Yi-Fu Tuan - Dear Colleague

April 26, 2005

Dear Colleague,

I got up late and so had to rush to the Memorial Union for the morning sessions of the Geography Student Symposium. Not knowing the room in which the Symposium was to be held, I walked up two floors, sweating under the layers of clothing and the heavy backpack. Then I fell. The coffee I carried spilled on the floor, on my coat, and on the program. I wasn't hurt, but I lay on the floor for a moment and thought to myself, how ridiculous! I should be at home reading The New York Times. Why am I here? Who am I trying to impress? On the floor, I didn't feel a bit virtuous or heroic. To the contrary, I wondered whether I have become the sort of old men I despise--the sort who wear their caps backward in a pathetic effort to be--or to court--the young.

In the sessions, I commented on various papers, but I didn't get a chance to do so on two of them, and I would like to make up for that here. One is Kim Coulter's paper, "Good-bye Lenin! A tale of a unified Germany for a unified Europe." I am delighted to see a paper on film, for I have often wondered why we geographers haven't explored that medium more. Good-bye Lenin!, a film about how a man tries to feed the illusions of his mother that East Germany is alive and well, is both a critical and a commercial success. Much of Kim's research is directed at the politics and financing of the film, the agencies involved at local, regional, and federal levels, the controversies over whether the project is worthwhile. As I listen, I can't help thinking: well, this is also true of Hollywood productions, with, of course, a different set of players, and different controversies over financing and suitability. In a democracy, whether German or American, any big project entails much in-fighting, and it may be worthwhile to document it. But the politics and the in-fighting in no way explain the quality of the final product! If Good-bye Lenin! were a flop, no one will take notice, not even Kim. So the real question for me is, Why does this particular movie have such power, and is this power manifest in the conceptualization of a unified Germany and a unified Europe?

The second paper is Melanie McCalmont's "Communicating the historical American West through Lewis and Clark Bicentennial websites." Using websites to document attitudes and values is a departure in geography. So I commend Melanie's paper as I do Kim's. Melanie distinguishes between Traditional images of the West (white-male pioneers, flag-waving, canoeing up dangerous rivers, fighting Indians) and Revisionist images of the West (communal activities, women at work, caring for nature, Indians fighting off whites). Now, to my way of thinking, these two categories--Traditional and Revisionist--are not on a par, for to revise, you have to have something to revise, and that something is the Traditional image: thus the Revisionist would want to focus on women rather than on men, on communal activities rather than on the intrepid individual, and on brave Indian fighters rather than on brave white fighters. Note two additional points that support my view. One: the general rubric, the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, under which both Traditional and Revisionist images appear, is itself egregiously Traditional. And this leads to my second point. If Lewis and Clark had stayed at home, had been communal, had cared for their backyard vegetables and looked after their families, as Revisionists would like them to do, well, there would not be much of a story to tell. We tell a story or celebrate an event because we think something out of ordinary had happened. Do you really want to know how I brush my teeth everyday, or organize a Bi-decadal in its honor?

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu