Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 24, 1990 TAG: 9006220610
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy Staff Writer
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
There's the Statue of Liberty - her power and immediacy showed up last year in Tiananmen Square, where Beijing students tried to re-create her and the democracy for which she stands.
In Russia, there's the Bolshoi Mec, or Big Mac. Moscow's McDonald's has 23 cash registers, and still it takes an hour to get your gums on a quarter-pounder with cheese. Symbolically, the Soviets can now look up to Ronald McDonald and his version of a better, Americanized way of life.
Marshall Fishwick can tell you what all these things mean, from the plastic pink flamingo in your front yard to the holey way you wear your jeans. From Dominion Bank's Tower of Power to the Mill Mountain Star.
And he will tell you - exhaustively - that no city or country can flourish without symbols. He can even quote Ralph Waldo Emerson on the subject:
"Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact," Fishwick says before launching into his some ideas of his own. "Symbols are on the front line in our battle for attention and survival."
That's why, he explains, the Beijing students used the lady with the torch to get their point across. Symbols pack punch.
Just like Marshall Fishwick. Statewide and beyond, he is to popular culture what Larry Sabato is to politics - highly quotable. He can annoy you with one remark and make you laugh out loud with his next.
A 66-year-old communications professor at Virginia Tech and a Roanoke native, Fishwick is one of the fast-talking deans of American popular culture. Meaning: He gets paid to spout off about stuff like Graceland, Slimfast, the Baby Jessica saga and electric guitars.
A newly released book he co-edited called "Dominant Symbols in Popular Culture" is a scholarly look at some of America's quirkier symbols, including house trailers, yard art, used-car salesmen, political cartoons, fast food and Big 10 football.
It's kitsch, with an academic twist.
And it's not exactly the kind of book you'd set down a Tom Clancy novel for - unless you were being quizzed on it in your next class.
But luckily Marshall Fishwick can talk . . . and pontificate . . . and otherwise charm the sunglasses off a visiting reporter.
We asked Fishwick to apply his theories to Southwest Virginia - to explain why some of us like the Mill Mountain Star, why some of us don't like it, and what it all means.
Not surprisingly, the Wacky World According to Fishwick came pouring out - all in the span of about 20 minutes. Take a deep breath and plunge in.
Symbolically, Roanoke is unlike most other Virginia cities, Fishwick says. Founded in 1882, it missed the "two great Virginia moments" - the 6 1 SYMBOLS Symbols Revolutionary and Civil wars.
Back then, Northern Virginia had claim to George Washington, Tidewater had Patrick Henry, the Piedmont had Thomas Jefferson, "and we had Big Lick, which was a bunch of rocks the deer came to lick," Fishwick says.
While those other cities still have a historically "Old South" feel, Roanoke's character is "New South" and very industry-oriented.
As Fishwick likes to say, "We were invaded not by the Yankees but by the railroad."
Fishwick knows railroads. While he was off studying at Yale ("I'm the non-producing, academic Fishwick"), his brother John P. Fishwick was on his way to becoming Norfolk & Western's chief executive officer.
Begun the same year as the city itself, N&W spawned Roanoke's major symbols: the locomotive 611, the largest and last standard-gauge steam engine in the country; the N&W building and train station; and the Hotel Roanoke.
In 1982, the railroad changed its name and moved most of its offices to Norfolk. Its symbols faded in its tracks.
All of which leaves Roanoke in a symbolic vacuum, Fishwick says. "Closing the Hotel Roanoke was the final blow."
What's a city without a symbol to do?
Follow its motto: "From Acorn to Oak, Watch Roanoke."
In other words, grow. Fill the void. Create new symbols that will create new dollars.
Here's what Fishwick has to say about those fledgling, wanna-be symbols, as well as the few remaining symbols of yesteryear:
\ The Star - At its first lighting on Thanksgiving Eve 1949, Rep. Clifton A. Woodrum quoted from the Bible: "When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding joy."
And then the party began.
Like a circus, the star was bright, shiny and not very relevant, Fishwick says. It symbolized the '50s, chauvinistic, America-on-top attitude.
But as America's power gradually began to slip, the star became too conspicuous and a little embarrassing. Some thought the star tacky.
"Why do you have a big star on top of a mountain? It's almost PR more than anything else," he says. "I do like it, though, because I like pop culture; I like kitsch. But to the historian in me, it doesn't make much sense."
The star is a comfortable symbol of an earlier, less sophisticated age. Unlike:
\ The Dominion Tower - Every new country that wants world recognition has to have two symbols: a skyscraper and its own airline.
