SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

140 I Comparative Perspectives on Complex Semiotic Processes The Semiotic Regimentation of Social Life I 141
the poverty of information provided on the short path leading to the mansion.
Here, we are told, is the future site of the slaves' quarters currently being reconstructed
as a one-room shelter; slaves shared a single room because "they had no
need for privacy." The poverty of the people and the poverty of the information
are mutually justified by the exigencies of scientific reconstruction: "little documentation
is available to indicate what objects slaves actually owned." 3 This sign
echoes a comment made in 1972 by the museum's resident audiovisual expert,
that while filming "Music of Williamsburg," "it was desired to depict the burying
of a field slave, but to the astonishment of the film makers not a single scrap
of information was available on method, emotion, practice, and music (if any) [!] of
black burials. The sequence had to be abandoned" (Smith 1972:7). And across
the path stands a small sign pointing into the woods where the hunting-gathering
Indians roamed. The Indians, we are informed, put up strong resistance to the
early English settlers, and if their assaults had been as successful elsewhere as
here "the course of American history might well have been changed." This was
not to be, and the Indians, "weakened by disease, were no match for the English"—as
if their eventual destruction was, in the end, their fault. Throughout
this site, the language of description systematically uses ergative verbs for the
victors ("a planter class emerges") and transitive verbs for the victims (who
"burned" houses, "killed" settlers, and "embraced" Christianity).
Partial validation of my hypothesis about social distinction came when, just
prior to my departure from Colonial Williamsburg, I attempted to visit Bassett
Hall, now a museum but formerly the residence of the Rockefeller family.
Though armed with my Patriot's Pass, I discovered that admission is very limited
and that a potential visitor must register ahead of time (in a large volume looking
like a guest-book) for an "appointment." In contrast to other exhibit sites, which
permit those without proper passes to stroll the grounds, Bassett Hall's 585-acre
tract is restricted to pass-holders. Unfortunately I did not have time to wait for
my appointment and went away only with the comfort of authenticity, knowing
that the house has been kept in exactly the same shape as when the Rockefellers
lived there in 1956-60. At the top of the hierarchy of regimenting historical interpretation
stands the home of the Rockefellers, the very agents responsible for
the preservation and reconstruction of the surrounding eighteenth-century city.
Although their residence dates only thirty-five years into the past and although
their national economic power originates only in the late nineteenth century, the
Rockefellers have managed to place themselves at the apex of a hierarchy of distinction
anchored at the very birth and birthplace of the democratic ideal.
Wallace (1986^170) is certainly correct in claiming that both Rockefeller
and Henry Ford (at the reconstruction of Greenfield Village near Detroit)
"soughtjpartly-to eelebratejheirjiewly won preeminencejmdjgartly to construct
a retrospective lineage for themseTveTTw buying tKëu way into the American
past." The" power t>fso^nfl^dîsTmctionui the present is thus projected into the
colonial past and rendered part of our cultural heritage worth preserving and
perpetuating. As Leone (19813:309) notes with reference to the museum at
Shakertown in Kentucky: "Naturalizing the present by imposing some part of it
on the past is, as all historiographers know, inevitable and unavoidable." 4
Two brief observations need to be made in closing, though each requires
more extensive e^am^at^on than is possible here. First, I believe that the scientific
or educatiönarfunction of Colonial Williamsburg is one of the principal
ways it legitimizes its reproduction of social distinction. A motto repeated by
interpreters is that Colonial Williamsburg is constantly changing, for "the more
we learn the more things change" as the exhibitions draw closer and closer to an
accurate depiction of the past. Indications of serious scholarly activity abound,
including ongoing archaeological excavations, research publications for sale, an
impressive schedule of academic conferences, and periodic announcements of important
"discoveries." As Cotter (1970:422), a professional archaeologist, observes:
The backbone of the physical restoration, reconstruction, and interpretation
here is Colonial Williamsburg's remarkable research facilities. An enormous
corpus of microfilm, usefully indexed, and excellent library resources, together
with curatorial and archaeological expertise fortified with many thousands of
artifacts and hundreds of thousands of fragmentary objects from the earth—all
provide the researcher with incomparable components of the historicaLscene.
Colonial Williamsburg's interpretive program is strong to the degree that it is
motivated by what I would call the goal of historicaltransparency, that is, for the
authority of the site to appear to the tourist as flowing naturally from the scientific
accuracy of the reconstruction and from the scholarly'^afiSfity of tfTëTnterpretation
without the processes of reconstruction and interpretation's revealing
any signs of regimented "semiotjcjmediation" (Culler 1981:134—37). Thi^evidence
of academic créditais, coupled with the metasemiotic rhetoric insisting on
the realismof.the reconstruction, combine to create what Barthes (1986:139)
labels the\"reality effect^ that is, the function of any historicizing sign "whose
sole pertinenTfeature is precisely to signify that the event represented has really
taken place." Or, as Handler (1986:4) puts it, "in modern society, the temple of
authenticity is the museum." /u„
Second, the message of Colonial Williamsburg is not only communicated to
tourists while at (hTcïty or taken back to the classroom by schoolchildren who
visit on fieldtrips, but it is alsojpr sale in the form of corrunoditjes at various
retail stores. 5 The tourist is encouraged to take advantage of these free-market
shopping opportunities, since all the stores are "ticket not required" sites. Williamsburg
Reproductions, claiming to be authentic replicas of period furniture
and thus embodying the aura of history so carefully constructed by Colonial Williamsburg,
are sold in fifty-nine stores throughout the country. Small signs on