According to the news, another Confederate statue has come
down. These monuments have been coming
down fast and furious for the last couple of years. There are not many of them left.
Even here in New Mexico, someone finally remembered that a
stretch of Interstate 10 was once named the “Jefferson Davis Highway”and
unnamed it. Well, it wasn’t really
official, the State Highway Department had never really renamed it, but about
60 years ago, an Army band from a nearby military base came and played a little
background music while a few old crackers dedicated a granite slab to Jeff
Davis, who had never been anywhere near New Mexico.
While Jeff never came to the desert, he did send us a few camels in
1855. Davis was the Secretary
of the Army at the time, and he believed that camels might replace cavalry
horses. The experiment was successful,
but the start of the Civil War ended the experiment.
Sadly, the markers along the highway never mentioned the camels
(which is a shame). Over the decades,
the markers were pretty much forgotten, as they became covered in weeds. About twenty years ago, on a road trip over
to Arizona, I stopped the car and pointed them out to The Doc and my sons,
What’s-His-Name and The-Other-One. They
gave me that stare that is usually reserved for when I drag them to museums,
the look that says, “Who cares?”
Well, nobody cared until suddenly someone remembered they were
there. Immediately, people were
outraged, and the monuments removed. I’m
pretty sure that some people remained outraged, anyway, since outraged is their
natural state.
There are still hundreds of monuments out there, and eventually,
I would be willing to bet that all of them will be removed, stored away some
place, and once again, forgotten. Well,
a few of the monuments will be safe.
There is a tree in Brooklyn that Robert E. Lee planted, but the
authorities just removed the plaque and they are hoping that no one will
remember the tree is evil.
Removing statues is not new:
people have been doing it for thousands of years. Every revolution means the statues of the
previous regime have to be destroyed. On
July 9, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was read to George
Washington and his troops, the excited crowd immediately stormed into Bowling
Green—a park in Manhattan—and pulled down a lead statue of King George III.
The statue was new, having been erected only a few years earlier
to commemorate the repeal of the Stamp Act, but in the frenzied excitement of
declaring a new country, the lead statue of George, wearing a Roman toga and
riding a horse, was pulled down.
Eventually, the statue was returned to the British, but in the form of
42,088 newly cast lead musket balls.
(Seriously, some idiot actually counted them.)
Statues of Lenin were torn down all over the former Soviet Union
back in the early 90’s; some of these were melted down, some were scrapped, and
one even made its way to Seattle. An
American was teaching English in Slovakia when he discovered a sixteen foot
statue of Lenin at the local dump. The
statue wasn’t exactly abandoned since a homeless man was living in it, but he
was willing to be relocated at a bargain price.
The American brought the statue home, and though no one knows exactly
what he intended to do with it, the statue is still standing in Seattle. (Presumably, without a homeless person living
in it).
Los Angeles recently permanently removed a statue of Christopher
Columbus from a park where it had been ignored for almost fifty years. A native tribe felt that Chris was “a symbol
of oppression”. Columbus, who never set
foot on North America, nor knew of any of the people who lived there, would be
puzzled by all of this.
A change in religion has frequently been the cause of the
destruction of statues. The Taliban blew
up the 1,700 year old Buddhas of Bamyan.
The Spanish destroyed much of the native art of Central America, and a
thousand years ago, a Chinese emperor destroyed the statues in over 3,300
Buddhist temples just to get enough copper to mint coins.
Even in Western Europe, as Christianity replaced the pagan
religion of Rome, bronze statues were torn down, melted, and recast with
likenesses of Christians. So many early
statues were destroyed that the photo at left
Why did this one survive?
Though the man on the horse is Emperor Marcus Aurelius, for centuries it
was incorrectly labeled as Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor
of Rome. If his true identity had been
known, this statue would have been melted down centuries ago.
Study the picture carefully, because it will soon have to be
taken down and put out of sight in storage.
Obviously, it can no longer remain in public view, since Marcus Aurelius
owned slaves. (Actually, 30% of the
citizens of the Roman Empire were slaves, so a whole lot of historic markers,
statues, and assorted architectural pieces will have to be removed).
After all, aren’t we supposed to look at the past with the values
of today?
Another interesting contribution to our understanding of human nature. But... were the slaves of the Roman Empire really "citizens"?
ReplyDeleteA lot of old Roman Statues have been preserved through renaming. Statues of many of the Gods had halos already and you could carve a cross on them and voila', Jupiter, Venus, and others could be rechristened Peter, Paul and Mary without their ever having to sing "Blowin' in the Wind." The Vatican, of course, covered up the whole mess later with a carefully written backstory, but one wonders if all the semi-nude saints parked around Rome were really the art of pious Christians or whether they might be repurposed Roman pornography. The purpose of the statues of the saints in churches were actually to make pagans feel more comfortable in Christian cathedrals, many of which were repurposed pagan temples. Then you got priests in robes with magical power, vestal virgins turned into nuns and not that much changed except for the reduced level of public sex, gluttony and dirty dancing.
ReplyDeleteBut like Harry Nillson's Rock Man said in his screenplay The Point, "You see what you wanna see and you hear what you wanna hear, dig?"
St. Peter's toes meanwhile have been kissed right off several times by anxious pilgrims. A practice, I'm fairly sure Peter would have frowned on.