History Revisited

During a week of tech hassles, I sought refuge in one of my favorite viewing pleasures, Colonial House. PBS did a variety of these shows: Frontier House, Texas Ranch House, Manor House, 1940s House (though that might have been the BBC.) I like and recommend all of them. (If you loved Upstairs, Downstairs, Manor House is a must see.) I watch Colonial House most often because I own it and because I love watching a Baptist minister and Berkeley theologian try to run the colony together and separately, often with too much input from the Berkeley theologian's wife. I especially adore it because, since my dad has worked in academia most of my life, I just crack up at the theologian. Even if they didn't say he was a Berkeley professor, if you had shown me his picture, I would have said "That guy has tenure somewhere, probably at Berkeley, and will speak slowly and profoundly, often about nothing." Not that all academics are like this, but there's at least one (usually more) in every department. But I digress...

Anyway, the concept of these shows is that 20th-21st century people go back and try to relive history, which makes for great t.v., though you'd never catch me actually signing up for one. (Without fail, the majority of people who sign up seem to have romantic, hazy ideas about the experience and no clue that it's going to be harder work than they'll ever see again and they will spend most of the time miserable. Why they don't realize that is beyond me.)

It also makes me wonder what people from the past would think about it. I imagine a woman on the frontier thinking, "Ok, so these people can go to a store and buy butter, put it in an appliance that keeps it cold, but they'd rather milk the cow and then churn the butter for the experience? Clearly, our descendants are stupid."

It's not that I don't see the allure of the past. In fact, I spent several years in the SCA. (Society for Creative Anachronism...you know, the people in the park dressed up like they're in the Middle Ages.) I thought it was a delightful way to spend an hour or two. And then I'd look at the really dedicated ones, those who were camping out in tents and lining up for port-a-potties, and washing up out of a bucket of water, and I'd say, "It's been really nice being medieval with you, but now I have to go home to my indoor plumbing, cable t.v., air conditioning, and Internet" --which was dial-up back then and as close to the ancient past as I ever hope to be again.

Invariably, these t.v. programs have varying success at authenticity. Manor House replicates life best, I think, which means the servants wind up hating the family they serve while the family thinks the servants adore them. Uh, yeah. They're just lucky it's not set in the French Revolution.

My beloved Colonial House participants don't do so well at becoming history. Some of them do better than others. The servants do best. But the non-servants spend a lot of time fighting over mandatory church attendance and dress codes. It is fun to watch them stake each other out (literally) and i also enjoy the representatives of two Native American tribes. The first tribe, who coordinated with the project, worry that the colonists won't make it through the winter. The second tribe, who stumble upon them, sort of hope they won't.

And I sit in my comfy recliner, eating junk food, laughing and rolling my eyes, and periodically pausing it so I can check Facebook, play Words With Friends, or add to my blog. Hmm. Three hundred years from now, is that what participants of 21st Century House will do? And will they wonder aloud how anyone survived with only a couple of hundred t.v. channels?