Anyone else see PBS "Colonial House"

I couldn't finish the second night after the gay guy came out of the closet. I am a history buff and thought that the program might be interesting but when I saw that the usual political correctness of PBS showed through by having participants that were either gay, or women's libers, atheists, and calfornia liberal college professors I could not watch it any more. Anyone else have a different take on this?

TIME TRAVELER Carolyn Heinz said the women enjoyed the challenge of coming up with creative meals using minimal supplies.

Thirteen/WNET, the production company that filmed Colonial House for PBS, wants all press inquiries to "cast members" to go through its New York office, but the News & Review and the Heinzes chose to disregard that.When some professors take time off, they travel to an exotic locale or enjoy some mind-easing down time. Don and Carolyn Heinz spent their "vacation" in 1628 colonial New England.

As participants in Colonial House, the sixth installment in PBS's series that takes a couple of dozen people and thrusts them into a snapshot of history, the Heinzes spent nearly five months in rural Maine, on a "set" constructed to mimic the lives of settlers, right down to how they ate, slept and took care of bodily needs.

For the married Chico State professors, whose prior reality show experience was watching a couple of episodes of Survivor three years ago, it was all about the intellectual experience.

"What interested us as intellectuals was that we could actually enter a historical period that one reads about and lectures about but doesn't live in," said Don Heinz, who is partially retired from teaching religious studies. His wife teaches anthropology.

"She applied for us, and we didn't know anything about it," said Carolyn Heinz. The producers were especially eager to get Don Heinz on board. As a real-life Lutheran pastor, he was cast as the colony's lay preacher and assistant governor.

The series' filming ended in October 2003, but before it was over the Heinzes had tried to pull out of the project more than once.

They were already forgoing professors' wages to participate (PBS paid them $10,000 apiece), and the couple began worrying that they were the only ones in it for the historical experience. "We were afraid we would be the schmucks who were taking it seriously," Carolyn Heinz said. "Nobody's heads were in the 17th century."

Also, the producers told the preacher they would allow him no books, even though his research of the time showed that someone in his position would have a large library. And they told Carolyn Heinz she couldn't keep a journal.

"It was going to be five months with no books and nothing to write on," she said, and that was a deal-breaker.

Eventually the producers relented, and the Heinzes were back in--Don with a copy of Pilgrim's Progress and Carolyn with some sheets of period-correct paper and a feather quill for a pen.

When Don Heinz was named governor of the colony, he was able to draw from his academic studies for a historically accurate representation.

The only other exceptions to historical accuracy were the addition of bug repellant, sunscreen and tampons. The producers allowed toothbrushes after participants threatened to sue if the flavored twigs they were using caused dental bills.

"There were endless discussions and arguments off camera with the production crew," Don Heinz said.

Because of the head-butting and the close-quarters intensity that drives reality shows, the couple is somewhat worried about how the producers will portray them through editing. It may be PBS, but it's still television.

The series will air May 17, 18, 24 and 25 from 8 to 10 p.m., and online synopses make frequent mention of the Heinzes, going so far as to derisively characterize Don Heinz, who has extensive knowledge of early religions, as "somewhat of a history buff."

"We felt to some extent they trivialized us," he said of the 20- and 30-something producers. "They were annoyed that we were always correcting them and challenging them. I think they probably thought we were something of a pain in the butt."

The Heinzes are suspending judgment until they see what airs, and they're not sure they even want friends and family over for their first viewing.

"It was a very intense social community," Carolyn Heinz said. "But in the end, it is reality television, and what they want is a good show that is going to get a lot of people watching it.

"It was pretty clear the cameras were after the quarrels and the struggles among the [people] rather than authenticity."

The show’s cast was primed for the experience by spending two weeks at the Plimouth Plantation, where actors, always in character, taught what it was like during the time of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (The Colonial House residents weren't supposed to play-act, but rather maintain their own personalities in the context of the time.)

In spite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the Heinzes, who are in their early 60s, were the most senior members of the "cast," they had little trouble adjusting to the physical demands of colonial life. They didn't mind washing their hair once a month, eating moldy meat or going without toilet paper.

