Theme Parks of History

The danger is alkways to sanitise for the family audience. This is done in the history we teach children as well. I think its much harder to be objective in bricks and mortar too much is at stake. Education or entertainment,which makes more money? lets sweep the distasteful elements under the carpets.

But how does that explain Williamsburg ?

The problem with any historical recreation is that it inevitably reflects the mores and ethos of the creators. We are obsessed with consumption. We feel that slavery is somehow safer for kids than prostitution. It is our obsession with authenticity that drives us to construct worlds of absolute artifice.

I don't know about Williamsburg but certainly we sanitise our Victorian/Edwardian/Inter War 'Experiences'. A read of Road tro Wigan Pier will rob you of any illusions of how poor the quality of life was in those eras. Often these intituttions tend to dwell on making comparisons that show us in a good light, 'aren't we enlightend for abolishing slavery, the pillory, beating children.....'. Howvere prostitution drugs etc. are still frowned upon buy our latent vitorian morals but still with us as always so we retreat back and sweep it under the carpet and hope that it will go away.

Anthony, you might enjoy the short story "CivilWarLand In Bad Decline" by George Saunders, which covers some of this ground in an amusing and interesting way.

Yeah! "Civilwarland In Bad Decline" is a bizarre story about historical theme parks, the post-apocalyptic theme park in the novella at the end ("Bounty"? I gave my copy to a friend,) and the first story in the Pastorilia collection is not much saner, which is more concerned with recreating cavemen. Saunders has cornered the literary market on the goblin in humans' heads on what makes them want to recreate the past accurately (which probably should be in quotes.)

Palahniuk's Choke goes into historical theme parks as well, but i kinda get the feeling that he might be riffing on Saunders.

It's all fairly weird, but we went to on outside Cardiff recently, and it was funnier than i imagined. Am currently surrounded by sanitized plantations and people who dress up in Civil War uniforms, shooting blanks at each other by rote. A regular renaissance festival ground has been started up down the road, and that's bound to be even more absurd.

I think a lot of people regard museums just as a place to take children on school tours, so the parts of history that might make people uncomfortable go unmentioned. I don't think there are going to be too many that tell the unvarnished truth about everything.

cow with the window in it's side = classic

In the UK I think such theme parks were the embodiment of the spirit of the mid-80s to early 90s (and to a lesser extent the period since): fetishising the past while in fact breaking radically with tradition in the movements and values of your daily life.

I liked them as a child, but I could never have fully understood the motives lurking behind a lot of them - at best the lunacy which motivated shops opened in 1987 to call themselves "Ye Olde ------ Shoppe" or TV presenters to refer to a new Ordnance Survey as "Ye Olde Mappe", and at worst the most self-contradictory (and self- destructing) elements of Thatcherism.