Attendance at historical sites suggests it might be time for a new way to tell the national story.
’s director of photography and a contibuting photographer forBaby boom-era Americans piled into their station wagons and visited historic sites in such record numbers in 1962 that the National Geographic Society sought to capture the trend in a huge, colorful volume it called. The book’s cover featured the colonial capitol in Williamsburg, Virginia, and showed men and women dressed up in tricorn hats and white bonnets, making an organic connection to the founding of the nation.
at the National Air and Space Museum trending down over the last 10 years despite drawing far more foreign tourists than in previous decades.Even places that depict American ingenuity in a different way, such as by telling the story of flight, show signs of losing their claim on the imagination.What does this say about the American story? The sites themselves are, in general, better-preserved and more thoughtfully and inclusively interpreted than ever.
After the Cold War, the American story as laid out by National Geographic seemed too simplistic, too determined to airbrush away the many bloody injustices and even atrocities that accompanied the European conquest of North America. Though the story was always tacitly intended to convey the power of myth, not truth, it couldn’t survive the evolving understandings of the events it covered. It became obsolete. It died a natural death.
Barack Obama came closer to defining a new national creed, inspiring to all, in his 2008 victory speech: “Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward.
Today, America finds itself in need of a national story that acknowledges the pain of the past — the struggle to overcome — but also emphasizes the ways in which all Americans pursue a common path to righteousness. It should be a story that doesn’t look away from suffering, but doesn’t demand victims and finger-pointing.
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