Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: THURSDAY, August 17, 1995 TAG: 9508170013 SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
More than 44,000 people visited an archaeological dig at Jamestown in June, a 25 percent increase from the same month last year. For those with an interest in real history, the trip is worthwhile. The archaeologists have discovered signs and artifacts that may be from the original fort of the first permanent English settlement in America.
If so, it is an important find. Historians have long believed the site was washed away by the James River. So far, about 40,000 artifacts have been recovered - but the researchers have no illusions that the jewelry, coins and tobacco pipes account for the surge in tourists. For that, they thank "Pocahontas" and the cartoon creature in the title role, who trades goo-goo eyes with the strapping young, clean-shaven Capt. John Smith.
At least some of the kids who watched the animated story have been curious enough to want to learn more about Pocahontas, and that curiosity has brought them and their parents and grandparents to Jamestown Island. There they learn that the young princess really was young - about 11 - when, legend has it, she intervened with her father to save the life of John Smith. The two were never an item.
As one modern 11-year-old visiting the dig told a Washington Post reporter, "I thought [the movie] was kind of good, but it lied."
Even more than whetting kids' appetites for more accurate information, here's a lesson for an infotainment-saturated democracy. It is difficult to get an accurate picture of an event even when a good-faith effort is made simply to record what has happened and put it in context. When a story is being told to sell as entertainment, the storyteller is free to add and subtract, to enhance the drama and create and ignore characters and events simply to move the narrative along in a crowd-pleasing way.
That's entertainment, kids - never to be mistaken for reality. Learning to distinguish one from the other is a lifetime learning task.
by CNB