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