Ok. I am not one for questioning Disney movies, believe me. I don't care that as soon as Ariel's head is out of the water her hair is dry. Or that Phillipe can show Belle where Maurice is, even though he left him in the woods far before he ever made it to the Beast's castle. I never yelled at Jasmine that, since Aladdin has lied to her over and over, she should stop trusting him.
However, there is one question that I have never been able to answer. Pocahontas, HOW DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH? Seriously. He just shows up and all of the sudden native Americans don't speak Creek/Cherokee/Sioux? No. They speak perfect English. Oh, and also the English explorers don't have accents. I just find this whole language thing so confusing.
And also, how does she run? Ouch, dude.
Photo
12 years ago
SERIOUSLY!! these bug the heck outa me.
ReplyDeleteShe doesn't speak English. Remember when she first meets John Smith and they can't understand each other? Because John keeps talking to her and she keeps having that "I do not get what you're saying, and also I'm freaking out" expression. UNTIL they both learn to listen with their hearts + the wind. They both speak their own languages, but now their hearts + the wind translate. So really what we've got here is a kind of Disney-esque gift of tongues, I guess. It's just in English so that *we* can understand. At least, that's what I've always thought.
ReplyDeleteReally. I have always thought that.
(But it is weird the explorers don't have accents. I never noticed that.)
That's not in any way supposed to be sacrilegious, by the way. I know you know that - I'm mostly putting that out there for anyone else who just read my comment. Because that REALLY IS what I've always thought was happening in that movie. Now I feel like watching Pocahontas 2 again to see if I'm right. If I remember right, she doesn't talk to anyone except the Johns. Isn't that right? I've always just assumed it's because she can't talk to anyone else but them. Maybe they're the only three with their hearts correctly hooked up to the wind translator.
ReplyDeleteI have never in my life thought about it that way. that's a good assessment of what's going on, I think, though. I never noticed that she didn't speak to anyone but john. I'm glad they're hooked up with that translator, though.
Deleteok, I re-watched both recently, and Pocahontas talks to Thomas when he kills Kokoum, and he seems to understand her. Then, in the second movie, John Rolf talks to Chief Powhatan and they understand each other. I always assumed that she was capable of speaking English, but chose not to at first because she was afraid of John Smith. But then she listened with her heart, and decided to talk to him.
ReplyDeleteAnd at the end of Princess and the Frog, Mama Odie revealed that the only way for Tiana and Prince Naveen to change back into humans is for Prince Naveen to kiss a princess, so Charlotte (who's temporarily a princess because her dad was crowned King of Mardi Gras) agrees to kiss Prince Naveen to change them back. But the clock strikes midnight before Charlotte kisses Prince Naveen, which means she was no longer the Princess of Mardi Gras, so shouldn't she have turned into a frog like Tiana?
ReplyDelete