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[aslant]

i stayed home sick yesterday with leftover cramps. my miraculous, limited engagement, one-day-only period has come and gone, and at least i got a nice loungey day out of it. k was home until 3pm, and we were lazy together. i played a lot of chrono cross last night. happy times.

did anyone else watch colonial house last night on pbs? ♥ i am sure i would be horrified by goat dung, too, but i still want a second career in historical reenactment. preferably in a cold, dark kitchen. the governor of the little colony is a southern baptist minister from texas in real life, and it was so interesting to hear his thoughts on what the whole reenactment meant to him & his faith. i don't suppose any americans can fathom what it was like to go to such lengths to freely practice religion -- he was crying a little bit when he spoke about it, and that was sweet. you know, alarm bells kind of go off in your mind when you hear that a southern baptist minister is a participant in an experiment like this, but he seems like a neat guy, very thoughtful and aware of the ten billion things to be considered in the reenactment.

Comments

[nevers.livejournal.com]

being raised in colonial wburg, i wonder what i would think of it. and yes, historical reenactment is grand!!

[aslant.livejournal.com]

i saw a tiny piece of behind-the-scenes stuff, and all the participants were trained at plymouth plantation, in first aid and fire techniques and stuff like that. they're actually in maine, so at least the climate is pretty accurate :) they are doing superearly-colony life, with four little houses and big fields and local indians dropping in occasionally. i think it's pretty neat, and it sounds like they gave them quite a bit of training in thinking like colonists, asking themselves if something is a period-appropriate solution, etc. it's a lot different from the frontier house series, in which it seemed the modern families were so unwilling to let go of their usual modes of life. although it sucks, the men of colonial house seem pretty willing to stick to period gender roles and power arrangements. i'm excited to watch it again tonight.

i need to stop talking about period reenactment stuff and just do it. yes.

[nevers.livejournal.com]

what would you do? what opportunities do you have -- or do you need to find out still? i suppose in boston there are surely opportunities to be had.

i still want a job wearing a gown and doing regal colonial dances at cw. but i have no idea how to get involved, or if they even still do them (i took lessons as a fifth grader, with a bunch of raucous giggling middle school boys and girls, and i loved it).

[aslant.livejournal.com]

well, unfortunately the plymouth plantation doesn't list any reenactment opportunities---everyone on their staff is professional, i guess. i would check out old sturbridge village, and local boston tea party-type stuff. i'm still looking into it, there must be more opportunities. i am going to make it a point to apply to be on the next house series that pbs does--so far they've done frontier and colonial house, so i'm not sure what they'll do next---an 18th century thing would be right up my alley.

[ex-mthrtong.livejournal.com]

yes, we watched this last night too, and i'm totally addicted. i guess i've seen all the pbs 'reality' and reenactment type shows, so it was easy to spot, in the first 10 minutes, which woman was going to bitch and moan during the whole program (what was her name? the voorhies wife) and which man was going to be a big self-indulgent doofus (lay-preacher whats-his-nuts).

it always seems to be the case, in these shows, that the men get quickly comfortable in their 'period' roles and the women throw a big fit about their 'period' position. and quite often it was the women who were most interested in doing the show in the first place ... it's a puzzle, because i'm not sure how one should really handle such a situation. on one hand, you can't forget what you know and believe as a 21st century person. on the other hand, announcing that the women want days off and are thus refusing to cook, etc., just seems dumb. i'm sure all that work would exhaust me too, but i don't understand how these women didn't realize that going into these projects. and then there's always that ugly surprise when they realize that their husbands are sort of enjoying it...

[ex-mthrtong.livejournal.com]

where i think i was going with that: i don't know about the men, but it seems to me that women get involved in these projects because they want to prove that they are as strong and able as the women before them, that they can be smart and professionals and sexy AND build a house from scratch in winter in montana while raising three kids. but when they find out they can't, rather than just admitting, "wow this is hard. those women really were accomplished. i am accomplished too, in different ways, etc..." they start crying and talking about how unfair the situation is. it irritates me.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

i absolutely agree. i think the voorhies woman was not quite as bad as that californian wife in the frontier house---the horrible woman who always bitched at her husband---but the voorhies lady will, i think, get worse. i have to say i have a bone to pick with people who dispute their religious upbringing late in life---angst about 'mouthing the words' as a teenager is expected, but angst about that as an adult? i want to slap her & say, get over it. it's nice that you're principled enough to take a stand and not want to just go along with the church service for the sake of blending in, but give me a break. her preachy "we're at the bottom of the ladder" speech made me roll my eyes, too. i'm sure we're not seeing the whole story with her, but i have BIG doubts about her adaptability. i don't get why bitching is part of it. i feel like she has issues, she wants this to be more meaningful in a women's liberation kind of way, and she's trying to twist the situations around to suit that. wasn't she the one wearing that giant berkeley-in-the-1960s peace symbol necklace in the interviews?

do you remember the last ep of frontier house? they followed the californian family around their mcmansion and the dad was mowing his tiny tiny lawn & looking so depressed about how far he'd sunk, compared to the more meaningful work he'd been doing on frontier house. and the little son was all sad about no more family meals together. and they all seemed so empty and soulless and unchanged, and sad about how different & unfulfilling it was to go back to regular life but they didn't do anything to make their regular lives better. that made me sad.

