Week Nine: Rabbit Holes and the Civil War

I was arguing with someone online a few months ago who insisted that all of the human rights reform movements between the 1830s and 1920s or so were against the Bible; that God never told us to defend our own rights, but rather to turn the other cheek, submit to authorities, and yield our rights to do what we want. This struck me as particularly interesting, since he was defending the South in the Civil War (of course, arguing that the abolition movement entirely went against Scripture). I thought about it for a moment, and in crafting my reply, remarked aloud to my friend Christi that with few (if any) exceptions, civil wars are merely failed revolutions, in which either the country splits into two or more separate sovereign states, or remains intact, with a new government taking over. Regardless, if the rebelling side succeeds, we usually remember the war as a revolution, otherwise it is a civil war. Which then launched a conversation between Christi and me trying to figure out why the Civil War, as a failed revolution, was okay, in which the Southern states were rebelling and fighting for the right to govern themselves (whether rightly or wrongly, it really doesn't matter here), but an abolition movement led largely by whites trying to free the enslaved African Americans, or a women's rights movement (very much supported by a number of men as well) to work to pass new legislation.

I have come to the conclusion that the American Civil War is a maddening rabbit hole. I remember my first glimpse into said hole- I was 16, away at a music camp for 3 weeks, with a roommate from Louisiana, Mandi. I seriously had no idea until then some people actually argued the Confederates were right. The next several years, I met more and more people who thought the same way Mandi did. Not long after returning home from meeting Mandi, my Baptist church in Cincinnati even had an actual debate about the Civil War. I was a little taken aback that people from my church actually sided with the South. So I started to study the Civil War. I became more aware of Civil War reenactments, of old Southern balls, with men in Confederate uniforms, and women in their big 1860s ball gowns, etc. The older I got, and the more I argued, the further I slipped down the rabbit hole. The further I slipped down the rabbit hole, the more people I discovered who are also stuck in said rabbit hole. I am currently further down the rabbit hole than ever. The frustrating thing is, I have yet to find a way out. I keep getting sucked into long arguments about the Civil War, in which no one's mind gets changed, and we end up where we started, only having lost several hours of our lives and raised our blood pressures in the process. No matter how many times I resolve to quit arguing about the Civil War, I always break that promise. When it comes to swearing off these arguments, my resolve is about as strong as Marshall Erickson's whenever he tries to make a resolution about...anything. I'm not like this regarding any other war. In fact, bring up literally any other war (my friend John on occasion has tried to bring up the War of 1812...he's Canadian), I'll make an argument, spend maybe 5 minutes defending it, and then shrug my shoulders and say you either have a decent point that I'll have to consider, or I'll just decide I'm right and move on (kidding...kinda).

So what's with the fascination with the Civil War? Actually, it could better be called an obsession. If it was just me, that'd be one thing, and I'd shrug it off, like I shrug off my obsession with fuzzy things or Peeps. But it's not just me! It's a freakishly large portion of the American population, including residents from states that weren't even involved...like Alaska...people whose ancestors hadn't even gotten here yet, and as my friend James informs me, even some Canadians. Yes, apparently Canadians have American Civil War reenactments too...including Canadians who never had ancestors in the US. I know, bizarre. But then, is it really any stranger than the fact that so many Americans are obsessed with a war that ended 148 years ago, and even our very oldest citizens are a few generations removed from the war? It's fascinating to me that someone could walk in to a crowded room in most parts of the US and scream "AMERICA SHOULD HAVE LOST THE REVOLUTION!" and most people would stare, blink a couple times, and then go back to whatever they were doing. But send someone into a crowded room to shout, "THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA SHOULD HAVE WON!" or, "GOD BLESS ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION ARMY!" and almost guaranteed, chaos will ensue, and people who may have just been speaking with each other in a friendly manner will end up in an instant heated argument (kinda like the whole predestination/free will debate- ironically, I discovered that was a "thing" when I met Mandi too...). So why is it that very few people care if someone says we should still be British subjects, but almost everyone is up in arms over any such statement about the Civil War?

One of this week's readings comes from the first two chapters of Tony Horowitz's book, Confederates in the Attic. I've always meant to read this book, and now I'm going to have to- the first two chapters are pretty awesome, though I only really have time to talk about the first here. Horowitz begins chapter 1 with a very apt quote from Gertrude Stein: "There never will be anything more interesting in America than that Civil War. Never." I think she may be correct.

Horowitz begins by talking about his great-grandfather, who didn't arrive in America until the 1880s, but was always obsessed with the Civil War, passing down that obsession to his children, grand children, and great-grandchildren. A few pages in, Horowitz queries, "Why did this war still obsess so many Americans 130 years after Appomattox? I returned to Poppa Isaac's book. What did that war have to do with him, or with me?" At this point, I looked up from my reading and said, "Yes, why IS this still such an obsession?" As many people have seen on my Facebook wall from time to time, I occasionally opine that not only has the Civil War not yet ended, but it also NEVER WILL. Historian Kathleen has to be more responsible and give more academic answers than that over-simplified rant, but private citizen Kathleen absolutely believes that.

