[As part of our
annual Virginia trip last summer, the boys and I—and AmericanStudier
madre—visited Colonial Williamsburg for
the first time. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy some different histories and
elements that are part of that complex and compelling historic site. Add your
thoughts, on Williamsburg or other historic sites, in comments!]
On what’s
unquestionably absent from a historic film, and what it can still offer.
One of the most
interesting choices made by Colonial Williamsburg can be found in the site’s
Visitors Center: its continued use of a more than half-century old introductory
film, Williamsburg: The Story of a
Patriot (1957). As that hyperlinked opening illustrates, the film stars
none other than future Hawaii Five-0 leading man Jack Lord as its
protagonist John Fry, a fictional member of the Virginia House of Burgesses who
finds himself and his family torn between the Loyalist and Revolutionary forces
and causes in the years leading up to the American Revolution. The presence of
a very young Lord (more than a
decade before Hawaii made him one
of the most famous actors in America) is no doubt part of why Williamsburg has
continued to use this film (remastered but otherwise unchanged from that late 1950s
version) rather than create a more updated, 21st century equivalent
(as, for example, Plimoth
Plantation has done to great effect).
The contrast
with the new Plimoth film, “Two
Peoples: One Story,” is particularly striking, and doesn’t cast the best
light on The Story of a Patriot. Plimoth’s
film does full justice to its titular subject, portraying both the arriving
English Pilgrims and the Wampanoag community with equal time, sensitivity, and
nuance; it neither shies away from detailing the destructive effects of that
English arrival on the Wampanoags nor fails to engage (as the film’s subtitle
suggests) with the complex, evolving interrelationships between the two
cultures. The Story of a Patriot, on
the other hand, features African American characters only as the Fry’s faithful
slaves; as I remember it, those slave characters have only a line or two in the
nearly 30-minute film, and then only to happily assent to whatever is asked of
them by the Fry’s. There’s certainly no indication that these African American
communities were part of 18th
century Williamsburg and Virginia in any meaningful way, nor that their presence
and voices would themselves become part
of the Revolutionary debates in complex and significant ways. I can’t
imagine a 21st century Williamsburg film treating slaves and slavery
in these reductive and nearly elided ways, and that would be an important
change to how the site is framed for visitors.
If Story falls short in that not unexpected
(for a 1957 text) but still important way, however, in others it took me by
pleasant surprise. Most interesting was the film’s willingness and ability to
present the Loyalist as well as the Revolutionary perspective—indeed, by making
Fry the son of deeply Loyalist parents (and opening with him taking over his Loyalist
late father’s House of Burgesses seat), the film rightfully positions that
perspective as the mainstream
one in the 1770s; and even as events unfold and the Revolution takes hold
(and Fry’s own perspectives changes), the film continues to do nuanced justice
to the Loyalists, treating them as thoughtful men and women following their own
path through that complex moment. Moreover, by focusing on the story of one
individual Virginian (a choice that reflects in part a Great Man style of
history that would likely not be the center of a 21st century film),
Story allows for personalized
portrayals of historical figures (and fellow Virginia legislators) like Thomas Jefferson
and Patrick
Henry, an element that helped my sons connect to those figures and the era’s
histories in meaningful ways. We happened to watch Story at the end of our Williamsburg experience, and I would
recommend that order—it helped us appreciate these strengths of the film while
better recognizing those elements it does not include.
Next
Williamsburg post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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