[ex-mthrtong.livejournal.com]

oh i do remember that--it was really awfully sad. they were like zombies. and it was very surreal, seeing how much money and STUFF they actually did have, understanding what a huge leap it was for them to, you know, do anything for themselves, or talk to each other, or even be in the same room.

exactly, exactly, when the voorhies woman started criticizing the baptist girl for her (admittedly curious) religious certainty, i just wanted to smack her. certainly seemed to be the pot calling the kettle unsure of her own identity.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

the lay preacher cracked me up. with his decorative branches and all. i know the 3-hr service is historically accurate, but he looks like the worst example of someone to have in that role--and at the same time, perfectly appropriate. irritating in a period kind of way. i think he has a weird pastoral vision of it all, and i feel sorry for his servant man.

i definitely feel they need more of a community spirit. sometimes they're goal oriented, but sometimes i want to jump in there and give a pep talk. how can they demand days off from cooking and not see how that affects the men working in the fields? there's a reason that is was illegal to work on sundays--that was literally the only day of rest. they seem to be kind of soft on themselves.

[ex-mthrtong.livejournal.com]

the passive-aggressive pbs commentary is hilarious. "this would be a perfect opportunity for the colonists to discuss historic forms of barter and farming with the native americans, but they're really anxious to skin that muskrat." .... "planting corn in this manner means alot of backbreaking work, which is an entirely new concept to these 21 century colonists..."

[souvenant.livejournal.com]

[aslant.livejournal.com]

oh my gosh! the colony looks so interesting. i hope they show it here! that sounds really cool. i know so little about australian colonial history.

they've showed manor house, 1900 house, and WWII house here. there was also a regency house series, but it hasn't been shown (or advertised, at least). frontier house is the only other american one---all the others are british. colonial house seems much better because more planning seems to have gone into picking the participants & the show's goal. the frontier house was all about family competition, and some of those people were simply AWFUL. ugh.

[paperthinwalls.livejournal.com]

i loved manor house, but they're all great. i'd so much rather watch this than anything else on tv--i sat with my mom last night and watched colonial house and we actually talked about it during, and thoughtfully, imagine that! ;) [hard to say that about other television]

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

i liked manor house a lot.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

manor house was very good stuff, although i hated their scullery maids. so lazy, so unprepared! also the psychotic thin cook was fun. i am a below-stairs addict, i love that shit.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

yeah, the puritans needed religious freedom the same way any extremist fundamentalist does. i mean, those loose victorian morals can really trip up a god-fearing lunatic.

[kleinekatze.livejournal.com]

random girl chatting with random friend looks up and says that she cannot go see OR-A-TRIX (the best all-female spoken word troupe EVER) and see my dear friend shey open for them with his BEAUTIFUL music because she's going to be watching colonial house at 8pm.

both coasts are hooked, i'm starting to wonder what i'm missing...and if the cbc will show america's pbs.

my cbc can kick your pbs' ass to the upn, yo.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

well, it's in the on-demand menu, if you have comcast digital cable. i can't believe you watch cbc! i can't believe you live in weird sort-of-canada-land!

these 'house' shows are so fantastic, i can't believe you're not watching it! get thee to a television! reenactments are so much better than reality shows---and thirteen (the production company) puts so much thought into the design of the shows, they really do try to get the participants to get inside the heads of the original colonists.

also you get to see a gay boy come out to the entire colony DURING THE SUNDAY CHURCH SERVICE. how much does that rock? lots.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

The uncanny thing is that the colonial emigrees were the most crazed and impatient. I mean - Cromwell conquered Britain only a few years after the plymouth colony began! I think the reason it looks so hard for the people on television is that they aren't actually crazy whereas the original people likely were. I don't mean it in an especially unkind way I'm just pointing out that the revolution these people were advocating was in full swing, but that they had to have it immediately! Immediately! So they sail around the world in a single boat to land in the middle of the biggest wilderness in the world where there are dangerous native populations that outnumber them by a staggering amount. You could say that's religious conviction, but religious conviction was what managed to change Britain - what the original colonists had was actual full on madness.

1628 & all that.

[aslant.livejournal.com]

i agree about the madness---although i guess if you had to define madness for the average white liberal pbs viewer, it would probably be "texan southern baptist", so to a certain degree they are presenting colonists with very foreign sensibilities & convictions to their viewers. when the minister was separated from his family for a while, they practiced synchronized prayers each day, long-distance, which governors back in the day did, too. an interestingly modern, unconscious echo, i think.

[coast.livejournal.com]

I'm so fucking late on this, and I saw this post when you first made it, but I'm all about Colonial House. I watched all four hours last week and I'm totally addicted. I have different opinions on everyone there, and the British/Irish/Scottish (or whatever they are) guys are HOTT.

<3

You'd be the perfect person to take part in something like that. I could see it now.