To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: theme parks and museums
From: rabaron
Cc: [log in to unmask]

This thread has many similarities to one that was discussed on museum-l
several months ago.   That one centered around the issue of the museum
object as a "real thing."  I am reposting one of my messages to that thread
because of what I believe to be its significance to this one.

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Subject: Re: why people go to museums

On Tue, 11 Apr 1995 David Harvey <[log in to unmask]> said:

>One thing, and one thing only, separates museums & historic sites from the

>"bells & whistles" of Disneyland and other popular attractions. Museums
>contain and exhibit "real" objects & artifacts and sites are the "real"
>places where things happened.  This is the resource which makes each
museum &
>site unique and of very real interest to our public.

Hank Burchard and others have underscored the significance of seeing the
"real thing" as the central experience of the museum visit in
contradistinction to the "constructed" experiences of "context exhibits" or
to theme parks (another kind of constructed context).

I believe that the central question about the attraction of "realness" of
museum objects still remains unasked and unanswered.  I agree with Hank
that the pull of the real has some special significance to museum visitors.
 (Visitors are not monolithic, of course, so I guess I speak only for those
for whom the statement is true!)  But, we must ask: why is that: what is so
special about the "real?"  Why does contact with authenticity carry
significance for us?  I believe that there is an answer to this question.
It is both a simple answer and an old one.

I suggest that it is not the "reality" or tangibility of the object that
carries significance (for all objects are real), but, rather, our belief in
the ability of "authentic objects" and objects of high quality to connect
us, in some unknown spiritual fashion, to people, events and circumstances
we define as central to our view of ourselves.  Our museum objects are
religious relics of the 20th century.  The paintings and fine arts, the
historical artifacts, realia, and all the other artifacts that comprise our
museum world are therein enshrined to serve one central purpose (and
myriads of tangential ones): to reinforce our personal connection to those
mythic centers by which we define ourselves and create personal and social
meaning.  We use these items to project ourselves into the events, times
and issues we hold dear.  They supply the foundation upon which we
construct our reason for existing in the present.  The museum experience,
and, for that matter, the historical humanities in general, provide the
scaffolding we need to build our own story onto the edifice of
civilization.  As in the kunstkammer, we see the world through the
projection of our holdings and in return our holdings define us.

If the artifacts are the relics that evoke the metaphor of our identity
with a primal center, then contextualizing them may be equivalent to
enshrining them within a reliquary.  The reliquary is the medieval
contextualization of its contents.  It draws the path from the object to
its meaning.  The fragment of the true cross (real or not) by itself means
nothing, just as the gun that shot whatshisname is meaningless without
developed contextualization (in your mind or on a label).  The reliquary
provides that missing context and underscores, by virtue of its richesse
and decoration, the power its contents is intended to convey.

Without context objects are meaningless: As Robert Nathan tells us in _The
Weans_, "During the winter of 7857, excavations in the south and southwest
uncovered ... one battered metal cylinder on which is etched the mysterious
sign: BUDWEISER." (Knopf, 1960, p. 36).  Museums have the ability to
provide context to history and reality in all its messiness.

There is a place for theme parks in this methodology.  In museums visitors
(the we) project themselves by way of dialogue into the re-created world
signified by the object or gallery (the them).  No matter how much meaning
we draw from it, it is always a question of our world versus their world.
In the theme park, the visitor has an opportunity to allow himself to be
subsumed into other worlds; the "I" and "thou" meld into the "we."

Writers on museum-l in the past have complained about the inauthenticity of
the theme park experience when compared to that offered by "museums."  I
think that they miss the point.  The museum experience and the theme park
experience have divergent but related aims.  Museums exist to make the
unknown known; theme parks recreate a world in which we can verify and
internalize our own values.  In the theme park the observer has an
opportunity to become a player in a cultural or historical version of
mythic events or mythic experience -- what we tend to call legends: "Come
with us now to those exciting days of yester-year."

The theme-park experience has an almost Aristotelian ring to it: It
provides an opportunity for the observer to indulge in a surrogate
experience of important, defining or dramatic events and times.  The theme
park is a stage, the employees, even those who pick up garbage, are told
that they are actors.  In the early days of Disneyland, park policy went so
far as to deny entry to anyone who did not look as if he belonged in the
official drama.

"Tragedy," says Aristotle, "is an imitation of an action that is serious,
complete, and of a certain magnitude; [...] in the form of action, not of
narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these
emotions."

While under the guise of having a good time, the theme park visitor is
given leave to identify with a mythologized version of historical phenomena
expressed in tragic or comic terms (be it a "dangerous" journey through the
unruly Caribbean, or a silly afternoon with musical oafish Bears).  As
players in these tableaux, we can pretend to be in peril, or we can pretend
we are superior to those other oafs: the demands of tragedy and comedy are
met.

Having suspended our normal tests for reality (our disbelief), in the theme
park we are given every opportunity to identify with the national myth in
no lesser manner (well, perhaps in a somewhat lesser manner) than ancient
Greek theatergoers watched the enactment of those stories vital to the
underlying moral strata of their own civilization.  We are invited to
become Tom Sawyer, to ride a rocket to Mars, to suffer the perils of a
run-away goldmine railroad; to watch a mechanized oracle Honest Abe deliver
the Gettysburg Address, and so on.  These national icons are not presented
as accurate recreations, but rather reduced to their essential experiential
centers.  Unlike museums, they exist -- not for fact -- but for their
mythic ethos, and like myth, they must simulate a version of reality that
is both appealing and significant.  (The Enola Gay exhibit aftermath can be
interpreted as a conflict between these two ideals.)

In the theme park we are offered historyless reenactments of those events
and times that define our national and social moral fiber.  Unlike museums,
theme parks do not attempt to recreate history, but, rather, offer us a
perpetual or timeless version of the everpresent past.  How quickly we can
bounce from the Jurassic to the Federalist period.

In the theme park it is by virtue of the act of imitation that we are drawn
into the center of our existence.  It is by virtue of our placing ourselves
in mock jeopardy, and by passing through the emotions of pity and fear that
we undergo our Americo-Aristotelian catharsis.  If this description sounds
as if it may be applied equally to a day at Disneyland or a morning at
mass, you will have understood the intense draw of our American
attractions.  You might say that in the theme park the individual lives
within the Metaphor, while in the museum the visitor is asked to stand
outside the Metaphor of identity.  The latter is a much more difficult
endeavor, for it requires the observer to remain an outsider and a distant
participant.  (Cf. Heart of Darkness.)

The museum and the theme park have opposite mandates.  That being said, I
do not think that museums should compete with mass entertainments, for to
succeed in this effort will probably mean that the historical, social,
educational or aesthetic mission of the museum will come to be abandoned.
On the other hand museums have a lot to learn from theme parks about how to
make their prizes accessible to those who venture their way.

______________________________________

Robert A. Baron
Museum Computer Consultant
P.O. Box 93, Larchmont, NY 10538
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