Learning Analysis

WMST488 Learning Analysis

            WMST488 has been the fourth class that I have taken with Katie King.  From every single one of her classes, including this one, I have learned that I have taken part in a story that has taken me on a journey leading to new findings and understandings of myself and the world around me.  Entering this class, I knew that I would be looking for another such journey and I began my observations and finding from day.  From the start, I was curious as to what the argument of the class would be and how this argument will better shape my understanding of women’s studies.  With the course title being, “Examining Reenactments,” I knew that the class would entail much work around reenactments, but it wasn’t until now that I realized how much this class was centered around this idea.  As stated by the American Heritage Dictionary, reenactment is to perform again.  A simple three word definition seems like nothing, but when analyzed and truly understood, it can totally change ones outlook on life and society.

            The argument of this course has taught us that reenactments are only repeats of events in life.  They are not the actual event, nor are they 100% accurate.  They should not be assumed to be the complete truth since nothing can really be reenacted perfectly like the original.  What we need to understand is that society puts too much trust in the hands of reenactments and it is because or reenactments that we have the opinions and views that we do.  Society, the government, and media have shaped our views through the various ways that they have portrayed reenactments throughout history.  The more we hear about or see a certain reenactment, the more we begin to believe it as the truth.  What’s important to note is that these reenactments are far from the truth and we need to understand that no one can make an exact account of the past and we should only rely on reenactments as assumptions of what may have happened.

            Each part of the course was broken up to reveal a different part of reenactments and their role in our society.  At first we got an introduction to reenactments so that we knew what it was all about.  The next chapter in this book revealed how reenactments take part in our everyday lives.  Next, we looked at how authors viewed reenactments and then how media and movies did this as well.  Through each step we were able to learn a bit more about reenactments and were able to put the pieces of each section together.  Once put together, the pieces revealed the final argument of the course, which is that reenactments shape our entire being and until our society realizes that they are just attempted copies of an event and not the whole truth, we will have faulty opinions and will not understand the true meaning of many aspects of our lives.

            The first chapter of the book of our course was the introduction to reenactments.  I wasn’t sure how an entire class could revolve around just one word, but I was willing to open up and try to see how far I could push myself in understanding reenactments and their purpose of our lives.   At this point in my life, I was about to begin my last semester at
Maryland and knew that this was my last shot at discovering new things about myself during college.  I decided to take advantage of this and truly take the tasks in this class seriously.  At this point in the story I knew that I needed to be open minded so that I could experience the argument of the book of the course to its fullest.  I was excited for what was in store for the semester to follow.

            As we began to start our first few assignments, the next chapter of this book began to unravel.  We wrote our thoughts on what reenactments were and where in history and society we have encountered them.  Doing this assignment made me realize how so much of my life contained reenactments.  I could not believe that reenactments weren’t only in the movies that I have seen or the books that I have read.  Even our textbooks for school are reenactments and we take them to be the complete truth!  I began to learn the lesson of this chapter, which revealed that reenactments are everywhere and in order for me to go any further in this adventure, I need to be able to open my eyes and look for reenactments everywhere I am.  Now that my eyes were wide open, I needed to take the next step and realize why this was such a huge deal.  Why are reenactments so important and how do they affect my life, and most importantly feminism?  I was ready to find this out and watch the argument of the course to unravel.

            The first website that we looked at played a huge role in my findings, for it was the first time I realized how much of the truth we don’t know and how much we rely on reenactments to explain the truth to us instead.  We saw the colonial
Williamsburg website and it showed how society has made up what they believe the colonial times to look like and we have believed it as the truth for years.  Looking at this website made me realize how ridiculous we can be.  Just looking at the colonial clothes, I noticed that everyone was wearing similar clothing.  Looking around the classroom I realized that none of just dress alike.  Some have completely different styles and express themselves in different ways.  This made me wonder how it is possible that everyone in the colonial times could have looked exactly the same way.  Was this truly the same or is another part of what is not 100% accurate in the reenactment?  Throughout the website, a lot was mentioned about how you would really feel like you were in the colonial times and how realistic this place really was.  But really, how realistic was it?

            I started the question all the reenactments around me and see how true they could really be.  I was shocked to find that most of the time, we believed the reenactments to be the complete truth and have lived all of our lives thinking this.  I began to may attention to all the reenactments I encountered in my other classes and in my every day life.  I was astonished to see that I have based many of my beliefs on these reenactments.  Who knows what happened during slavery, but what I think is the truth is just what the schools have taught me.  Were women really missing in important parts of history or is that just how reenactments decided to portray their role?  Reenactments are what decide how we think, not the actual truth.  The ideas we have about immigrants, certain cultures, and even past history all have to do with the reenactments we believe as the truth.  Because society decided to tell the story of the colonial times with the notion that women was less important, we now believe just this and hold women to a lesser status and lesser importance than men.  I realized that much of the problems we face as feminist could have easily been changed if reenactments were more truthful or female-friendly.  If historians cared enough to understand the role of women in the past, then maybe we would view women differently today and give them more credit than they have been given thus far.  Analyzing reenactments was the new way I planned to look at life and through the Colonial Williamsburg website, I was able to realize how powerful these reenactments are.

