Further thoughts on Who Do You Think You Are

The long awaited and much hyped debut of NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? was last night. For months anyone remotely connected to the world of genealogy has been hearing about what this show is going to mean to the world of genealogy and prompting us all to tune in to the premiere. So that’s what I did, this morning on Hulu rather than last night on NBC. If you didn’t watch or wish to watch again, you can do so for the time being by clicking the follow text to view Episode One with Sarah Jessica Parker.

My first thoughts on the show was that it definitely has that slick production that you can usually expect from NBC so it’s a little shinier and 2.0ier than Faces of America was. The show moves along at a quick pace and doesn’t spend more than a few minutes on any one particular issue, which is the status quo with American television so that was to be expected and was forewarned by Lisa Kudrow in interviews as being a large difference between the UK and American versions of the show. It still remains watchable however.

As the post I did a few days ago expresses, I am not a huge fan of genealogy of reality television. I’ll deal with my objections to WDYTYA here and then move on the to things that I liked. First, while Sarah Jessica Parker appears to be doing the research and visiting the places where her roots were buried, she didn’t do much more than the participants of Faces of America. Sure she plugs ancestry.com in a nice scripted voice over and visits archives and talks to historians but all of the work was done in advance to her visits. Everywhere she went she was literally handed the documents that would lead her down her next branch. So what is presented comes across as a ProGenealogist’s infomercial sponsored by ancestry.com. Fly to where your roots are and a professional will dig up the documents you need and let you read them aloud and look at them in front of a computer and then fly on to the next place and be driven around and presented with the next magic envelope. I know, I know the show is supposed to be about the importance of finding one’s roots rather than the process and I’ll get to that. So here is my biggest complaint: the continuance of telling American’s that they only have a history if they are connected to a pivotal moment in history… a witch trial or the Mayflower or a tea party. More time was (or at least it felt so) focused on Sarah Jessica Parker’s Salem roots than were spent on her her Miner 49er roots and nothing was mentioned of the lives that her ancestors lived while not participating in such events. Why does no one ever celebrate the normal, mundane daily lives that our ancestors lived? Why is Sarah Jessica Parker’s exclamation of “I have belonging, I have.. I’m an American” guaranteed to send anyone remotely interested in their own roots to start their search? Because social history is next to last in importance in our historical educations… we are taught that they only things that mattered were the big events and that is all that we can focus on. I am personally just as satisfied, proud, and American for my ancestors that were farmers, horse thieves, miners and factory workers as I would be of any ancestor that I find connected to a historical event like those that fought in the Revolutionary War at Kings Mountain. Its all vital to who we are but would apparently make less marketable television.

I didn’t hate the show though! I plan on watching the rest of the series. I like that Parker seemed genuinely curious and surprised and touched by her ancestors lives. I like the idea that her husband will be featured on an upcoming episode. I like that it goes from her fearing that she doesn’t have a history to her being gifted (I won’t say that she discovered anything) a back story. I hope that people watching have taken away the sense of excitement that learning about their family’s history can bring. More than anything I like that the entire show wasn’t about using ancestry.com to find everything you need. She hit archives and historical societies and visited the places that have played a part in the lives she is hoping to look into. I hope that this point is made again and again during this series. Libraries and archives are under funded and under used and shows like this won’t be possible in fifty or a hundred years at least as far as non-digitized documents go.

Overall, the show is what I expected. Don’t expect anything too in depth or to spend much time learning that your favorite celebrity comes from a long line of farmers cause they weeded any ancestral line like that well before production. Hmm.. at least no one had to eat a rat or sit in a circle around a fire in the jungle.