Robert T. Handy wrote:
>
> Eric Siegel wrote:
> >
> > > You're concise definition of slavery, "one group of humans
> > > systematically degrading another for profit"
> >
> > Eric
>
> I think you would have to closely examine whether or not many people
> could in reality, "pick up and leave." It just is/was not that easy for
> many.
> --
> Bob Handy, Director
> Brazoria County Historical Museum
> 100 East Cedar
> Angleton, Texas 77515
> (409) 864-1208
> (409) 864-1217 (Fax)
> http://www.bchm.org
Bob, Eric,
I wonder if, in our stampede to reveal the "truth", we sufficiently add
the dimension of gratitude for living in a society so fortunate as to
afford us such an opportunity? Many Americans might benefit from
occasionally remembering to pause and count their blessings. Impiety
occurs when we take everything for granted, and then demand more. But
one cannot focus entirely on our brightest or darkest achievements. The
IRS April 15 deadline is another issue.
The Congress Party of India, political rulers of the subcontinent during
the mid-seventies, admitted that during its term there were still
"approximately 250,000" indentured servants working on sugar plantations
in Bihar, an impoverished and backward state in eastern India. These
people were born into servitude, many still paying off their
grandfather's loan for a dowry: in some cases amounting to little more
than a dollar! These plantations are on fair-weather roads (navigable
about 6 months a year), populated by nonvoting illiterates. The
politician's socialist sensitivities recoil at the words "slave" or
"serf", so they are classified as indentured, by their ancestor's debt.
How would a curator or director in India approach that one? Very, very
delicately, if at all.
Like colleagues at museums in areas facing the dilemma of a local slave
history, how should one who manages a museum in an industrial state
exhibit or portray the sweat shop/factory workers of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries? Some sympathy for the caricatured,
pot-bellied industrialists who charted America's growth to world power?
The Chinese, Japanese, and Irish immigrant railroad builders who in
their search for a better life, naively contributed to the dismantling
of the native societies? The interned American-born of WWII? Realistic
dioramas or re-enactments of victimization? I doubt if one on holiday
pays a visit to a museum, or takes one's children to see exhibits which
are appalling or depressing, however illuminating, realistic and
accurate. Down goes the attendance and revenues and contributions, up
goes the controversy and ammunition for the "lunatic fringe", and out
goes the exhibit director. Where does the sacked museum-person nowadays
seek new opportunities? Little inspiration can be culled from a thorough
scan of the "situations vacant" section in the Havana Daily Bugle.
I wholeheartedly admire and support intelligent and concerned people,
such as yourself, who shoulder the burden of directing institutions
involved with educational projects. Responsible education may one day
help eliminate such farcical tragedies as the fact that also in Bihar,
home of the largest mental hospital in India, 30% of all long term
mental hospital inmates- not outpatients- are women who were admitted
for temporarily acting "strangely" during postpartum.
Do curators and directors have a duty or right to expose every injustice
and force our personal crusades down the throats of museum visitors?
Most definitely not. It is unprofessional and offensive to parade one's
political or religious convictions in the alledged secular environment
of a museum.
By the way, sex has replaced sugar as the leading impetus of
contemporary slavery; ergo
brothels are the plantations of the twentieth century. How will the
future generations of curators deal with that?
I invite you to visit www.bangkokpost.net -The Bangkok Post Newspaper,
24 February '98 edition - Opinion & Analysis page; "More needs to be
done to protect victims of modern-day slavery". Written by Professor
Vitit Muntarbhorn, faculty of Law, Chulalongkorn University, for an
fact-filled article on the current trade in tribal women AND children
sex slaves in the Mekong River region. It does not inspire hope or
cultivate a sense of brotherly love for the perpetrators, many in
uniform. How does one possibly portray these pathetic souls and their
living nightmare in an institution visited by elementary school
children, the squeamish or simply less broad minded? Any suggestions,
Bob, Eric, anyone? Actors? Brothel scenarios with pimps and beatings?
One must appreciate the difference between entertaining visitors and
educating them. The ideal solution is to offer an educational
opportunity while entertaining visitors. The heavily- interactive
Ethnographic Museum in Leiden, Holland has done pretty well in that
effort. Interactive displays at ethnographical exhibits there are very
popular- much like at the more modern science-oriented museums. More
interactive displays but also some costumed live exhibits, to intensify
and humanize the experience.
People are invariably attracted to a spectacle. Whether its a film clip
of a lunar landing or a lynching. People's natural curiousity is one of
the curator's best assets.
At a temple near Bangkok, there is a Museum of Hell. Not recommended for
the faint hearted. Its murals and life size mannequins depict graphic
and grisly scenes of torture and punishment- as described in ancient
Buddhist texts of the Therevada tradition. Its purpose is to presumably
inspire the devout to avoid a potentially similar fate. Although not
touted as an ideal tourist hot spot during the current "Amazing
Thailand" promotion, it does attract lots of curious Oriental and east
Asian visitors. Across the border in Penom Penh, there's the Cambodian
War Museum.......
Bruce Miller
[log in to unmask]
PS
For those of you on the list who cannot download or haven't time to
visit the Bangkok Post website, post me - off list - and I'll try to
email you a copy of Professor Muntarbhorn's article.
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