            The next chapter in the book of the course made me realize that I was not the only person that felt this way about reenactments and that others, including published authors, have similar views on reenactments to share.  After reading Handler’s, “The new history in an old museum: Creating the past at colonial Williamsburg,” I felt confident that I was on the right track and was on to something remarkable that I would figure out my the end of the semester and the end of the journey through the book of this course.  I was glad that I had made my own assumptions about reenactments and Colonial Williamsburg before I read this book.  Once I read it, it gave me a chance to connect my views to those of Handler and I realized that this idea that the truth and reenactments are blurred was visible to Handler as well.  The book mentioned how the truth in reenactments was influenced by the people funding the site whom would tell the stories in ways that they felt appropriate and not as the complete truth.  First off, none of them know what the complete truth is, and if even if they did they would change it to make themselves look good.  They wouldn’t show how gruesome some parts of slavery could be or how the women and children were huge assets to society, and instead they would should how superior the white man is and how important his role in the family is.  In these ways they have tricked us into believing that this is the truth because they have portrayed it like this for so many years.  Who would dare question what textbooks and teachers have taught us for years?  Handler went on to discuss how these little assumptions in Colonial Williamsburg don’t actual make it such a truthful place.  Not only with Colonial Williamsburg, but also in other reenactments we need to break them down and look for these flaws before we believe everything we see and hear.

            We were finally in the middle of the book and I realized that the people behind reenactments actually play a large role in how we view certain events in history and we need to examine these authors to see how they fit into the entire picture of the book of this course.  When we read Chauncey’s “Why Marriage?” the power of those in authority was extremely obvious.  I had read this book for a previous class with Katie, but this time I was able to read it in a different light.  This time I knew more about reenactments and how they have affected society and I was able to incorporate this into Chauncey’s argument and why he felt a certain way about the right to gay marriage. The first time I read this book I was shocked to see what homosexuals went through in the past.  I was annoyed that I had never learned about this in previous classes.  I felt so stupid thinking that times were not that harsh for gays and not even assuming that their lives could have been horrific in the past.  When I read the book this time around, I realized that it was not fully my fault for not knowing this part of history.  Society had reenacted what they wanted to from history and told us those stories.  They took advantage of this technique and manipulated my way of thinking.  Those who create textbooks, movies, and encyclopedias decide how history is portrayed and remembered and because of this we all have an altered view on what history was really like.  None of us know for sure and so none of us should be able to judge.  Just from one book I realized how much I didn’t know about history and this is in just one area.  Just imagine how much more we are tricked into believe or disregarding and have no idea.  Reenactments are truly a powerful tool that has not always been used properly throughout history by society.

            Catching the flaws of reenactments was thrilling to do, but I knew that there were many parts of society that I had not yet considered or realized how they have been altered because of reenactments.  After reading Johnson’s, “Everything bad is good for you,” I was hit with the idea that reenactments really do shape everything in society, including video games.  I try to believe that I think everything through before I make judgments, especially when it comes to feminism and gender issues, but I did not realize how I am not doing this with all aspects of my life.  Video games is something that I would never think about and reading this book made me realize that even something that I don’t think is really important could be completely different than I expected it.  With a six year old brother, I had very strong feelings about how bad video games were and how he could be spending his time doing much more productive things.  After reading this book I have been able to look at video games in a new light and realize that they have been portrayed to be all bad when really there is a lot of good in them.  Again, this all comes back to how we reenact and reveal something.  Simple recreations can alter my opinion on how they are remade and the truth is not always revealed in these reenacts.  It seems that everywhere we go we are attacked with thousands of faulty reenactments and may never be able to notice every single one of them and change our idea.

            This is when I realized what the real argument of the course is.  Yes, reenactments have shaped our society, views, and opinions in faulty ways, but when we need to realize that we should take these reenactments just for what they are: reenactments.  It is fine that reenactments exist, because after all we need them to help us get an idea of previous events.  Yet, what we need to do is understand that these reenactments are not the complete truth.  Once we can accept this then we can be open to more ideas.  We can appreciate Colonial Williamsburg and all of its fascinating attraction, as long as we don’t live and breathe every story that they tell us and every thing that we see.  These attractions are assuming and somewhat educational, but never are they the complete truth. 

