Inside the World of Living History

Living history is a complicated topic in the world of public history. Public historians debate whether it can be considered authentic and even whether it is a useful tool at all. This week’s reading, The Wages of History: Emotional Labor on Public History’s Front Lines by Amy Tyson, used an extended case method to examine the complexities of working as an interpreter at Historic Fort Snelling in Minnesota.

Tyson found several major themes that affected the lives of the workers, both on and off of the job. One such theme that I found to be interesting (and somewhat maddening) was the gender and class divides between workers. Interpreters at Fort Snelling experienced tension between male and female employees, as bosses assigned historically male of female tasks to each individual hired. Interestingly, female interpreters were not included in the interpretive plan to be historically accurate—as females would have lived and worked at the fort—but to please visitors (42).

Tyson found that visitor preference affected most of the decisions made concerning interpretation, both by management and individual staff members. Most interpreters agreed that visitor reaction guided their performances. Because interpreters could not move up in the organization, many workers considered positive visitor feedback the most important aspect of the job. The focus of interpreters on pleasing visitors led to another interesting point: that the less comfortable topics of history, especially slavery, was generally erased from the interpretation (150). Like in other situations, interpreters gauged how comfortable visitors seemed when they mentioned tough subjects rather than always including the touchy information. This caused some interpreters to misrepresent the history of Fort Snelling. It displays one major issue with living history: that the individual interpreters decide what story to tell and how they will tell it.

Many interpreters mentioned in Tyson’s book recalled internalizing their roles. Some explained that they maintained their upbeat, outgoing work personalities outside of work. They commented on gender tension in the discussion, but also focused on the class divide amongst workers. For example, an interpreter playing an upper-class lady can scold an interpreter playing a servant for an action that their “present-day person” decided was okay. Many interpreters who played lower-class roles kept the feeling of guilt or embarrassment throughout and after the workday. This class divide caused tension amongst the employees and personal strife even outside of the work place. After reading some of Tyson’s examples of this, I imagined a co-worker at the same level as me held the right to reprimand me just because they wore a different outfit and sat in a different room. I know that wouldn’t sit well with me, and imagine it would be difficult for most individuals to adjust to.

The Wages of History discussed many aspects of interpreters at a historic site, but in my opinion, the most important discussion focused on authenticity. According to Tyson, most employees had a preoccupation with authenticity and became almost obsessed with the idea (117). Some interpreters even turned authenticity into a game or competition and monitored others about it. Lead guides often falsely labeled behavior they disliked as inauthentic, using the term as an excuse to exert power (135). The authenticity of objects is a hot topic in the field of house museums, and I was interested to learn about it in the context of living history at historic sites. The thought that kept popping into my mind while reading is that those playing the roles of historic characters can never be truly authentic, no matter how much they get into their character. Even “hard cores” who take their jobs more seriously can never be a truly authentic representation of the past. They did not experience it. No matter how much they believe they know, they were not there.

Overall, Tyson provided a thought-provoking look into the lives of interpreters. Her discussion raises several key themes relevant to historic sites and museums around the world, with or without living history. Throughout the book, I compared the issues of interpreters to issues at my own past jobs. In the end, the book left me with the thought: a job is a job.