We Interrupt Your Broadcast... WandaVision and Historic Preservation

 Welp. I just can't resist jumping on the WandaVision bandwagon. 

***Here There Be Spoilers for the Season Finale of WandaVision***

I'm a pretty casual Marvel comics fan, but I really enjoy the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movies are full of snark, ridiculousness, and absolutely amazing fight choreography. Iron Man and Captain America: Winter Soldier are seriously in my top 10 movies along with the Thin Man (1934), Metropolis (1927), and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (Extended, thank you very much). ...My steaming recommends are always entirely confused. 

I never expect the MCU to be more than popcorn crunchers, though. Some moments are heavy, some intriguing, but I don't expect block-busters to try to be smart. Then WandaVision came along. I liked it from the beginning; as a former film historian, I have experience handling and researching old movies and TV shows, so it was very fun to catch a lot of the meta-humor going on as each episode is styled after a different decade-ish of popular American TV. Except in the last episode where Wanda's Vision confronts the White Vision. They reference the Ship of Theseus paradox and I when I saw it, I started to cackle like a madwoman. I used a version of the theoretical debate about the Ship of Theseus in my master's thesis to talk about different historical preservation practices of old buildings, using the Forbidden City in China as my main case study.

Now, bear with me - there's a method to the madness! To start with, you might want to watch Wisecrack's video on this; my friend loves to find these sorts of things - philosophy meets pop culture, so she can watch me have meltdowns. 

So, the Ship of Theseus is a philosophical debate about whether or not an object, after replacing all its material parts, is still the same thing. If all the planks and rope and sails on the Argo are replaced one by one until none of the original parts are there, is it still the Theseus' Ship? In WandaVision, this is the debate the two Visions have, if Wanda's version has Vision's personality/memories but none of the original material is he the original Vision? And conversely, if the White Vision has the material, but not the memories/personality, can he be the original Vision? Of course, the paradox is that the answer to both of these questions is both yes and no. To further complicate things, like they say in the Wisecrack video, other philosophers have asked other questions, like the place of the soul or the continued use of the original can sway the paradox to one side or another. This liminal space of yes and no, being both yet neither is the paradox. The Argo, once its planks are all replaced isn't the same ship, but yet it is. 

I played with this paradox in my masters thesis, and it was tons of fun. ...Then my main advisor convinced me to narrow the argument by shifting to a Buddhist rather than philosophical debate and now its less fun...

Anyway! So, basic historic preservation strategies are outlined by many government and international agencies, check out UNESCO or The National Parks Service for more detailed info; this will be a barebones recap. But basically, there are certain paths down which preservation projects go. If there is an old building that needs saving you basically have a few options to choose from - Stasis, Stabilization, Restoration, and Reconstruction. Stasis is choosing to preserve the building in the state in which you find it, whether its in good shape or not. Usually this means documenting the building with drawings and photographs and making it sure it doesn't fall apart any more than it already has. Stabilization is like it says on the tin, making sure the building is stabilized to prevent further deterioration. This is often for buildings that are preserved for their exterior rather than interior, but it can involve some construction work to reinforce certain parts like the roof or structural members. Restoration has varied versions, but this means restoring parts of an old building to keep it structural stable and viewable - especially so people can go inside. This is usually accomplished by replacing/restoring parts with obvious and reversible fixes - adding a plain white wall to replace a damaged one so the building is structurally stable, for example. But Restoration can also involve period accurate repairs like using oyster shell in mortar to rebuild a wall; this restores the original without adding too much new. Of course, the extreme end of Restoration is Reconstruction, where an old building is rebuilt in some amount. This does and can include full reconstruction, like at Colonial Williamsburg or partial reconstruction like when modern additions are taken off the back of old houses to restore the original footprint or roofline.  

If you combine these paths of preservation with the Ship of Theseus paradox you might be able to see where I was going with my thesis. Choosing a preservation path is complex and tailored to the specific building, but the Western traditions tend to choose Stasis and Stabilization in preference to Restoration or, mostly, Reconstruction. I posited that this comes from building traditions steeped in stone as the main construction material. While wood can, in the right conditions, outlive stone, if a culture builds in stone it tends to avoid reconstruction and embraces permanence for their structures. Think about the Colosseum or Notre Dame. When they are damaged, people tend to either want to preserve them in Stasis, Stabilize the building, or make obvious fixes through Restoration. However, in building traditions that wood as the primary construction material, they tend toward embracing ephemerality. They will rebuild buildings over and over again - Ise Shrine in Japan. Often this is with new materials and traditional building technologies.

Chinese traditional architecture is really fascinating. Its a building style that is thousands of years old! They are basically really awesome Lego sets. The buildings are meant to be taken apart to replace individual destroyed parts and reassembled. Overtime, even when destroyed by fire or war, they get reconstructed over and over again yet they are still called the same building. The Temple of Confucius in Qufu has been there for almost 1500 years, and rebuilt probably dozens of times but it is still treated as the 1500 year old temple despite retaining none of the original building material. So, in some ways, some buildings in the Chinese architectural tradition are also Ships of Theseus.

Its a fun paradox to think about, because in historic preservation there often isn't one correct answer. Do you replace the roof with obviously modern materials to make sure it lasts as long as possible or is it better to replace it with period accurate materials and techniques to maintain the building tradition? Both can be okay! Maybe climate change has made damaging storms more likely, so a modern roof would help protect the rest of the building better than traditional materials. Maybe a modern roof is more cost effective, opening up budget for more preservation? Maybe it doesn't matter because no one can see the roof anyway. ...And maybe its okay to destroy the original to allow for new construction.

Still, I'm just going to ask the Avengers to maybe avoid collateral damage of historic buildings in the future, enough of them get destroyed from negligence as it is. And Wanda, if you can figure out how to recreate your mind control just so people can see what an old building looks like - Virtual Reality style, please look me up! Cause that would be awesome.

*Photo taken from https://tvline.com/2021/03/05/wandavision-recap-season-1-finale-episode-9-scarlet-witch/