Difference between revisions of "329--Week 2 Questions/Comments"
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And moving on to a very nitpicky matter, did the filmmakers ever visit Tidewater Virginia? Cliffs? Mountains? The animators' depiction of Virginia reminded me of the overblown and romantic frontier of the Hudson River School painters in the nineteenth century. The America of those artists--and of this film--is as un-English as it gets: wild, untamed, majestic. It just reeks of Manifest Destiny. - Sarah Richardson | And moving on to a very nitpicky matter, did the filmmakers ever visit Tidewater Virginia? Cliffs? Mountains? The animators' depiction of Virginia reminded me of the overblown and romantic frontier of the Hudson River School painters in the nineteenth century. The America of those artists--and of this film--is as un-English as it gets: wild, untamed, majestic. It just reeks of Manifest Destiny. - Sarah Richardson | ||
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| + | One thing struck me in particular that I had never noticed before when watching Pocahontas; both Smith and Pocahontas speak with American accents. This contrasts with the rest of the cast who almost all speak with non-American accents. This serves to situate Smith and Pocahontas as the first Americans and our cultural ancestors. – Wesley Weeks | ||
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| + | In class on Tuesday, we discussed the gendered division of labor among the Powhatan Indians establishing that the women were in charge of agriculture and the men in charge of fishing and hunting. We concluded that because agriculture was a large part of the diet, women must be valued and have some degree of power. This is not necessarily true. While certainly possible, and I do not know about the Powhatan in particular but, there are many societies where the women do a large portion of the work but are not valued for either because what the women produce is not considered important or the men view the product of the women’s labor as belonging to them e.g. a man’s wife farms pigs but the pigs are owned by the man. – Wesley Weeks | ||
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| + | In John Smith’s journal, it is interesting how he maps Indian political organization onto European models. For instance, Smith refers to many leaders as Kings even though they’re position in society was nothing like and English King. This lack of understanding foreshadows problems to come, especially considering Smith had probably the best understanding of the other culture out of all the original settlers. – Wesley Weeks | ||
