|
What is going on here? Historical (Re)Creation as Popular Culture
© copyright Michael M. Williamson, Ph.D., 1996-2008 last revision August 22, 2008 |
The following is a statement of my purposes for undertaking the research project described in this web presentation. What follows below is a draft of my attempt to share the meaning of the project. In places and at times, it is quite drafty, as some writers describe a work in progress. However, as with all academic projects, the statement below and the rest of the web site are the results of considerable time and effort.
Since the statement is a always draft, I would appreciate any quotation or citation to be cleared with me first. As an investment of my time, I ask that any use of my work in the statement and the web site by anyone else be properly documented. I hold a copyright to all text and images in both this site and the larger professional site to which it belongs. Any unauthorized use of anything from this site constitutes copyright infringement.
Please feel free to create links to anything in this site. I would appreciate the courtesy of being notified about such links and will happily find an appropriate place in the site to link back.
This web site is an emerging representation of my observation of and participation with several groups of historical re-enactors. At present, I have spent most of my time with Company K of the 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteers, a Civil War living history group out of the Harrisburg, PA area, and L Company, 109th Infantry Regiment, 28th Division (PA National Guard), an amorphous group of men and women, World War II living historians from the Harrisburg, PA area.
As I hope the emergent construction of this web site will show, re-enacting is fundamentally a form of profound play (Begg, 19xx), viewed as recreation (re-creating) by the participants. Thus, it is a form of recreation, not exactly a synonym for leisure in this case, however. According to Begg, re-enacting is probably best understood as a form of creation. It involves the participants' aim to recreate history, a kinesthetic creation for demonstrating their beliefs the meaning of a particular historical period. Since, with some exceptions, re-enacting is chiefly separate from the daily lives of participants, it is a form of recreation, a form of play that nearly always provides a purpose for for leisure time and frequently has a broader meaning in every day life, as I will attempt to demonstrate.
The meanings re-enactors construct in their activities are as diverse as their backgrounds. Demographically, they are from all socioeconomic classes in American culture. They share one common purpose, an interest in a particular historical period. Their reasons for involvement in re-enacting are as diverse as an attempt to provide as authentic a presentation as their exacting research into the past will allow to spending a weekend out of their daily lives, concerned only with play that will allow them to enter another time in their collective imaginations. Regardless of their purpose, their activities reflect the kind of collective play described by observers of young children's play groups. However, the adult sophistication re-enactors bring with them to their activities allow the kind of complex routines only seen in the adult workplace (Begg, 19XX).
From the very beginning, I have found myself drawn into a dichotomy between work and play. At its most serious, re-enacting is very hard work, involving an attempt to create a total impression of the past that absorbs both players and observers into a sense of being in some other time and place. The kind of disconnection between daily life and re-enacting reflects some of the self reports of users of hallucinogenic drugs (Huxley). The experience of entering into a sense of disconnection from the perceptions of everyday life and the need to reorient oneself upon re-entering at the end of the experience seem highly similar in both kinds of activities.
I began this project to explore different approaches to narrative as a tool for research, emergent tool for research in the study of literacy. As the project developed, I also began to think about alternative ways to represent research.
Focusing on teaching and learning in school and college writing classrooms, my primary commitment to professional research has never involved anything more than minimal risk to participants as defined by the Code of Federal Regulations regarding the ethical conduct of the use of humans participants in research. However, I did not feel comfortable asking people in educational settings to give up time while I explored a new research methodology. Re-enactors involvement with the hobby, as they call it, is intimately connected to opportunities to interact with others in public settings. Little, if any, of what they do is closed to public observation. Certainly, Horwitz's account of Civil War re-enacting in Confederates in the Attic left many participants feeling as though they were being held up for public ridicule. However, as a journalist, he had no obligation to to avoid such harm to people in his journalistic account. Furthermore, he had no obligation to attempt to understand the activities of his informants from their own point, nor a methodological approach that allowed him to understand the difference between his own judgments and his subjects' perceptions of their lives.
Beginning with the fundamental principle that knowledge is constructed by the knower, my stance in this research had to acknowledge that my perspective is but one of many that create an intersubjective account of the meanings represented in this report. Intersubjectivity involves the recognition that meaning is a constructive activity. Each of us constructions meaning for our lives out of our own, subjective, experience of life. At our worst, we attempt to impose our construction on others, aiming toward a univocal expression of meaning. At our best, we recognize that our meanings are enriched by the meanings of others, to the extent that we allow dialogic interaction (Bahktin). The result of dialogue is a multivocal construction, one that includes many views.
MORE
Typically, empirical research has been published in highly formulaic genres, such as dissertations and academic journals.
MORE
I first met the men of the 83rd and their companion groups, the Ladies Union Relief Association of Harrisburg (LURA) and the 125th US Colored Troops in January of 1994, the second year of their existence. At the time, their lieutenant and founder, Bob Frazier, was organizing the group for its second season of participation with the National Regiment, an umbrella organization for a number of Civil War groups. The 83rd was in its probationary year as it learned its trade.
