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Conservative Tastes
ALL CULTURE begins with commemoration of the past and honor rendered to the dead. The oldest literary monuments in the Western tradition, the Iliad and the Odyssey, seemed to their original audience to be historical accounts, in suitably decorative form, of events they believed should not be forgotten by those who would be born long after all who fought at Troy were dead. Probably, the cave paintings at Lascaux, six times older than the Trojan War, were meant to commemorate a particularly memorable hunt, a kind of memory of whose victims has outlived by 17 millennia anyone’s memory of the hunters. Such irony—by which I mean the tendency of meaning to change with context—is routine. Shelley’s Ozymandias, whose “shatter’d visage” and “vast and trunkless legs of stone” were all that remained of those works upon which that hero had once invited the mighty to look and despair, is rather the rule than the exception for those in the commemorative trade, given a long-enough perspective.
All such commemorations are not only of events and the people
who were involved in them but also of
the meaning of those events in the eyes of the commemorators. They
build their monuments not only in order that great deeds should not
be forgotten but, ipso facto, to defend the greatness of the deeds
and the men who performed them against the insolence and
irreverence of time. Ultimately, of course, time
proves to be pretty unbeatable, even by marble and the gilded
monuments of princes—even by the rhymes that Shakespeare said
would outlast them. But long before “the unswept stone” in his
Sonnet 55 is “besmear’d with sluttish time,” the context of such
perdurable goods changes and, with it, their meaning. Thus the
Roman-style monuments to conquest and victory still to be seen in
London or Paris have become only a century or so later rather an
embarrassment for many of the British and French grandchildren of
those who built them, along with the national honor and the empires
they were meant to commemorate.
Indeed, as the newly unveiled monument to Martin Luther King on the Mall in our nation’s capital shows, the context can change its meaning before the monument is even built. Ostensibly there among the Founders and preservers of the Union for as long as the Union itself endures, the colossal image of Dr. King in granite was presumably placed there to memorialize the new birth of civil rights for all races that he did so much to bring about less than half a century ago. Yet already it conveys quite a different meaning—and deliberately so. Done in socialist-realist style by a Chinese sculptor whose more usual subject has been the late communist dictator and mass murderer Mao Zedong, this image of America’s nonviolent civil rights hero appears to have been designed to stand less for his genuine accomplishments than for his later “progressive” opinions, once thought to be un-American—for example, those related to the twin progressive fantasies of a superstate to guarantee the good things of life to all and a (rather contradictory?) world government to take the place of national sovereignty.
Although this incongruous portrayal of King as Dear Leader explicitly commemorates his genuine accomplishments, its style together with its placing of them in the context of his aspirational utopianism has the effect of making it into a monument to unreality—perhaps because so many of today’s heirs of the civil rights movement, like Rep. André Carson, have decided that their political interests lie in upholding the fantasy that King really changed nothing and that the Tea Party, for instance, represents a concerted attempt to return America to the days of lynchings and Jim Crow segregation. Indeed, to a certain kind of post-honor sensibility, the colossal King transforms the context of the much-commemorated achievements of the Founders nearby, rather than being transformed by it. Thus Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post, reviewing what he affects to regard as the “mostly harmless and neighborly” Chinese King statue, argues that “this newest addition to the national clutter will eventually fade into Washington’s marble background of benches, bollards and inspirational blather.”
So much for honor! I particularly savor the irony in the fact that one of the stone-masons imported along with the statue from the Middle Kingdom told Courtland Milloy of the Post that he and his colleagues were working on it not for pay (the King family, by the way, demanded and got some $800,000 for the use of their ancestor’s words and not very like likeness) but for the “national honor”—meaning China’s national honor. Here, by contrast, the massive slabs of granite at their very unveiling are rhetorically reduced with little fuss to “clutter” and “inspirational blather.” It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that what the statue was first intended to make us remember has already been forgotten—along with so much else that we used to think was an important, even an essential part of our national identity. The historical irony thus built into the statue is that, in honoring a great man, we now mean not to affirm but to deny the concept of greatness itself. King as the martyred visionary is presented to us not only as a monument to a distinctive kind of 20th century failure, like the many toppled and untoppled communist Big Men he so much resembles, but also as a rebuke to King the man of action and doer of great and unblatheringly inspirational deeds for believing in the goodness of America.