The book continues as Horowitz details his experience meeting a hardcore Confederate reenactor, and the time he spent with this guy and his other reenactor friends. It's amazing just how hardcore these men were. Every single detail had to be correct. They cared nothing about physical injury, as long as it happened authentically. Many even tried to lose as much weight as possible, trying to achieve a weight of 135lbs or less, and acquiring the underfed, gaunt Confederate soldier look. I'm sorry, but as a 29 year old female, I canNOT help but wonder how many of these men had wives or girlfriends at home. I'm trying to come up with any circumstance under which I would find a guy over 5'7" or 5'8" and weighing 135lbs to actually be attractive, and I'm not getting anything. How hardcore must these women be to be okay with this? Or all they mostly confirmed bachelors who care more about reliving a war than female companionship? I did actually laugh out loud  when I read the conversation in which one reenactor lamented that his girlfriend broke up with him because she was tired of trying to compete with a 130 year old event. Can't say I blame her. Actually, I'd probably give her a good fist bump if I met her. But as per usual, I digress.

I found the end of the first chapter to be somewhat disturbing. Horowitz recalls the a conversation with several of the hardcores. They talked about how their repeated reenacting experiences, in very unpleasant conditions helped them understand how easy their lives were, and one said he would not be upset to get ticks and lice: "If that happened, I'd feel like we'd elevated things to another level. It would suck, but at least I'd know what it was like to scratch my head all day long." To me, this comes too close to the medieval ideas of self-abasement and punishment. Extreme suffering as a kind of penance. In this case, what a read seemed to border on a psychologically unhealthy obsession with understanding fully- by actually feeling- what Civil War soldiers went through. But here's my question: for what? Is there a purpose other than just understanding? And if so, what is it? To take it a step further, though my argumentation does not approach the commitment level of the hardcores, reading this does make me ask what the purpose of such arguments are.

Why am I still arguing about a war that ended 148 years ago? Why is anyone?

 
I have a mixture of good and bad answers to those questions, and I'm really not sure there's one right answer, or even just a dozen right answers. But something about the American Civil War makes it one of the most unique and, frankly strange, obsessions in existence. For all of us afflicted with this obsession, it wouldn't hurt to return to these questions occasionally for perspective. Though maybe it's really just another mental illness, and in 100 years, it'll be right there alongside paranoia and delusional behavior. Hmmm...

Week Eight: Hollywood and History

This week's readings centered around the film Black Robe, so as would be expected, we were required to also watch the movie. For my more conservative readers, I would say watch at your own risk, the movie does have an R rating, and it ain't the dialogue that got it said rating.

As a history geek, I have long been irritated by inaccurate portrayals of history in film. In many cases, Hollywood likes to sacrifice the real for the sensational, or edit things to prove the producer's agenda. For example, you know the scene in The Patriot in which the villagers are locked inside their church and burned by the British? I'll never forget the reactions of various professors decrying that as a sensational Hollywood lie. Of course then there's Song of the South which is a horrid perversion of a slave's life in the South. Pearl Harbor, Titanic, and many other movies have glaring historical errors in them.

The movie Black Robe is about a Jesuit missionary who embarks on a journey and has dealings with various First Nations tribes in Canada, including the Algonquins, Mohawks, and Huron. It is true that the portrayal of these people groups is less than flattering. It is also true that to someone who knows absolutely nothing about any of these tribes (and very little about Native Americans and First Nations in general), it has an air of authenticity. However, according to one article I read in response "And They Did It Like Dogs In the Dirt...An Indigenist Analysis of Black Robe" by Ward Churchill, the content was actually less than accurate. For one thing, the movie had Algonquians speaking a Cree dialect. I mean, not that I'd know the difference, but seriously, people? I wouldn't make a movie and have a Mexican speaking Castillian Spanish, nor would I make a movie and have a Ukranian speak Russian. If you're going to go to the trouble of having a large portion of a movie's dialogue be in a foreign language, why not make sure it's the correct one? Sorry, I just don't get that.

Churchill decries the film critics who claim to know anything about history at all, claiming it to be "historically sound," etc., and I'll agree, this is a problem. Film critics should comment on the film as a film, not as a representation of history. But aside from that, Churchill criticizes the filmmakers for quite obviously misrepresenting the various tribes, especially the Mohawks, showing them to be far more bloodthirsty or sexually deviant than they actually were. According to Churchill, the details were so thoroughly researched (sets, costumes, etc.) that it would be impossible to do so much research and not be aware that the child captured by the Mohawks would have simply been raised as a Mohawk, rather than killed in front of the child's family. Churchill accused the filmmakers of having an agenda to show these tribes as being savage- as if in an effort to justify white domination over the indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada. I'll have to agree with him (assuming his facts are correct), that if so many minute details were correct, the filmmakers must have known what they were doing, and to intentionally villainize these people is wrong.

However. In his article, "In Defense of Black Robe: A Reply to Ward Churchill, Kristoff Haavik disagrees with Churchill, in spite of claiming to be an avid admirer of Churchill's work. Haavik actually states that Black Robe was an accurate portrayal of Native Americans.  After having read both articles, I have to say I'm more inclined to agree with Haavik, as he points out a few discrepancies between the film and Chruchill's retelling of it. Haavik states that Churchill has "something of a point" in his claims about the Mohawks killing their child prisoner, saying it would be more likely for the child to be adopted into the tribe, but killing children as portrayed in the movie was not unheard of for Mohawks- just far less common than adoption. Haavik's article goes on for several pages about native culture and Churchill's points.