In 1996, I was invited by Quartermaster Sergeant John Dubbs of the 83rd to participate in a World War II event in January of 1997. Along with several others in the 83rd, I began to participate in World War II events.
Aside from the obvious opportunity for some profound play, I continued to be fascinated by the amount of effort that the people I met put into their impressions as they call the identity they adapt as a re-enactor. As I spent time with them, I realized that re-enacting seems to involve a large and loose web of people, some of whom drift back and forth between various historical periods and identities within periods. The primary reason I have heard cited for changing affiliation is that the group or era became too 'political', a way of saying that the people involved had engaged in power shifts that changed the focus of the group to one that did not permit the same sense of fun or involvement. Another reason for change involves the discovery of a historical period that is of more interest to the individual. Many WW II re-enactors started with the Civil War because that is what they found first. However, on discovering the existence of WW II events, they quickly switched over because they felt more affinity for the period. Yet others just became tired of the repetition of events, but did not want to give up re-enacting as hobby, or found renewed interest in learning about another era.
Re-enactors are a slice of America life, with many international visitors joining along. Age, gender, socioeconomic status, and home culture do not predict who will want to be involved. However, re-enacting, because it is an expensive hobby, tends to be the province of middle aged men. Secondly, while re-enactors include many ethnicities and cultures among their members, the hobby is populated primarily by white males.
The observation that the largest number of re-enactors are middle aged, white males does not mean that women and people of color are not important participants in re-enacting. It does reflect that history, until now, has been written largely by white men. Women and people of color have to work harder to find the narratives and historical records upon which they may construct impressions, or personas, that reflect their historical roles.
For instance, there are a number of Civil War regiments that re-enact the role of the US Colored Troops. The histories of these regiments are proud ones, histories that reflect that energy of African Americans as they struggled against the status quo to find an equal footing in American mainstream. It is understandable, however, that few African Americans would be interested in portraying the life of a slave during the Civil War. In fact, the only place I have seen such an impression was at Colonial Williamsburg. One of the tour guides there was dressed as a slave and interpreted the culture of African Americans living in colonial America through a tour of the slave quarters at a plantation. It was clear that her dedication to her work was focused on helping people to understand the meaning of slavery in early America and to disabuse anyone with the illusion that slavery was a pleasant way to life. In helping Americans to feel more comfortable with our past, many of us tend to move toward a belief that our ancestors could not have been monsters. Therefore, we tend to think of them as benevolent autocrats who meted out justice and provided for the needs of their property. The young woman I have mentioned helped me to see that not autocracy is benevolent if you are not the autocrat. And, the mere fact that some people are the legal property of others, means that some human beings have no more status in law than agricultural stock. Such a situation cannot provide material for saving face.
The primary goal of all re-enactors is to provide a recreation of history through dramatic presentations, displays of artifacts, and interpretive presentations. Their goal, nearly to a person, is to honor the past through their recreations and to help us remember the sacrifices of our ancestors who helped us to become who we are today, for better or worse.
One of the sides of re-enacting that many people find troubling is the Dark Side. I chose this term because it is used commonly by re-enactors from Single Action shooters who use black powder, to WW II German and Civil War Confederate re-enactors.
For the most part, the explanation they give is that there have to be opposing forces if there is to be a re-enactment. Furthermore, they point out that they are involved with recreating history; and, they are representing historical fact. In WW II re-enacting, I have been surprised at the conventional wisdom that many German re-enactors work in law enforcement. Why that is, I can only speculate. I have some confirmation that they may need to engage in some form of apparently deviant behavior that is legal, because their work demands that they observe strictly enforced codes of behavior, far beyond those imposed on civilians.
Of course, many German re-enactors do not work in law enforcement. In many cases, these re-enactors can identify relatives, such as grand parents or parents who are of German descent. In some cases, these relatives served in the German armed forces during World War II or the Great War.
In other cases, it has seemed to me that younger men and boys are attracted to dark side impressions because they are fascinated with deviance itself. Going back to Erik Erikson, the dominant theme in the life of adolescents is the struggle to establish an viable identity. Thus, that period of life is involved with experimenting with a variety of identities. Some part of this experimentation involves rebelling against normative behavior. Thus, participating as a German re-enactor has a special attraction.
While many German re-enactors do not wear uniforms to and from events, I have noticed a tendency in many adolescent re-enactors to want to wear their uniforms from the time they leave their homes until the time they return. There are, of course, exceptions to this observation. In at least one instance, a German re-enactor I know wears his complete uniform to and from all events.
This same re-enactor was offered free coffee on one occasion when stopping at a convenience store because he was in uniform. He explained that his uniform was a World War II German one, but the clerk said that it was sufficient for her and thanked him for his service. Ironically, the re-enactor was a veteran of Desert Storm, although no longer in the USMC.
