Netflix Changes Their Description For Disney’s ‘Pocahontas’ After Folks Complain It’s Sexist

So, normally, any talk about Pocahontas is going to be limited to random singalongs of “Colors Of The Wind” during a road trip or late night at the bar or discussions about which Disney princess is better (how you frame that is your creepy business). But as Mashable points out, we’ve reached a new discussion on the classic Disney film and it’s all because of Netflix. As Dr. Adrienne K. pointed out on Twitter, the earlier description for Pocahontas was a little off:

Now she also shared this article more recently to explain the reasons why she believed this to be wrong, using other Disney films on Netflix as a comparison:

I picked [Tarzan, Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Hercules, and The Emperor’s New Groove] because they have male protagonists, and with the exception of Emperor’s New Groove which has a “South American” lead (who spends the vast, vast majority of the movie as a llama), the rest of white males. I have problems with the “gentle, crippled” descriptor…but the point is, these movies all have well developed romance plot lines, but their (white, male) protagonists get to save things, fight people, have adventures, and be ‘lord of the jungle’–they are not defined by their romantic relationships in the film. Ah, misogyny.

And she makes a good point, supporting many that she made on Twitter in the immediate wake of her initial Tweet:

You might call this a narrow social issue, but Netflix heard the complaints and took some action. Adrienne received a notice from Netflix about her complaints and then changed the description on their service:

Pretty cool that Netflix went and changed the entire thing after reviewing the complaints. There’s certainly more weight here than say a Change.org petition or just a lot of loud complaints on Twitter. And it only took them a month to do so, something that the Washington Redskins can’t seem to work on.

(Via Mashable / Native Appropriations)

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