The White Gloves Problem

So you're sitting on the couch watching television with your resident medievalist, and you get to a scene with a rare book or manuscript. We're watching 'Map of the Seven Knights', an episode from the TV show Grimm, but you could be watching any show or movie. Eyes on the screen, you notice that your medievalist leans forward. They tense.

The characters reach for the rare book or manuscript.

'No, no!' cries the expert on screen. 'You must wear these!'

"White Glove Tour" by Minneapolis Institute of Art is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The on screen rare book expert hastily dons white gloves and hands the intrepid investigators their own pairs to put on. 

A scene from the show Grimm, which inspired this post

 Meanwhile something terrible seems to be happening to your medievalist. Is that...is that high pitched wail coming from them? What on earth is wrong?

Congratulations, friend! You've just met the white gloves problem.

What Went Wrong?

If your medievalist has done an MA (at some institutions, this may also be a part of undergraduate training, but not everyone has this opportunity), they have likely had at least a year's worth of training in how to work with medieval manuscripts--classes both on paleography (the study of medieval handwriting) and codicology (the study of how books are made). If they have gone on to do a PhD, or a second masters' in archival science or rare books librarianship, they will have continued this training. Depending on their field of research, they may even be an expert in manuscripts produced in a particular place or time, or manuscripts of particular genre of writing, such as legal texts.

They probably have never worn white gloves to handle those manuscripts. More than likely, they have been trained not to wear gloves (and if they are a manuscript scholar, they likely don't wear nail varnish much if ever--the manuscripts don't like it, and your medievalist can't handle them with painted nails).

A quick google search reveals that almost every major library has tackled this at some point--as the British Library points out, their experts regularly get scolded by the public for not wearing gloves in videos or photos of them handling their old books! The National Trust explains why wearing gloves to handle rare books and manuscripts actually endangers them. The Smithsonian's essay on the subject stands in solidarity with your whimpering medievalist.

Have you ever tried to text someone wearing your winter gloves? You keep stabbing at the keypad on your screen, and hitting all the wrong letters, and it takes forever to hit the right ones. That same lack of dexterity applies to handling ancient pages with gloved hands: you have less dexterity and control over your touch. You might accidentally tear a page or swipe your finger across a flaking bit of ink. Plus, cotton gloves are not perfectly smooth--fibres from the glove might snag on the material you're handling. Anyone who's ever been around a little kid knows that white fabric stays white for...typically not long, meaning that those pristine white gloves are likely to be picking up dirt and spreading it on the book, not keeping it off. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, your bare hands (freshly washed and dried and free of lotion or nail varnish) are safer for the book.

This is not news--librarians and archivists and medievalists and other specialists in old stuff have been counteracting the white gloves problem for a long time. So why do the white gloves persist?

Strategies of Distinction

 

How do you show that a manuscript is special? Libraries and museums handle this in different ways--they might hold a special exhibition of manuscripts from particular cultures or time periods or places, with lots of fascinating signage or audio guides. If you're lucky, you might get a special tour from one of the experts who helped make the exhibit, pointing out interesting or significant details. If you're wandering through a permanent display, a book might be set out on its own in a special case. The point is, as a viewer you are given visual and spatial and sometimes even auditory cues (the medievalist who gasps when coming face to face with the Codex Amiatinus) to know you are in the presence of something spectacular.

 

Now, The Secret of Kells clearly proves that manuscript-making can make for good audiovisual entertainment, but when your rare book or manuscripts is a guest cast member for only a scene or two, how do you make it stand out? I would argue that simply providing video of the pages is exciting enough, especially if they have gold leaf or illumination, and your medievalist likely agrees with me.  But for someone who doesn't have our level of interest in rare books and manuscripts, how can the filmmaker quickly convey that something rare and special has appeared on screen?

They have their characters reach for the white gloves. In fact, they usually have their characters be admonished to put on the gloves before handling the manuscript. Pay attention! a white glove scene says, there's a manuscript onscreen!

Your medievalist is paying attention--a manuscript just appeared--but they're also upset and frustrated that the filmmaker once again went for the easy visual shorthand of the white gloves scene, instead of asking the actors to, you know, act as though they were in the presence of something spectacular. Sometimes I wonder if this reflects a larger malaise in the way we modern folk approach heritage--we'd rather stick with the easy stereotypes that tell us something is important than more nuanced approaches that help us learn why it's important.

Don't do this.

In any case, if you, like me, are watching 'Map of the Seven Knights' with your medievalist, their wail likely reached a shriek when you reached the scene above--running your fingers over text way the person is doing in the photo above makes a nice visual shorthand for someone skim-reading a text, but touching the ink like that is likely to damage it.

Filmmakers, keep your medievalists happy and your manuscript-handling accurate. Find other ways to show viewers how special an old text is.