            As discussed in class, there are two types of knowledge: authoritative ones and alternative ones.  Now that we know that reenactments are not the full truth, we need to figure out how to absorb their being.  Authoritative and alternative knowledge allows us to categorize the two types of knowledge that we may encounter.  When faced with a reenactment we need to decide what kind of knowledge it is.  Neither knowledge is more important than the other as they are book equal and vital.  Authority has created the authoritative knowledge and portrayed events the way that the superior group wants to.  Such knowledge is seen in our textbooks and works by large publication groups.  The alternative knowledge is seen as the challenges to the authoritative knowledge.  Professors tell us that slavery happened a certain way, and alternative knowledge gives us a chance to challenge this and question the idea that there may have been a different way that things took place in history.  They go hand in hand and one cannot function without the other.  We cannot challenge something if there is nothing to challenge, and we cannot understand something unless we have some previous authoritative knowledge on it.

            When watching the movie, “Journey of Man,” I learned how important both of these types of knowledge are in our experiences.  Wells goes on a search to find out the migration of people through their genetics.  On this journey, he meets many people and cultures that have their own opinions on how migration took place.  Wells proposes an authoritative knowledge using science and genetics to prove his point, while the people he encounters us an alternative knowledge using their own songs and stories to prove their point.  We cannot say that either side is right or wrong, but only appreciate each type of knowledge for what it is worth.  We need to learn that there are so many parts to one story and since we cannot reenact history exactly, then we need to just embrace all these types of knowledge and respect their presence (even if we do not agree with their opinions).  If this could be done with feminism then maybe we could be going further in our fight for equality and understanding.

            Putting all these resources together and looking at multifaceted views of this subject has made me realize how society has grown so deeply on one simply idea of reenactments.  We can change our future through reenactments and embrace our past through them to.  We need to show society that everything they see and hear is not always the truth and this could be why they have fault impressions of feminism and women’s movements.  Through this course I have grown not only as a student but also as a person.  If we could only open everyone’s eyes just like I have opened mine, then maybe we could change from a narrow minded society to a more open one that will be able to accept alternative views on what we have been drilled in our heads to believe as the truth for thousands of years.

            This class has truly been like none other that I have taken.  Every time that I take a class with Katie, I feel like I have changed from a blinded individual to one with a smarter outlook on life.  This time, I learned one of the biggest lessons of life: never take anything as the total truth unless you were there to see it happen.  This class is not like my other courses because I’ve learned valuable life lessons in this class, and not just dry facts from textbooks.  I can carry on a decent conversation about how our opinions have been shaped and not just label all the parts of the human cell.  Yes, information from textbooks and dry facts are important in my education, but as a college student my knowledge needs to expand further than just book-smarts.  I need to learn more about myself and my surroundings in order to better identify myself and shape the type of person that I want to be and that I want to convey.  I learned all this through Katie’s class and I feel like this has been a crucial lesson that I have gained as a student.  This is an important part of being Women’s Studies major, because I need to be able to figure out my outlook on life before I can understand the outlook of others.  From this class I have learned that there is more than one approach to understand why society thinks a certain way.  I have now learned that reenactments play a huge rule in shaping our opinions and by changing this notion of reenactments being the truth, we may be able to change society and their way of thinking.  From this course I have gained the more important tool of analysis.  I have learned that everything needs to be dug deeper into and needs to be looked at from various approaches.  We cannot just take something for what it is and let it be.  We need to understand why people think a certain way or act a certain way, and by doing this we may be able to push feminism further.  If we can show society why women should be treated equally based on the wrong notions that they have believed, then maybe we can make a change and open everyone’s eyes to the reality behind reenactments.  Reenactments are just replicas and not the real thing.   I will always remember this and in the future, everything I see I will analyze based on this idea.  I will know not to believe everything for being the truth and I know that I will need to take a step back and look at the whole picture and really decided how accurate and real something is.   Then and only then will I have a better understanding of my own beliefs and the beliefs of others. 

LINK TO PAPER: Learning Analysis attachment

Criminal Reenactments SOURCES

wmst488reeant-sources.doc

Criminal Reenactments

Venous Mokhtari

WMST488A King

Criminal Reenactments

Reenactments seem to run almost everything in our lives.  We turn on the TV and begin watching reenactments of events in history.  We turn on the radio and we listen to reenactments of older songs or even reenactments of events explained through lyrics.  We go shopping in the mall, only to find reenactments of fashion from the past brought back as the “new style.”  And we come home for dinner to reenact a meal we learned from family, a cookbook, or TV, that will never be exactly the same each time we make it, but close enough.  Our lives are not only ran be these reenactments, but are also effected by their accuracy as well how “close” to the reality they really are.  Reenacting a recipe that you’re making for dinner may be “close enough” to the actual, but in some cases “close enough” may not cut it for “close enough” could be the difference between life and death.  At first glance, reenactments may see like ideal things to use in the investigation field, but how helpful are they really?  The slightest change in accuracy may cause a totally different outcome.  Adding just a little too much sugar may lead to a very sweet pie, but altering a suspects description could lead to the wrong man behind bars.  Reenactments have played a vital role in the criminal field, but must be used with caution for their power is greater than can be imaged at first glance.