PREACHER MAN While colonists of the 17th century would have been subjected to a full day of worship, lay preacher Don Heinz kept his sermons to less than two and one-half hours. He planned his addresses over the course of each week; one of his favorite topics was the struggle to build communities in difficult times.

"Half the world lives that way today," said Carolyn Heinz, who has resided with less-developed cultures as part of her academic work.

The biggest surprise--and disappointment--for the Heinzes was that the environment stifled rather than piqued creative thought.

"It suppressed creativity," Carolyn Heinz said. "I felt myself fading intellectually. There was no sharing of ideas. We were hunkered down to endure."

Two months into the filming, they almost left again, sick of the sheer tedium of it all.

Don Heinz was irked that, even though it was the law of the time that everyone attend church services, he was forced to deal with a handful of modern-day atheists who refused to play along.

In the midst of what the preacher called "the Sabbath wars," one participant skipped church to go skinny dipping--an historically unlikely escapade that earned her the punishment of being bound and paraded around by her husband.

It's that type of clip that the Heinzes are sure will make it to the final edit as the producers condensed 700 hours of film into eight hours of air time.

The Heinzes also had an indentured servant, 24-year-old Jonathon Allen, who did chores by day and slept on a straw mat at the foot of their bed by night.

One day, at a church service, Allen revealed that he was gay--an emotional moment for him in part because he wasn't "out" in real life.

HOUSE RULES Carolyn Heinz, shown with her husband, Don, in their Chico home, convinced Colonial House producers to allow her to keep this journal. During filming, participants were allowed to receive mail twice, under the pretext that it had come by ship from the "Old World."

The news didn't faze the Heinzes. "You're talking to two Northern California liberals here," Don Heinz said. However, it did bother him from the perspective that "it's not the way anything would have happened in the 17th century."

Partway into the series, the colonists, all of whom were furnished with "back stories" about their lives in Europe, were joined by a man from the English homeland checking on the "investment." (The colonists were supposed to be making money off their work on the land.)

That threw the settlement's structure on its ear, and, when the governor's family had to leave after a real-life emergency, Don Heinz became acting governor.

The PBS Web site also claims that Carolyn Heinz was "hell-bent on serving as de facto governor via her husband, an arrangement that would have been highly unlikely in the 17th century."

"I simply had ideas about how things should work," she countered. "There would have been strong-minded, opinionated women who had to live in patriarchal societies."

When the cameras weren’t filming, the participants, who included several children, talked freely about the outside world. Many of them became friends.

The Heinzes have kept in touch with Allen, their indentured servant, via e-mail, even helping him get into graduate school. Recently, he drove to Chico from South Carolina for a visit.

At the end of the series' filming, the cast members were asked if they'd do it again. "There weren't many people who said yes," Don Heinz said. "I suppose we're glad we did it, but we would not do it again."

Upcoming episodes are entitled, "Regime Change", "Shake Up", "The Reckoning", and "Judgment Day". Personally, I think the Governor made some wise choices, even with his decision to suspend the Sabbath rules. I imagine that pragmatism had to be the bottom line in those days with their very survival hanging in the balance.

I was very disgusted with the whole gay thing, though. It was an obvious set-up from the beginning. The sap even happened to know what the preacher was going to be talking about that Sunday. It seemed that the producers were actually going for "Survivor" set in 1628 with all the conflicts between characters and obvious effort to include those with, shall we say, diverse views. Too bad because I love the premise of this series and did enjoy Frontier House, especially all the whining from the women. LOL

I like these living histories, in theory.

PBS has gone over the cliff.

PC is their perversion. Most women, white and black, are pathetic, carping, social statement hags.

The Big O will swoop in the revolving door to ruin the last traces of "history" with Star status sychophancy.

Why do homos foist their sexuality onto any and all who are in proximity? Why don't normals announce their heterosexuality: "I want sex with women." Think about it.

'Coming out' is in itself an assault by PC standards.

I would have blown up at the producers over their slopy personnel choices and poor management of the "settlers".

