Post by Cliff Krainik on Mar 24, 2005 6:45:05 GMT -5
PART III
'Was the War About Slavery?'
"Lincoln was no friend of the black man. His Emancipation Proclamation freed no one. Just look at the map!"
An image of the black abolitionist John Rock appears on the center screen in the Union Theater, where BRC staffers are previewing the museum's second big theatrical production, "Lincoln's Eyes." Rock's role is to question the Great Emancipator's motives. His sentiments are real, but the voice-over's language is that of a scriptwriter.
Look at the Confederate states, he continues, as a colorful map of the divided nation replaces his angry face: No slaves freed there, because Lincoln didn't control them. Look at the northern states: No slaves freed there, because there were none. Look, finally, at the slaveholding border states still loyal to the Union: No slaves freed there, because Lincoln exempted those states, fearing they would secede if he didn't.
"The Emancipation Proclamation was a slick but empty trick by a cynical politician," Rock adds.
"No matter what Lincoln did, somebody didn't like it," the narrator says.
After Rock comes Chief Justice Roger Taney, who calls emancipation unconstitutional. More voices follow, including that of Frederick Douglass -- a black abolitionist far more influential than Rock -- who inclines toward giving the president the benefit of the doubt. On-screen as Douglass speaks are two Lincolns, one wearing horns, another equipped with a halo.
A bit crude, perhaps -- but the complexity of Lincoln's positions on slavery and race are not easy to get across. This is part of what makes him feel so contemporary. "The metaphor of Lincoln as someone whose real achievement was in outgrowing the racist culture that produced him," Smith says, represents "what America would like to think of itself" today.
No, the complexity isn't easy to deal with, but you can see that the museum is trying. Take the interactive display called "Ask Mr. Lincoln," in which visitors can choose from a range of questions that get answered in Lincoln's own words, with context added by state historian Schwartz. One is "Was the war about slavery or about Union?" In his answer, Schwartz parses a much-misquoted letter Lincoln wrote on the subject, underlining its internal contradictions.
"You decide," the historian concludes.
BRC has been trying to get slavery right all along. Well before Smith made his how-the-museum-will-be-judged pronouncement, the advisory committee was talking about how best to introduce the subject. An early notion had been to focus visitors' attention on a famous photograph of an escaped slave with a horrifically scarred back. Then Howard University historian Edna Greene Medford argued that slavery's horrors "were both psychological and physical, and we needed to convey that." The planners switched gears and highlighted a diorama of a slave auction instead.
Sometimes BRC seemed downright fanatical about getting important details right. For example, BRC researcher Darroch Greer spent months researching Civil War casualty figures for a small display called "The Civil War in Four Minutes" -- an electronic map that shows shifting battle lines and includes an odometer-like device showing how the casualties mounted week by week. University of Virginia historian Gary Gallagher calls Greer's work "a valuable discussion of the topic."
Yet showmanship sometimes trumped historical precision.
There are those modernized campaign commercials: Exhibit planners are still debating whether there should be signage explaining that there was no television in 1860.
And, of course, there are those hard-working Holavision ghosts.
'That Flag Was With Us'
The Lincoln Museum's impact will be "huge," says James C. Rees, executive director of Mount Vernon. When it opens, Rees believes, museum people from all over the country -- not to mention tourism officials from cities that, like Springfield, think they have some history to sell -- will descend on BRC's creation. They'll be looking to see if the showmanship-meets-scholarship approach really works.
And what better place to start than "Ghosts of the Library"?
The reboot is over now, and the BRC crew takes the show from the top. Early on, the actor playing the host raises the ultimate taboo question for a history museum. "Why study all this old stuff? Who cares?" he asks, as if channeling an audience of restless middle schoolers.
One answer is: Way cool ghosts. There's a boom, crack of thunder and lightning and the first batch briefly flicker into view.
But there are more serious answers as well.
The host explains that historians discover new things all the time. What if someone's secret diary turns up, or a batch of Mary Lincoln's letters? Her son Robert burned the ones he could lay his hands on, but you never know. By preserving and studying such things, the host says, "we create our own experience of those times, as if we had been there with them, long ago."
So far, "Ghosts" appears to be just as Rogers describes it: an unprecedented attempt to use D-word showmanship to explain why history is important -- and more specifically, to explain why we need that fancy library across the street, with its climate-controlled stash of diaries and deeds and its priceless Gettysburg Address, written out in Lincoln's hand.
Here comes the climax, again.
"You see that flag?" the host says. "It's my favorite item from this collection: the regimental flag from the 33d Illinois. That flag was with us on June 22, 1863, when we were down in Mississippi at a town called Vicksburg."
Cue the music, cue the battle scene, which comes in just fine this time. Cue the actor's transformation from host to uniformed soldier. "I was a proud member of the 33d, and I carried that flag into battle," he says.
Whoops.
In fact, the artificially tattered Stars and Stripes he's pointing at is not the flag of the 33d Illinois. It's not any other regiment's flag either, and it's not even a replica of anything from the Lincoln Library's collection. Regimental flags, Rogers explains later, often looked more like state flags, and "it's hard to get emotional about a flag with some strange logo on it that you've never seen."
He seems unconcerned that the centerpiece of his story about why the past should be preserved isn't real. "If we can add other emotional elements, such as patriotism, to help connect people to history, then why the heck not?" he says.
Then Rogers makes a point with which even the harshest critics and staunchest boosters of the museum's historical high-wire act could agree:
"History," he says, "is too important to be left in the past."
