Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

by Kurt Andersen

Dedicated to blurring the lines between the fictional and the real, people in the living history world became focused on what they called the authenticity of their simulations. Living history boomed and acquired academic legitimacy, no longer just tourist traps but centers for “experimental archaeology” and “imitative experiments.” In 1967 one of the foremost archaeologists of the American colonial era became assistant director of Plimoth Plantation, the built-from-scratch re-creation of the Pilgrims’ village. Soon all the “interpreters” at Plimoth playing the parts of Pilgrims started doing full first person, speaking seventeenth-century English in the historically correct regional dialects of England and never stepping out of character. As the professor-in-charge said, they “actually build houses and outbuildings….They cook food, and even eat it in period fashion” and “get dirty and tousled in their work in the fields.” They are P. T. Barnum’s descendants with advanced degrees and none of his winks about humbug.

We see this in our children and exclaim “How cute and imaginative.” We seem to have descended back into childhood where we didn’t have to face our fears. It isn’t so cute with adults!