ABSTRACT
Hollywood has long taken a leading role in shaping the American tradition of playing Indian. This chapter considers how this tradition is mobilized in two family films released close to the turn of the twenty-first century: Disney's heavily marketed animated film, Pocahontas and the 1995 Columbia/Paramount adaptation of Lynne Reid Banks's popular 1981 children's novel, The Indian in the Cupboard. While the marketing of The Indian in the Cupboard and its translation onto CD-ROM undercuts the narrative's critique of objectifying and manipulating human beings the tensions and contradictions among the message, the medium, and the marketing of Disney's Pocahontas are far more blatant. The CD-ROM encourages the Henuyeha, in the spirit of playful learning, to mimic just what Omri learned not to do, albeit in the service of understanding Little Bear's world. That Pocahontas raises a number of difficult and timely issues is a tribute to its ambition and seriousness of purpose.
