By Paul Ho – Litchatte Reviewer
Ten years ago, I would never have imagined I’d be reading a book about statues. But here we are in 2022, where even the most inanimate of objects have become topics of great controversy.
The author points out, however, that controversy is nothing new in the world of statues. The Egyptian pharaohs smashed images of their predecessors and rivals, and the Bible talks about the destruction of idols in Deuteronomy. More recently, European colonizers smashed statues of native peoples in an attempt to obliterate their ancient cultures.
Putting up a statue is, in essence, establishing a new view of history. Tearing one down is an attempt to alter or erase that history, although the destruction of statues does not guarantee the destruction of the ideas that fostered them. History has proven that again and again.
Take Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. When he was on his deathbed, he wholly rejected the idea of “Leninism”. He felt that memorializing ideas was far more meaningful than honoring living personalities.
But by then, Joseph Stalin had come into power. He sequestered the dying Lenin, and built a personality cult around himself, using the image of Lenin as a springboard. Stalin then attacked those who opposed his soon-to-be dead predecessor. As late as 1991, there were still over 7000 statues of Lenin still in place. In the Ukraine, the national shirt was facetiously draped on one Lenin statue in an attempt to change the narrative. Another Lenin statue was dressed like Darth Vader. Even Mr. Lenin’s physical body (or what’s left of it) remains on display as a “living sculpture”.
There’s a chapter on former Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, known as “the goat,” who built hundreds of giant phallic symbol statues dedicated to himself. And then there was the destruction of the Saddam Hussein statue, which according to the author, was strictly a media event, orchestrated and facilitated by the United States government and not the people of Iraq. The tallest statue in the world, in case you are wondering, is the “Statue of Unity” in Gujarat, India, clocking in at 600 feet. Robert E. Lee and South African slaver/philanthropist, Cecil Rhodes each have their own cozy chapter, in which the brutal politics of their eras is described, as well as the building and destruction of various public monuments dedicated to their questionable achievements.
The last chapter is about George Washington, whose statue was deposed in Portland, Oregon on June 19, 2020, (Juneteenth). It seems that Washington was not universally loved as imagined. He was disparaged by the likes of Thomas Paine and John Adams even before his death in 1799. When Washington had the opportunity to free his slaves, he chose not to do so, and there is also mention of an order to rout the Native Americans of the Susquehannock tribe and illegally grab their land.
Many excuses are given for maintaining unpopular statues: It was a different time, nobody knew slavery was wrong back then, they did good things too, you can’t erase history, and you can’t compare the past to today. The book also questions the idea of defunct statues being placed in museums, or re-labeled in public spaces to remind people of bad past deeds.
Although I’m not a lover of tradition or rituals, I enjoyed reading this instructive history of the twelve monuments, most of which were created and destroyed for to achieve political purposes. My one caveat is that Asian culture was ignored in this telling as if it never happened. I was hoping to find a chapter about the giant Buddha that was ignominiously exploded by the Taliban, or the memorialization of Chairman Mao, but no such luck.
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