I have experimented with wearing a uniform from door to door and found that the attention it draws creates both excitement and discomfort. I now typically dress only at an event, even if the only changing room that is available is the interior of an automobile.
A Presbyterian minister of my acquaintance once said that wearing a kilt in public requires considerable psychological energy. I think this emotional demand extends to wearing any unusual clothing, particularly historical garments. In our everyday life, we observe extreme forms of clothing and behavior, such as goths and punks. Certainly, the preponderance of adolescents among them reflects the need to experiment with rebellion as well. And, the attention such clothing draws in one important factor.
I attended a local production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night some time ago. Because the pirates in the production were themed around Scots, I was asked to serve as a greeter in my kilt and evening wear. At the intermission, a friend and I walked across the street to have a beer. When I entered the place, without thinking about my kilt, a woman in the restaurant began laughing hysterically at me. This reaction was unusual, but it is common to see people stare and to look like they want to ask a question.
Since all behavior has consequences, unusual behavior can elicit a variety of responses, from laughter to condemnation. In the case of people who dress goth or punk, as an expression of their rebellion, such labels as satanists are often used. While others may see the behavior for what it is, an adolescent expression of rebellion.
In the case of dark side re-enactors, many people outside of "the hobby" label Germans as Nazis and Confederates as racists. Like any kind of stereotype, such labels can be highly inaccurate.
After many years of participating with re-enactors, I have found that many, perhaps most, are likely to be politically more conservative. My friends and acquaintances find great humor in labeling me a "flaming liberal college professor." Naturally, I accept the role since it does fit, to some extent. Others find me a contradiction, as a participant is re-enacting because it inevitably carries an acceptance of the role of war in history and the use of firearms.
To make my bias clear, I subscribe to General Norman's Schwartzkoph's belief that a soldier hates war the most. While they train for it all the time, they hope that they will not be required to use their skills. As the son of diplomat, I also subscribe to my father's view that war is the failure of diplomacy. And, I guess the bottom line is that war is part of the history of all nations. Regardless of my feelings or beliefs about national policies, I believe that the men and women who served in American wars deserve to be remembered for their sacrifices. It is possible to detest war and the policies that created while respecting those who felt they were doing what was asked or demanded of them.
All human activity is inherently political, since status and role relationships reflect the power of individuals or groups over the action of an individual.
I was introduced to the kind of politics inherent in re-enacting fairly early on when the 83rd voted its founder out of office as president. Ostensibly, the reason was that he was unable to command troops with any competency. Several members of the group began canvassing the other members for a sufficient majority to change the leadership, putting a new president in charge. This was accomplished at an annual meeting of the membership.
I cannot comment on the competency of the current president as a company grade officer. Considerable grumbling in the ranks in parades proceeded the movement to oust him.
The move to oust the president was followed by a redirection of the 83rd toward what is known as a hardcore unit. Horwitz's book provides an excellent overview of the intensity of hardcore units in their participation in Civil War re-enacting.
The result of the change in direction, one that developed over time, was that a number of members left the group because they were unhappy with what they perceived as a manipulation and the damage done to the founder of the organization. Others left because the financial demands became too great. Hardcore units typically require museum quality reproductions of uniforms and equipment. While there are a number of manufacturers that provide such reproductions, they typically cost three to four times of the commercial grade merchandise available. The cost often challenges personal finances and forces re-enactors to think carefully about their commitment to the hobby.
Horwitz notes that hardcore groups do not value the size of their membership as opposed to commitment of the membership; and, they are not concerned about the size of events, preferring more authentic events where a serious commitment to first person impressions is important.
Whither Goest Thou?
I began this web site as a scholarly endeavor, related to my interest in popular culture. My involvement has led to a grant funded video production (Ausel, Begg, & Williamson, 19xx) and paper at the annual meeting of Popular Culture Association in New Orleans in 1999. This web site is intended to present my continually evolving understanding of the meaning of participating in the recreation of history.
References
Ausel, D., Begg, B, Williamson, M. M. (19xx).
Begg, B. (19xx). Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Popular Culture Association and the American Popular Culture Association, New Orleans, LA.
Horwitz, T. (1998) Confederates in the Attic. NY: Pantheon.
Huxley, Aldous. (1970). The doors of perception. NY: Harper & Row
The Dark Side A term that seems to have originated with Single Action shooting for those who use black powder cartridges. Its usage has expanded to label re-enactors who represent re-enacting in such impressions as WW II German.
Hardcore An adjective used to describe re-enactors or events where there is a serious attempt to act in the character of an individual of the time period being re-enacted. At its most extreme, anyone dressed in current clothing is excluded from the site of the event. Hardcore is also a noun used to label individuals or units who pursue authenticity to an extreme. They are often unpopular with other re-enactors because of their tendency to label others as farby.
The Hobby Re-enactor's name re-enacting
Impression The role chosen by a re-enactor
|