Cartooning History Disney Attempts To Avoid Insult Or Offense In First Feature Based On A Historical Figure

They fretted over the cleavage and fussed over the violence.

They sweated such cultural and historic details as the precise structures the Native American characters would occupy and the precise hairstyles these characters would wear.

They even timed the duration of a kiss, making sure it wasn’t too salacious for an exchange between two drawings.

Call it the protest-proofing of “Pocahontas,” a careful - and sincere - process by which the people at Walt Disney did their best to make certain that this summer’s huge animated release avoids the shoals of insult and controversy.

The movie, which opens June 23, perhaps seems anticlimactic in the wake of the mall tour and its long preview on “Lion King” video cassettes.

It’s a gamble for Disney in several regards - the studio’s first animated feature based on a historical figure, and its first with an ending that’s not entirely happy.

But one way in which the makers of “Pocahontas” have hedged their bets is by scrupulously monitoring the political, cultural and narrative content of the movie, by tempering the whimsy with a heavy dose of responsibility.

“Pocahontas,” for example, is a rare Disney animated feature in which the animals don’t talk. Its makers didn’t want to sacrifice the seriousness and believability of their story to that gimmick.

In terms of its portrait of Native Americans, a group usually treated by the movies in broadly stereotypical fashion, “Pocahontas” may actually be trailblazing.

Russell Means, a well-known American Indian (the term he prefers) leader who speaks the part of Chief Powhatan, Pocahontas’ father, says, “Looking at it as an American Indian, I cannot find anything wrong with this movie. I love the treatment of everything, because it’s all done with respect.”

Thinking back to 1953 and another Disney animated feature, “Peter Pan,” that included a song titled “What Makes the Red Man Red?,” Means adds that “Pocahontas” is “an absolute about-face, and thank God.”

Means - along with James Pentecost, the movie’s producer, and Ruben Aquino, the animator for the Powhatan character - visited Detroit recently to talk about “Pocahontas.”

A subject that quickly arose was the scrutiny - by arbiters of racial sensitivity, by parents, by psychologists - under which every aspect of the movie is guaranteed to come, particularly given the influence that Disney’s animated features have demonstrated in recent years.

Ask any parent with copies of “Aladdin” or “The Lion King” atop their video cassette recorders: A kid may watch a successful Disney feature dozens of times.

Last summer, “The Lion King” hadn’t been playing in theaters more than a few days before it provoked objections to its disturbing depiction of the murder of lion cub Simba’s father.

Weeks later, the complaint had changed to the alleged racism in the movie’s portrait of its animated hyenas and the alleged homophobia in the depiction of Simba’s uncle, a part spoken by Jeremy Irons.

“We just laughed,” says animator Aquino, who worked on that movie as the illustrator for the adult Simba. “It was so out of the blue. Here was somebody reading into the film something that we had no intention of putting there.”

What will be read into “Pocahontas”? Its makers concede that something inevitably will, but they don’t have any specific guesses.

The movie, taking pages from both known history and legend, tells the story of a Native American woman who in 1607 meets and falls in love with one of the English settlers of the new Jamestown colony in Virginia.

Their budding romance is played out against the suspicion and enmity between her community and his; they’re like a Juliet and Romeo of the virgin but racially charged American wilderness.

It necessitates a somewhat passionate embrace, which producer Pentecost says was approached with the utmost care.

“You don’t want to know the discussions we had about that kiss!” he laughs. “We talked a lot about how long it should go on. To a certain extent, it was about how intimate you should allow animated characters to get.”

For all their caution in that regard, they nonetheless forged ahead in presenting an illustrated protagonist with a decidedly va-vavoom figure and some visible cleavage in certain scenes.

Pentecost says the cleavage sort of slipped by him and others because for most of the movie, Pocahontas wears a necklace that covers it. By the time they gave it full attention, “it became an issue of ‘We can’t redo this, we’ll never get the movie done.’ “

The tale they were telling also necessitated a bit of violence, but “Pocahontas” steers clear of any illustrated blood. When one of the characters is shot, it’s impossible to tell where - there’s no visible wound.

“These kinds of things are very carefully planned out,” says Pentecost.

So was the movie’s approach to its historical subject matter and Native American characters.

Pentecost says that as soon as the project was set into motion about three years ago, efforts were made to touch base with historians and Native American leaders. Although the historical record of the Pocahontas story is vague and incomplete, the makers of the movie wanted to avoid any obvious inaccuracies.

They also wanted to avoid stereotypes. In “Pocahontas,” you won’t see tepees, because the movie makers’ research showed that those structures were alien to the Native Americans around Jamestown at that time.

You won’t see an ornate headdress on Chief Powhatan, because research showed he would have worn a simpler one.

Even more significant is what you will see - and hear.

“Pocahontas” makes the point that the Jamestown settlers had two primary and unflattering goals: to get rich off the land and to clear it of so-called savages.

“That’s historic,” says Means. “That’s revolutionary. For Indian people to ever be considered with respect in this country, Americans have to first deal with and admit their historical deceit. Disney does it right away, in the opening sequence.”

In fact, if any single group gets riled up over “Pocahontas,” it may be those who adhere to a more Anglo-centric version of American history. But the movie seems careful even to quell those complaints, taking pains not to demonize the colonists completely.

With one exception, they end up coming across as more misguided and ignorant than evil.

Although Pocahontas’ great love, John Smith, starts the movie bragging about the savages he will kill, he eventually changes his tune. His early proclamations of aggression can be chalked up to a testosterone overload.

His voice is provided by Mel Gibson, but the voices of all the significant Native American characters are provided by performers who, like Means, have Native American ancestry. The part of Pocahontas is spoken by Irene Bedard, who previously appeared in the TV movie, “Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee.”

While such casting is logical, it’s hardly common in the movie business. In the recent release “The Perez Family,” for example, the main Cuban characters are played by nonHispanic performers.

Smaller details drew attention, too. Means says that whenever he noted an incorrect observation of culture in a scene, he spoke up, and that contrary to his experience on other movies, the makers of this one listened.

Means told them to have the Native American characters call each other by their relationships - “father, daughter, friend” - rather than names, and so they do.

On top of all this, Means says, “Pocahontas” asserts the strength and prominence of women in Native American communities - something few if any movies have really done.

None of this is accidental.

“We’re aware of the power of the media in general, and of these films in particular,” Pentecost says.

“Pocahontas” represents a considered flexing of that muscle.