Irony of quite a different kind was present in many of the commemorations of the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I was particularly taken with the exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York, the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, and the Imperial War Museum in London called Memory Remains by the Catalan photographer Francesc Torres. Without any context, Mr. Torres’s series of photographs portray mere junk, albeit junk removed from those normal junky contexts of casualty, decay, failure, abandonment, or random destruction, and placed as incongruously and ironically as Martin Luther King’s image on the mall in a JFK airport hangar. You could entertain yourself by regarding the images of these broken buildings and machines belonging to everyday life as abstract forms but only by deliberately forgetting that they were removed from the site of the ruined World Trade Center 10 years ago and brought here so that people could remind themselves of that ruin.
In the book that accompanies the exhibition, Mr. Torres writes that over the last century we have developed in the retinal and conceptual arts a visual vocabulary that didn’t exist before modernism. We have grown accustomed to perceiving bent steel (Richard Serra) and crushed cars as sculpture (John Chamberlain), and charred and eroded surfaces as painting (Jasper Johns, Antoni Tapies, Anselm Kiefer). All these and more—discarded clothes, personal belongings, papers and documents— are now fully assimilated into the history and tradition of modern Western art, making very difficult a strict distinction between documentary and aesthetic qualities.
In other words, the context in this case does not just change the meaning, it is the meaning—as, indeed, it is for modernist and conceptual art. The power of time to diminish that meaning as the shock of September 11, 2001 gradually wears off is as great as ever, but at least it is not so easy to transform it into something quite different by political chicanery. I think that this power to transcend politics—which, as Hurricane Irene so recently reminded us, is vouchsafed to fewer and fewer people and events in our national life—is a big part of what makes these images so evocative.
At any rate, it’s clear that national honor and pride, which once had that power, have it no more— which may be one reason why national catastrophe and defeat still does. It’s true that some may repair to Mr. Torres’s photographs or the bizarre waterfall memorial at Ground Zero or other images or reminders of disaster in order to keep their hatred of the enemy burning bright while others, like the so-called “truthers,” will do so in order to keep their hatred of someone other than the enemy (are you listening George W. Bush and Dick Cheney?) burning bright.
But most people who look at them, like most people taking part in the other tenth anniversary events and remembrances, do so in a pure spirit of the response to tragedy as identified by Aristotle, that is in a spirit of pity and terror. More even than an aesthetically correct response, this is a Christian response, it seems to me, since the image at the heart of the Christian faith is of a man dying on a cross— which also commemorates a defeat and a tragedy.
Don’t tell the ascendant forces of militant secularism, however. They really won’t like that.
About the Author
James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.
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Ken (Old Texican)| 10.31.11 @ 6:39AM
You know, James,
I would much rather see Mr. King's monument with a Bible in his hand.
Moe Blotz| 10.31.11 @ 8:03AM
Imagine the furor that would set off among the separationists. A man of the cloth holding his bible on display in a public park. ACLU would be on the statue quicker than the pigeons.
oldfart| 10.31.11 @ 9:28AM
The Holy Word was central to the life of this great man - but not to the people who commissioned this monument.
Ian Strachan| 10.31.11 @ 10:00AM
Or to the people who carved the statue.
Margie| 10.31.11 @ 9:36AM
Why? So you could accuse him of being a Bible Idolator, Ken?
Hypocrite!
Teenie| 10.31.11 @ 10:06AM
You never pass up an opportunity to hurl invectives at Ken, yet I never see him respond in kind. Your knowledge of scripture I do not question. So why not practice what you have learned from the Holy Bible? Who is the hypocrite here?
Margie| 10.31.11 @ 12:38PM
TROLL:
He has accused me falsely and threatened me numerous times openly here with a supposed e mail he has of mine asking him to "Marry me."
He is a FILTHY LIAR.
Now get ye back underneath thy rock, scumbag.
RCV| 10.31.11 @ 11:35AM
Give it rest, Margie. Go and comment on the Trinitarian article so we can all again try to understand your unique non-Christian view of Christ's deity.
Margie| 10.31.11 @ 12:38PM
RCV: Repent, snake.
RCV| 10.31.11 @ 3:12PM
Margie, your childish screeds have just become so tiresome to everyone. Try discussing the topic of the column on its merits for a change, and stop your incessant sniping at other people.
Ken (Old Texican)| 10.31.11 @ 3:44PM
RCV,
I do honestly forgive Margie, and as you know, I have defended her here endlessly.
Her words evoke nothing from me but sadness for her.
My life is filled with joyfulness. I'm forgiven by Jesus' pain and death on my behalf.
Conversely, Margie is angry with everyone. She is NOT a happy camper. I pray for her happiness and joy that I have found.
Someone help me out here. I can't find it in my concordance. Something like..." you search the scriptures...and they speak of me..."
Margie is struggling with being the "Judge"....but we Christians are supposed to be only "witnesses".