It is not terribly uncommon for historians to disagree on things such as this. However, this dispute does raise a valid question: Can films be used as legitimate ways to teach history?

My answer to this question is a cautious "yes." One of the history professors at Ouachita (where I did my undergrad), Dr. Motl, used films in three of the four classes I had with him: Modern Germany, Modern America, and American Women's History. We watched Schindler's List, and then discussed it. He was careful to point out the few things here and there that were sensational add-ins on the part of Steven Speilburg, but that was easy to do, and on the whole, the film was incredibly useful in our class. It brought the horrors we were studying to life. I also remember watching the film Thirteen Days, about the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this case, the film was almost entirely accurate (yes, sometimes Hollywood actually resists the urge to change history!), and I learned so much more about the Cuban Missile Crisis than I would have EVER learned otherwise. After watching the movie, I more fully understood everything that was at stake during that time, and how fantastic a job the Kennedy administration did in dealing with it. But I think the most significant movie (for me) that I watched in Dr. Motl's classes was the HBO film Iron Jawed Angels. Again, Dr. Motl did explain a few things that were sensationalized, the fact that the senator's wife was a fictitious character added to the story, etc., but the movie overall was an accurate portrayal of what women in America went through to gain the right to vote. It also showed Woodrow Wilson in a less-than-heroic light (which, in the case of women's suffrage is totally accurate!). I will never forget the force-feeding scene with Alice Paul in the prison, during her hunger strike. She wanted to starve to death to make a point, and of course, as was said in the film by the men opposing the suffragettes, "We can't have any martyrs on our hands."

Seeing those things on film helps people understand significance and sometimes context better. If we see it playing out in front of our eyes, we're much more likely to connect than if we hear a professor say it, or read it on a page in our text books. Dr. Motl set a great example for me as an aspiring college professor, in knowing exactly how to use films to teach in a way he couldn't do by just talking about something (sorry, Dr. Motl, but even Darth Vader has limitations!). Those are lessons and films I will never forget. In my own classroom, with my students, I even used film clips to help drive home certain points. I did show the force-feeding scene from Iron Jawed Angels, and I had half my class come up to me and ask for the title of the film so they could go watch the whole thing. I showed 70 minutes of The Help to show my students the kinds of things African Americans dealt with during the Jim Crow era, and to show them a good portrayal of African American agency at the same time. They responded to those things way better than they would have responded to me rattling off the facts during yet another lecture.

Sure. As teachers, we have to be careful to use films appropriately. Sure. There are teachers who use films as cop-outs, not knowing anything about a specific event or topic (sometimes including whether the film is accurate). But used correctly and with caution, films can be fabulous tools for teaching about history. We simply have to use our own professional integrity in choosing well what we use, and how.

Week Seven: Archives and Records Management

I'm sorry, friends, this week I just don't have anything witty or interesting to talk about. The subject of this week's readings was Archivists and Records Managers. While I recognize the need for both professions, and am very grateful such people exist, and even know and love wonderful people in such positions, both are positions I think would make me die of boredom if I had to do those jobs. I was simply not cut out to do either. I'm not calling these professions boring. I'm just saying they hold no interest *for me,* much like many people claim the greatest sport in the world (baseball!) to be boring, when it's really not. They're unable to find baseball interesting, and likewise, I am entirely unable to find careers in archives or records management to be remotely interesting. So this post will be pragmatic and to-the-point, in the interest of filling my class requirement for a weekly blog post. ;-)

Essentially, records managers AND archivists are both very important within a corporation. A records manager is mostly interested in information pertinent to the future of the company, meaning some information gets kept, perhaps reformatted, and stored for future use, while other information is permanently destroyed. Which make perfect sense for the efficient workings of a company. Keeping a lot of unnecessary information would absolutely make no sense, and perhaps be too cumbersome for things to run smoothly.

Archivists, on the other hand, keep records and original documents of things which may be important, not so much to the company itself, but to researchers in the future. They keep things for posterity and for the purpose of future learning. While some records may be of no use to a company after a certain date, future researchers may want to look into a certain period of the company's past, in which case, certain obsolete records may be pieces of vital information. Conversely, an archivist may have no interest in preserving certain records that a records manager would keep, because they have no archival value.

Of course, as far as a company (or government agency, or university) is concerned, archivists are "extra" or "unnecessary," so many only have records managers, who may, or may not, be capable of  serving a dual role as a good archivist as well. But in order for records to be properly managed and archived, any business or other institution should have both a records manager and an archivist who can work together to fulfill the needs of both the company, and future researchers.

Week Six: Bare Ankles, Union Soldiers From Georgia, And Rachmaninoff On The Harpsichord

It was a cool, misty morning in March of 1999, and a 15 year old me and my mom were in Arlington, Virginia, visiting friends. We set off for a day at Mount Vernon, and I was beyond excited to see the home of George and Martha Washington. Though at the time, my main focus was undeniably music, history had always been a major interest of mine, and I couldn’t wait to see the home of this historical legend.