            Crime reenactments are those that accuracy is vital, for they could easily convict an innocent person for a crime, or they can accidentally let a guilty man lose.  Crime reenactments play a fascinating role in our lives for they have allowed us to learn about the past through repeating it in the present.  Many crimes have been solved with the aid of reenactments and many have broadened their evidence through reenactments.  Crimes reenactments have become the basis of television shows where they reenact criminal investigations and even show crime reenactments that help solve their crimes.  We even see the vital role that reenactments have had in the movie industry through movies such as The Life of David Gale.  And though these crime reenactments seem like the perfect solution to solve crimes, they have many setbacks as well.  Accuracy and authenticity play key roles in determining how important and useful crime reenactments are.  With that, they also help in understanding which type of reenactment is most ideal.  Animated reenactments, actor reenactments, drawing reenactments, and testimonial reenactments are also used in the criminal investigation field and by looking at all these aspects of crimes, we are able to understand the true role of reenactments in the legal world.

            Reenactment is defined as performing again (American Heritage Dictionary) and in terms of criminal reenactments, it is defined as performing previous crime.  The purpose of these performances is to try an figure out what happened at the crime scene and how everything took place.  For instance, if someone was shot, they would try and reenact the crime in order to figure out where the person must have been standing to shoot at such an angle and how they might have fled the scene or gotten ride of their weapon.  We also see criminal reenactments performed in order to see what type of person could have committed the crime.  Is the give space to small for a 6’5” man to have committed the crime?  Are the shoes at the crime scene too big for a size five woman to have been involved?  And, do the times add up from when the crime was committed to how long it took the suspect to flee the scene?  All these aspects are taking into account when executing a criminal reenactment.  Investigators find that reenacting the crime will help them better understand what happened and differentiate between logical and unrealistic explanations of what may have happened.

            These reenactments may come in many forms with the main one being actors reenacting the crime at the scene, or at a model of the scene.  In this time of reenactment actors that fit the physical description of the victim are used.  Also, models of the possible weapons used are incorporated into the reenactment.  If there are suspects already found, then other actors fitting their descriptions are used to figure out if these suspects could have physically committed the crime.  For instance, if they found that the victim was struck from above, it may be found unlikely that a suspect that was only 4’11” would have hit the victim from that angle.  Also, this type of reenactment may help locate possible locations where evidence may be found.  If the victim was stabbed in a certain corner of the kitchen, it may be helpful to look food blood splatters within its three feet radius.  Performance reenactments may also be useful is deciding if the crime mentioned could have actually taken place.  The crime may be labeled as a suicide and by acting out the crime it may be found that suicide would have been impossible.  If they reenacted a crime they may see that the way that victim was tied up was in a manner that needs the assistance of another person.  Certain knots cannot be made by an individual.  Furthermore, the position they were killed in may show how the person was killed.  Hanging from rope with your hands tied behind your head and a bullet through your heart may show to be impossible to do on your own.  Some things may actually look impossible but actually be possible too, and this is where these performances are also found to be helpful.  You may find that the criminal tried to pull off the crime as a suicide but really such is found not to be the case since the reenactment performance reveals that certain things could have been physically impossible if this was a suicide.  By running through the crime through these reenactments, investigators are able to learn a lot about what could have happened at the time of the crime and are at least able to eliminate some ideas of what may have actually happened.

            These reenactments have helped narrow down the suspect hunt, but at times they may be narrowing down the wrong people.  Criminals get smarter and smarter as investigators find new ways to catch them.  Many frame others for their crimes so that they can be let lose while a poor innocent person is convicted for their crime.  Framing another person means to set up the crime and the scene in a way that all fingers point to the wrong person.  Using reenactments may cause investigators to fall for this trap.  As they reenact a crime they may realize that it could have been possible only in the way that a criminal set up to scene to make them believe it was possible.  Testimonies may also be altered to sway the evidence and make an innocent man look guilty.  By mixing evident, faulty testimonies, and altered crime scenes, criminals are able to make themselves look completely innocent in a crime that was totally their fault.  Investigators must realize that though reenactments are a helpful took, they can be easily manipulated and that is something they need to watch out for.

            Criminal reenactments may be found to be faulty not only by tampered crime scenes but also by flawed use of reenactments.  No one but the criminal and victim know exactly what happened, so others need to try and assume what may have happened.  This is a tough task because a single wrong assumption can throw everything off.  Timing is everything and how long the crime took may never be exact enough in the search to solve the crime.  Only guesses can be made on how the crime took place and so reenactments are used to perform the crime.  But if the reenactor stands too close to the victim or doesn’t use enough force in the performance or moves too slow, the whole reenactment ends up being flawed.  Some cases rely too much on these reenactments and this may cause a problem.  Reenactments should be used only to visualize what may have happened in the most general sense.  It is hard to pin point the exact actions taken during a crime and standing by false accusations may cost an innocent man their freedom. 

