He does, however, make the surprising claim that "by 2000 Gettysburg was a less-democratic shrine than it had been a century earlier." Could that possibly be true? By his own count, attendance is up since the turn of the century. Millions continue to visit the same battlefield their forbears did, even with countless other attractions competing for their attention and dollars. And what about all those people who decide to bypass Gettysburg entirely, opting instead to visit someplace they find more appealing or rewarding? Aren't their decisions democratic? Weeks seems to equate democracy with limited options and strong gatekeepers. But that combination sounds like something else entirely.
Weeks also evinces a remarkable nostalgia for the family dynamics of the mid-century road trip. "Gone were the days," he writes, "where parents connected children to pride in an exceptional nation." That particular quote follows one father's anecdote, relayed in an online discussion in 2000, about how his young son enjoyed playing on an artillery line with a group of re-enactors when the two of them visited the park. In other words, Weeks relates how a parent takes his child to see a historical attraction, the kid learns something about the past from some heritage types, and everybody has a good time -- precisely the sort of activity he then claims is "gone."
Weeks even uses tourism to analyze the American family. He claims, for example, that as tourists and consumers, baby boomers now engage in "less compromise among family members than found in earlier generations." Rather than piling the kids in the car to see the country, they are recklessly seeking self-gratification, even taking individual vacations. Yet elsewhere Weeks notes that among earlier generations of tourists, women "had traditionally either tagged along with their husbands or acted as responsible mothers." Now more women enjoy sites such as Gettysburg on their own terms. Weeks thus seems to suggest that when a woman follows her husband's wishes and sacrifices her own desires it is a key indicator that "compromise" is alive and well in the American family.
Despite such shortcomings, and despite his obvious distaste for much of today's commercial culture, Weeks makes a convincing case that Gettysburg owes its special status to the marketplace. Nationalists might not like to hear it, but the shrine that prompts so much flag waving and solemn devotion is also a major moneymaker. PBS viewers, enchanted by the epic struggle portrayed in Ken Burns' Civil War documentary, might also want to reflect on the assorted capitalists that kept the shrine in business in the dark days before public TV. It takes elitism of one form or another to revere Gettysburg while reviling the market that has helped shape its meaning.
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