We arrived at the site, and my first memory is of being greeted by a costumed woman, speaking to us in 18^th century language, and introducing herself as a house servant of the Washingtons.  (I think. I guess I should say, this was 14 years ago, so while I remember some things in extremely vivid detail, other things are a little fuzzy.) She gave us the usual background information about the Washingtons and the plantation, and life there. She never broke character that I remember, as she gave us a tour of the yard and buildings close to the house. At one point, she engaged the tourists, and I remember being amused and slightly (though only slightly) irked that she berated me for  wearing a skirt so short it showed my bare ankles (seriously, the skirt went alllll the way to my ankles, but did stop there), while ignoring all the other women in the group daring to sport extremely cropped hair or, even worse, pants! I was the only female there in a skirt, and thought I should at least get some credit for that, but I suppose the others there were better off because at least their pants covered their ankles? Yes, 14 years later, I do still think about and try to figure that one out. Lame, I know. 

I had never been to such a place before, where there were people like this woman. I was fascinated. I have a vivid imagination, and  spent much of my childhood imagining what it would be like to live in various time periods, so actually seeing someone talking to us, in costume, using correct 18^th century grammar and vocabulary, as though she had stepped right out of the 1780s absolutely fascinated me.

Fast forward almost three years, to December of 2003, in a hotel dining room in Georgia, where 18 year old me sat with my parents and about 30 other people, listening to a costumed man in his Union blues talk about his experience on the battlefield during the Civil War. Even though the setting was entirely modern and lacked the period authenticity suggested by Mount Vernon, I was at least as riveted as I had been three years earlier, for multiple reasons. I had always been far more interested in the Civil War than the American Revolution, but also, I was fascinated by the fact that we were listening to someone in Georgia, play the part of a Union soldier. Even then, I was keenly aware of the irony here. Additionally, I have been a lifelong Union supporter (but that’s another story for another time), which added to my excitement and fascination.

This guy did break character, when he removed his cap. He answered a lot of questions, including those regarding his portrayal of a Union soldier in formerly (some might argue currently- also another conversation for another time) Confederate Georgia. If my memory serves me correctly (again, 11 years ago here), he was actually the several greats grandson of an actual Georgia boy who had gone North to fight for the Union, for reasons of conscience regarding the slave issue (I believe he was unwilling to fight for a country which held slaves). For obvious reasons, he remained in the North after the war, but I believe it was either his son or grandson which moved back to Georgia with his family. He said it was true- he didn’t get as many calls to appear as his Confederate colleagues, but often was called upon by people who were either ambivalent about sides in the war, or who were Confederate sympathizers but genuinely fascinated by the story of a Georgian who went to fight for the North.

The next summer, 19 year old me visited an old French fort and settlement in Nova Scotia. Like at Mount Vernon, there were many costumed people present. Unlike Mount Vernon, none of them gave any kind of first-person accounts. They spoke about and demonstrated the life of people in the fort, but never pretended they were the people. I enjoyed this very much as well, because we could ask questions about contrasting the modern day with life in an early-18^th century French Nova Scotian settlement. I especially enjoyed speaking with the young man inside the main house who was playing the harpsichord. He was playing a Bach invention I was actually learning (though on the piano) at the time. When he finished, we talked about things like Baroque music, the differences between playing the harpsichord and the piano, and how funny he thought it was when he tried to play Beethoven, Chopin, or Rachmaninoff (the last of which was the most hilarious, according to him) on the harpsichord when no tourists were present. No, I didn’t get the first person experience, but it did get me thinking much more about the differences in the style and theory of the Baroque period, as well as the more primitive technology, producing a harpsichord rather than a piano, and what it must have been like for those alive during the transition period (for those of you who don’t know, the technique required for playing the piano is vastly different than that of playing the harpsichord- today we perform pieces on the piano originally written for harpsichord, and yes, the performance and interpretation is significantly different). Over-analyzer that I am, I literally thought about this for days. Actually, I still find myself really wanting to get ahold of a harpsichord and trying to play Joplin or Debussy on it, simply because of that conversation- which then inevitably always leads me back to thinking about the settlement and the reason it died: over-fishing. The bay on which it was located was filled with a certain kind of fish (I’m inclined to say cod, but I really don’t remember), and within 30 years, the bay went from being literally overpopulated with the fish to having them be nearly entirely wiped out in that location. Had that costumed harpsichordist not been there, I doubt I’d still think about my trip there in such detail.

This week’s readings were about performed historical interpretation. One reading was the first chapter of Joyce M. Thierer’s book, Telling History: A Manual for Performers and Presenters of First-Person Narratives. Thierer states that the result of good costumed historical interpretation is “active participation because an entertaining performance, a well-told story, inspires audience members to focus by appealing to diverse learning styles.” She also cites stories which say these presentations have emotional impact and creates long-lasting learning, which can be so significant to the observer, that it can be life-changing.  She also refers to it as “sneaky history,” meaning it is so much fun, even those who don’t like history enjoy costumed interpretation.