This is unwatchable nonsenser because most of these clowns are 15 minute frauds showboating.

For 2008, PBS will broadcast America: 1969, the Republican War.

PBS ruined any historical accuracy by throwing in atheists and homosexuals and celebrities. They chose to focus on entertainment rather than history.

I know Cyrano here was trying to watch it - was interesting the first episode, although yeah the atheist thing was pretty lame. [I have heard the same "oh she doesn't give herself enough credit - they give it all to God" from atheists I've known too. they all kind of seem to say the same thing] I didn't see the coming out part, so that's news to me. Sounds like the whole thing is up s*it creek now. Once the family left to see about the fiance's funeral, no one who was left had a CLUE what to do and I just couldn't watch anymore. it was too painful - kind of like watching Survivor and seeing the emotional dregs of society trying to pull some kind of real team together when only one or two members have any real character... and those few are the ones that are nearly first to be voted off.

PBS provides entertainment, not education. They chose participants for entertainment value or shock value, and they are trying to show how impossible it would be to live back then. Actually most of my reenactor friends and I would deal with all of this stuff without blinking an eye, but then, showing how easy it is to churn butter or make dinner without a microwave wouldn't make for interesting TV. Throw in a few atheists and gays and you get higher viewership.

Why would anyone bother watching PBS, anyway? What a waste of time.

Have her dress up as if for winter to put in a garden, speaking only when spoke to. Have her use a chamber pot, bathing with sponge baths weekly. Have her carry water in buckets without using indoor faucets.

Have her learn to cook over an open fire pit using cast iron pots, occasionally catching her long dresses and long sleeves on fire. Fire killed many a frontier women. Look up antique and woild game cook books.

Marry her off at 12.

Then give her the final exam and her own convection oven/microwave and refridge/freezer.

Why do homos foist their sexuality onto any and all who are in proximity? Why don't normals announce their heterosexuality: "I want sex with women." Think about it.

My thoughts exactly. The theme of the meeting was telling people who you really are or something similar. While most people said what they did for a living,etc.. The gay guy's whole identity lies with who he likes to have sex with- other guys! What if the straight men stood up and said "i've been living a lie because I haven't announced to all of you that I like to have sex with women. I feel so liberated now that I've said that!" This 'coming out' was neither appropriate or necessary and made the whole thing seem really stupid. I'm glad he feels so much better now.

If PBS was simply trying to prove the challenges of life in 1628, they could have set aside nearly four-hundred-year- old rules and dressed the participants up as Pilgrims and let them work their lives out with primitive tools and housing.

BUT NO!...They had to impose 17th Century morals, religion and social customs on people diametrically opposed to that in their core beliefs. In order for that to even come close to being a re-enactment, you would have to select only those people who today are closest in philosophy to that era. Using liberals and atheists was a recipe for disaster and a guarantee of failure for the Governor. It was not fair to require this fundamentalist Southern Baptist to enforce rules of 1628 upon people who don't have ANYTHING approaching the mindset of the original colonists.

There are people alive today who put God and their fellow man ABOVE their own selfishness and those people are the only ones who could approach an authentic replication of colonial life.

If these sissies, whiners and godless self-worshippers had been the first people from Europe upon this continent, they would have perished within a few months.

Only the fervor and dedication of hard-working faithful people could have actually founded this country.

This show could have been so much more realistically executed.

This show could have been so much more realistically executed.

But what fun would that be? Seriously, only a few people here seem to get the point of the show, which is that most people nowadays couldn't hack it back then. If you had a bunch of people on the show who could hack it, who'd care? It would just be a reenactment, and bad television. The point of all these shows, going back to the original BBC Victorian House series, is to make modern people miserable by making live the way their ancestors did.