How are you sure how authentic our reenactment is?  How are you sure something even close to what you think happened, actually did happen?  There is no way to be sure since there is no documentation to go by.  At least when there are reenactments of wars, we have some documentation of what took place.  Yet in a crime, it is much more difficult for there are far less witnesses and evidence of what may have happened.  Even if there are close, they will never be exact on what happened.  Every single step the criminal took cannot be remade and every single breath cannot be reenacted so it is hard to be exact.  The question comes down to how important the accuracy is.  Does it really matter what the criminal was saying or does it only matter how the gun was shot?  Does it matter if he punched her or if he slapped her?  Does it matter how tall or short he was?  The importance of the accuracy and the authenticity all depend on the aspect of the reenactment that are the most important.  For example, the color of the wallpaper in the room may not matter, unless it has camouflaged the red blood splattered on it.  Reenactments are not as accurate as people expect them to be and this should be taken into account when the jury looks at the evidence to convict someone.  Factual evidence and assumptions in reenactments are two different things, and their differentiation could be the difference between life and death for someone.

Movies have even been produced that show the importance of reenactments and how tricky they can be.  In the movie, The Life of David Gale, an philosophy professor, David Gale, is sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a colleague, Constance Harraway.  Ironically they were both dedicated to the abolition of the death penalty.  During the movie they talk a lot about the crime scene.  A reporter, Betsy Bloom, goes and visits the crime site to see how this crime was committed.  They discuss how everyone has envisioned the crime, where Gale tied her hands behind her back with handcuffs and tied her legs together, while she laid there naked.  He then was said to make her swallow the key to the handcuffs and covered her head with a plastic bag that he taped shut.  She was then left on the ground to suffocate to death.  This reenactment was explained and used as the prosecutions defense throughout the movie.  They were very sure of how Harraway was killed until the end of the movie where Bloom proved them all wrong.  She was able to prove that Harraway actually tied herself up and committed suicide. Unfortunately, by the time she was able to make this public, it was too late and Gale was already executed.

The movie was able to prove that reenactments need to be separated from the actual truth for they can actually be completely wrong.  Especially when dealing with a crime that you are unsure of and have no witnesses, it is hard to say for certain what really happened.  In this case there was the evidence of her laying there tied up with a bag on her head and the key found in her stomach, but how this all happened was explained completely wrong.  This is yet another example of why we need to really understand the meaning of reenactments and their role in our society.  Not just in criminal reenactments, but in all reenactments, we need to take a step back and realize that these are just guesses on what had happened and are not the actual truth.  If they were the actual truth then they would not need to be performances of what happened and they would just be tapes of the actual event happening.  We think that our legal system is perfect until we get a chance to analyze such things as reenactments and we really realize that not only is nothing perfect, but something so accepted could actually go horribly wrong by being completely inaccurate.

            Performance reenactments have also been found to be useful techniques in criminal investigations, but we find that drawing and animated reenactments play a bigger role when it comes to the trial and trying to prove their criminal case.  We find that the defense and the prosecutors use many visual tactics to explain their case and their version of what happened at the time of the crime.  When in court, everyone cannot just get up and walk over to the crime scene and see performers reenact the crime.  Instead, any reenactments that need to take place must be done in the courtroom.  In the courtroom, it may be simple to show how a gun in held but more complex visuals may not be possible.  Because of this, many defense teams use animated visuals and drawings.  They program images of the crime scene into a computer.  They basically make a model of the scene that should fit to scale.  They then add images, fit to proportion, of the suspect into the crime scene.  These animations are able to show visuals of the crime from numerous angles so that the jury can see all the possible ways that the gun may have been shot.  In many cases they show all possible reenactments and reveal the one that best fits their argument and the evidence that has been provided to the court.  Some may look real life while others look like cartoons that you would see on television.  Computer animations also the defense to show a mini version of the crime, but how accurate their demonstration is, is in the hands of the jury to decide. 

Just like with performance reenactments, animation reenactments have been found to be misleading as well as times.  In the case of Dunkle vs. State (2006), a new rule was actually made to caution jurors when misleading animations may be used.  This case involved the death of Gary Benton White outside of his home that he shared with his fiancée, Laura Dunkle.  She told police that he shot himself but she was later charged for his murder.  At her trial, the State showed computer animations that were crime scene reenactments.  The reenactments were supposed to be used as a demonstrative aid but Dunkle felt that they swayed the decision of the jurors too much.  The State had created four computer animations that would four different scenarios for the shooting that may have taken place.  Each showed the gun held by the victim or the suspect and in different positions.  The frame would rotate in the animation to show the different angles.  Only one animation showed Dunkle shooting the victim and the State showed that it was the only scenario that matched the evidence.  The problem was that there was no bullet found in the crime scene and there was little other forensic evidence to show the exact position and posture of the victim and the defendant at the time of the shooting.  It was argued that the first three animations were just made to be knocked down and set up the final animation as the only possible explanation.

