Talk:Historical reenactment

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This article is part of WikiProject Reenactment, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to historical reenactment on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.


Contents

[edit] More Content Needed

This could use some more content. Especially on

  • history of historical reenactment
  • reenactment groups
  • living history groups
  • differences between living history, reenactment, recreation, drama
  • references to PBS content: Frontier House, 1940s House, ...
    • What is it the participants were doing? (Livining history, I think)
    • What is it that PBS was doing? (Creating historical entertainment, I think)

Happy editing! Jeff 21:15 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)


[edit] Revolutionary War reenactors

Although less known and fewer participants, American Revolutionary War reenactments do take place. The regiments portray everything from British redcoats to French and German and of course the American troops. The reenactors mainly come from the East Coast of American though there are contigents all over North American and even Canada. Tony

[edit] Spelling

Fowler says it should be re-enactment -- whats does US spelling say? -- Tarquin 09:05 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

Webster's shows it as reenact. Jeff 00:37 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
Yep, re-enactment is the British spelling. I get the impression that Wikipedia is culturally American, so I do not change Americanisms although I have to say I write in British English myself :-) Salvianus 14:45, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Don't hold too firmly to that impression. It is cross-cultural see Wikipedia:Manual of style#National varieties of English Jooler 16:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I try to avoid it in the face of evidence :-) Thanks - the manual clears that up reasonably well - presumably this article should stay with reenactment because that is how it predominantly is already? Cheers Salvianus 22:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SCA Inclusion

I'm bothered by the fact that the SCA is listed as an "example re-enactment group" (indeed, as the ONLY example). I've been in the SCA for twenty years, and that's not what it does. See <a href="http://www.ostgardr.org/terminology.html">what the SCA is Not</a>, which includes some discussion on the topics Jeff raised. -- sbloch June 29, 2003

I merged the content of a page on reenactors, with a bit of tailoring here. I'll make the reenactor page a redirect. Thanks to User:Rmhermen for pointing thiss out. The SCA isn't the only fantasy group, and the article can still use considerable expansion. -- Lou I 16:56, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I moved the SCA and the other simmilar groups to a new page devothed to Non-historical re-enactment groups. Guthroth 23:01, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

That's not very helpful -- the SCA *does* have historical aspects. It's safer to call it "re-creation" than try to add adjectives to "re-enactment." Greg 07:51, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

While the SCA does a great deal of research and it's members undoubtedly enjoy what they do, the system by which they conduct their affairs can in no way be called an historical re-creation or re-enactment. Vikings did not fight samurai, no-one ever used rattan as a weapon, and knighthodd is not the pinnacle of chivalry. However you classify the SCA - or the ECS, Adria etc, - they do not belong in the same category as groups such as The Vikings, the ECWS or the Napoleonic asociation. Guthroth 21:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

It's fair to say that the world at large has not invented a category name that splits the two, so Wikipedia can't invent it either. I propose re-creation because other groups don't seem to ever use it to describe themselves. Greg 04:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More Recent Time Periods?

Just curious Does anyone know of re-enactments of more recent time periods? I don't know of anything more modern than the American Civil War. Do they do any re-enactment at the Tenement Museum in New York? ike9898 17:47, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

There is a World War I recreation group, so I assume they must have some sort of reenactments, however, I don't know anything about them and assume that this is rather smaller in scale than the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Vagrant 19:47, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There are a number of WWII reenactment groups in both Australia and the UK.

There is a Vietnam group listed at http://www.nwha.org in Oregon, and I know of similar US Vietnam War groups in the USSR if you can believe that.Michael Dorosh 16:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

The Dettling, England multi-period show in August 2004 included Desert Storm Gulf War re-enactment displays. (User:arthurchappell

[edit] Classification of Reenactment styles

Is fantasy reenactment really the best term to describe reenactment that is not exclusively based on historical facts?

I don't think most European medieval reenactment can be described as "fantasy", which has a ring of dragons, wizards and Zweihänder-wielding barbarians to it.

I think the difference between "professional" and "fantasy" is aritifical. Most "professional" reenactment groups are either groups of actual actors or experienced display groups.


