[Ansteorra] Authenticity and Persona Play

[karen moon]

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What a great discussion!  I hope I can still throw out a few bones for the list to gnaw on.

1.  Some folks have had some bad experiences with alleged Authenticity Freak attacks, where someone huffs up to them and points out everything wrong with them, damages their psyche, runs them off from the SCA, etc.  (The tales abound.)  I do not doubt this has occurred.  However, I have to wonder if blame isn't being laid at the wrong doorstep.  Maybe the attackers aren't really into Authenticity (witness Iago's story about being laid into by the chick with the Raybans).  Maybe these people really aren't into authenticity.  Maybe they're just Buttheads.  Maybe we should revise a certain old yet valid phrase into "Never attribute to authenticity what can easily be explained by bad manners."

2.  I have never, ever understood why an imaginary line is drawn between Fun and Authenticity.  I've never found them to be mutually exclusive.  When I think back to truly spectacular (and memorable) good times I've had in the SCA, at least 2/3 of them pass the test for both.  Maybe more.

3.  I think there may be a misperception at work -- that all persona play is dramatic, or rehearsed, or well-researched or even Visited Upon the Elect by the Muses of Authenticity.  This is simply not so.  Get this -- persona play (or at least persona experimentation) can even be done Alone.  Here is an actual example, sad or silly tho it be...

Years ago, I was at a very small revel given by a local college group.  It was Yuletide and the group had put their cafeteria cards together, cashed in all their points and looted the university's larders.  A table was spread with turkey, ham, roast beef, dips, vegie trays and a vast array of fresh fruit surrounding a vat of molten chocolate for dipping.  I was perusing the spread when I got one of those odd ideas -- it was Christmas, I was stressed, I was in costume but still feeling mundane -- and just for a lark, I decided to look at this spread thru my way-early-Briton persona's eyes.  What would Mari have thought, and recognized and done?  Didn't take long to find out.  Nabbed a ham-roll right off, then started looking at all the dips and sauces and stuff for the appropriate sauce for ham.  Hmmm.  Nope, some sorta cream sauce, nope that won't work.  Hey, what's this really dark, syrupy stuff?  Some sauce made with pig's blood, maybe?  A badly set-up blood pudding perhaps?  Maybe that's the sauce that goes with the ham.  Let's see.....

I think it was Ivar who walked up to me after I had chomped a big bite out of the chocolate-covered ham-roll and saw the look on my face.  "What the heck did you just eat?" he wanted to know.  I offered him the rest of the chocolate covered ham roll.  He sorta peered at it critically then, God help him, he ate it.  He chewed quizzically for a moment, then made the same face I was making.  "Bleah!  What was that?"  I pointed at the liquid chocolate, swallowed, and said "Whatever that is, it is NOT the sauce for the ham."  Did we then decide MAYBE it went with the fruit that surrounded it?  Gosh no, that would have been cheating.  To our early-period eyes and palates -- which would never have encountered chocolate -- anything that dark had to be some sort of blood sauce, so of course we kept dunking meat in it and cringing as we ate it.  And misery loving company as it does, we were soon joined by others, who also had to try it out, or suggest different combinations.  Someone finally couldn't take it anymore and decided to try dipping a strawberry in the stuff, declared it good and induced us all to try it that way.  We christened the goop "blood-honey" since it was dark but sweet and Ever After, whenever a chocolate sauce or syrup appears at a feast, I am most careful to inform my dining companions NOT to use it with ham.  Or any other meat.  Yes, they look at me oddly.  I don't care.  I want to make sure my friends do not suffer needless food trauma.

Lest you think otherwise, this Incident required but 2 pieces of knowledge/trivia -- that blood was a common ingredient in medieval recipes -- soups, sausages, puddings, sauces; and that an early Briton would have known nothing of chocolate.  I guess it also required the willingness to throw caution to the wind, and friends who would do likewise.  Ivar could have told me "Don't be an idiot, that's chocolate, you dip strawberries in it."  The others who joined us could have said the same thing.  But then it wouldn't have been An Incident.  An interesting personal persona experiment, maybe, but nothing we still giggle about from time to time.

So, if you think "Oh, I can't play persona!!!" ask yourself what you'd have done in similar circumstances.  Sometimes all it takes is closing your eyes and taking a bite.

incautiously yours,

Mari