What is the 20CRS?
The 20CRS is the 20th Century Recreation Society, which is a group dedicated to researching and recreating the 20th century in the present. Many groups meet weekly, and at these meetings we dance, talk, study, learn, party, and make plans. But first, let's get a little bit of info about the 20CRS in general.
Where did the 20CRS come from?
The avowed purpose of the 20CRS is the study and recreation of the 20th century Western society, its crafts, sciences, arts, traditions, literature, etc. Under the aegis of the 20CRS we study dance, music, martial arts, cooking, sitcoms, consumer electronics, costuming, literature... well, if they did it, somebody in the 20CRS does it (Except die of the AIDS virus!).
As you can probably guess, the thing that separates the 20CRS from a Western Imperialism 101 class is the active participation in the learning process. To learn about 1980's fashion cults, you design and build costumes. To learn 20CRS infantry fighting, you make flak vests, field radios, etc., and put them on and go learn how it feels to wear them when somebody is firing a machine gun at you.
You will frequently hear a 20CRS person describe the 20CRS as recreating Western Society "as they ought to have been." In some ways this is true -- we have few talkshows, drive-by shootings, and unemployed. In the dead of winter we have other things to eat than Burger King, instant coffee and potato chips. However, a better description is that we selectively recreate Western culture, choosing elements of the culture that interest and attract us.
The 20CRS was started in 1999 in Christchurch, New Zealand by a group of KAOS agents and SCA fans who wanted a theme party. Following the party, a group, who'd somehow missed the joke, got together to discuss the idea of forming the society for real...
How is the 20CRS Organized?
The 20CRS is a capitalist society. The 20CRS "First World" is divided into thirteen Corporations, each with a President or CEO, a Vice President or COO (heirs to the throne), and a Board of Directors who handle the day to day business of running the company.
A capitalist society takes its form from the ideas of the free market, the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, and the accumulation of wealth. Everyone is presumed to be an unemployed westerner at the start, capable of subsisting on social welfare. We let them turn up to events in jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers until they learn how to make an Armani suit or other such garb for themselves.
Fighting in the 20CRS, or Why are those people shooting each other?
Fighting in the 20CRS evolved from an attempt to recreate what happened when two industrialized societies fully mobilized all their available resources in an armed fight to the death between nations. The height of this is represented by the selective recreation of the trench warfare of The Great War Part One (no mud, rats, or lice!), and the blitzkrieg battles of The Great War Part Two. Some people in the 20CRS also like to recreate the heroic late-period struggles of oppressed masses against the invading forces of the American Empire.
20CRS fighting does have rules. The first, and most important rule, is that each and every combatant (as defined by the period Hague Rules, 1949 Geneva Conventions and 1977 Geneva Protocols) on the field has honour. The combatant keeps faith with their honour by accepting strikes that would be killing or wounding (more about this a little later). The second basic principle is like the first; A combatant keeps faith with their fellow combatants by acknowledging their opponent's word -- if they say a US air strike was too distant to cause injury, then it was off-target and hit the embassy instead. Since we prefer that no one get hurt, 20CRS fighting is done with real armoured fighting vehicles (made with cardboard, metal, padding, etc) and compressed air water weapons.
Compressed air weapons are made from plastic components that allow water to be squirted out. Physics limits their effective range to 37.5 feet, which is ideal as no one wants to recreate the boring bits of battles where you get killed by people so far away that you can't see them. Water streams are fast enough to simulate bullets (although hits are *real wet*) and water is heavy enough to approximate historical ammunition weights. Bayonets are made by wrapping a length of rubber to the barrel with strapping tape, covering them with duct tape for aesthetic reasons, and attaching some sort of telescopic or night vision sighting. Grenades are usually manufactured by converting party balloons.
Armour is much more complex -- some armour, being made of steel, glue, cardboard, and bicycle wheels, can take more than 40 hours per piece of armour (for example, a PzKpfw V, or Panther Tank, with moving turret and hatches can take upwards of 75 hours to complete). There are several essential and required pieces of armour -- scout vehicles, armoured personnel carriers, and the panzers. In addition, most 20CRS fighters choose to wear decorative helmets or berets and kevlar flak jackets.