Cliff Krainik
'Was the War About Slavery?'
"Lincoln was no friend of the black man. His Emancipation Proclamation freed no one. Just look at the map!"
An image of the black abolitionist John Rock appears on the center screen in the Union Theater, where BRC staffers are previewing the museum's second big theatrical production, "Lincoln's Eyes." Rock's role is to question the Great Emancipator's motives. His sentiments are real, but the voice-over's language is that of a scriptwriter.
Look at the Confederate states, he continues, as a colorful map of the divided nation replaces his angry face: No slaves freed there, because Lincoln didn't control them. Look at the northern states: No slaves freed there, because there were none. Look, finally, at the slaveholding border states still loyal to the Union: No slaves freed there, because Lincoln exempted those states, fearing they would secede if he didn't.
"The Emancipation Proclamation was a slick but empty trick by a cynical politician," Rock adds.
"No matter what Lincoln did, somebody didn't like it," the narrator says.
After Rock comes Chief Justice Roger Taney, who calls emancipation unconstitutional. More voices follow, including that of Frederick Douglass -- a black abolitionist far more influential than Rock -- who inclines toward giving the president the benefit of the doubt. On-screen as Douglass speaks are two Lincolns, one wearing horns, another equipped with a halo.
A bit crude, perhaps -- but the complexity of Lincoln's positions on slavery and race are not easy to get across. This is part of what makes him feel so contemporary. "The metaphor of Lincoln as someone whose real achievement was in outgrowing the racist culture that produced him," Smith says, represents "what America would like to think of itself" today.
No, the complexity isn't easy to deal with, but you can see that the museum is trying. Take the interactive display called "Ask Mr. Lincoln," in which visitors can choose from a range of questions that get answered in Lincoln's own words, with context added by state historian Schwartz. One is "Was the war about slavery or about Union?" In his answer, Schwartz parses a much-misquoted letter Lincoln wrote on the subject, underlining its internal contradictions.
"You decide," the historian concludes.
BRC has been trying to get slavery right all along. Well before Smith made his how-the-museum-will-be-judged pronouncement, the advisory committee was talking about how best to introduce the subject. An early notion had been to focus visitors' attention on a famous photograph of an escaped slave with a horrifically scarred back. Then Howard University historian Edna Greene Medford argued that slavery's horrors "were both psychological and physical, and we needed to convey that." The planners switched gears and highlighted a diorama of a slave auction instead.
Sometimes BRC seemed downright fanatical about getting important details right. For example, BRC researcher Darroch Greer spent months researching Civil War casualty figures for a small display called "The Civil War in Four Minutes" -- an electronic map that shows shifting battle lines and includes an odometer-like device showing how the casualties mounted week by week. University of Virginia historian Gary Gallagher calls Greer's work "a valuable discussion of the topic."
Yet showmanship sometimes trumped historical precision.
There are those modernized campaign commercials: Exhibit planners are still debating whether there should be signage explaining that there was no television in 1860.
And, of course, there are those hard-working Holavision ghosts.
'That Flag Was With Us'
The Lincoln Museum's impact will be "huge," says James C. Rees, executive director of Mount Vernon. When it opens, Rees believes, museum people from all over the country -- not to mention tourism officials from cities that, like Springfield, think they have some history to sell -- will descend on BRC's creation. They'll be looking to see if the showmanship-meets-scholarship approach really works.
And what better place to start than "Ghosts of the Library"?
The reboot is over now, and the BRC crew takes the show from the top. Early on, the actor playing the host raises the ultimate taboo question for a history museum. "Why study all this old stuff? Who cares?" he asks, as if channeling an audience of restless middle schoolers.
One answer is: Way cool ghosts. There's a boom, crack of thunder and lightning and the first batch briefly flicker into view.
But there are more serious answers as well.
The host explains that historians discover new things all the time. What if someone's secret diary turns up, or a batch of Mary Lincoln's letters? Her son Robert burned the ones he could lay his hands on, but you never know. By preserving and studying such things, the host says, "we create our own experience of those times, as if we had been there with them, long ago."
So far, "Ghosts" appears to be just as Rogers describes it: an unprecedented attempt to use D-word showmanship to explain why history is important -- and more specifically, to explain why we need that fancy library across the street, with its climate-controlled stash of diaries and deeds and its priceless Gettysburg Address, written out in Lincoln's hand.
Here comes the climax, again.
"You see that flag?" the host says. "It's my favorite item from this collection: the regimental flag from the 33d Illinois. That flag was with us on June 22, 1863, when we were down in Mississippi at a town called Vicksburg."
Cue the music, cue the battle scene, which comes in just fine this time. Cue the actor's transformation from host to uniformed soldier. "I was a proud member of the 33d, and I carried that flag into battle," he says.
Whoops.
In fact, the artificially tattered Stars and Stripes he's pointing at is not the flag of the 33d Illinois. It's not any other regiment's flag either, and it's not even a replica of anything from the Lincoln Library's collection. Regimental flags, Rogers explains later, often looked more like state flags, and "it's hard to get emotional about a flag with some strange logo on it that you've never seen."
He seems unconcerned that the centerpiece of his story about why the past should be preserved isn't real. "If we can add other emotional elements, such as patriotism, to help connect people to history, then why the heck not?" he says.
Then Rogers makes a point with which even the harshest critics and staunchest boosters of the museum's historical high-wire act could agree:
"History," he says, "is too important to be left in the past."
Cliff Krainik
I found two "mentions" on time-line displays... that's all. 