Heroes and Statues
Many people have
expressed disappointment with author J.K Rowling for her views on
transgenderism. My first reaction to this is that anyone disappointed in an
author does not know authors. What I mean by this is that the authorial voice
is a mask that hides as well as reveals the empirical individual. Sometimes it
is a highly antithetical mask. The empirical individual behind it is not at all
the person we expected: they may be a raging alcoholic or an abusive partner.
They might be a boring conversationalist or cranky and opinionated. This
individual can be very, VERY ordinary compared the exciting persona of the
creator. Indeed, like Salieri in Amadeus,
we might well wonder why great artistic talent is not conferred on people more
deserving of it (like ourselves!).
History also
confers prominence on less than stellar people. These people become ‘heroes’
and here again I must say that anyone disappointed in a hero does not know
heroes. The heroic mask is like the artistic persona a façade and behind that
façade can be a misanthrope or a scoundrel, a cheat or an addict. This is
because not very admirable people can transcend their ordinary selves in a
historical moment just as they can in a moment of artistic inspiration. This problem usually comes out when it seeps into public consciousness that the legacy of
the hero is mixed. Great persons do great things and they also err greatly.
Their errors have much greater consequences for others than those of ordinary
people and the baser traits in their character are magnified not diminished. The subtle
historians know this. Indeed the world’s first written history (as opposed to
mere chronicle) may well be the two books of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible.
These books tell the story of King David as a great but catastrophically flawed
man whose errors are the ultimate undoing of his kingdom. Indeed, one wonders if
as raw a historical portrait has been written since. It tells the truth about
history and character exactly as Homer tells the truth about war. The greatness
of any historical actor is also his besetting sin and hidden flaw.
The problem, as we
are keenly aware, is that heroes are memorialized publically and what is
memorialized is the mask and not the man or woman behind it. When profound
social changes reveal just how mixed and ambivalent the legacy of the hero is
the question arises as to what to do about these memorials. On one level they
are all, of course, inherently false as no one is the imposing figure they cut
in marble or bronze. In strict principle they should all come down if truth is
what we are devoted to. At the same time there may be a truth captured by the
mask so that a statue of Martin Luther King that occludes his philandering and
other human flaws is not exactly a falsehood either. It is probably wrong to
think that when we have found the ‘dirt’ on Smith or Jones we have found the ‘real’
Smith or the ‘real’ Jones. IF, though, we are to have commemorative statues of
historical individuals it might be worthwhile to enquire on what principles we
should have them and make some basic determinations about what sort of
commemorative objects we should keep and which we should discard.[1]
We have to
remember, before we begin, that statues fall when societies change. When
statues of Saddam Hussein were toppled in Baghdad I heard no one complain. In
part this was because no one considered them worthy objects of appreciation but
also because no one had even a smidgen of sympathy for their subject. Statues
are NOT sacrosanct. This is clear with respect to tyrants and should be clear
with respect to out and out villains like Cecil Rhodes or King Leopold. People
may keep such statues if they wish, but, if pluralities of people find them
offensive and want them taken down a society is not obligated to keep them. One
other option I suppose would be to replace existing images with negative depictions (grotesque gargoyle-like
caricatures?) of such people but, frankly, cartoonish depictions of villainy
are aesthetically boring no matter how deserved they might be.
A bit more complex
is the problem not of monsters but of ordinary villains who may have something
redeeming about them that causes an irrational attachment to their persona on
the part of a significant number of persons. Such is the case with a figure
like Robert E. Lee who, in the minds of certain persons, represents gallantry in
a lost cause with which they still secretly or no so secretly identify. I will
be up front that I think all statues of Lee should come down not for the reason
that he is a villain or a monster but precisely because he is not. Lee was a compromised individual which is a bit
different than a villain. In a time which required heroes and visionaries he
was neither. Though opposed to certain ‘excesses’ of slavery, like many of his
class, he had neither the insight nor the courage to question its foundations. Furthemore, like many a 'gentle' slave owner he was perfectly capable of savagery when the mood struck. In other words, he was a man whose opinions did not deviate from those of his
society in any meaningful way beyond a bit of handwringing and slave owner’s
guilt. I think that as such Lee FAILED to be a historical agent or a man
adequate to his times and though his cowardice and conventionality are
certainly ours in most of our moods he does not merit any special
commemoration. His virtues, the virtues of many a hand-wringing liberal today,
are the virtues of mediocrity. A statue of Lee should be about as exciting as a
statue of Eichmann.