Ken (Old Texican)| 10.31.11 @ 3:52PM
Uh, two thousand years after they supposedly killed him...Jesus Christ spoke to me...and entered my life. That is my witness.
Al Adab| 10.31.11 @ 5:12PM
Ken, my friend:
May He bless and keep you in His care.
Margie, do we not worship the God revealed to us in scripture? Why would we not read His word? We can honor the book (Gods' Word) without making an idol of it as the Moslems do of theirs. No further word from me on the issue.
As to the memorial statue, I find it too reminescent of "Stalinist" realism. Kind of totalitarian looking and stark.
Margie| 10.31.11 @ 5:18PM
Al Adab,
You're a coward.
You see what Ken is doing to me here. He accused me of something filthy and perverted. Yet I asked him to post the e mail. He has not, yet continues to slander me here.
You do not care , therefore you are NO CHRISTIAN MAN.
And apparently, you must have misunderstood my comment to Ken.
I was mocking the scumbag.
You must have missed the thread where he accused me of being a Bible Idolator because of how I stand on Scripture.
Now, please repent of your comment to me.. and aim it to whom it belongs!
victor| 10.31.11 @ 5:06PM
Ken,
YOU forgive ME?
For what, scumbag?
You're the one who has said I asked you to marry you, yet you haven't posted the email you disgusting freak.
I'm still waiting.
Where is it?
Reprobate.
You are a genuine snake.
Anyone with eyes to read has found you out, SCUMBAG.
Margie| 10.31.11 @ 5:08PM
That was me, above. My husband was posting before me and I neglected to remove his name from the box.
And SCUMBAG: I judge no one.
The WORD OF GOD DOES.
And HEs ays that liars and slanderers go to Hell.
Lotsa luck, pervert.
Margie| 10.31.11 @ 5:12PM
So the SCUMBAG RCV speaks for everyone, does he?
The lying filthy slanderer of Christians.
The perverted filthy man who rejects the Scripture, yet sees fit to clack with the lowest of the low here and sit in judgement making himself God.
You will burn in Hell along with your reprobate scumbag pal, Ken here.
Isn't it interesting folks?
Your pal the supposed Christian man Ken, has accused me of something so filthy, yet he refuses to put forth the evidence.
None of you have anything to say to him?
Al Adab? Other so called Christians here?
RCV is a well known liar here. A defender of Obama, a retired Leftist lawyer hack who defends Obama and "Social Justice."
You see who he clacks with.. not a soul will say anything to Ken about what he is doing?
Not a soul, eh?
COWARDS!
Fred C. Dobbs| 11.1.11 @ 2:30PM
I don believe in ANY a that superstitious bullbleep but I forgive Margie. U go Gurl!
Drudge Ette Obama| 10.31.11 @ 8:00AM
A made-in China statue? Who cares? Today, people across America will don Chinese made costumes, wear Chinese made shoes, clothes, and coats. Then toast their bread in Chinese toasters, while ironing their Chinese made shirts with Chinese made irons.
Who gives a U.S.A. -baked Lorna Doone who made and designed the statue? King was Marxist-leaning anyway. (His kids are definitely greedy Capitalists, though, don'tcha-think?) One day, we will find out that Mao is secretly carved in the statue, like allegations of Pershing throwing early Baco-Bits in the gravesites of slain Islama-cysts.
Am I the only one, or is the King Statue the ugliest chunk of stone around? It could have been so much better - it should have been.
Mac Jehoff| 10.31.11 @ 8:05AM
Several other racists probably have the same opinion.
Cawfee in Da Mowning| 10.31.11 @ 9:04AM
But how about the racist Mac? What's his opionion?
Mac Jehoff| 10.31.11 @ 9:16AM
Pigeons have to have a place to crap, too. That is my opionion.
Mike Hawk| 10.31.11 @ 11:02AM
Ugly is as ugly is.. It is ugly and an eyesore.
TrueBlue| 10.31.11 @ 11:51AM
The only reason I care that it was made in China, is the fact that because of that the statue was made (either on purpose or subconsciously) to look more like a statue of Mao than a statue of a great man that tried to make life better for black Americans. It really is sad that that message was forgotten, or ignored, because of his later socialist messages.
RJ| 10.31.11 @ 8:16AM
Seems to me the King family tells us more about them with this work of art...if that is what this is. I'll go with Forrest Gump: "Stupid is what Stupid does!"
As to one's inner thoughts on art...I'll go with the thoughts of Sigmund Freud: "It's just a cigar."
Melvin| 10.31.11 @ 11:07AM
May God forgive me, for my opinion on this. All this anti religious zealotry in the big picture of life, is crap.
