It’s a highly technical difference, but had the decision gone the other way, Obamacare might have unraveled. Individuals who receive these subsidies make less than $48,000 per year, and many would struggle to afford health-insurance plans without the government’s financial help. Health-policy analysts feared that, without the subsidies in place, healthy people would withdraw from the health-insurance exchanges in large numbers. That, in turn, would cause premiums to skyrocket, making insurance unaffordable to almost anyone who does not receive insurance coverage through their jobs.

Deadly American Extremism: More White Than Muslim

White supremacists and anti-government radicals are responsible for twice as many deaths in the U.S. as jihadists since 9/11.

It’s an accident of fate that Dzokhar Tsarnaev’s formal sentencing for the Boston Marathon bombing is happening just now, as the U.S. continues to reel from the Charleston massacre. Tsarnaev—

cover and teenage apologists aside—is a stereotypical face of terrorism in the 2010s: An extremist Muslim, residing and radicalized in the U.S., and acting alone or in a small cell.

In fact, though, most lethal political violence since September 11 has come in the form of attacks by white supremacists, anti-government extremists, and the like, according to an analysis by New America. It’s not even close: Jihadists have killed 26 people, versus 48 by what New America calls “right-wing extremists.”

Imagine a world where everyone sleeps well, because no one sleeps together.

James Hamblin, Katherine Wells, Nicolas Pollock, and Chiara Atik

It's quite possible to live and date in New York without a smartphone.

How to Cook a Real Chicken Nugget (and Why)

School lunches, including chicken nuggets, are notoriously unhealthy. They don't have to be.