Of course, Thierer spent a lot of time talking about the various kinds of performed historical interpretation (spending much time saying re-enactors usually do things more for fun than scholarship, but serious re-enactors can be useful at times for certain programs and events). She talked about the pros and cons of each of the three kinds of experiences I talked about. Only having first-person interpreters who never break character can be awkward and uncomfortable for the visitors when they have questions about where certain things are. Having someone who breaks character can be confusing, if they don't make the transitions back and forth clear. Having people just in costume (she referred to them as "red shirts") can be interesting, but then the visitors miss out on the connection with a historical character that occurs with a good historical first-person interpreter. 

Personally, I enjoyed all of my experiences, and they all have stayed with me. I don't really have anything so fantastic to say with this post, but it was interesting to learn about the different kinds of costumed historical interpretation. I think the most important thing I took away from these readings is this: know what you have to work with. This includes everything: actors/interpreters, audience, costumes, settings, scripts, research materials, props, etc. Really take the time to figure out what is going to work best for your purposes. Failing to do this could end up doing more damage than anything else, and since history already gets such a bum rap anyway, correctly judging the situation is all the more important.

Week Five: In Which Mickey Mouse Decides To Play Historian…

I’m going to try and keep this post short and sweet, as I haven’t the time this week to wax verbose as I generally prefer to do. This week, the reading assignment focused around two essays from Mike Wallace’s Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory. I’m going to focus on one of them, “Disney’s America.”

As many Americans older than I am may remember, Disney was facing a financial crisis in the 1980s. For a while, it was uncertain whether the company would recover or fold. By the end of the 80s, they had succeeded in producing some new movies which were big hits, such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Little Mermaid. Their brand was bouncing back, and my generation benefitted from it greatly. But Disney was also facing increased competition from other movie companies. In order to keep up, the company decided to launch a few new projects, including a theme park just outside of Paris, which struggled greatly, and registered hefty losses the first couple years, though it eventually became a profit-maker, and is still in operation, 20 years later. 

Because the theme park in France got off to such a rocky start, Disney decided to pursue a new project: Disney's America. Originally, it was supposed to be just outside of Washington, D.C. only five miles from the Manassas Battlefield. Of course, many people were concerned about the proximity of the park to the battlefield, worried that urban sprawl would threaten the battlefield's preservation as an important place in American history. This is definitely problematic for me- of course building any kind of large theme park or resort would threaten nearby areas, and a battlefield as important as Manassas should be protected. But for me, the park itself was the most problematic issue.

Originally, Disney claimed the park would contain various areas focusing on different parts of American history, including Native American culture and history, the Civil War, WWII, and Vietnam. Yes, I said Vietnam. Disney wanted to include the debacle that was Vietnam in a theme park. With rides. And games. Ehrm, I read that and actually said aloud, "What the heck, Disney? What the heck?!" Call me unreasonable, but I do have a problem including anything that's supposed to be accurate and thought-provoking on Vietnam, only to have it set up where people are on roller coasters minutes later. 

Of course, Disney quickly amended their original claim that the park's displays would be thought-provoking and accurate, saying, "The idea is to walk out of Disney's America with a smile on your face. It is going to be fun with a capital 'F'." Um. Wait a second, hold the phone. Are these people for realz? The theme park is going to include Vietnam, slavery and the underground railroad, the Civil War, Native American history...and yet somehow, these people are supposed to have as much fun exploring the horrors involved as in Disney World? I'm sorry, people. Not possible. If you're going to do that, back off the serious topics. In fact, just back off of history. 

The goal of presenting history should always be to provoke thought and increase knowledge. Sure, some things can still be fun and do those things. But to seek out "fun" while trying to educate about Vietnam and American slavery just seems so very wrong to me. Are we so addicted to "fun" that we must make all of life fun? Clearly, Disney did not end up building this theme park, and for that, I am grateful. It would have most likely severely trivialized history. Disney is not a learning company. It is an entertainment company. They specialize in drunk pirates, pixie dust, singing mermaids, and elephants that can fly. If Disney was to truly pull off a *good* site focusing on American history, and doing it accurately, it would have to realize that their profit margins on that site would probably be significantly lower than that of their other parks. They would also have to take special care to make sure that over time, they didn't "Disnefy" history. To do so would be a true atrocity.

One last observation I want to make. In the process of battling the public over the proposed site, Disney insulted historians. Wallace writes, "Adopting a populist stance, company publicists attacked opponents as 'landed gentry' foxhunters, or genteel 'no-growth proponents' who would turn the piedmont into an economic no-man's land and deprive working people of jobs." Disney included historians in this group, being painted as elitest and bourgeois. Nevermind that they're historians and might actually care to preserve the heritage that Disney seemed so eager to trivialize.
I like Disney, I really do. But Disney should stick to what it does best: fiction, fantasy, and animation. 

Week Four: Hellfire and Brimstone...and Archie Bunker Too

This week's post actually nicely follows last week's. I was torn between two of our articles this week. Both would have made fabulous blog posts, but doing both together wouldn't have worked for what I'm wanting to say. Perhaps I'll come back and make another post on the other article later, but for now, I shall focus on the article, "The Unstifled Muse: The 'All in the Family' Exhibit and Popular Culture at the National Museum of American History," by Ellen Roney Hughes.

