On why it’s okay
to turn a prison into a tourist attraction—and what we could do instead.
San Francisco’s Pier 39 is one of the more interesting
tourist areas I’ve seen—because of its unique origin point, as the site of an
annual (and now seemingly permanent) gathering
of sea lions; because of the collection of stores and games and
entertainments that has sprung up around that focal point, making the pier feel
a bit like a combination of Coney Island and the Mall of America; and because it’s
also the launching point for tours and explorations of Alcatraz, the island, national park, and former federal prison in San
Francisco Bay. As a result of that latter connection to The Rock (the
penitentiery, not the action film starring Connery and Cage), Pier 39 also houses
the Alcatraz
Gift Shop, a store where you can buy, among countless other things, baby
clothes designed to look like inmates’ apparel (right down to the numbered
nametags).
When I first
encountered the gift shop, I found it in pretty poor taste, a crass
commercialization of a site where over a thousand Americans were
imprisoned, many for life and all in the most bleak maximum security
conditions. I’d still say that’s part of the story, although the gift shop’s
earnings do support the national park and thus (as I understand it) the very
deserving National Park Service as a whole. But I would also say that the gift
shop, like the national park, like the tours and explorations of the island, and
perhaps even like the action film, although that would be a stretch at best,
has the potential to connect tourists and visitors to the history of the prison—and
that such a connection, like any burgeoning historical interest, could lead as
well to further investigation and engagement with issues in the present, with
the broader histories and stories
of America’s prisons and prisoners. I’ve long since come to the conclusion
that almost any method of engaging Americans with our histories, as long as it
doesn’t blatantly misrepresent or falsify that past, is worthwhile, and
certainly the Alcatraz tourism industry has the potential to produce such
engagement.
On the other
hand, there’s another Alcatraz history, one located after the prison’s 1963
closure and before its 1973 opening as a national park, that isn’t part of the
gift shop at all, nor, I would argue, much present in the island’s tourist
narratives more broadly. That’s the 1969 takeover of the island
by a group of Native Americans affiliated with the American
Indian Movement; this particular community called themselves “Indians of
All Tribes” and hoped to turn the
island into a cultural center. During the nearly two years of occupation,
this activist effort certainly succeeded in raising
awareness and changing national conversations, although (as was the case
with each AIM endeavor) it also produced unintended acts of destruction and
violence. The history of the occupation is thus a complex one, connected to
longer-term and even more complex histories and obviously unable to be turned
into a gift shop product; but why couldn’t Alcatraz become the site of a
cultural center, one that could include not only Native American communities
and stories but those of the many other cultures that have called and continued
to call the Bay Area home? Not sure I can imagine a more inspiring future for a
former prison.
Next site
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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