On the battlefield I observed with my own eyes the most ardent, atheists and non-believers discover their new found situation with requests to God Almighty to get them out of the crappy situation that they were in. When many saw the first tracer round whiz by them, usually the first utterance was, "Oh God."
I to was a non-believer of sorts. As I was sitting with my platoon in the Al-Burqan oil fields that Saddam had set alight. We were eating MRE's while the sky rained Black Rain upon us, turning everything into a deathly black stain.
Some of our thoughts in our lives impact us, more than most. At that particular time my thoughts were of my family, my wife, my children, father, and sisters.
As I was sitting in crater, as we were getting hit with 122 mm rockets fired from somewhere. Right then I made a request to God, that if he got my ass out of that hell-hole, I would become faithful to him. I didn't know how to pray, I didn't even know if I was doing my request right. I made my request as simple as I could, because everyone else was doing the same thing at that time.
Ken, made a reference that Doctor King should have been carrying a Bible. People, have to realize that, that book is utterly useless if you do not have the faith. Ken isn't preaching or forcing anyone to accept the faith. But the faith is everything that Martin Luther King ever was, it was his belief, that made him into the man he was.
Atheists need not be threatened if the Statue of Doc. King had him carrying a Bible, to Atheists is just another leather bound book with words in it, it has no meaning to them.
I do fault the King Family for selling out, in the name of the Dollar. They'll fight over that money just like they fight over everything else in selling off the dream of Martin Luther King. But that is beside the point and another story I suppose.
This monument should be taken apart and shipped back to China because it is more of a likeness of Chairman Mao, or Kim Jong-il.
I never thought in all my days that this Country would have a monument crafted by a Chinese Communist sitting upon our National Mall in our Nation's Capital. The Red Chinese Politburo are probably having a good laugh at our National Leader's stupidity and the King Family's greed.
I apologize for what many will say is wordy, anyway it is they're opinion.
Now I have to fulfill a promise I made to somebody, I hope he doesn't mind for me being a bit late.
Mike Hawk| 10.31.11 @ 11:54AM
What anti religious zealotry?? The statue is ugly and looks out of place. No more/ no less. That is an asthetic judgement a lot of people agree with and has nothing to do with race or religion.
RCV| 10.31.11 @ 3:14PM
I've been to the monument, and it is quite moving in person. It clearly speaks to almost everyone who visits there.
Margie| 10.31.11 @ 5:21PM
Repent filthy liar.
Hell isn't a nice place.
"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death." Rev. 21:8.
RCV| 10.31.11 @ 6:20PM
The peace of the Lord be with you, Margie.
Appleby| 10.31.11 @ 11:33AM
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
PolishKnight| 10.31.11 @ 11:50AM
Ironically, King's legacy is even more surreal. Perhaps at the time he was committed to civil rights for all or civil rights in general, but clearly today his followers are merely hypocritically enforcing Jim Crow against white males and we live in an era when racism is as strong today as it was in his time.
So yes, the imposing communist carved block of stone ready to stomp the spectator to death while preaching tolerance and equality probably is quite appropriate.
fmm| 10.31.11 @ 12:14PM
Time does change perspective, but the Wall, with its simple design and pathos, still has great meaning for me.
Bill| 10.31.11 @ 1:20PM
Bowman says, "the image at the heart of the Christian faith is of a man dying on a cross-- which also commemorates a defeat and a tragedy."
I respectfully disagree, though in the strongest possible terms. The image at the heart of the Christian faith, that of Christ on the cross, commemorates a tragedy and a triumph, not tragedy and defeat.
Appleby| 10.31.11 @ 1:29PM
Thank you -- If Christ had not arisen, then our faith would be in vain. It is the fact that he died to put paid to our sins and arose to show us what to do next that They can't get over and try Their best to deny....until the Day.
nathan| 10.31.11 @ 2:39PM
Just as we acknowledge the flaws of the Founders, especially the southern ones, the most obvious being most of them being slave holders while still acknowledging their brilliance regarding their notion of what constituted a proper government and the unalienable rights doctrine so to let's give Dr. King full credit for his speech on the mall while acknowledging his weaknesses as man. His serial adultery, his inability to put his cause first and his his passions second could have set back the civil rights movement years had that adultery become widely known especially since he tended to favor white women, an absolute no no in that day and time. If he were acting today TMZ or the Inquirer or some other "news" outlet would long since have outed him and he would not have been able to explain how he, a minister, was acting as he was. Since he more than anyone represented the civil rights movement, such knowledge about his personal behavior would have set it back a decade or more since it would have conformed to the stereotypes so many white Americans believed and were put forth in movies like Birth of a Nation. It was horribly reckless on his part and we have no idea why he behaved in this manner.
