Katharina Gerhardt 
Representing Frontier Life in the Living History Format ’Frontier House’ [PDF ebook] 

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject American Studies – Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1, 0, University of Frankfurt (Main), language: English, abstract: The series Frontier House tries to recreate the conditions of nineteenth century pioneer life by sending three families from the twenty-first century to homestead in Montana and watches them adapt to their nineteenth century environment as they struggle to prepare for winter. The purpose of this is to give the viewers an insight into the reality of pioneer lives and make them understand the hardships the pioneers had to endure. The series claims to do that without romanticizing the topics of westward movement and frontier life as it is often done in literature and film.
The question is in how far such an experiment is authentic and can be educational for both the audience and the participants and whether the Format Living History is really serving its purpose in Frontier House. This leads to my thesis that although the series Frontier House claims to show the harsh reality of nineteenth century frontier life, it still romanticizes the era to a certain extent and in a way influences the viewer to believe in the mythology that is commonly connected to the time.

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