Romanticism In The New World

Terrence Malick’s The New World, depicts a romanticized view on the settlement in the “New World”. The title itself implies that with a new world there is also an old world with Native Americans. This film is directed towards a sensitive audience creating a romanticism that depicts Romeo and Juliet. With two people from far different cultures fall in love despite social barriers and language that lead to how pocahontas comes to live with English settlers. The young women is portrayed with a wild spirit and a willingness to learn the new culture. Throughout this movie, viewers are subjected to the romanticism between two opposite cultured lovers as well as shown how Native Americans reacted to settlers both negatively and positively. This

The story depicts a good feel version of history and rationalizes the genocide of the Indians through a tale that is familiar to Americans. The story reconstructs the colonization and ultimately creates ignorance of the accurate history of the Natives. Romanticizing the image of Natives in The New World creates a vision of the Powhatan Indians of Virginia. This can be seen through different variations of the Pocahontas such as the animated Disney story which is more accurate than the movie New World, where John Smith and Pocahontas come from complete cultures fall in love despite coming from two different worlds. By creating a whimsical love story. Nevertheless, the Powhatan Indians are shown through whimsical scenes and music that creates positive and negative stereotypes of the group as well as showing the inevitable colonization of the New world. The movie the The New World has accurate and inaccurate historical context with two opposite cultures coming together. This essay will depict the portrayal of the settlement regarding the English puritans and the effect it had on Natives. Backed up with scholarly essays, readings from class, as well as notes from lecture to actively analyze the accuracy and inaccuracy of the movie. Through an Ethic lense to focused on the Initial reaction as well as secondary reaction, Romanticizing colonization,

Whimsical music in the background causes anticipation that the group felt since Natives have never seen anything like this before. Natives originally believe that the “1st European ship they saw to be floating islands inhabited by supernatural spirits”(Trigger 1201). Since this was a new concept for them, they were blinded by the hardship they would soon face. The first interaction the two groups had in the movie was peaceful, the Indians were curious about the settlers foreign clothing, and accessories. They were seen touching the settler’s clothing and hair which can best be described as two realities coming together. Bruce Trigger explains that on numerous occasions, Native people interpreted the settlers as supernatural (1201). This was because of the accessories that the settlers had such as guns, swords, and gunpowder that captivated the Natives. This is seen in the movie where John Smith, and his assigned group search for food when there's rotted. They head to the village and when arrived, one of the men shoots an Indian, this startless the indians and justifiably scares them. To counteract this violence, Smith plunges the shooter’s head under water. Since the indigenous people saw the settlers as supernatural, many “Spanish recalled Natives holding prisoners underwater to determine weather Europeans were immoral”.