All that said, his speech on the mall remains his defining moment. Content of character not color of skin or any other external. The problem today in the environment of affirmative action is that if we quote him and insist on a strict adherence to that philosophy, you can and will be called a racist. It is bizaare and tells you much about where the country is today that for whites to quote Dr. King today puts you at risk of being considered racist. What he said all those years ago is as relevant or more so today as it was then.
Tiddly| 10.31.11 @ 10:00PM
If only we had picked our own cotton. . . .
Fred C. Dobbs| 11.1.11 @ 2:33PM
YES!!
If.
Only.
POST American| 11.1.11 @ 12:11AM
----And speaking of 'Lost Meaning' ----
Putting to one side the FUKISHIMA
world depop op cover up ---the Globalist
RED China TREASON OP etc. --
Could we get a smidgen of coverage on
33rd degree Freemason/ Chrisitian IMPOSTER
Pat Robertson's greenlight to Masonic
EUGENICS 'X--speed-iency' over the
Christ's uttered doctrine --
'ONE MAN
---ONE WOMAN
------ONE LIFE'
Seems, according to Robertson, it's now
cool to shluff off the spouse of your
youth should they contract Alzheimer's.
And this almost on top of the infiltrated
Vatican coming out for world 'govern-ants'under a
psychopathic, usurious, world bank
author--IT--he.
With the vampires of our TAX FREE
foundations surely facing capital crimes
prosecution within a year or two
for EUGENICS, andTREASON against
the Republic on every level -------UH--------
it really is time to bring things up to date.
-----------------REALLY REALLY----------------------
Marc Jeric| 11.1.11 @ 1:11AM
After all is said and done - Martin Luther King was a devout communist as most of his close entourage were; he also got his "doctorate" by transcribing somebody's 1890's thesis, hoping nobody will notice.
skip| 11.1.11 @ 1:45AM
All have feet of clay, including every Founding Father. Any monument is inherently tricky.
King is on the national mall for one reason only: skin pigmentation. That is simply not worthy, which makes it a sham.
RCV| 11.1.11 @ 4:48PM
King is on the national mall because the movement he led helped end the disgrace of segregation peacefully, for which all Americans should be grateful.
skip| 11.1.11 @ 8:42PM
...said the genius who stated
"I abhor the sanctimonious conservatism of the tea party brand, an ideology wholly lacking in intelligence or a shred of real Christian love and compassion. Every policy it espouses is dangerous, damaging, and detrimental to our country and it's future."
and
"I belong to a party that cares about human beings AFTER they're born."
who has no credibility on social and political and economic matters based on many many many idiotic posts that reveal his tendency toward pretending to lofty rationalities covering fiercely resentful passions leaking out endlessly in the form of crazed projections revelatory of ignorance and of arrogance and of a dogged stupidity; such as his views on the tea party as wholly lacking in intelligence without a shred of real Christian love and compassion espousing dangerous and damaging policies; such as his views on the democrat party caring about human beings while usurping their constitutional liberties and promoting tyranny over them to the point of brutally slaughtering over 54 million innocent and defenseless Americans; such as views that the republican party was not the reason that ended slavery and passed civil rights; much less his view that the King monument exists only because of the color of his skin.
Idiot.
RCV| 11.1.11 @ 10:05PM
At least you owned up to your comments, Skip, although I'm not understanding what relevance they have to the point I made.
RCV| 11.1.11 @ 11:18PM
And Skip, while I'm flattered, as always, by your personal obsession with me, it's really not healthy for you. You should talk to a therapist, or at least your priest. Be well!
skip| 11.1.11 @ 11:36PM
...said the genius who has proven endlessly he lacks the intelligence and honesty to realize relevance is only relevant through reason and experience, which he wholly lacks, even as he fails, yet again, to realize his pretended loft rationalities covering fiercely resentful passions are yet again leaking out, yet again, in crazed projections revealing his ignorance and his arrogance, not to mention is dogged stupidity.
Richard Rogers| 11.1.11 @ 10:12AM
"ALL CULTURE begins with commemoration of the past and honor rendered to the dead. The oldest literary monuments in the Western tradition, the Iliad and the Odyssey, seemed to their original audience to be historical accounts, in suitably decorative form, of events they believed should not be forgotten by those who would be born long after all who fought at Troy were dead." Australian Aborigines have a law that dead person's names cannot be spoken - result, they have no history apart from weird and frankly somewhat inane legends of the "dreamtime." With no history, they are culturally maimed in all manner of ways.