THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 30, 1995 TAG: 9508300017
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By AMY E. SCHWARTZ
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
I almost won the bet we had made as the car rolled toward Jamestown: that the historic Virginia shrine, site of the first English landing and of the events so exuberantly mischaracterized in Disney's ``Pocahontas,'' would manage to avoid even a single reference to the animated movie's existence. In fact, it takes an hour or so of exploring to find the island's one mention of Disney, deep in the interpretive museum, in an exhibit next to but emphatically not part of the gift shop.
You might have thought a Disney ``Pocahontas'' would constitute a bonanza of free publicity and media visibility for Jamestown, an obvious way to jazz up a site less visited and less visual than nearby Colonial Williamsburg. But that underestimates the seriousness with which tradition-minded Virginians have always taken Jamestown. One book calls it the ``mecca'' of historic preservation in a state known for reverence for past glories. Tourist presentations on the small ruin-strewn island date mostly from around 1907, the 300th anniversary of the English landing. They betray a cultural mind-set that, to put it gently, is far removed from the one that shaped the Disney script, a charming if a historical fable of a romance that paves the way for interracial harmony and understanding.
A wonderful book by historian James Lindgren called Preserving the Old Dominion, published by the University of Virginia Press, explains some of the forces at work in 1907 and before, when newly organized preservationists began reclaiming and labeling long-abandoned Jamestown Island ruins as a way of rebuilding an American identity from post-Civil War chaos. Virginians, he writes, resented bitterly the primacy accorded the Puritans and Massachusetts by northerners, who, they complained, had ``stopped the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay with Plymouth Rock.''
Pocahontas is a pronounced presence on the island, greeting visitors at the entry in the form of a 1922 statue. Plaques say she was a frequent visitor during the ``Starving Tyme,'' bringing gifts of food and serving as go-between with ambivalent tribal leaders. Of Disney's fancies - the romance with John Smith, the rejiggering of a 12-year-old child into a buxom 21-year-old - the formal presentation takes no note, saying only ``John Smith believed she had saved his life twice.''
Eventually you reach the museum's exhibit on ``Pocahontas's Image Through Four Centuries,'' which starts by noting ``the reality of her life is far overshadowed by the myths and legends which have surrounded her to this day.'' After listing other Pocahontas promotional gigs, old and new, it adds, ``Recently an animated cartoon by the Disney Company was released entitled `Pocahontas.' Note the new updated image of Pocahontas as displayed in a multitude of souvenirs ranging from Sweet Tarts to a popcorn bucket.'' And there she is, buxom and buckskinned, surrounded by turn-of-the century Pocahontas brand cigar boxes and pictures of Pocahontas steam ships and express trains.
Those Disney souvenirs are nowhere to be found in the well-stocked gift shop - not, attendants explain, because of anti-Disney sentiment but because the materials don't meet National Park Service criteria for gift shops at any historical site. One is that materials and books be historically accurate, a goal the Disney version doesn't meet and has repeatedly said it doesn't claim to.
Kids enthused by the movie should emerge from the encounter with no reason for cognitive dissonance - the main worry of those who complain about the animated movie's falsification of history. If anything, kids may be intrigued by the evidence on display of other eras' misconceptions: The museum notes dryly that the 1922 statue has Pocahontas dressed for no particular reason in the buckskin skirt and vest of the Plains Indians.
More historically accurate reconstructions here and there show Pocahontas closer to the preteen age she probably was in 1607. Standing near them, I heard two different small girls ask their mothers, ``Is this Pocahontas when she was little?''
Their perplexity invites a sense of the futility - worse, the historical myopia - of those who insist the latest interpretation of history is the absolute objective right one and also of those who sniffily dismiss it as reflecting the preoccupations of the day. Of all the hundreds of generations, why should ours be the first to free ourselves of current preoccupation and current psychology? I asked at the gift shop whether young customers are upset when they don't find the Disney Pocahontas on the shelves. Not really, said one souvenir-seller: ``They ask questions, but they're not disappointed, just curious. They want to know more, they like that it's a mystery.''
It doesn't confuse them? I asked. ``I expected that too,'' said her colleague, ringing up my purchase of three postcards, ``but I've been pleasantly surprised. I guess most people are just smarter than that.'' MEMO: Ms. Schwartz writes for The Washington Post.
by CNB