These PBS "reality" shows are my guilty pleasure - I've seen them all. I was looking forward to "Colonial House" because that time period is one of my favorites in American history. Trust PBS to ruin what could have been a wonderful educational tool by their PC agenda-making.
Deliberately picking atheists, femi-natzis, homos, and a liberal "theologian" as part of their core group of settlers was a darn shame. And yet for all the stupid remarks and complaints, I have found some of the participants really engaging: Jeff Wyre and his sweet daughter Bethany, the carpenter (Wood?), the freeman Tysdale, and the young woman (Jane?). Wyre has some very perceptive comments about his take on the experience and has gone into it with the right mind-set. His daughter is the kind of young Christian woman I'd like to see my own daughter immulate. And even though they are somewhat rowdy and profane, I'm getting a kick out of the English guys (I guess I'm a sucker for a British accent!).
The series wasn't what I hoped it would be, but I'll watch it all. Too bad it wasn't more "survivor-like", or stupid Michelle Voorhees and Johanthon "I'm-Coming-Out" would be HISTORY.

Actually, I think the "colonists" are the ones at fault here. Surely, they must have done some research (or gotten a briefing from PBS) on what life as a colonial settler would have been like.

Only the truly uneducated wouldn't have known that church attendance was mandatory, and absences were punished. If there were aspects of their character and belief which were non-negotiable, then they shouldn't have signed up for the project.

Although a Christian, I'm not a church-going man. Still, my expectation upon entering the series would be that I'd be sitting in church for six hours on Sunday. Because, in that day, I would have had to or be punished.

I can't even begin to guess what would have happened to someone who stood up in the middle of church to announce that he was a sodomite.

I have enjoyed some of the "House" series, but this is a joke. In the others, at least the folks made a (mostly) genuine attempt to live as the folks of the subject era did. They were educational in many respects, and very entertaining.

I think what is most offensive is using a truly God-fearing Christian minister as Governor for the express purpose of ridiculing Christians. This is a Christian-slamming exercise turned particularly perverse by requiring the most faithful Christian present to use his bestowed "power" to deliver punishments clearly out of place with respect to modern liberals and atheists who disrespect all authority.

This program is blatantly anti-Christian and mocks our brave and faithful colonial founders as somehow unenlightened and inferior to modern American hedonists.

In retrospect, no Christian should have participated in this organized mockery of their faith.

I don't find it "entertaining" for PBS to make fun of devout Christians blindsided by the set-up. The Governor bemoans participants agreed, in writing, to abide by the laws of 1628 and are blatantly disregarding them. The Governor is made to look the fool for taking his role seriously while others undermine him.

The producers should throw the blatant offenders off the project for refusing to abide by signed agreements they executed. The producers undermine all authority of the Governor by not backing his enforcement of laws EVERYONE agreed to obey in advance. They should remove deliberate and chronic lawbreakers from the colony and send the scofflaws packing as real colonists might indeed have done.

This is more of the famous Clinton mantra: "It depends on my interpretation of the definition." (In this case, signed agreements to abide by the rules.)

The one thing this program does prove is moral relativism is ANARCHY. With moral relativism, your system cannot control me because I don't have to follow any system of laws I believe offensive to me, personally. I make up and follow my own law as I go along.

I would argue that many more Indians were slaughtered at the hands of rival tribes than by whites.

I look at this a little differently. Given the fact that Indians lived in America for thousands of years before we came, and since they did have wars, it would stand to reason that over time, they had the chance to kill more of one another than we did intentionally.

I think it would take some research to show that white incursion on "Indian land" killed fewer people over the brief period of that migration than Indians themselves. But what are we talking about here?

Denying that the incursion of whites in America didn't ultimately destroy the Indians seems dangerous. Would things have been different if we knew in advance that there was a choice?

If you were an Anglo-Saxon, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, or Slavic immigrant in 1650, and you were told that if you and millions of other whites would not choose to stay in Europe in the old world, "American Indians will no longer exist as they do now by 1900," what would you say?

I would have come here anyway. I would have done my best to get along with Indians, much the way my ancestors did, and I would have shot them down in their tracks like dogs if they had threatened my community.

Let's not forget how things were. We came with mixed intentions, and we survived. Are we going to survive now, or are we going to bleed to death like a sickling tribe that can't protect itself?

What ever the rest of you do, I'm going to go down fighting.

"What ever the rest of you do, I'm going to go down fighting."

--------------------------------------------------

"Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" - P. Henry

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.