SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

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136 I Comparative Perspectives on Complex Semiotic Processes
But the "smallness of [its] world" did not hinder its eagerness to "receive the
latest fashions, to be in touch with the polite world, and to enjoy the benefits of
a cultured high society" (Isaac 1981:235). After the administrative functions
moved further inland to Richmond in 1780, the city continued to be the location
of the College of William and Mary and of the Public Hospital for the insane.
The contemporary tourist site is the result of financial contributions of John
D. Rockefeller, Jr. Starting in 1926, Rockefeller arranged for the purchase of
land, the removal of nineteenth- and twentieth-century structures, and the construction
or reconstruction of eighteenth-century buildings. Modern buildings
were added to accommodate the tourist crowd, such as the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Folk Art Center, the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Gallery (self-proclaimed
as "one of the foremost collections of English and American decorative
arts of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries" [Cooper cited in Leone
1987:4]), the "award-winning" Williamsburg Inn, the Williamsburg Lodge,
Conference Center, and Auditorium, and various retail stores, including one for
Colonial Williamsburg furniture reproductions. In short, Colonial Williamsburg
offers a "total historical environment" (Fortier 1979:252), if not a "total social
order" (Wallace 19863:148).
Today, Colonial Williamsburg is an enormously popular tourist destination,
hosting over a million visitors per year; and it is an equally important educational
and historical institution, with an operating budget of over $75 million. Its hotels,
restaurants, golf course, and meeting rooms make it suitable for all sorts of
corporate, educational, and political conferences (such as the Summit of Industrialized
Nations in 1983). Its prominence is reflected in the names of the men
serving as the Board of Directors, which included in 1985 the Chairman of the
Board of AT&T, the Senior Vice-President of IBM, the President of the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund, the Librarian of Congress, the Secretary of Education, an
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, the President of the University of Virginia,
the C.E.O. of New York Life Insurance Company, the C.E.O. of Brooks
Brothers, and David Brinkley of ABC News.
p
The thesis I want to argue is that Colonial Williamsburg's overt educational
and recreational functions^mask "à* powerful covert function of reproducing and
legitimizing a system of social distinctions in contemporary American society,
and that"this4s accomplished by the promotion of aif ideology of scientific transparency
that anchorsj>resent distinctions in the colonial past. From the moment
a tourist enters the Visitor Center on the outskirts of the Historic Area and views
the thirty-five-minute docudrama orientation film Williamsburg—The Story of
a Patriot, Colonial Williamsburg proclaims itself to be a story of freedom and
democracy and presents the tourist experience as a "journey through history."
The reconstruction is said to represent not just a remarkably important colonial
city but the very birthplace of the "idea of America." This idea is formally de-
The Semiotic Regimentation of Social Life L 137
scribed in terms of the "Five Cornerstones of Freedom": integrity of the individual,
responsible leadership, self-government, individual liberties, and equality
of opportunity. The tourist is .continually reminded that eighteenth-century Williamsburg
was a perfect example' of the harmonious mingling of different social
classes: the British aristocracy, the local planter elite, the "middling sort" of
hard-working farmers and craftspersons, and the slaves—Indians, as we shall see,
occupy an utterly outcaste position. And those members of the community who
found themselves at the lower end of this hierarchy were, at least, engaged in the
process of "becoming Americans." There is, thus, an explicitly constructed identity
between the "melting pot" process of modern multiethnic America and an"
original coexistence of social differences under the aura of democratic ideals.
And while at ColoniaLWilliamsburg visitors are encouraged to use the experience
as a means to ^rededicate^ themselves to tfeèjttanshistorical verities.
What the tourist's experience) of this "lnnn^"n^ëiïm'' consists of is, how- ~\ '
ever, quite different frortl the official orienting ideology. The pervasive message
of the discourse, images, interpretive signs, and overall site organization taken as ;,
an implicit semiotic text is that of rigid social "distinction" (Bourdieu 1984).
Not only do the costumed interpreters repeat the hierarchy of aristocracy, planters,
craftsmen, and slaves, but even finer distinctions are drawn within each of
these categories: for example, between masters, journeymen, and apprentices, dfr\Z '
between skilled and unskilled slave labor. This lesson is communicated largely v (
through the interpretation of material objects. Furniture is divided into fine, im-^f "
,c>
ported items and rough, locally produced items; houses are evaluated in terms of
the presence or absence of multipurpose rooms; patterns of activity are separated >p*w*
into leisure (such as "politics") and labor (such as craft production); different
terms of address are used to set off "ladies" and "gentlemen" from the rest of
the populace; and distinct styles of clothing mark fine gradations in the social
ladder (gentlemen's shoes are designed to be too tight to actually walk in). This
system of distinction, though rigid, did not prohibit middle-ranking persons
from hoping to climb up the social ladder: I attended an evening performance of
"Keeping the Best Company," described as a dramatization of the "clothing,
manners, and diversions of the gentry of eighteenth-century Virginia to which
the middling class aspired."
At the Gaol we were told that "upper class" people received bail; debtors,
middle-class women, and the insane were confined in not-so-uncomfortable spartan
rooms ("the only place in Williamsburg with indoor plumbing"), while criminals
from the lower classes—that is, real criminals—were bound in miserable
cells. The tourist's experience is that these last are the stereotypical or focal criminals,
although the guide did note that, in eighteenth-century Williamsburg, most
criminal cases involved the propertied classes. After leading us through these various
gradations of incarceration, the interpreter commented that, luckily, "today,