Review: "The 1900 House"
Aug. 20th, 2008 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI just watched "The 1900 House" where a family agrees to live the way a middle-class family might have lived in 1900 England.
Sadly, I learned more about the family or about the film crew's biases than I did about living in 1900. The first problem was that the most important part of the house, the stove, did not work perfectly. Second, the family got minimal training and seemed to have very little clue of how people entertained themselves. A real family would have people living like this all their lives with friends who lived like this, etc. Trying to do everything in period while also learning how to do it is not realistic. So we saw more how people respond to frustration than how people actually used to live.
Two of the six family members were barely shown at all. One of them plus two of the others were mostly shown complaining. Fortunately, two of them were shown mostly being great. For example, when they got a look at an old newspaper, one complained that it was boring, but two decided to make their own version. In addition, the maid they hired was shown being really great (and even though she also complained, she continued working anyway).
At the end, they were all asked what they missed most and of course they all had answers. Soap and shampoo! Fast food, sweets, going out. They were not asked what new thing they liked that they'd want to keep when they returned to 1999, and there were only two hints that there even were such things. One person wanted to hang on to parts of herself that she had discovered living in the house, though she felt she might not be able to. The same person wondered at one point whether she would get used to the way humans naturally smell while living in the 1900 House and would later find the way people who use perfumed soaps, shampoos, lotions, etc. to have an overly strong smell about them.
My favorite thing about the show was watching some of the family members really get into it in a positive way, either finding better ways to do the things they had to do or finding ways to be creative with what they had. I would like to be more like that.
Sadly, I learned more about the family or about the film crew's biases than I did about living in 1900. The first problem was that the most important part of the house, the stove, did not work perfectly. Second, the family got minimal training and seemed to have very little clue of how people entertained themselves. A real family would have people living like this all their lives with friends who lived like this, etc. Trying to do everything in period while also learning how to do it is not realistic. So we saw more how people respond to frustration than how people actually used to live.
Two of the six family members were barely shown at all. One of them plus two of the others were mostly shown complaining. Fortunately, two of them were shown mostly being great. For example, when they got a look at an old newspaper, one complained that it was boring, but two decided to make their own version. In addition, the maid they hired was shown being really great (and even though she also complained, she continued working anyway).
At the end, they were all asked what they missed most and of course they all had answers. Soap and shampoo! Fast food, sweets, going out. They were not asked what new thing they liked that they'd want to keep when they returned to 1999, and there were only two hints that there even were such things. One person wanted to hang on to parts of herself that she had discovered living in the house, though she felt she might not be able to. The same person wondered at one point whether she would get used to the way humans naturally smell while living in the 1900 House and would later find the way people who use perfumed soaps, shampoos, lotions, etc. to have an overly strong smell about them.
My favorite thing about the show was watching some of the family members really get into it in a positive way, either finding better ways to do the things they had to do or finding ways to be creative with what they had. I would like to be more like that.