More complex
though are the cases of figures like De Gaulle or Churchill. This is because
these figures WERE significant historical agents. In 1940-41 they offered the
only effective resistance to Nazi horror that could realistically be offered at
the time: military resistance by the other major powers. I say this knowing
full well that the major allied powers were in many respects just the lesser
bullies and that, for the sake of the future,
we need to organize our world around different modes of action and resistance
beyond our wasteful and dangerous military establishments.[2]
At THAT time it is hard to conceive what else could have been done (and 20/20
hindsight cannot help us here) and in that sense we owe a debt not only to
Churchill and De Gaulle but to Roosevelt, King and, God love him for someone
must, even Stalin. Such figures did something that at the time needed doing in
the only way the ‘nation state’ framework under which they operated could
conceive of doing it. I say this also recognizing that in many ways their
conduct of the war was reprehensible (I think there should be no statues of
Bomber Harris or Curtis LeMay or indeed of Marshall Zhukov). Still there is a
broad public sentiment (at least) that their actions saved the European
continent from something far, far worse and that is why in the U.K especially
there is considerable backlash against removing statues of Churchill. Though he
failed in many things (not the least of them running the Royal Navy!) he did
succeed in the one thing people regard as essential in a leader and that is in
energizing the society he lead in the face of an existential catastrophe (and
he did this in effect- I do not wish
to bring up the thorny question of historical intention).[3]
A better person might, in theory, have done a better job but, as a point of
stubborn fact, that better person did not materialize.
However,
I also think we need to fundamentally re-imagine how we think of public
statuary. Part of the problem here is the false aesthetic that poses such
figures in a heroic ‘classical’ manner. Such poses almost invite us to peer
behind the glossy image and see the grubby reality. What is more they create
the impression that the function of statuary is uninhibited celebration when,
to be frank, I think they should embody the very different function of
aesthetic truth. All celebration has a moment of pretense at its core as is
realized by the feeling of humility that often overcomes the person celebrated.
A historian or novelist writing a novel about De Gaulle would be expected by
the rules of her craft to produce a complex and nuanced portrait and neither
extenuate his vices and whitewash his failures or neglect his virtues and
successes. The historian or novelist would be bound by historical or novelistic
truth. There seems to me no reason why public statuary cannot be similarly
complex and challenging. We might take John A. MacDonald as a pertinent example.
For good or ill Canada (the political entity) exists and for good or ill he is
the first prime minister of it. This is a recalcitrant fact that we cannot evade
though we MAY alter or improve our reactions to it. For that reason some public
commemoration of him may be unavoidable. Conversely, there is no stubborn,
recalcitrant fact lying behind Confederate statues for they failed to ‘found’
anything and they exist only as part of a toxic nostalgia cult. That said we do
not need any of the current statues
of MacDonald. Any sculptor or artist wanting to depict the founder of the
political entity called Canada in a way that embodies a more sophisticated
conception of the deep moral ambivalence of all founders and the violence
inherent in all foundings might face an interesting aesthetic challenge. He
would have to acknowledge the darkness in the man without making the aesthetic
error of sculpting a cartoonish villain.
Cartoonish villains may exist but they are not aesthetically
interesting: as I said above, if someone were a simple ghoul one would not
depict him for such a depiction could not be interesting. The banality of evil
is an aesthetic principle too at least where humans are concerned and as we
know from Milton even a devil needs a certain repulsive glamor. Of course it
may be that no such balance may be struck with a particular individual but that
is for artists to determine.
[1] I
say if because the alternative to having better public statues is having none
at all. We could decide that they are simply too divisive and that the hero to
some villain to others split is simply too deep and pervasive. If we can’t
agree on what music to play we can all wear headphones. Still, public statuary
has a long history and is part of our repertoire of story- telling so we might,
along with the option of stopping altogether, consider the option of doing it better. At any rate putting up
and taking down statues is a choice and there seems to me no right answer to
who, exactly, should have one. On a continuum for 1 to 100 there are people
near both extremes but most of the people at issue, like Teddy Roosevelt or Churchill
are probably hovering somewhere between 48 and 52.
[2] Non-violent
philosophies, like philosophy of mind, have their ‘hard problem’ which is what
to do when evil passes a certain threshold of resolution and defiance. Ultimate
defiance seems to call for ultimate sanction. Though such examples are abused
constantly and used to justify ordinary and avoidable violence they DO, though
very rarely, occur. I do not have an easy answer to this beyond working for a
world in which such events become increasingly less thinkable and there any
number of ways of doing this such as developing techniques and perhaps even
technologies of non-violent resistance and working for multi-lateral disarmament.
[3]
A ‘Hero’ may do all he does for personal vanity or financial gain from a God’s
eye point of view but as we generally lack this we tend to judge their actions
in consequentialist terms. When we move from ‘personal intention’ to ‘historical
intentionality’ the question is even more vexed.
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