I went to college at William & Mary, a small, public, liberal arts school located in the heart of Williamsburg, VA, one point in “America’s Historic Triangle,” which heralds itself as the “birthplace of American democracy” (http://www.historictriangle.com/). Literally across the street from William& Mary’s campus is Colonial Williamsburg, mile-long stretch of colonial houses, shops, and government buildings which have been preserved or reconstructed to tell the story of 18th and 19th century colonial life in Virginia. Just a 15 minute drive outside of the city limits of Williamsburg lies Busch Gardens, an amusement park that was likely built to appease the children whose parents dragged them through the streets of Colonial Williamsburg’s living museum to teach them important lessons about America’s noble founding fathers. Busch Gardens is a European themed park, with rides, restaurants, and games organized into different European countries and cultural themes. While reading through the chapters from Cantwell’s book this week, my mind began to wander to considering the different mediums through which we experience “culture.” Theme parks (Busch Gardens specifically in this case), living history museums, and finally folk or cultural festivals all come at the visitor with varying purposes. The visitor is bombarded with images of culture and responds to them in different ways, and perhaps not always in the way intended by the creator or transmitter.
Busch Gardens is, of course, primarily an amusement park. Its main attraction is its roller coasters, although it also offers a variety of games, shows, and food to its visitors. Busch Gardens is interesting when considered as a cultural amusement park as well. The park is separated into European countries with accordingly-themed rides and food: Germany, Italy, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, and oddly, New France (Canada). As the visitor moves from country to country, the scenery and music change accordingly. In Germany, the visitor is greeted with the sound of accordions filling the air with a German polka, and looking around, they can choose to ride a coaster like “Alpengeist” (“ghost of the alps” in German) or maybe take a break at Das Festhaus to take in an Oktoberfest show or some “traditional” German fare served by waitresses in costume. In England, the visitor is surrounded by the artificial architecture of an English village replete with stores and restaurants resembling the thatched-roof cottages of yore. However, these representations are overtly stereotyped and changed to fit the comfort zone of the average American tourists. Italy’s restaurants serve pizza, the German Festhaus sells Bud Light and pizza alongside “authentic” German sausages, and Scotland’s “Pig in a Kilt” restaurant serves “American food with a Scottish Accent,” which somehow also includes jumbo corn-dogs, chicken tenders, and French fries. Visitors can become “tourists” of Europe without being challenged to step outside the requisite stereotypes of Old Europe’s “traditional culture,” with even those being poorly translated. But honestly, that’s not what people come to Busch Gardens for anyways; are you really going to question the authenticity of historical Italian representations while plunging into watery darkness in “Escape from Pompeii?”
Well, according to this 1980s promo for the park, it is "eight faithful reconstructions" of Europe with impressive "attention to detail" both inside and out that "radiate with authenticity"...although I think that marketing avenue has changed at this point...Colonial Williamsburg (CW), on the other hand, is approached as an educational experience outside of the walls of a museum. Visitors are expected to be paying attention to the information and cultural signals being transmitted from the historical interpreters, historic buildings, and performances, right down to the authentic “road apples” that horses leave in the middle of the street to give CW that authentic colonial smell (Handler and Gable 1997). While in its early years, CW focused on the patriotic storylines of the colonial founding fathers and used these historical “masternarratives” of the time to imbue national identity (Ritchie 1993:336); however, there was virtually no interpretation of Native Americans or African slaves, nor the lower or middle class white townspeople, which says something about whose identity was important to the “nation.” Criticized as a “Republican Disneyland,” CW has taken steps to reintroduce the “dirt” of history into its interpretation; this means allowing buildings to decay, paint to peel. This includes the “dirty” parts of history we are not as proud of: slavery, class inequality, gender inequality, etc., through the representation of different classes and ethnicity, conflict, and complexity.
CW has greatly improved in its representation of different social and ethnic groups, and provides opportunities for visitors to challenge their conceptions of colonial life, religion, politics, sociality, slavery, and how these operated in daily life, although different itineraries offer varying levels of confrontation. Visitors are able to engage with the conflicts and construction of identity for colonial people, which has varying affects depending on the history and identity of each individual. While CW’s programs strive to place the visitor in an authentic past, the constructs of the living museum are such that even as you watch interpretations of the past, you are still aware of the artificiality and construction of your surroundings and experience. Although the buildings are for the most part real historic representations, and the interpreters and trade similarly researched for authenticity, “the very existence of these settings denies to the visitor the imaginative participation upon which the pleasure he takes in the museum depends…[and] amplifies the effect of objectification and domination that is the principle offence of such techniques.” (Cantwell 1993:63). The crafting of the living museum experience sometimes leads to self-conscious consumption of the past that lacks personal engagement with the concepts.
I’m looking forward to attending Tucson’s folklife festival to see how the experience of culture, ethnicity, and identity are transmitted by the actual cultural practitioners rather than experiencing African or Native American culture, for example, through innumerable degrees of removal and reinterpretation by others. As Cantwell points out, festivals allow for cultures “embodied in real presences” to represent themselves (87), and for visitors to feel they have gained “privileged access [and] penetration into the privacy of communal life” (101). The visitors’ thirst for the “authentic” can be quenched and their engagement and imagination satisfied in performances, food, and crafts from traditional cultures. However, cultural representations are still altered, compressed, creolized, etc. to be presented for an audience in a festival.
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