Renaissance faires are often objects of derision, criticized in both academic works and popular culture for their mixture of the historic, the fantastic, and the modern, and for the perceived flaws of their employees and fans. Rachel Lee Rubin’s Well Met: Renaissance Faires and the American Counterculture is refreshing in its focus on the important subversive role of Renaissance faires as well as their influence on everything from fashion to music to foodways in American culture. Rubin begins with the question, “to what concrete personal, political, and cultural uses can a group of Americans put a past that, for the most part, is not their own?” (3) and finds that faires are at least as much about contemporary events as they are about the past. Above all, Renaissance faires have served as sites of personal and cultural experimentation.
The first chapter, titled “Welcome to the Sixties!” traces the history of Renaissance faires, focusing primarily on the first faire, the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in southern California, which began in 1963 and continues to operate every spring. Rubin successfully argues that this first faire, which grew out of a children’s theater program, was a reaction against the 1950s emphasis on conformity and McCarthyism. In fact, many of the artists involved in the early faires were available because they had been blacklisted and could no longer work in Hollywood. As the faire continued and grew it became closely linked with the counterculture movement in California. For example, the prominent underground newspaper, the Los Angeles Free Press, was originally created and distributed in conjunction with the faire. After a detailed discussion of that first faire and its struggles and growth, Rubin gives a brief history of the subsequent creation of similar faires throughout the United States.
The second chapter, “Artisans of the Realm,” focuses on craftsmen who work as vendors at Renaissance faires. Rubin shows that the Renaissance faire was closely tied to the craft revival in California in the 1960s. Having artists selling wares such as pottery and wheat-weavings directly to patrons fit well with the anti-commercialism that drew many people to the faire in the first place. She then explains how Renaissance faires were instrumental in popularizing certain crafts as well as certain foodways such as mead and bread bowl soup. As in the previous chapter, she begins with the very first Renaissance faire and shows how crafts and vending have evolved over time.
The third chapter, and perhaps one of the broadest, is about faire performers ranging from musicians to mimes to dancers to jousters. One of the main focuses of this chapter is the influence Renaissance faires have had on popular culture, especially music. Faire music helped spark revivals in folk music, early music, and klezmer music, and to popularize other ethnic musics. She also argues that Renaissance faires act as a “new vaudeville,” providing a space for forms of entertainment such as miming, juggling, and Morris dancing that otherwise have little place in contemporary American society.
Chapter 4, “A Place to be Out,” examines the faire from the patron’s perspective, looking at why it draws such devoted audiences. Over all, she shows that the faire community serves as a place where people who may not fit in with mainstream society because of sexuality, style, or size have found acceptance. The fifth chapter looks at the faire from the outsider’s perspective, specifically focusing on the cultural trope of mocking Renaissance faires. Rubin concludes that much of this criticism lies in the very things that attract devotees to faires such as discomfort with female flesh, specifically that of larger women in corsets, or the blurring of sexual identities produced by men in tights. While she concedes that most contemporary “antifans” are not aware of the history of right-wing opposition to faires, she argues that their criticisms are not unconnected. It is still the response of mainstream society to that which challenges it.
The final chapter discusses representations of faires in fictional works. The author shows how the faire comes to represent different ideas in different genres: in romance novels, for example, the faire is often a vehicle for female sexual agency and liberation, while in children’s fiction it is more often used as an educational platform. In a conclusion at the end of this chapter, which might work better as a stand-alone, albeit short, chapter, Rubin discusses the memorial of Ron Patterson, one of the founders of the original Renaissance Pleasure Faire, who passed away in 2011. She uses this event to show that faires are still best understood as a family business, due to the close-knit quality of the community which creates them, even as they have become increasingly commercialized, corporate entities.
Rubin’s scope is ambitious since she essentially takes as her subject all American Renaissance faires since their inception. As such, there are inevitably some things that are overlooked. She tends to treat the Renaissance faire as a single entity, when, in fact, faires are highly regionalized and each faire has a distinctive character. She either misses or opts not to discuss the distinction between cast members and entertainers, something that in my experience is essential to understanding the social dynamics among those who work at faires. Her overall argument about faires and counterculture is compelling, but there are moments where it feels somewhat forced.
Nonetheless, the depth of her research, particularly from an historical perspective, is impressive, and the work will be a valuable resource for anyone doing research on Renaissance faires. Non-scholar fans of Renaissance faires will probably find it interesting as well, and appreciate finding a scholarly work that is not overly critical. For folklorists it has applications to studying related types of performance such as contemporary side-show or circus as well as other fan communities.
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[Review length: 962 words • Review posted on December 10, 2014]