A more important difference seems to be between display groups and combat groups, although some groups (SCA?) seem to be umbrella groups satisfying both tastes.

In Germany display groups have been the only kind of medieval reenactment for quite a while. Only recently has the combat reenactment been introduced by copying American, British and other concepts (some groups seem to be influenced by the Eastern European rules that sometimes allow for sharp weapons, full-momentum blows and random headshots, all of which are usually examples for practices that are not allowed in most other rulesets). In England, in turn, German display reenactment is usually perceived as rather odd because it sometimes tries to be authentic to a point at which it just seems unintentionally funny or unrealistic for outsiders (especially if the authenticity is then intermixed with fairy tale like storylines for display fight and tournaments).


The difference basically is that combat reenactment generally is a free-form practice quite similar to a sport (although less goal-oriented, except for explicit tournaments) that has a specific ruleset and specifies a number of "lives" for each combatant (oftenly based on the type of armour worn, usually varies between 1 and 3 for simple padding and modified by 1 for chainmail and 2 for plate -- i.e. 2 or 4 for chainmail, 3 or 5 for platemail, depending on the base amount), whereas every hit in a legal area deducts one of these lives and the loss of all lives results in "death", usually without a chance of resurrection for the scope of the battle, or sometimes even the entire event.

Display reenactment usually focusses on living history (note that by "living history" I usually refer to the reenactment of civilian life in a period or of trades and arts of that time) and/or display fights, such as knights' tournaments performed for tourists at various castles. Display fights usually have a strict choreography or at least somewhat strict sequences of moves, usually focussing on non-lethal hits, especially against swords, shields and other weapons. Unlike in combat reenactment, the goal is not to score a lethal hit on your opponent but entertain the audience with a prolonged duel and a lot of noise (since your oponent knows where you will hit him, you can even smack away on his shield or sword, thereby creating a lot more noise than a normal fight would -- given that your equipment is made for that kind of (ab)use).


Combat reenactment is different from LARP in that its combat has a strong focus on technique -- though not as much as most common Martial Art's, although some groups go as far as practicing traditional European Swordfighting as a combat sport by the book, although I'd say they're closer to real sports like Fencing rather than reenactment -- and public battles are usually still within a historical setting (even if it's just "Arthur's guys vs. Mordred's guys" and Arthur and Mordred do a little display fight at the end.

Some combat groups do display work as well, and some display groups have an interest in free-form combat, but usually groups have or develop a focus on one thing and stick with that, although they may later join umbrella groups which provide a platform for ALL kinds of reenactors.


To my understanding Civil War reenactment, which seems to be what American reenactment is mostly about (opposed to the medieval focus of European reenactment), is mostly display work since it is very fire-arm heavy and apart from paintball guns there isn't any apparent way to provide a real base for combat reenactment without killing anyone -- and paintball guns don't make that satisfying bang a display gun creates.


That actually makes me wonder: Should reenactment be specified by whether it's based on history or not (which is a very foggy seperation because most reenactment is not historically accurate, because that simply is not possible, especially not in an entertaing way -- neither for reenactors nor for the audience), whether it is focussed on combat or living history (which again creates the problem of having to deal with fluent borders) or what time period it is based on?

The latter seems ideal to me, especially because of the geographical focus I mentioned earlier. Individual groups could then again be further categorized by professionalism (whether they're actually stage actors or simply reenactors doing it as a hobby), focus of interest (living history or combat reenactment) and so on.

Depending on how broad the term should be used, we could even include "minorities" like the processions in Napolean uniforms which occur in memorial of the Napolean invasion in some parts of Germany, although that might be going too far because they usually don't do much but "look pretty and authentic" and doing a parade, possibly with a theatrical scene at the end of it and a (sometimes enclosed) campsite beforehand (which in turn might be considered display work).


As a consequence I would suggest considering splitting the article up into a main article and sub-articles about the general periods ("medieval" for anything from the European Dark Ages to the renaissance, "American history" (or somesuch) for the Civil War and Revolutionary War, "modern history" for the world wars and 19th century stuff, maybe "ancient" for everything before the Dark Ages, "Asian" for samurai-related stuff, etc etc) -- of course it'd be insane to just braindump a list of reenactment articles and go on from there.

