Advertising Missionaries; Willa: An American Snow White

Once upon a time there was a filmmaker in Virginia named Tom Davenport who had the uncanny knack of being able to create winsome live-action American versions of classic fairy tales in a multi-award winning series called From the Brothers Grimm...and, by golly, he's gone and done it again! In Willa: An American Snow White--based on the timeless tale of monstrous vanity transforming into a murderous jealousy--the young Becky Stark is radiant as the photogenic orphan Willa. Having lost her mother and later her (remarried) father, poor Willa now lives with her aging stepmother Regina (Caitlin O'Connell), a former queen of the stage who carries a certain mirror which reassures her regularly that she's the bee's knees. Although Willa tries to court her stepmother's favor, she makes the nearly fatal error of attending a house party looking better than her stepmother; an offense which is, of course, punishable by death. Taking mercy on the child, Regina's henpecked servant Otto (Mark Jasper) takes the child into the woods, where she later hooks up with a traveling medicine fair (the story takes place around 1915) and--sweet irony--ends up playing Snow White on stage to rapt small-town audiences. From a business standpoint, naturally, the play is not the thing; what's important are the commercials. Which is why the crowds are regularly regaled with eloquent sales pitches for Chief Tonka's Elixir of Life (the innocent Willa, when questioning the potion's actual efficacy in alleviating all and sundry woes is told succinctly: "It's not meant to cure, it's meant to sell.") Needless to say, complications arise when Regina discovers that her stepdaughter is not only still sucking in oxygen, but playing to (relatively) packed village fields, a fact which really makes her come unglued in a kind of Gloria-Swanson-Sunset Boulevard-ish way. Clever scripting, wonderful comic timing, Davenport's trademark faithfulness to the darkness of the tales (this is not the Care Bears version), and sly asides on the thespian trade, make Willa an altogether enjoyable addition to the impressive Davenport ouevre, which includes Ashpet: An American Cinderella (VL-5/91) and Mutzmag: An Appalachian Folktale (VL-7/93). Highly recommended. Aud: I, J, P. And speaking of vanity and fairs, here's an odd question. How do condoms drive up the cost of pork? This is a weird trail, but follow me: in Papua New Guinea, a traveling troupe of native actors/salespeople, i.e. Advertising Missionaries, bring their soap opera plays to remote tribes beyond the reach of radio and television. Here, the modern medicine fair hawkers act out skits emphasizing the disgusting nature of normal body odors; hence the pressing need for laundry and personal hygiene products. In addition, the troupe offers social education about subjects ranging from alcohol abuse to planned parenthood. In one village, located somewhere out in nellie's booty, the actors suggest a sketch outlining the population control benefits of condoms. But the tribal elders argue that condoms would encourage promiscuity causing all kinds of social and economic grief. You see, cuckolded husbands would demand compensation from the scum-sucking dogs who slept with their wives, and since the coin of the realm is pigs, the more testosterone-driven members of the tribe would end up paying dearly--which is how condoms can drive up the cost of pork. Chris Hilton and Gauthier Flauder have created an always interesting (if occasionally heavy-handed) documentary whose primary strength is that it provides an illuminating snapshot of a nascent consumer economy. And while we may laugh at the gullibility of native audiences who literally beam with pleasure over utterly hokey, pedestrian skits (you'll ask yourself: "that's entertainment?"), our superior chortling should be tempered by the reminder of just how (un)sophisticated television commercials were during the 1950s. But perhaps the most naïve/poignant aspect of Advertising Missionaries is the tribal chief's boast that he will ‘take the best of the West' for his people while maintaining tradition. The chief, unfortunately, is ignoring both poetry and history. In his classic poem "The Vanity of Human Wishes," the great 18th century man of letters Samuel Johnson wrote of "how nations sink, by darling schemes oppressed." The chief is no match for an army carrying the weapons of underarm deodorant and fragrant shampoo. He too will succumb to the temptations of the vanity fair: we just don't know what the consequences will be. An invigorating, often humorous, and sometimes sobering film. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)