            The jury is made to believe that the final animation must have been the truth, when in reality that could have been a faulty animation as well.  With no forensic evidence and no bullet they had no idea how he was even standing during his murder.  How really could these animations have been?  Just because they look detailed and are presented well does not make them the truth.  Again, reenactments are overestimated and assumed to be the whole truth when in reality they are far from it, especially in criminal cases with such little detail.  Especially when the reenactments are used in court, there is a large chance that biases are involved that skew the reenactment to support one side more than the other.  The courtroom is just a place for a battle to show who is right, so your evidence must prove your side correct.  If this involves some alterations in your reenactment to prove you right, then this is something that may be done to help your case.  Will this show the truth? No.  And that is what people need to understand.  Unless you were there, you have no idea what the complete truth is and because of that reenactments alone should not be enough to prove something to you.  Clearly this case shows that animations alone should not be counted on to put someone in jail for the rest of their life.  There is a fine line between the truth and an assumption and criminal reenactments blur that line many times, and as a result, alter outcomes in criminal investigations. 

Along with computer animations, hand drawings are also used as a form of reenactment.  Many witnesses and victims try and describe what their attacker looks like.  From this description specialists may be able to make a sketch of the criminal they are looking for.  For example, a victim may have noticed that their attacked was about six feet tall, white male, and had a large pointy nose.  These descriptions are taken into an account and a close sketch of the man is draw that fits the victim’s description.  Once the victim agrees that the attacker looked like the picture, the picture may be used to look for a suspect or used as evidence in a case.  This is yet another way to react the crime and go through it a second time.  The accuracy and the correctness of such drawings may be debatable, for they are just sketches of what the person may look like and are not actually photos taken of the real criminal.

But yet again, even drawings and sketches may not be accurate enough to use as evidence in a case.  After all, how sure can you be that the person’s description is detailed enough to make a sketch from it?  And also, how can a sketch be perfect when you have never seen the person?  On top of that, many reenactment drawings are just pictures that play as models and are not scientifically created when it comes to their detail.  In the article, “Shooting Reconstruction vs. Shooting Reenactment,” by D.H. Garrison, Jr. they discuss the accuracy of these drawings by stating that, “reenactment producers are but skilled cartoonists, not analyzers of physical evidence. It is dangerous for the members of a jury to confuse the two terms.”  This is a very important point to note, not just for drawing reenactments, but also for all the other types of reenactments already mentioned.  The position of the shooter or the victim cannot be scientifically calculated, especially with the sketching, but the reenactor would have to he jury believe that he knows that this is ho it looked and this is how it happened.  “The reenactment is less than bad science, it’s non-science masquerading as science,” (Garrison).

            Finally, testimonials also play a vital role in crimes as another form of reenactments.  When witnesses, suspects, and friends of those related in the crime are found, they are brought in for questioning.  Suspects, victims, and witnesses are especially important in such reenactments, for they involve explaining what happened at the time of the crime.  Many victims are asked to explain, step by step, what happened from the beginning of the crime until the end.  By going through the events, the victim is reenacting the day they were victimized and explaining every detail that they could remember.  They are asked to explain what they were doing, how they were attacked, what weapons were used, what the attacker looked like, what conversations took place, and what was going on in the surroundings.  These descriptions also the investigation team to seek new leads and find new sources to pursue the case.  The victim’s explanation of what happened plays an important role in the crime and because of this, this type of reenactment is also key in a criminal investigation.

            Just like with the many other types of reenactments, accuracy also plays as a big issue with testimonial reenactments.  How accurate is the description that a witness or a victim is giving?  If what they are saying actually what happened or just what they think happened or what they made themselves believe happened?  Testimonials may be fault since, again, they are not the real thing; they are just reenactments of an event that previously took place.  Many things can alter a person’s testimonial including nightmares, messages drilled in their heads by friends or law enforcement, and even repeating things that they though happened enough times that they think it is what actually did happen.

            Repressed Memory Syndrome has been found to be a new condition that many victims have.  Their memories have been created through suggestive techniques making them think that something happened, which actually did not.  When in therapy, these victims are steered in the direction of thinking these new ideas and they end up incorporating them with the reality of what happened.  This ends up altering their testimonial and making it faulty for the facts that they end up recalling are not fully true.  In some cases, it has been found that women create instances of sexual abuse when there was none and end up accusing an innocent person of this horrific act.  No one knows what a victim goes through and the events that affect a victim’s life end up also effecting how they feel and how they think.  This in turn affects any reenactments that they may perform or state.  Again, we see faulty reenactments created that can affect the legal system.  Just as will the other forms of reenactment, it is important to note that investigators should not solely rely on these testimonials when convicting a possible felon.  Many other aspects of a crime need to be investigated to make a more accurate finding since reenactments may not hold authenticity in many cases.

            Criminal reenactments are not only found in real criminal cases, but they are also found in fake performances of criminal investigations.  Many television shows, movies, and groups devote their time in reenacting criminal investigations.  They play out how a crime happens and how law enforcement officials crack the case.  Real crimes or fake ones, these reenactments have made the law enforcement world a fascinating one to their audiences.

