There is this new design out for the Flight 93
Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Its original version,
called the “Crescent of Embrace,” met a barrage of flak in the
blogosphere because of its unfortunate resemblance to an Islamic
crescent, aligned toward Mecca. In the wake of the criticism the
architects retitled that section as the “Forty Memorial Groves” and
revised their plan to close the crimson crescent of maple trees
around a large natural depression in the earth, adjacent to the
“sacred ground” where Flight 93 crashed.
I suppose that is an improvement. Nonetheless, the winning
memorial to a plane crash is still…a hole in the ground.
Is that the most tasteful commemoration possible for a
struggle aboard a doomed plane, one that may have saved the United
States Capitol from the fate of the World Trade Center?
Next up from the same firm: The Titanic memorial ice
sculpture.
The revised design is still the subject of some criticism, with
one blog called “Error Theory” lambasting it as an “Islamofascist shrine.” I don’t buy that. I don’t
think Paul Murdoch Architects, the L.A.-based firm who came
up with this, harbors some deep affinity for Taliban hegemony. On
the other hand, I do believe that the revised plan is so vague that
it is possible to find any number of conflicting interpretations
within its incoherent and nihilistic expanse. Murdoch’s designers
bear some of the blame for this failure, but there are three
sources of bad inspiration that deserve singling out as well.
The first precursors of failure were the poor design criteria.
Murdoch’s design responded to a “Memorial Expression,” directing that the plan
should “allow freedom of personal interpretation” of the Battle
Over Shanksville. In a brochure announcing the new design, Paul
Murdoch’s letter boasts that his memorial is “open to emotional
experience, individual interpretation and personal
contemplation.”
William Wallace’s monument near Stirling, Scotland, is certainly not open
to “individual interpretation” about the legitimacy of Wallace’s
opposition to English incursion. A partisan of Napoleon would be
hard-pressed to find solace in either the monument to Admiral Nelson in Edinburgh, or the
Column in Trafalgar Square. An Islamic terrorist
sympathizer ought to be out of luck when trying to find support for
his cause in the Flight 93 Memorial — but as the Error Theory blog
has shown, he might yet find some.
Monuments are not neutral. They take a stand. They recognize
virtue and heroism and they point out the good guys. The Tomb of
the Unknown Soldier leaves little ambiguity to interpret or
misinterpret about the worth of those it represents. The new
World War II memorial on the D.C. mall remembers
American servicemen, and not Japanese or German veterans. There was
a right side and a wrong side to that war, and the monument is not
afraid to claim as much.
Would that the Shanksville memorial did so.
THE SECOND ANTECEDENT to the furor caused by the Flight 93 Memorial
was Maya Lin and her Vietnam War Memorial.
Lin’s Vietnam Memorial was not just controversial, it was
radical. It subverted the conventions of memorial architecture.
Previously, memorials required a viewer to look up to take in the
arch or obelisk or statue, because they represented something
bigger and nobler, something elevated above the plane of daily
life. But rather than commanding the terrain with a massive and
solemn presence, Lin’s design bowed its head and tore through the
dirt. It is, ultimately, an extended headstone, stretched out to
include more than 50,000 names.
Lin’s design might have been a fitting monument for a tragedy —
a natural disaster or an accident where thousands died without a
discernible reason. But the dead of Vietnam commemorated on that
wall were not victims — they were heroes.
As were the passengers of Flight 93.
Angry veterans, unsatisfied with the minimalist stone wall,
demanded a real monument. They claimed Lin’s design used the color
of shame and hid the memorial below eye level. So after a great
deal of protest, a tall flagpole and a traditional, realistic
bronze statue were added nearby. The “Three Servicemen Statue” by Frederick Hart is
magnificent, gritty, and still quite complex: the soldiers are
weary and wounded, the machine gunner bowed under the weight of his
weapon. These are reluctant heroes, but clearly heroes all the
same.
One essay introducing Lin’s works dismissed these
new elements by noting that “[i]n the end, these additions were
placed far enough away from the wall so that its artistic integrity
was not seriously affected.” (After all, you wouldn’t want to see
such an elegant, streamlined concept tainted by an
encroaching American flag, or a heroic representation of soldiers.
Tacky, tacky.)
While Lin’s monument was forced by public outrage to add a flag,
Murdoch’s revised design is taking them away. The brochure
announcing the changes includes an illustration of the sacred
ground with an American flag flying there. But the text of the
brochure notes:
Vertical elements, such as the fence, flags, and other
features will be removed so as not to interrupt the focus on the
sacred ground.
Despite his gaffe with the red crescent and the new one with the
flag, Murdoch may have learned a few things from the controversy
over the Vietnam Memorial. Rather than keeping the monument
entirely at ground level, he erected something called a “Tower of
Voices” off near the highway. Unfortunately, it’s not a traditional
tower, but rather a sleek, modern one housing forty aluminum wind
chimes, one for each of the remembered dead.
Wind chimes.
Nothing evokes the “mystic chords of memory, stretching from
every battlefield and patriot grave” like a bunch of wind chimes.
Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.
A THIRD ANTECEDENT of the failure of the Flight 93 memorial was the
notion — often discussed in the planning of the New York 9/11
Memorial — that it would be a sacrilege to build on “sacred
ground,” whether it be the crash site of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania
or the “footprints” of the Twin Towers.
Where did this idea come from? Religions build upon sacred
ground all the time. Look in Jerusalem at the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount or at the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built at the site of the
Crucifixion. Or see Bramante’s Tempietto erected on the site of St. Peter’s
execution.
It is precisely in order to differentiate the ordinary from the
sacred that these monuments were built. Admittedly, any structure
on such important real estate must be equal to the task of
commemorating the events that hallowed the ground. But it is far
better to try and fail than never to try, and leave the sacred
indistinct from the profane.
Or were Bramante et al. simply wrong?
The aesthetic of the Murdoch design is not, as Error Theory
suggested, Islamofascist, but rather pagan, or at least New Age.
The chimes, the Stonehenge-like circle of trees, the obsession with
the ecology of the area, all decry the thoroughly
Californicated roots of the idea. Granted, his design was
judged the best of several entries. But perhaps because of the
three reasons suggested above, all of the entrants seemed similarly
diffident and non-committal about the events they attempt to
commemorate. Perhaps they misunderstand them.
A war had long been declared on America, but despite the attacks
at Khobar Towers, the USS Cole in Yemen, and our African
embassies, we only began to grasp the magnitude of the threat with
the other three hijackings that same morning. The second amendment
of our Constitution speaks of a “well-regulated militia.” Well, the
civilian passengers organized — regulated — themselves
into a militia that foiled the terrorists’ plans.
Flight 93’s battle marked the first time in this war the
American militia took a stand — not with bunker busters and rifles
but with drink carts and pots of hot coffee. This was our newest
Lexington and these men and women — not the Iraqi insurgents, as
Michael Moore suggested — were our newest Minutemen.
I wish America’s architects had, like the heroes they are
supposed to honor, risen to the occasion. But I fear that if we
seek a fitting monument to the courage of those passengers, today’s
builders will prove incapable of visualizing it. They don’t even
know their monuments from a hole in the ground.