I don't think any article should be created unless someone has some real content for it, but since I'm currently working on an article on the Codex Belli, the quasi-standard ruleset of most German medieval combat reenactment groups for quite a while (including display groups which practice free-form combat), I know at least one potential author for that one.


I don't want to edit this article accordingly because that'd be a lot of changes and I'd rather have some feedback on changes with that level of impact. --Ashmodai 20:34, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs?

Do we have a stub template for reenactment-related articles? Ojw 18:44, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

It's reenactment-stub Ojw 22:02, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dark age reenactment

Perhaps someone involved with dark age reenactment could suggest a naming convention for the articles? At the moment, it seems to be "Dark [Aa]ge(s) reenactment". Is that even the right name, or are there other words to describe later than Roman and earlier than Medieval? Ojw 22:02, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

From what I know it's generally called "Dark Age" rather than anything else. Some medieval reenactment events feature a "Dark Age battle", so I guess that's close enough. Since I personally only participate in such events occassionally and don't know of any specifically Dark Age focussed events, I can only assume. -- Ashmodai 03:12, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
In Britain, the immediate period after the withdrawal is now usually called 'Sub-Roman', but Christopher A. Snyder makes a good case for the term 'Brittonic', as avoiding the implication of degeneration which now appears to be an oversimplification (in An Age of Tyrants Britain and the Britons, AD 400-600, 1998), but this would not cover Europe. I sometimes favour 'Post Roman'. Of course much of the empire continued with much less disruption than Britain. 'The Early Middle Ages' now seems to be covering from the mid C7th.

I would suggest a brief outline of these alternative terms, but re-naming is less certain, as I think most people would only search for 'Dark Ages' Salvianus 10:52, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that different people use the term in different ways. Dark Age Society is not alone in using it to mean the late 9th century- what could alternatively be called Early Medieval or Early Middle Ages or Viking Age or Anglo-Saxon. Meanwhile some other groups use it to mean post-Roman/pre-Saxon/Arthurian/Brittonic. There is no consensus among reenactors. Fishies Plaice 10:55, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

The list of external links seems very bloated; I've reorganized them by time period, but are these links simple advertising for various groups, or do they meet the WP standard for external links - ie provide new and useful information to the reader about the subject in general? I think some of these should be pruned as simple advertising. Thoughts?Michael Dorosh 16:47, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree there are way to many external links, but am not sure which should stay and which should go. Marc29th
The external links should focus less on examples of reenactment organizations and more on what constitutes reenactment. For example, a website that lists an event's judging criteria (what constitutes authentic, etc) might provide a useful illustration. A scholarly paper or two describing what has been learned through reenancts might also prove interesting. Something along the lines of "we tried to reproduce an event from its historical description, and we were most surprised to discover the significance of..." Lastly, what is the impact these reenactments have on society as a whole? How do reenactments affect: education; the economy (tourism); academic research; nationalism; and the arts? In the end we might include a link to a sample reenactment society. I'd use Google or Alexa to select the one with the biggest footprint. With that as a standard, we'll get (I hope) less pointless debate over the trivialities of inclusion. At worst, we might create a "List of..." and be done with it. Rklawton 00:12, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
I see what you mean - links more as illustrations of points in the article & less to help people interested in finding a particular group or getting into re-enactment. Would that just be links to specific pages? For example, my re-enactment group has the usual public friendly stuff up front explaining what we do, nothing special, whilst reference pictures of authentic equipment, movies of equipment use & techniques and essays on re-enactment itself, pertinent history and our experiments are further in. These sort of pages could be picked out, although it would be difficult to be representative of all the groups who might have relevant content. A 'list of' would still be extremely useful, even if moved, perhaps cross referenced with List_of_medieval_reenactment_groups - and it is useful to have them by nation as well as by time period. Cheers. Salvianus 22:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I have provided an example of this approach at Ancient_reenactment#External_links, replacing http style links with no text Salvianus 19:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Is there somewhere appropriate to put an external link to a (non-profit) catalog/list of historical reenactment and living history groups? This has already been done and I don't want to copy my entire site to Wikipedia. Lilkender 21:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the External Links need a complete overhaul, the link to the 'fat re-enactors' page is simply condescending and inappropriate Blisterfists 6:08, 13 September 2006

- ordinary folks didn't get to eat that much in the old days anyway.

