Confusion and Torture

This past Sunday, our musuem studies class embarked upon a field trip to downtown San Antonio. The ride itself was fun (but road trips always are); However, it's the thought provoking museums we visited I want to discuss here. Since we've been studying the orgions of musueuming, with Peale, Barnum, and the Dime Museums, Dr. S gifted us with this opportunity to visit Ripley's Believe It or Not, Louis Toissands Wax Museum, and as a after thought, The Alamo. Although I have visited San Antonio and the Alamo several times, I've never been inside any of these. I'd like to think my parent's had higher sensibilites, but the deciding factor was probably the exhorbiant ticket price.
My favorite theme for Ripley's: Confusion as Strategy. Much like the past Curiosity Cabinet's Dr. S goes on about, Ripley's collection was a conglomeration of random items. The layout directed you through walkways that twisted and turned. At every turn you thought you we almost to the exit, but there was another floor, room, hallway to go through. No map was provided and no other museum experience had taught you what to expect from this visit. An overwhelming abundance of visuals and sounds expounded the confusion. One minute you would be looking at "legitimate" exhibit on the Titanic and the next a Furry Trout. What was true? And what was not? This confusion irritates most of us who desire order and want to know what to expect, or even just want to know what's real and what's not. I would argue that not only is this misdirection and confusion deliberate, but it effectively presents the visitor with an experience not dependant on the artifacts or exhibits of the "museum". Of course, whether that experience was pleasant or not, is up for question.


The second most interesting theme: Human Delight in Torture. One of my classmates made an interesting observation that the only themes of the exhibits at Ripley's were focused on death or dying. While I think that this may be a little overreaching, he called out a large portion of the sights. Many were only horrific placed in today's context (and perhaps only by certain people) such as a bill of sale for 19th century sales and Hitler memorabilia. Some of it was just silly, making it easier to laugh at. A wonderful illustration, at the end of the Third Floor you find a skeleton hung up behind a glass case. Pull a lever and the torture instrument wrings a scream (very unrealistic sounding) from the skeleton. On the wall you see musical notes, so some of us took our places at the levers and the skeleton "screamed" the tune of "Mary had a Little Lamb". It was hysterically, but I kept wondering why we were laughing? Why did we think it funny that we were "torturing" this representation of a human? What made that okay?

 
I have several pages of interesting notes, so the silly field trip was actually quite productive.