Before being allowed to participate in combat without close supervision, each combatant is trained by senior combatants, known as "Drill Instructors." This basic training aims at ensuring that the combatant is able to march in a straight line, salute properly, and to look after any kit issued to them. 'Basic' typically lasts a few months. As part of this training, the novice combatant is taught how to recognize a "good" hit. Each fighter judges whether hits received in combat strike the body in a vital location. If the hit is "good" to an arm or leg, the fighter will give up use of that limb, go into simulated shock, and fall to the ground; if the hit involves simulated napalm the combatant is "dead", but permitted to run around screaming for a minute before falling to the ground, signaling that their opponents can increase their body count score by one. At the end of training, each fighter must prove to a panel of drill instructors that they are competent to fight on their own. If the panel decides the combatant is safe (not good, you understand, but unlikely to hurt him or herself or an opponent) they authorize him or her to fight in skirmishes. This process (from starting to fight to being authorized) can take from a couple of months to a year or more.
Why Do you all have such funny names?
Every person in the 20CRS picks a name to use in the Society. It could be something simple and familiar (Bill Ragen or Jenny Thatcher) or something elaborate and exotic (Captain Stupendous or Mack Daddy Spice). Most people pick a decade in the 20CRS "period" (1900-1999) and a country (any place that can documented and proven to have had a MacDonalds restaurant in that period), and choose a name from that. Some 20CRS members try to create a "persona" which could have lived in some time and place within the scope of the 20CRS, and fit their garb and activities to that persona; some people try to live at events as if they were their personae. Other folk simply pick a name and go ahead with life in the "Current 20th Century."
How Can You Get Involved?
You can get involved by attending the 20th Century Recreation Ball on Saturday 25th September at Lower Clyde (home of Dave, Dillon, John and Sharon).
The evening will begin at 8:00pm with a Feast (BYO fast food) followed by an evening of merrymaking in the style of a typical Commonwealth university fraternity party1, featuring a range of authentic 20th century music.
Guests are expected to make a reasonable effort to dress in appropriate garb; our resident authenticity fascist, Dave, will expect you to be able to site appropriate documentation that what you are wearing is indeed, genuine late 1990 poor student gear. If you don't come up with the goods, don't be surprised if we point and laugh, and even taunting you a second time.
Resources
If you're stuck for persona ideas, have a look at these links:
Places to start:
Kitsch:
Fashion and Culture:
Persona Ideas:
Start with a period. Pick a decade, but don't narrow it down more than that. Pick a place, though don't be more precise than, say, the US, UK, Europe, or whatever. From there, wontonly disregard any distinctions between music genres, fashion movements, political ideologies or anything else that co-existed at that time and place. It's important focus on the authenticity of individual parts of your persona while somehow missing the point as to how it all fits together. For example...
[Naturally, these examples are skewed towards my, frankly unhealthy, preoccupations with the punk, gothic and glitter music and fashion movements of the '70's and '80's.]
Fred Sex Dagg: A true-blue kiwi joker dressed in shorts, a Joy Division black singlet, big goth hair and his signiture pointy gumboots. Fred enjoys political satire and recording the death throws of magpies as they bash their brains out on the glass roof of his shearing shed/sound studio.
Mods: They dressed like the Beatles did on their first tour of the US, (suits, stupid haricuts). I can't find much infomation on them, aside from a perverse fascination with Vespas. An easy persona if you already own a Nify 50 or something.
Film Noir: Film noir first developed in the '40s as a response to the bleak, morally depraved environment of postwar America, but all we remember it for is trenchcoats, floppy hats and thrid person narration.
Fife, Alabama Gothic: If they had punks in Salt Lake City, they must have had goths in red neck hell holes like Fife, Alabama. They'd probably wear black and white checkered flannel shirts and eat bat, rather than possom, pie. 'If you have a make up kit in your pickup, you might be a red neck goth.'
Scifi cults: Trekies! Babylonians! X-philes! Dr. Who fans, all dressed up in awful costume parodies of their favorite characters!
Label kiddie: Find as much clothing with promenant corporate logos on them and wear them. Sew on more. Wear your CK underware pulled up over your NFL t-shirt, and 501s that are so completely the wrong size they're practically all ass and one foot left for the flares.
1. Without all the inconvenient aspects, such as jocks, cheerleaders, projectile vomiting and so on.