This has been a difficult couple of weeks for me. I have not had enough time to devote to my class work as I would have liked due to a family illness that I needed to tend to. So, I am feeling like my website is just sort of thrown together. The time I would have been spending on it over the last two weeks has been spent driving to Columbus and back. However, I have put together what I hope will be an entertaining website for AMS205.
I have been pretty fascinated by how we are manipulated into seeing history in whatever way the government or media outlets want us to see it. This is true now, but was especially true before the advent of television, radio, and the Internet. For example, in AMS205, we have learned that the "Wild West" was not really as glamorous and beautiful as we have been led to believe. The actuality is that it was harsh, deadly, and that our ancestors took what they wanted from people who were only trying to protect what was theirs. I wanted to show that Buffalo Bill was marketed, and that his real story was just as interesting as his "his-story" of the Wild West. But when you remember Buffalo Bill, you are probably remembering the "story" and not his real story. I also wanted to show that while the American Girl dolls are probably a good investment for a child who likes dolls, all of the marketing and accessories could make a parent need to take on a part-time job just to pay for the stuff! I think that if American Girl dolls were real history, they would probably not need hairdressers and a different outfit for every day of the week!
So, my website is looking at history vs. "his-story". I chose to compare the reality and the fantasy of Buffalo Bill and of the doll line, American Girl Dolls. I know that seems a little weird, but I thought it was interesting to explore how Buffalo Bill was presented as "fact" to Americans, and how the dolls, which are based on historical characters, are presented to young girls as factual. What I've found out is that, as I expected, there is some truth to both Buffalo Bill and the dolls, but there are also many ways in which both are manufactured to sell an item to the public.
I really did enjoy this assignment, even though I don't feel like I devoted as much time to it as I would have liked to. I have never even considered developing a website before, and while I know that a Google website is not actually developing, it is good enough for me! There are some things that I didn't quite figure out as far as putting things where I wanted them and taking them out once I put them in the wrong place, but all in all, I learned a lot about using websites. I don't feel quite so bad about not being able to figure out a couple of things since I asked Librarian Kathleen to help me with a bread trail on my home page, and even she couldn't figure out how to get it out of there! We tried for a good while, but eventually gave up.
I think I was trying to market this website to parents of children (mainly girls) between the ages of 6 and 13. My goal is to make them aware of the fact that these are nice dolls for young girls, but that the books are a little superficial and don't exactly lean towards progressive when addressing women's issues. However, in fairness, I don't think that they could actually portray young girls in past historical settings and show an extremely left-wing young lady! At any rate, I wanted to show my audience that the dolls are part fantasy and part history, and should be presented as such. I used the legend of Buffalo Bill to show that history can be made to look one way when it was actually something else, so the books that go with the dolls should be used in conjunction with actual history readings.
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