Lawrence Hall, HSG
Statues and Time
Capsules
“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand
in the desert. . .
-Shelley, “Ozymandias”
The past few years have witnessed a purge of statues,
which while ahistorical in an immediate sense is historical in another: as
cultures rise they raise statues to themselves, and as they decline the statues
are destroyed or recycled by a new rising culture. In their turn, those statues too are
eventually destroyed by yet another rising power.
But it’s all neatly told in Shelley’s clear and
cautionary “Ozymandias.”
A statue almost never tells us much about history as it
was lived, but rather as the mythology held by whoever had the power to tax
people to set it up.
Movies are much the same. Gettysburg is a fine
movie with great staging (except for the fake beards) and a great musical
score, but, gosh, all those fat Confederates don’t match the reality of a time
when no one had enough to eat.
The soundtrack to Sam Peckinpah’s chaotic Major Dundee
sounds like a bunch of drugged-out hippies turned loose with tin pans and car
parts, communicating nothing about the Civil War in the American Southwest; the
racket reveals only that the film was made in the 1960s.
An irony about all the Confederate statues coming down is
that they were bought mostly from northern businessmen. Those of well-known
figures, such as Lee and Jackson, were specialty items, but the famous “standing
soldier” who, well, stands on the courthouse squares of many southern towns
also stands on the courthouse squares of many northern towns. They were
mass-produced, and a USA belt buckle or a CSA belt buckle and a hat change made
a grey stone or zinc statue either an American soldier or a Confederate
soldier, whichever way a town council wanted it.
Confederate, Union Soldier Statues Look the Same. Here's Why
| Time
Why those Confederate soldier statues look a lot like their
Union counterparts - The Washington Post
I suppose now they’d come from Shanghai.
Indeed, the likeness of Martin Luther King on the
national mall was made in China. There was some controversy about that because
apparently no American artists, quarries, or stonemasons were permitted to bid
on it.
MLK Memorial: From China, with love? - CSMonitor.com
I don’t know if there is a time capsule somewhere within
it.
If someone were to raise a statue to you some day, what
items would you like to see included in its time capsule?
These things needn’t be especially durable because in a century
or two someone’s going to knock your statue down too.
…boundless and
bare
The
lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-“Ozymandias”
-30-
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