Editing Historical reenactment (section)

==Criticism==
[[File:20080809 mokotow 44 reenactment IMG 2511.jpg|thumb|[[Wehrmacht]] reenactors near a [[flag of Nazi Germany]] during a reenactment of the [[Warsaw uprising]] in [[Mokotów]]]]
There are a number of criticisms made about reenactment. Many point out that the average age of reenactors is generally far higher than the average age of soldiers in most conflicts. Few reenactment units discriminate based on age and physical condition.<ref name=wargames>Thompson, Jenny. ''Wargames: Inside the World of 20th Century Reenactors'' (Smithsonian Books, Washington, 2004). {{ISBN|1-58834-128-3}}</ref>

In the United States, reenactors are overwhelmingly white.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} In Civil War reenactments, African-American characters, both enslaved and free, are underrepresented.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} In 2013, five black reenactors at the 150th anniversary event at Gettysburg constituted "the largest bloc of black civilians anyone had ever seen at an event whose historical basis was full of black civilians... Astonished spectators stopped them constantly, usually assuming they were portraying enslaved people."<ref name="theoutline.com"/>

Jenny Thompson's book ''Wargames''<ref name=wargames/> discusses the "fantasy farb", or tendency of reenactors to gravitate towards "elite" units such as commandos, paratroopers, or [[Waffen-SS]] units. This results in under-representation in the reenactment community of what were the most common types of military troops in the period being reenacted. The question has arisen among North American reenactors, but similar issues exist in Europe. For example, in Britain, a high proportion of Napoleonic War reenactors perform as members of the [[95th Rifles]] (perhaps due to the popularity of the fictional character of [[Richard Sharpe (fictional character)|Richard Sharpe]]), and medieval groups have an over-proportion of plate-armoured soldiers.{{original research inline|date=October 2016}}

Some veterans have criticized military reenactment as glorifying "what is literally a human tragedy",<ref name=":0" /> with one World War II veteran remarking in 1988, "If they knew what a war was like, they'd never play at it."<ref>{{Cite news|last=Joseph B. Mitchell, quoted in Brown|first=Rita Mae|date=12 June 1988|title=Fighting the Civil War Anew|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/12/travel/fighting-the-civil-war-anew.html|access-date=3 December 2020}}</ref>

Some feminist critiques of certain kinds of reenactment, such as Civil War reenactment, "builds up a prosthetic symbolic male white body, embedded in an archaic racialized gender system: the clothing and the tools normally intensify male whiteness. Thus, even if the outer appearance of the uniformed female reenactor is flawless, her participation is deemed unacceptable by most male reenactors."<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Auslander|first=Mark|date=2013|title=Touching the Past: Materializing Time in Traumatic "Living History" Reenactments|url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/670167|journal=Signs and Society|volume=1|pages=161–182|doi=10.1086/670167|s2cid=191618828}}</ref> Some reenactments more recently have allowed women to participate as combatants as long as their appearance can pass as male from a specified distance.<ref name=":2" />

Reenactors may be accused of being, or actually be, aligned with the political beliefs that some of the reenacted armies fought for, such as [[Nazism]] or the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate South]]. For example, U.S. politician [[Rich Iott]]{{'s}} participation in a [[World War II reenactment]] in which he was in the group that portrayed the German [[5th SS Panzer Division Wiking]] side excited media criticism during his [[United States House of Representatives elections in Ohio, 2010#District 9|2010 Congressional campaign]].<ref name="Nazi uniform row">{{citation |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11511574 |title=US Republican candidate Rich Iott in Nazi uniform row |date=2010-10-10 |publisher=BBC News |access-date=2011-06-30}}</ref> Similar accusations have been made against [[Igor Girkin]], a Russian reenactor who has led Russian-aligned forces in the [[Russo-Ukrainian War]].<ref>{{cite news|last1=Kashin|first1=Oleg|title=The Most Dangerous Man in Ukraine Is an Obsessive War Reenactor Playing Now with Real Weapons|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/118813/igor-strelkov-russian-war-reenactor-fights-real-war-ukraine|access-date=29 January 2020|newspaper=The New Republic|date=22 July 2014}}</ref> In 2017, in the weeks following [[Unite the Right rally|a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia]] at which a neo-Nazi killed a counterprotester, some reenactors complained about—as one reporter put it—"the co-opting of the [Civil] war by neo-Nazis."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Guarino |first1=Mark |date=25 August 2017 |title=Will Civil War reenactments die out? |newspaper=Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/will-civil-war-reenactments-die-out/2017/08/25/f43c6bc0-874b-11e7-a50f-e0d4e6ec070a_story.html |access-date=30 March 2018}}</ref>