Conversations

I created a zine recently for my Gender and Violence class. It includes a series of conversations between various figures about violence. I got some really positive feedback from my prof today, so I thought I would post a segment from it. I am going to submit a copy to the Toronto Zine Library if you are interested. Who knows, it may become a series.

Part I

Pocahontas gets a chance to bitch out Walt Disney

P: Fuck you!
D: What?
P: Fuck. You.
D: What did I ever do to you?
P: What didn’t you do to my life?
D: Oh that.
P: Yeah, THAT.
D: I don’t see why you are complaining. I turned your life into a beautiful love story about cultural misunderstanding! I made you a Princess!
P: Fuck that and your Disnified American morality! I’m not one of your perfect cookie-cutter princesses! I am not, and was not the sexual Barbie-esque woman you made me into. I was 12!
D: That’s why we made you into an adult. The true story would have been too scandalous.
P: The true story would have revealed white people as colonialist swine.
D: Yes, well we’re choosy about history. Sometimes bending the truth is best.
P: Sometimes it’s better to throw truth out the window, which is what you did. You put my name on it so that you could claim some kind of historical basis. The whole story was total bullshit from both sides. Just because we’re native doesn’t mean you need to take same hippified interpretation of native spirituality to the point where I actually converse with a tree.
D: But we made you the good guys!
P: I appreciate your understanding that the colonialists were evil bastards.
D: Thanks.
P: But that doesn’t mean I’m happy. You turned my life into a tale of morality that totally ignores the colonialist power implications involved. I was a native girl that was kidnapped and died young and far away from home. What kind of life is that? How is that one of your fairy tales? You should have gone with Sacagawea, you could have pretended that she wasn’t captured and sold to a French fur trapper. You could have made her a feminist icon!
D: There’s no potential love story in that.
P: You could get rid of the French man and give her a polyamorous relationship with Lewis and Clark. It could be hot; you’d get the gay vote too!
D: Ummm
P: Oh, That’s right; you don’t do gay do you?
D: I just don’t think society is ready for polyamory just yet.
P: Of course not, but they are all set to eroticize native women, you’ve only being doing that as a society since the discovery of the new world after all.
D: ...
P: Listen Walt, are you listening? Ok, don’t fuck with history. Do you know what happens when you fuck with history? No, I’m sure you don’t, no one fucks with your history after all. When you change history you deny and erase important truths. Important truths like the fact that I was not a princess, I was not in love and I wasn’t a woman yet. Important truths like that natives did not actually speak to trees, and that our culture had its own set of issues and autonomy. I understand that you did do some research, and that’s great, I totally dig it. Just don’t fuck with history. Because fucking with history ignores the violence that was done to us.
D: So, I guess I have a lot of work to do.
P: Pretty much.
D: I’m sorry
P: Prove it.
D: How?
P: I’m not sure you can.
D: What can I do?
P: I’d like to see your next princess not be a racist stereotype with a waist the size of a toothpick, but that might be asking a lot.
D: I can try.

STAY TUNED for ROLLERDERBY and my review of NEW MOON and the twilight franchise.