The Presence of the Audience
In the chapters to follow, I will offer a more extended reading of letters, journals, diaries, and their published counterparts as avenues through which to reconstruct the audiences who were present at missionaries’ magic lantern shows. Williams’ textual account is not as conducive as others for this mode of reading due to his narrative style. In his letters and journal, Williams was far more preoccupied with his own mission, leaving little room for the anthropological details that characterize a field diary like Livingstone’s. Indeed, Williams was far less attuned to his local cultural context than the missionaries he inspired. When South Pacific Islanders do appear, they are often cast as supporting characters in his narrative about evangelical work.
In his account of the lantern show, Christ’s apparent materialization during the performance not only invited a response from the audience, but it also underpins the audience’s presence in the text. Williams’ concern about the apparent physicality of the projected image leads to an awareness of his audience’s bodily response. The audience’s tears suggests that the magic lantern show should be read in light of other prayer meetings and services in which Samoans wept. According to historian Alan Gavan Daws, Williams arrived on Tutulia in the early stages of a significant religious shift in which many Samoans converted to Christianity. Archibald Murray’s published account of his work on Samoa describe weeping as evidence that the Samoans were “seized with overpowering convictions” during meetings in the months that followed Williams visit.[1] Though the missionaries interpreted these outward demonstrations of religious conviction, waning church attendance after this period of intense emotional outpouring suggests other motivations for weeping. Daws is quick to point out that for Polynesians, Christianity “very often remained simply a ritual means of access to European goods.”[2] The lantern would have been a mechanically sophisticated symbol of European material culture, and by “exhibiting the lantern,” Williams would have also been advertising the commercial benefits of conversion. That is not to say that Samoans were disingenuous in their professions of faith, for many remained active participants in worship services regardless of the ebb and flow of European goods to the island. The brevity of Williams’ account makes it difficult to assess to what extent these dynamics are at play.
[1] Forty Years’ Mission Work in Polynesia and New Guidnea, from 1835 to 1875. New York: Robert Carter & Bros. 1876. Quoted in “The Great Samoan Awakening of 1839.” The Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 70, no. 3, 1961, pp. 326–337. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20703912. p. 330.
[2] Daws, p. 326.