            Television shows such as Law and Order, SVU, and Criminal Intent portray such reenactments through series of crime solving episodes.  For an hour a week, they fascinate audiences with their crime solving abilities as they crack the toughest cases.  Through these shows they try and reenact how crimes are actually solved by investigators.  They act as if these are real cases with real victims and they go on hunts to find killers and criminals.  They do DNA testings, fingerprintings, witness testimonials, and house searches just as real investigators do.  In this way they are basically performing how investigators act.  In itself, this is a type of reenactment.  In fact, many of the viewers of these TV shows think that this is how real crimes are solved and that this is what real detectives do. 

In Law and Order SVU Detective Elliot Stabler and his partner Detective Olivia Denson set out to solve special victim unit crimes.  These crimes included finding the killer of a young Tibetan woman who was found dead in an ally with her foot cut off.  After going in circles from testimony to testimony they finally found her killer; a young white male who had a shoe fetish that got out of hand.  The story may have sounded crazy, but they play it off as just solving another crime.  They actually went through the process of talking to the victims husband, friends, and owners of local restaurants that she had visited.  They also went through her house to find clues on what she was doing the time the crime took place.  Furthermore DNA tests were done on blood found on her body and an autopsy revealed how she died. These clues helped trace the location of her death and linked related shoes crimes to that area as well.  They later brought in people to prosecution and made them tell the detectives everything that they knew.  Finally, after trailing all the clues, they were able to find the killer at his apartment and he had confessed to the killing and his story matched all the evidence that they had found.  Even though the story was a bit bizarre, the reenactment seemed normal to someone who just had a small idea of what a detective did.  The accuracy of their reenactment may be questioned, but they attempted to portray a realistic example of what goes on behind the scenes of a criminal investigation.

For an hour a day these shows keep us entertained and at the edge of our seats, but the reality of it is that these shows are just shows and nothing more.  The main goal of television shows is to sell their program to the audience.  Because of this, they must add features to their story that will make it seem fascinating and appealing for every minute of the one hour that it is broadcasted.  So we tend to see reenactments of crime solvers that are not really as accurate as they should be.  The work of a detective is not as simple as they make it out to be, nor are the crimes always so captivating.  We need to also realize that these reenactments are extremely inaccurate and should not be over analyzed.  Every single case a detective gets will not involve a killer with a shoe fetish or a rapist having an affair with his attorney.  There may not be all these twists in the plot when it comes to a real case.

When Law and Order first aired, many colleges had to increase and even create new pre-law programs.  The fascination in this show made many students interesting in the field, which caused many schools to have to provide for this demand.  So many students began studying law so that they could work in the legal field, only because Law and Order made it such an appealing occupation.  Once more we see how easily people can take reenactments to be the complete truth.  What the audience sees is just a show and nothing more, but people do not want to believe that.  Thinking that these reenactments of criminal investigations are completely accurate makes many want to partake in such a field.  Our society too easily persuades by media and outside influences and because of this the line between reenactments and authenticity is numerously crosses and never recognized.

Not only do we see television shows that reenact the jobs of law enforcement officials, but we also see television shows that actually reenact real life crimes in order to help solve those crimes.  Though Law and Order can solve a crime in a one hour episode, such is not the case will all real life crimes.  Many crimes take even years to be solved and some have yet to get solved after decades have past.  Because of this many television shows have been developed to reenact crimes in order to reveal them to the public and have the public help solved the crimes by coming forth with any information they may have.  Such shows include
America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries.   On
America’s Most Wanted, a crime in introduced by John Walsh and then a reenactment of the crime is displayed.  Actors and actresses play the roles of the victims and criminals and they try to stage what happened the night of the murder.  How accurate these reenactments are, are based on how much information they have received and how detailed the information may be.  Millions of viewers tune into these television shows and what they see is all they have to go by when it comes to understanding the crime at hand.  Really, they know nothing more than what the show shows them and what they see is already visualized for them since it is already acted out for them.  In the last 20 years over 1,000 crimes have been solved thanks to hints from viewers of
America’s Most Wanted, so the reenactments have been found to be helpful, but could they be more helpful?  The fact that reenactments are based on biases or skewed to fit the suspect they hope to find, may be questioned, but they still continue to be used in this television show and similar ones.

By fully understanding reenactments we may be able to decipher what is fact and what is the truth.  Reenactments play a huge role in our lives and understanding that they can never be 100 percent accurate can change a lot of society’s views and actions.  When it comes to the legal system, the understanding of reenactments becomes key, for how reenactments are interpreted could result in a life or death situation.  Criminal reenactments include crime scene reenactments, animation reenactments, and even testimonial reenactments.  Too much of the information provided in these reenactments is confused with the truth and because of this we find many flaws in our legal system.  Many have been sentences based on beliefs of reenactments as the truth.  Reenactments of a crime scene do not necessarily mean that that is what actually happened.  Until society realizes this, there will be many faulty assumptions made that alter the lives of many innocent people and victims.  We must explain that an event cannot be exactly repeated unless we see an actual video tapping of it.  Even then, we are unable to actually experience the event, first hand. 

