Cultural Logics of Reenactment

While the performance of the past has a longer history that dates back to the tableaux vivants and the pageants of the 19th and early 20th centuries, this chapter argues that by the 1970s, re-enactment was on the rise as a strategy for engaging history; for evidence, many reenactments as part of Bicentennial. The end of the chapter focuses on the Bicentennial Wagon Train and the diverging experiences and expectations of planners, participants and audiences to show that re-enactment as a practice leads to many different forms of meaning making.

The Spaces of History

Museums of all kinds became more interactive and immersive. In two now exhibits, “Nation of Nations” and “1876,” the National Museum of American History placed viewers inside of historical milieus. Meanwhile, exhibits in Philadelphia and Boston made use of technologies like computers and phone banks to personalize historical understanding and identification. Finally, living history sites like Plimoth Plantation and Colonial Williamsburg placed more emphasis on realism and authenticity in their presentations of the past.

The Commemoration Revolution

Federal interests planned the Bicentennial of the American Revolution for ten years. In the late 60s and early 1970s, planners envisioned a new World’s Fair, to be held in Philadelphia. But as consensus fractured and distrust of the government, and particularly Richard Nixon, mounted, Americans lacked enthusiasm about the upcoming celebration and criticized what they considered to be a co-optation of the anniversary. By the mid-1970s, the Bicentennial federal planners envisioned was not only more decentralized, but also focused more on the past, as opposed to the future.

Introduction

Using examples from popular culture, this chapter shows that by the 1970s, Americans were far more interested in the past than in the present or future. While many popular and scholarly critics have dismissed this as simple nostalgia or escapism symptomatic of the turbulent decade, the book will argue that in fact what happened was a larger-scale shift in not only how Americans thought about the past, but also how they placed themselves within it, a shift that manifested itself across many iterations of popular and public history during the decade. Chapter ends with an overview of remainder of book and case studies within.

Conclusion

This chapter notes that while the emergence of immersive and identificatory engagements with the past can be traced back to the 1970s, this form of historymaking remains critical and can be seen at sites like the Air Force One Discovery Center at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where schoolchildren ‘play’ Reagan and his cabinet during the invasion of Granada. Likewise, video games and other digital matter continue to help make history come alive.

History Comes Alive

Activists, like everyone else, were interested in history in the 1970s, using the past in the formation and reformation of individual and collective identity. But strategies different across groups: while the People’s Bicentennial Commission urged Americans to identify with the historic revolutionaries, African American culture workers used the Bicentennial as an opportunity to call for inclusion in the “national narrative” through the collection and dissemination of objects and stories. More radical groups, like the American Indian Movement, the Black Panther Party, and other members of the Bicentennial Without Colonies movement saw the commemoration as a way to call attention to ongoing inequalities.

Preservation Is People

The preservation and collection of structures, objects and stories changes significantly in the 1960s and 1970s. Building preservation is democratized as more people and organizations are involved, and different kinds of structures are targeted, including vernacular and recent buildings, and sites associated with African American history. Likewise the collection of vernacular objects and expanded oral history practice also changed at this moment.

Past as Present

Television is one of the earliest indicators of a significant shift, by the 1970s, in how we understand and learn about history. In the 1950s and 60s, television programs like You Are There and The Twilight Zone see the past as a distant and frightening milieu. But by the 1970s, a host of programs, including the new miniseries, depict histories that are relatable and emotionally resonant.