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lonesparkI was Disney villain song surfing lately (and yeah, "Hellfire" is the best one, although they are generally fantastic) and I came across "Savages" from Pocahontas. I felt like it should come with a trigger warning.
The full song/clip has two horrible aspects. The first is a "good" horrible aspect; it is triggery as fuck because it's a relatively catchy tune about murdering people because you distrust them, you want their resources, negotiating is hard, and when you're scared and hungry (or just scared) it's good to have a monsters to fight. And it's stuck right in a movie aimed at kids, as though plenty of people viewing the film haven't been on the receiving end of vicious bigotry and systemic racism. I haven't, although friends of mine have, and it still made me feel sick.
I say that's "good" in the sense that the bigotry is expressed by villains; the movie doesn't condone it. What the movie does condone, in the reprise of the song, is a kind of "both sides live in glass houses" false equivalence bullshit. The English think(/are convincing them selves that) the Indians are vermin, so wiping them out is not only not wrong, it's actually a duty. This is kind of foreshadowing for, I don't know, THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY. But the Indians also don't like the English, and want to attack them, so KIDS, VIOLENCE IS ALWAYS BAD, MKAY?
No.
I'm not a pacifist, but I come from a family of pacifists, and they still distinguish between defending your community with violence when maybe a nonviolent solution would be better and, and straight-up genocide.
The full song/clip has two horrible aspects. The first is a "good" horrible aspect; it is triggery as fuck because it's a relatively catchy tune about murdering people because you distrust them, you want their resources, negotiating is hard, and when you're scared and hungry (or just scared) it's good to have a monsters to fight. And it's stuck right in a movie aimed at kids, as though plenty of people viewing the film haven't been on the receiving end of vicious bigotry and systemic racism. I haven't, although friends of mine have, and it still made me feel sick.
I say that's "good" in the sense that the bigotry is expressed by villains; the movie doesn't condone it. What the movie does condone, in the reprise of the song, is a kind of "both sides live in glass houses" false equivalence bullshit. The English think(/are convincing them selves that) the Indians are vermin, so wiping them out is not only not wrong, it's actually a duty. This is kind of foreshadowing for, I don't know, THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY. But the Indians also don't like the English, and want to attack them, so KIDS, VIOLENCE IS ALWAYS BAD, MKAY?
No.
I'm not a pacifist, but I come from a family of pacifists, and they still distinguish between defending your community with violence when maybe a nonviolent solution would be better and, and straight-up genocide.