I'm quite used to kneejerk reactions by various people who swear that the election of a certain president is going to bring the end of America as we know it, or that God is going to visit his wrath upon us for allowing a show like NYPD Blue on television (remember that, my Evangelical friends?), or even just that focusing too much on "the arts" instead of being wholly dedicated to the three R's, history and science, will bring about a country that's run by imbeciles who can't even find a word in the dictionary. I was at once highly amused and incredulous as I read this article last night, about how the Smithsonian came to incorporate American popular history into the museum...starting with Archie Bunker's chair.

I've never seen All in the Family in my entire life, but I do remember being aware of it as a child. My mom would talk about Archie Bunker as a mean-spirited bigot who cared more about keeping everything as he liked it than he did about other people. My parents have always been very accepting of people coming from different social, racial, religious, etc. backgrounds. They have also always been very conservative about language and such. I assume it's this combination which caused them to paint All in the Family as a "bad" tv show. As a result, I wasn't entirely amazed by what I read about the resistance the Smithsonian experienced when first displaying certain items from the tv show. Add to that my awareness of the resistance many in academia have toward new interpretations or ideas showing up in their discipline, and nothing about the piece was too shocking.

Hughes, who worked for the Smithsonian, talked about how the All in the Family display was the first nod the Smithsonian gave to accepting pop culture history as a legitimate part of American history. The exhibit, which opened in 1978, drew a lot of criticism from historians who turned up their noses at the idea that television could be considered an actual part of American history. Of course, some were still struggling to accept social history at this point, so for them, extending that to include popular culture bordered on abominable.

So, what DOES American pop culture have to do with American history? It's a valid question. As Hughes points out, pop culture reflects life experiences, social and political dialogues, commonly held beliefs, and any issues considered important by a significant contingent of Americans. Of course, this is why I've been so big on incorporating music into the history classroom for so long. It's also why I made my US107 students write a history paper, using an American novel as a primary source. After all, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Wizard of Oz, and The Great Gatsby were once pop culture novels as well.They weren't always seen as classics.

All in the Family was significant in many ways. For one, it was the first sitcom to show a real family, meaning, one with problems that wasn't all happy sunshine and smiles and togetherness all the time. For another, it dealt with real issues of bigotry and liberalism; the show was one big dialogue about issues Americans were dealing with. I think about my favorite sitcoms: Who's the Boss?, Cosby, and more recently, How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM). High art? Eh, probably not. But not at all insignificant. As a kid, I identified with Rudy Huxtable, especialy as the youngest child with significantly older siblings, and parents old enough to be her grandparents. Rudy and I had similar rules we had to follow, and similar likes and dislikes. She was real. She was relatable. Now, I think about HIMYM, and how I relate to that cast of characters, especially Ted Mosby. He was this kid from Ohio who had this idea of how his life was going to unfold, and it just didn't happen. The ups and downs he experiences along the way to meeting his eventual wife and settling down are more or less relatable- at least in general...the specifics, not always! I think one reason sitcoms are so popular is not because they're inherently hilarious, nor because they're incredibly dramatic, nor because the screenwriting is the best since Shakespeare, but because sitcoms- to a very real degree- reflect real life. Don't get me wrong, I love Bones and Castle and Revolution and House and Smash, but not because they reflect real life. Sitcoms may not be as refined, but they're much more real, and as such they do absolutely deserve a place in museums and historical study.

I write this as I'm preparing to travel to Albuquerque in 10 days to present a paper on African American music during the Jim Crow era at a pop culture/cultural history conference. There are entire panels on such things as Dr. Who (3 whole sessions, to be specific), Harry Potter (I think 5 sessions), The Hunger Games, Fifty Shades of Gray, Star Wars, as well as more general topics, like horror movies, music, religion, etc. Why is it legitimate to study Dr. Who and Harry Potter as topics in history? Because any time a tv show or book series, or movie, or any other piece of "pop culture" creates such a large wave that it causes an entire subculture to arise, it is worthwhile to look at those things and query, "Why?" There's a reason Harry Potter became such a huge part of Western culture. The reason is not found solely within its pages, or the movies, or solely outside of the books in society. It's a combination of the content of the stories, and whatever was going on at the time to make them such a hit, and looking at them from a historian's perspective can shed a lot of light on the matter.

Pop culture history takes social history a step beyond what the common people said and did and who they overthrew. It looks at what they liked, what they created, what made them "tick." Pop culture, like fine art, often reflects the issues of the day. Unlike fine art, it cares more about resonating with the people than  making some huge statement.

I could close there, but I'm not going to. I have to move on to the hellfire and brimstone portion of the article because, well frankly, it's too good not to pass along. We live in a nation filled with sensationalists who love to freak out because Clark Gable used the word "damn" in a movie, and declare the nation is headed to Hell in a handbasket. What I love is that every single generation says the same thing about the next generation as the generation before said about them. As a historian, I get a front row seat to all of this. It's hilarious. No, really, it is! You haven't lived until you've heard one generation diss another in 18th century English. It's fantastic. But I digress. Not only were there those who objected to a display about a tv show at the Smithsonian, but there were also those who objected to the specific show. American opinion was mixed about All in the Family. It had a longish run, so obviously, people loved it, but there were plenty of others, like my parents, who didn't look so favorably on the show. They got their knickers all up in a knot because the Smithsonian- with taxpayer money, no less- installed an exhibit glorifying Archie Bunker and his foul mouth and bigoted ways. *excuse me while I snicker to myself*

The Smithsonian received a flood of letters, mostly complaining about aforementioned glorification of "evil." Some of them are just too good not to share. I have seen so many such reactions to different things by the people I know (both in my mainstream Evangelical experience, which continues today, and my years in Christian fundamentalism), so these probably struck me as a little funnier than they'd strike the average person.