As a society, we rely too much on reenactments to explain the past.  When we watch television, we find ourselves easily believing anything we see and hear.  This again, fills our minds with false facts that we are determined to believe are the truths.  It is necessary to us to step back and analyze the role of reenactments in the criminal world.  Reenactments play a vital role in our legal system and we should not delete them all together.  What we must do is understand them in depth before we use and perform them.  Authenticity plays a vital role in all this, in that it helps explain how much of a reenactment we should believe.  Authenticity deals with the truth portion of something compared to its original.  Defined as undisputed credibility, how much authenticity is enough to make something a reliable source?  If we cannot be perfect at explaining a crime then is the reenactment credible at all?  We do not need to throw the whole idea out, but rather break it up into pieces.  When a reenactment is performed we can locate parts that we know are true and then lump a group of undecided sections together.  In this way we will see that certain aspects are debatable and that should be taken into account when a jury is making a decision or a detective is looking for a new lead in a case.  With detailed information and comprehension of these reenactments we will be able to make more accurate, and less biased decisions in the criminal field.

Reelections of Reenactment

When I first thought of the word reenactment, I quickly looked up its official definition to really understand what it meant.  According to the American Heritage Dictionary, it means to perform again.  Such a simple definition has so much meaning in it.  Reenactment plays a huge role in our society; at time larger than we would perceive.  A lot of what we’ve learned and face everyday is a reenactment that we absorb as facts. 

TV, books, and movies are all sources of reenactments that we encounter everyday.  Certain movies we watch, such as Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, and
Troy are all reenactment of historical events.  Books on history, movements, and cultural events are all reenactments of what has happened in the past.  Though they are all wonderful sources of information on past events, how they are reenacted makes a huge difference on what we learn and absorbed.  Many people learned much of their facts from these reenactments and if certain things are swayed to look a certain way in a movie or book, people will begin to learn and accept them in that manner. 

For example there are groups in South Caroline (http://www.awod.com/gallery/probono/cwchas/reen.html) that spend much time performing reenactments of the civil war.  Through this action they are able to preserve their history and in some ways show it in their own way. Such reenactments are seen in other ways as well.  For instance, if women are portrayed as inferior to men in historical events, then society will begin to looked at them in that way and justify why women are seen as less than men.  Being able to influence people like this is a huge power that reenactment has.

Because of its immense power, we need to understand how important reenactments are.  Society could change so much just by the way that we perceive a certain event or group of people.  If we see a TV show on a certain culture, we begin to absorb what that culture is like just based on what we see.  This can also lead to stereotypes being created due to biases seen in these reenactments. 

Reenactments can also be used in a positive way to reveal the good of a group of people or event, to others.  It plays a key role in expressing the importance of certain events, such as the civil role or women’s movements, for they show important aspects of our society and its people.  In terms of women’s studies and feminism, we need to understand the role of reenactment and see how it can be used to push for more equality and changes for women and understand how previous reenactments have influences and even altered the women’s movement and the push for feminism.

Are Reenactments The Real Truth?

Doing the first blog really helped put my thoughts together before I read and discussed Handler’s book, The new history in an old museum: Creating the past at colonial
Williamsburg.  It gave me a chance to evaluate reenactments before I read someone else’s opinion on it.  Then reading Handler’s book opened my eyes to new aspects of it and I found that I agreed a lot with what handler was saying.  Reenactments really are swayed to one opinion of the certain group that is writing or telling the event.  Colonial
Williamsburg is just like that because the people that created the reenactments did have some say on how it would be reenacted.  The more I think I about it, the more I question the things that I have seen in Colonial Williamsburg or in any other reenactments.  Who is to say that the people in those societies only walked a certain way, or talked a certain way, or held court sessions in a certain way?  There were no video cameras back then to show how they really acted, so how can just one group of people decide how they acted?Even with the way that they dressed, how are we sure that there was only one style of clothing?  Look at our style of clothing now?  Everyone does not dress the same nor is there just one single style we can categorize our clothing as.  So how is it possible that all colonial women dressed the same way?  Is that just a generalization that will one day be made for us as well?  How can be really be sure that all of these reenactments are not just generalizations that one group of society decides for us? 

The more I look at things, the more I wonder how true reenactments really our.  What is the truth and what is just made up?  Some things have been said for so long that it is hard to really know if they are true or not.  Are they?  And more important, could society look at these things much differently is a different group reenacted them?  How much more different could the view on women have been if they were reenacted by different people?  Could women actually be seen as superior to men if they were the ones creating all the reenactments?  These are thoughts that I would love to explore more in depth especially as we talk more about them in class.  For now I am very conscious of the reenactments around me and begin to question everything so that I will hopefully learn more about them and the truth about our history.

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