Week 10: Displays of History: Pageantry

Week 10: Displays of History: Pageantry

As I began reading Glassberg’s chapter Celebrating the City, the first thought I had was the Roman practice of bread and circuses.  So I was flattered to have the author point out an editorial from a San Francisco newspaper calling the Portola Festival just such an endeavor (p. 76).   I was also pleased to have Glassberg refer to the game of football (and sports in general) as another of these events (p. 84-5).   The idea is simple:  Keep the citizenry fed and entertained and they will move from meal to meal and event to event without feeling the need to pay attention to what those in power are actually doing.  Let things get bad in the daily lives of the populace and the beast begins to stir. 

Current examples of things causing Americans to stir include the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The citizens are stirring and political reporters are forecasting a tidal wave of changes in the upcoming election.  Over the weekend as I was reading, several things caught my attention as I dutifully watched my dose of football (I’m leading in my fantasy league, btw).  The ‘powers that be’ spend an enormous amount of money, time, and effort in providing circuses for our viewing pleasure.  Even if I don’t remember which multi-national firm has it’s banner on the Cowboys’ 50-yard line, I’m entranced with the game, the plays, the spectacle…not with asking how in this distressed economy they can afford (indeed are happy even anxious to do so) to spend millions of dollars to provide the entertainment.  I think as individuals we are all aware that this manipulation is occurring.  I even think we care.  But we are so indoctrinated, so comfortable with our routines that it takes a major jolt to move us. 

Just such a jolt happened nine years ago when the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed.  There were several ads aired during the football games this weekend devoted to plans for observance of the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center disaster.  Cities around the country are making plans to remember the day with speeches, the placing of wreaths, and other fitting memorials.  The ads could have come from either the Civil War Centennial or the Bicentennial:  loyalty, unity, and patriotic pride.  Here again my cynicism leads me to see these efforts as simply a way for the ‘powers’ to say ‘It’s alright!  We’re doing something.  Stay home and enjoy your family.  Watch the game.  You don’t need to stir…we have everything under control!’ 

The third thing I noticed, again on TV, was a Sixty Minutes piece on white-collar executives in California who have reached the end of their safety nets.  Their savings are gone, they’ve borrowed all they can against their retirements, they’ve spent their kid’s college funds, and their unemployment benefits are gone.  The commentator remarked that while nationwide the unemployment rate is 9+%, when you include those who have stopped trying to find work and those who have taken part-time positions with no benefits and at a much lower pay rate, the percentage is over 17% nationally and over 20% in the California area of the story.  Regardless of what we think about the choices these people made, they are stuck.  They are in upside down mortgages, they have no assets to sell, and few have relatives nearby they can lean on.  One woman in her late 50s, who lost her $60,000 a year office manage position, claims to have sent out over 1,500 applications and gotten 3 interviews in the last 18 months.  She’s collecting cans and plastic to sell to the recycling companies and admits that her 80+year-old mother is sending her money so she can eat.  How long can the circus distract us from the lack of bread? 

Week 9 - Public Displays of History: Monuments

Week 9:  Public Displays of History: Monuments

The issue that strikes me most about the Glassberg and Levinson readings for this week is the way in which the meaning of a monument changes over time and across groups.  The WWI monument in Orange, MA documents one monument and the changes/differences in the community’s attitudes toward it.    From the beginning the intentions of why and what the monument should mean was different between the veterans and the peace proponents.  Glassberg’s chapter documents these changes from the commissioning to the mid-90s.  I found Glassberg’s examples clear and compelling and overall feel the chapter does exactly what it sets out to do: show how monuments become important to communities by allowing disparate groups to find compatible meanings which change as time passes.  Value is truly in the eye of the beholder. 

The Levinson book, Written in Stone, presents several examples of how communities deal with changing attitudes toward monuments:  placing plaques with new/updated descriptions and explanations over old/politically incorrect messages from the past; moving the offensive pieces to museums or to less prominent locations; etc.  The New Orleans monument to the overthrow of the ‘carpetbag government’ was especially interesting as it presented an example of preserving the ‘history, warts and all’ (p. 102).  Surely, the incident being memorialized was rightfully hateful to modern African Americans living in New Orleans today, yet a compromise was reached where the piece was preserved in situ (or nearly so).  Not completely satisfying to those it offends, I’m sure, but preserved in a location attached to its original significance nonetheless. 

This all leads back to the memory versus history line of thought we’ve been following all semester.  Each group defines the meaning of the monument in a way that is significant and satisfying to its own vision of self.    So the WWI veterans approve the statue because it shows them as an integral part of the community especially with regard to educating the children and the peace group sees the same statute as an indictment of war by believing the soldier to be teaching the evils of combat.  Both examples of group memory or interpretation both partially historically accurate but neither representing total historic truth.

Week 7 – Cultural Resources Management

The chapter from Glassberg, ‘Making Places in California’ was remarkably similar to other readings we’ve been considering – just taken to the logical next step.  If it’s OK to interpret history in a way that is supportive to a particular group’s understanding of history, then it should come as no surprise that it’s OK to create that history where none exists.  I kept thinking of the ‘Lost Cause’ adherents and was struck as how similar the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West were to those of the Glorious South.  Protecting heritage against those who migrate in, as did Chicanos and Asian Americans, or who gained legal status, as did the African Americans. 

Once again we have group fighting group to tell ‘their’ history and, of course, that history is always the ‘right’ history.  I’m beginning to see that the ‘problem’ of getting to the truth or the ‘true’ history is a never-ending battle for historians.  It’s a seemingly inherent trait among our species to fear the other and to place our own version of history on top in order to use that history as a tool of power.  In the end, that’s what every one of the groups we’ve read about has done:  used history to secure their place, to subjugate others, and to gain respect and social position (not to mention economic gain). 

The Californians did just that:  they had no marketable history so they built one.  There was a line in the article that said ‘No matter how many men and women had been on a trail before, the first ‘white’ to pass along it deserved a plaque’ (pg. 193).

I think that says it all in a nutshell … whichever group is telling the story will key in on the accomplishments of ‘one-of-their-own’ and use THAT history as the ‘right’ history.  This is also true in the New England town of McKnight where the ‘white’ history centered on the time after the Victorian houses were being renovated by wealthy 30-somethings and the ‘black’ history centered on the ‘50s and ‘60s when black business and neighborhoods were strong and flourishing. 

The question remains: How to make all groups interested in combining all histories to come to a ‘whole’ history.