"We want to protest putting Archie Bunker's chair in the Museum. His show is vulgar, constantly using four letter words. Just things that the American people can be proud of should be put there." Which eliminates anything accurate dealing with the reality of life for women, Native Americans, Japanese, Chinese, and African Americans for, well, most of American history.

"What kind of American society raises a monument to bigotry, slobbiness, and a sneer at all decent American American values? The sad part is you are putting this alongside such memorials as the Spirit of St. Louis and other great achievements and seem to feel that it is in its proper place." I think the idea that an exhibit can display the significance of something without glorifying whatever was wrong about it is lost on most people, such as this person.

And my favorite quote, "I would never join the Smithsonian as long as you have an exhibit of Archie Bunker as part of American culture. Archie Bunker and Norman Lear are racist saboteurs and you are gullible nincompoops." I actually cannot read this one without both cracking a pretty amused smile, and marveling that somehow, this person managed to use the words "saboteurs" and "gullible" in the same sentence. No really, that takes talent! Of course, this person had just plainly misinterpreted All in the Family. Norman Lear (the show's producer) was actually not a racist. His point was to show Archie Bunker as a racist, in dialogue with his more progressive, Polish son-in-law. The idea was to help give voice to the struggles going on racially/ethnically/etc. in America at the time, not to glorify a racist.

Of course, there will always be older and more conservative generations saying our education is going to pot, or our morals are leading us all on a merry path to Hell and are going to invite the wrath of God on us all, but it is up to the younger generations to keep forging our new paths. All ideas were new at some point. There was a time when women were seen as having loose morals for exposing their ankles. Now, no one looks twice if a female exposes her knees, and no one (okay, well, no non-extremist) views that as immoral. There was a time when black people couldn't vote, and having equal rights with whites was seen as a sure way to bring about the degradation of America.

So what's my point? It's this: We shouldn't be afraid of blazing new paths because the old ones work fine or the older generations will be offended. We should move forward, because in most cases, we'll travel much further down the road of true progress than we will the road to Hell. Sure, caution is a good thing, and we should question the merits of our new exploits. But we should not hold back, for fear of certain criticism.

Week Three: Culture Wars and Revisionists

I want to start off by saying I'm writing this with a fever of over 101, and my brain is a little, well, foggy might be the best way to put it. I am therefore apologizing in advance for any typos, sentence fragments, or random words. Now that we have THAT out of the way, I shall continue.

I'm also going to say here that I know more people than just my history classmates will read this. I am fully aware that some of what I say here is going to rub some people the wrong way. It is not my intention to be inflammatory here at all. I am merely commenting, as a historian, on something I have seen a lot of.

While most of this week's readings came again from the Gardner/LaPaglia book and contained great information on working as public historians in various arenas (including sites, parks, museums, and even corporations), I want to focus on the supplemental article we also read. The reading was chapter one from Gary Nash's History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past. Those of you who know my past know exactly why I chose this piece to focus on. For those of you who don't, read on.

Growing up in the mainstream conservative Evangelical world, the phrase, "culture wars" was one we heard often, and it usually pertained to loss of "family values," the emergence of gay marriage, abortion, secular pop/rock music, and many more modern tv shows and movies. It may be hard for some to imagine, but that emphasis on the culture wars increased tenfold when my family left mainstream conservative Evangelicalism and moved into fundamentalism, through our Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church and homeschooling organization. These culture wars included public school, Christian rock music, and women wearing pants, among other things, and in addition to everything the mainstream Evangelical world had declared war on.

During these years, I saw thousands of people fight these culture wars as if their very entrance to Heaven depended on it. It was also during this time I became aware of an insidious force  in the world: revisionist history. My A Beka history curriculum (published by Pensacola Christian College), church, and of course such fundamentalist groups as Wallbuilders and Vision Forum told me that the revisionists were liberals, out to change our history, and turn our country into an Atheistic Communist country. According to what I learned in high school (as a fundamentalist homeschooler) and as a young adult, almost all of our founding fathers were born-again Christians. Slavery "wasn't that bad" (and it was often just ignored). The women's suffrage movement was the beginning of the end for family values. The 1950s were perfect- everyone was happy and moral, and all was good. I even remember watching my A Beka school videos and listening to the American history teacher talk about how awesome the 1890s were.

Then I left that all behind, and majored in history in college. I learned so many things. I learned that while a few Founding Fathers actually were born-again Christians, most were Deists. I learned that no, actually, slavery WAS that bad and should not be ignored. I learned the women's suffrage movement was not such a "radical feminist" thing as I was taught. I learned that the 1950s were by no means perfect, and were filled with manipulation and fear-mongering and Joseph McCarthy. And the 1890s? I have yet to figure out what that teacher was talking about, unless overcrowded tenaments, a depression, and urban filth and corruption are his idea of a "good time." I learned that Revisionism can come from anywhere: left or right, and occurs when people have an agenda other than ascertaining and teaching what happened. 

