Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory Book

Mike Wallace, in his book Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory has three basic themes:
1. History is best done by doing sociology.
2. Reagan is a poopy-head.
3. KARL MARX!!!1!1!!!!1

As you can see, I am having a terrible time taking anything that he says seriously. He isn't saying anything that we have not read before, but he says it with such left-wing vehemence that his politics become the focus of the book rather than his ideas on how to interpret history. At least one reviewer, Daniel Rosenburg, supports this very politicized way of interpreting history by pointing out that the other guy does it: "At each point on this continuum, Wallace discloses the silver-spooned, formidably ultra-conservative project to narrow down the public's history." And he warns "[The book] serves as a useful reminder that public representation of the past cannot be left in the wrong hands…" Given Wallace's preoccupation with capitalism, corporations, "right-wingers," "Reaganauts" and Reagan himself, it is not left to the imagination whose are the "wrong hands."

Let me start with what seems a commonplace in all the books I have read about the history of museums:
"...from the mid-nineteenth century on, most history museums were constructed by members of dominant classes and embodied interpretations that supported their sponsors privileged positions. I do not contend that those who established museums were Machiavellian plotters; the museum builders simply embedded in their efforts versions of history that were commonplaces of their class's culture."

He says this with no awareness that what he is advocating is a version of history that is a commonplace of HIS OWN class's culture - academia and its preoccupation with race, class and gender. Marxist and/or deconstructionist interpretations of history are only one backwater in the rich historiographical trajectory.

I found that I simply could not take him seriously after such assertions as these: "In a few years, the forces of reaction and the onset of war put an end to the New Deal and its public history initiatives." "…the bourgeoisie set out to uproot 'un-Americanism.'" "The 1980s and 1990s are a period of right-wing offensives. Those who seek to repeal the gains of the working class, women, and African Americans in the present are also working to reverse their gains in the field of history."

And the crowning glory:
While it is important to connect the emergence of technological history to the ideological interests of American engineers, and to link the new museology to the intellectual universe of the community of scientific and technical workers in Washington, it is also important to note the degree to which both the ideological interests and intellectual constructs were themselves shaped in the process of conflict with rival (indeed antagonistic) ways of perceiving and interpreting contemporary life.

That is one sentence by the way. What does that even mean? My dad and my brothers are all engineers. I am quite sure they have absolutely no ideological interests or intellectual constructs that they defend against rival ways of interpreting contemporary life. They are just guys making a living.

All through the book he advocates presenting an extremely complex, sociological context for any museum interpretation. For example, he suggests that the Lowell story be told in terms of a huge list of questions regarding "struggle" and "power":
"To thicken the Lowell story, for instance, it would be good to know: Who ran the town, who ran the state? What was the impact of the emerging Irish machine on the nature of work life? How did the struggle over social welfare and labor reforms affect workplace matters? Where did working-class voters stand on issues of labor or capital mobility, in the debates, for instance, over immigration restriction? What stance did workers and businessmen take on federal politics and the battles over the banking system. Most broadly, what difference did the possession of political liberty and the exercise of political power make to the people whose lives museums have taken to chronicling?"

And that is only one part of a 4 part program for interpreting the Lowell story. Wallace offers no notion on how do that given the constraints of a visit to a historical site. He is stuck in a text paradigm - all those questions are natural for a book or a monograph, not a visit to a history museum. Visitors are not very likely to stare at panels of text elucidating these complex issues.

By the time I got to the central essay "Mickey Mouse History: Portraying the Past at Disney World" I was disgusted with his entire approach. I am pretty sure that the enormous crowds that visit Disneyland and Disney World are not there to learn anything about history. Yes, the presentations take visitors on trips "through time" but to equate an amusement park ride with a serious presentation of history is ridiculous. If anything, Wallace's insistence that people get any serious history from Disney exhibits shows a stereotypical academic disdain for the cultural level of hoi polloi.

I feel kind of sorry for him in a way. He is stuck in a historiographical backwater. History is not just about class struggle. I have to agree with Paul Croce when he says "Through all these [essays], he harbors the rare and optimistic view that the public, if only given the chance to express its views, actually sympathizes with the academic advocates of diversity and history from the bottom up. In fact, he is so committed to this view that one could follow this account of contemporary history debates and gain little sense about how anyone could possibly disagree with the Left's perspective."

There ARE in fact, many other perspectives. When I started a a graduate program in Public History I was only vaguely aware of historiography. In my head, there was "history" and "revisionist history." To me, Revisionist history had to do with postmodern deconstruction, class conflict, and women's studies. Part of the reason I chose the public history degree over the history degree was to avoid just talking to other historians who had drunk the race/class/gender/imperialism/man-made global warming kool-aid. Now I see that "New New" history has also infiltrated public history. But that is not the only way to tell the story. Each event, or place or object or person has multiple stories. And there are stories about how we tell those stories. The whole interplay between memory, history, and historiography fascinates me. There are so many connections to make and paths to follow that it's almost overwhelming how much I don't (and never will) know. One thing is for sure - I will never read a history without looking for other ways to tell the story ever again.

For example, Annette Gordon-Reed's takedown of Henry Wiencek showed how easy it is for a historian to lead a reader to a false conclusion. If you didn't know about the legal entanglements of Kosciusko's will, then you would be led to believe that Jefferson passed up a golden opportunity to free his slaves, and is morally culpable for doing so. The ease with which he did that is kind of scary. It's also irresponsible.