Johnny Depp Kills Disney Pirates

Having just returned from Disneyland, I have been thinking about the updated Pirates of the Caribbean ride that now features Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. While Disney surely added Capt. Jack to the ride to update it and increase audience engagement, in discussing it with my wife, it became clear to us that the addition actually reduces the narrative power and, thus, the overall engagement and enjoyment of the ride.

Timelessness

What makes good narrative great is when it is imbued with a sense of timelessness. While stories like Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird have a definite time and place, they don’t feel bound to that particular time. The characters feel fresh and real every time you read them, and the settings feel like they could exist right now in some parallel universe coexistent to our own. Before the addition of Jack Sparrow, the ride had this feeling to it. The riders filled in the details of the narrative, imagining a back story and a conclusion, projecting the motivation of each character and their ultimate fate, placing the events in an imaginary, but plausible, history. With the addition of Sparrow, all that is taken away. The narrative is forced (rather ungracefully in its repetition) upon you. You are now watching a version of a blockbuster movie, and you know the back story and the ending because it has been thrust upon you. The narrative has been appropriated, and you must comply.

Rider as a Character

Even worse is the loss of the inclusion of the riders as characters in the story. In the original ride, you become a part of the story. You are warned at the beginning that you are entering into danger, you then view the “cursed treasure,” and are then told the following:

“No fear hath ye of evil curses, says you. Ah... Properly warned, ye be, says I. Who knows when that evil curse will strike the greedy beholders of this bewitched treasure.

Perhaps you/ye knows too much. You've seen the cursed treasure. You know where it be hidden! Now pass through at your own risk. These be the last friendly words you'll here!”

You are now cursed and must face your fate. That curse brings you right into the middle of a fierce battle with cannon balls whizzing overhead, then through a burning, groaning, crumbing building, and finally between the muskets of drunken, dueling pirates. Happily, you survive all of these and leave with your secret knowledge of the treasure and your lives. All this is taken away from you in the new version. You simply watch as other characters play out other stories. The boat is little more than a floating theater seat. Pass the popcorn.

Implications for Instruction

Seeing or hearing a narrative is a powerful means of engagement. Even more powerful is direct participation in the narrative by taking on a role and/or being asked directly or indirectly to project the conclusion. People like Stephen Covey teach using great narratives. But they keep those narratives for themselves because they provide all the pieces and trot them out in each training masterfully and verbatim like an actor on a stage. While this is so much better than PowerPoint bullets, it is not as powerful as sharing the narrative with the audience, giving them a real stake in its outcome, and even trusting them to write the ending.