This chapter we read talks a lot about the culture wars and revisionism, especially in regards to right wingers, Lynn Cheney, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh.  I will admit I thought Nash was less balanced than he could have been, though personally, I see far more revisionism coming from the right than from the left. In addition to Cheney, Gingrich, and Limbaugh, people like Glenn Beck, David Barton (of the aforementioned Wallbuilders), and Bill O'Riley, seem to work more from a predetermined conclusion than from a set of questions relevant to primary sources. (That's being generous- Nash talked about a time when Limbaugh presented a set of history education standards as a new revisionist textbook...no way that's accidental!) It also seems as though for many people, the further right they go, the less they're willing to re-examine old information through new analytical tools (such as social history, agency, etc.). This is not always the case, of course.

With this kind of revisionism, I was taught that what happened, happened. There's no mystery to interpretation. 1+1=2, that's the way it's always been, that's the way it always will be, end of story, no need to go back and revisit old facts. Now, of course, that's true about some things. William the Conqueror invaded Britain from Normandy in 1066. That happened. Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. That absolutely happened. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. That happened. These things are not going to change with interpretation. Other things will. It seems to me that many of the people and organizations I have mentioned are rather adverse to accepting social history, even though it has been a significant part of historical interpretation for the last 50 years now. Another thing I see many of these people do is look at history outside of its actual historical context. Simply put, it is not possible to look at the Founding Fathers outside of the context of the Enlightenment. Of course, left-wing revisionists like to take things out of their historical context as well. In fact, they seem more prone to anaylizing things too much from modern perspectives than anything else.

I remember once debating about child labor laws on Facebook with a friend of mine who is decidedly more conservative than I am. We branched off into women's suffrage, and I believe slavery and civil rights as well (you know who you are!). She and I were going about our debate quite civilly when I got a private message from someone I didn't know. He was basically imploring me to stop embarrassing myself with my lack of historical knowledge and understanding. He then said how interesting it is that Jesus or the Apostle Paul never advocated people demanding their rights and standing up for themselves against authority, as was common in these various social movements. I replied back, asking him what constitutes just authority, and how American slaves were wrong in trying to get their freedom, as many of these slaves were kidnapped, which, according to the Old Testament, is punishable by death. I also asked him how it was that slaves, children, and women were not Biblically justified in fighting for their rights, and yet the American Revolution, and the failed Southern Revolution were acceptable. Of course, he came back saying I don't know enough about history or the Bible for him to try and explain it all to me. It was more the double-standard that struck me than anything. Things that come from the study of politics and empire (such as revolutions) are acceptable, but things that come from a study of the little man (social history: slaves, children, women, and poor people, to over-simplify) were clearly taboo.

The reality is, we as historians- and as a society- must find a balance between looking at the past as a set of objective facts which are as easily interpreted accurately in 1800 as in 2013, and something that is always changing, ever fluid and fluctuating. The reality is yes, what happened happened. However, our ability to understand and interpret what happened, and why, is constantly in flux.

Does anyone actually expect to accomplish anything productive when using such terms as "culture wars," and while pointing the finger at those darn revisionists on either side of the spectrum, when in reality, both sides are often revising things to their own liking? When I grew up, and heard of two people fighting, I often heard people say, "the truth is probably somewhere in the middle." Meaning, neither account was probably correct on its own, but if we look at the facts, and take both stories, we can probably get fairly close to working out what really happened.

Why can't we do this with history as well? This is where I'll probably lose some of you. Why should it be this big deal if America was not established as a Christian nation? Why should it be some earth-shattering event to find out America was only "the land of the free" for white landowners? No, really. Can someone tell me? If that's what actually happened, why is it such a travesty to acknowledge that, and work forward from there? I can ask the same kinds questions to the extreme left as well. Why is it that we must go into our historical research with a conclusion ready to go, wanting not to find out what actually happened and why, but trying to figure out how to use facts and/or interpretation to prove our foregone conclusions?

In conclusion, I do want to say, it's very important to re-examine facts, and do it often. Who writes the history can control what it says. This is a bit light-hearted, but nonetheless true, and I wanted to leave you all with something fun. In the musical, Wicked, the wicked witch, Elphaba, has a conversation with the Wizard, in which the Wizard sings the following:
     "Elphaba, where I come from, be believe all kinds of things that are wrong. We call it "history."
      A man's called a 'traitor,' or 'liberator,'
      A rich man's a 'theif' or 'philanthropist;'
      Is one a crusader, or ruthless invader?
      It's all in which label is able to exist.
      There are precious few at ease with moral ambiguities,
      So they act as though they don't exist."
He's actually spot on here. In most of Western-written history over the last few centuries, the European crusaders have been the good guys. In most Middle Eastern history over the last few centuries, they were the bad guys. Really, what's right? Just because Columbus said he was exploring for the glory of God doesn't mean he actually was. He knew his journals were going to be read, are you kidding me? Of course, he's not necessarily the monster he's been painted as more recently, either. It is really important that we, whether historians or just responsible citizens, pay attention and educate ourselves, constantly taking into account new findings, and approaching our research without preconceived conclusions.

 Here's the video for the song I mentioned above. You should watch it- makes me smile every time.