"Now Roanoke has its own fancy airport, even though, incidentally, the number of flights out of here has diminished," he says.
"And the tower will show the world that we're really big stuff. We want to be seen."
Fishwick notes the contrasting placement of the skyscraper that is now under construction - just one block away from . . .
\ Roanoke City Market - where you can still get peaches from Bent Mountain. Although even that has changed somewhat, Fishwick says.
"When I was a kid, growing up in Southeast, the market was really down-home and country. Now it's almost chic with its cutesy shops and boutiques. It's got a little elegant flair to it now, and it's not quite so homey anymore."
What do all these little ironies mean?
That Roanoke is a city torn between two images.
Which brings us to the ever-controversial:
\ Explore Project - The fact that Roanoke can't decide what it thinks about the proposed living history park is more evidence of Fishwick's city-in-conflict theory, he says.
Explore, to its supporters, symbolizes that "we want to be big time; we want to be a hub. We want to be another Disney World," Fishwick says.
"Here we have sweet Fincastle, home-style Salem and comfortable Lexington. And we're caught between wanting to stay comfortable or becoming another Charlotte or Greensboro."
Symbolically similar to Explore, minus the controversy, is the Roanoke arts scene, and in particular:
\ Center in the Square - "The Roanoke arts are becoming New York-oriented. Where do we get our tenors for `La Boheme'? From New York."
Roanoke is a city in danger of losing its character, he adds, a personality he describes as a combination of "Scotch-Irish mountain culture with a strong dose of Southern conservatism and pride, and a bit of English country living."
And from off the civic track, Fishwick added a few final regional symbols to his list:
\ "Little Graceland" - The miniature Graceland replica that graces one Roanoker's Riverland Road lawn is not not only symbolic of what Americans think of Elvis. It's also symbolic of what Southwest Virginians think of country music.
"Roanoke has a deep affection for the society that produced Elvis," Fishwick says. "That's why so many people know about Little Graceland. We're yearning for the not-so-distant past already."
\ The VMI controversy - Very, very Virginian. Virginia Military Institute's refusal to admit women showcases the state's chauvinistic male attitude, he says.
"Only Virginia would have this fight. You can't imagine this argument rising in Michigan, can you?"
Just as the VMI controversy will one day be settled, so, too, shall these other symbols eventually fade - just like the N&W steam locomotive did.
"The point is, I try to see symbols not just as dead things in museums," Fishwick says. "I try to see them as live, forward-moving things."
Remember the fuss some Wellesley College students made over the selection of Barbara Bush as their commencement speaker? Two symbols clashed in that debate: Bush, symbolizing the devoted wife, mother and volunteer; and the students, representing the future lawyers and CEOs.
Following are a few other symbols that showcase the fads, trends and movements of today's American culture:
\ Holey blue jeans - The fact that you can actually buy jeans with ready-made holes has a lot to do with people who watch reruns of "The Grapes of Wrath," Fishwick argues.
"We want to identify ourselves with the Earth, with common things and people. Blue jeans symbolize freedom."
\ Yard art - People who display plastic pink flamingos or deer in their front yard yearn for a connection with animals they can't have as pets. A whole chapter of Fishwick's new book is devoted to this topic. (Nearly half a million pink flamingos were sold in North America in 1985, by the way.)
"It's almost like you have a cross at the cemetery to show you're still a Christian; you have a deer in your yard to show you still love animals," Fishwick explains.
"Yard art is poignant."
\ Baby Jessica - Why was the entire world tuned in a few years ago when Baby Jessica slipped down an abandoned well? Just ask Fishwick, a fanatic media-observer who gets his news in mega-bytes - by watching three television channels simultaneously.
"I checked, and the President was playing golf that weekend," Fishwick says. "It was basically a no-news weekend.
"If she'd have fallen down the tube while Gorbachev was here, no one would have noticed."
\ The flag - Here's a symbol that keeps rearing its head, most recently with the flag-burning controversies.
"The flag has come back in a very important way, as has anything dealing with liberty - the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell," Fishwick says.
Recent events in Central Europe and the country's shift to conservatism, Reagan-style, have made the new interest in Old Glory a fad to be reckoned with, he adds.
But no fad lasts long.
One of the best things about being in Fishwick's line of business is that it's always changing, always spawning out new material about which Fishwick and his colleagues can pontificate.
It's kind of like Slimfast, he says.
"Right now, everyone you know is on Slimfast. Two years from now, you won't even remember what it was."
by CNB