[edit] War of 1812

Another time period, The war of 1812 is also recreated in North America I was wondering if we should include it here. The scale of these events is somewhat smaller than Civil War events in the states however there are often as many as a few thousand re-enactors at these events and a field strengh of a few hundred per side is not uncommon, 1812 is probably one of the most prominent time periods re created in southren Ontario. Should I add it? 1st scots 16:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Live-action role-playing games

I do not believe that Historical re-enactment belongs in the 'Live-action role-playing games' category. Whilst sometimes having some points in common, Historical re-enactment is not by definition, primarily or even usually a game and certainly does not involve the fantasy elements usually attributed to Larping. Unless anyone can cite otherwise, I would recommend removal. Salvianus 00:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Any objections to removal from the category? Salvianus 23:01, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] criticism- unsupported claims

Some claims around criticism are included here. No doubt there are criticisms, but what are they? who made them? when did they make them? or are they hearsay and/or merely the anonymous criticisms made by the originator of the piece? 20:16, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


I agree; no sources are stated with regard to these claims. The whole "Criticism" section need work. - DaisyDahm 16:48, 16 January 2007

Work needed. It could reflect the difficulty of recreating the appearance of our ancestors when for some periods average heights are greater and skin diseases less prevalent, or the issues about speaking in period languages that are incomprehensible, but is that what a dictionary entry should contain, as opposed to a blog article? I think that, at the least, it should adhere to the writing guide about avoiding 'woolly phrases'. Salvianus 23:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] criticism- Truth or Opinion?

"...it is not truth, but opinion, that can travel the world without a passport. For were it otherwise; and were there not as many internal forms of the mind, as there are external figures of men; there were then some possibility to persuade by the mouth of one advocate, even equity alone."

Sir Walter Raleigh (Preface to 'The History of The World' 1614 - para no.4)Captain McVitie 12:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

It is all opinion. This sentence for example seems to have been added by someone who doesnt reenact or is umfamilar with it - "This is largely drawn from an North American perspective, although there are parallel issues on the European scene, such as the general discomfort and uneasiness with recreation of the SS, for example" - What discomfort? In the US, there sometimes seems to be more SS units than Heer/Luftwaffe (although looking at registered units it seems to be about 50/50) and this goes for Europe too. There is no 'discomfort' I am aware of. user:Pzg Ratzinger

On the contrary - I've been an English Civil War reenactor for 23 years and also a 'Living History' presenter too.

I'm intrigued by your assertion that I'm unfamiliar with reenactment and quite how you drew your conclusion. In the outside World it's often the practice for reenactors to consider their role from all perspectives - ECW groups consider religion, net effects of war, how civilians were affected and so-on. To merely dress up is, well - dressing up isn't it? Many people worldwide still bear the scars inflicted by the Axis powers and Stalin's regime up to and including WW2 and this is within their living memory. So, I would merely say to you Pzg Ratzinger that you should consider what you do and what you say with a little more circumspection.

Sir Walter

Not sure you got the drift of the quote in this context there my old chum! Walt.


mmm... I'd say that SS 'reenactment' is still an outrageously sanitized evocation of the SS though isn't it, given its actual purpose? If this 'Elephant in the room' aspect of history is glossed over and denied then it's all just so much fancy dress.

There is no 'discomfort' I am aware of

I went to a multi-period reenactment event in the UK a couple of years ago where some WW2 people were posing as SS. An elderly fellow in the audience was asking them what time the massacres would start. Discomfort all round I'd say.

In the US, there sometimes seems to be more SS units than Heer/Luftwaffe

- so what? does this say more about the state of WW2 reenactment in the US that it places a disproportionate emphasis on the most savage, inhuman and amoral faction of the German military?

Lovely uniform though eh?

'Monty' For you Kamarad, the War is never over.

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