A one-day stand -- Visiting the Museum of the De-platformed

The phrase "one night stand" originally referred to a one-night engagement by a performer at an entertainment venue. 

On another time-scale, fame seems to last but a single "day". The heyday of someone famous can vanish in a flash to be replaced by infamy when attitudes change --when different "influencers" do the influencing.

Distinguished people whose busts once stood in museums, or their statues in squares, are suddenly "cancelled". For them a city needs a new type of history museum that highlights the vanishing past: the Museum of the De-platformed.

Everyday Ghosts: A Tale for Halloween

Ghosts are restless spirits of people repressed or banished from history. Historical figures banished in one way will reappear somewhere else, haunting the places they used to flourish in when alive. Somehow they seem to redress retroactive cancelling. The more we censor the past the more we need ghosts, for re-balancing.

It's not only historic personalities but historic social habits that erupt again in our thoughts, haunting us like secret underground unconscious desires -- products of taboos.

On the morning of Halloween, at the laundromat I smelled cigarette smoke. I swear it was there, a ghostly odorous emanation, even though no one was smoking and the walls were plastered with “No Smoking” signs. The diagrams on these signs made the images of wasted lungs look like skeletons: very Halloween-ish, very appropriate for hallows-evening! The night before All Saints Day, night when the non-saintly ones get out and express themselves.

More ghostly things happened to me that day: at the cash machine outside the bank I put my card in ... and it disappeared. Some evil force stole it and left a creepy message: “insufficient funds”.

This meant less cash with which to buy Halloween candy for the trick-or-treaters. I knew I'd have bad luck at the store and sure enough, a black cat crossed my path. A free one! Just walking along! We rarely see a free cat since the “lock up your cat” lobby forced everyone to keep them indoors – for the sake of birds. The spooky crows in the trees overhead seemed real enough. They cawed raucously, jeering at the black cat, who vanished down a dank alley. These crows had spent the summer killing baby robins, for which cats got blamed – a criminality of crows they were, black against a darkening sky. They soon flew off, evaporating like shadowy wisps ...

Some people say ghosts are mere imaginings, products of our need to hang on to things we've lost, things like history and the habits that used to be robust choices in our personal lives ... let letting our cats go out. This seems to suggest that ghosts are “real”, and that whatever we ban comes back to haunt us.

In my town, the City Council decided it was wise to ban the statue of Canada's first Prime Minister because some aboriginal people didn't like walking past it. His statue's gone now, but Mr. Macdonald isn't: I saw a shadowy top-hatted frock-coated figure on Government Street the other night, flitting round a corner under the moon as the clock chimed midnight.

He'll stick around. History has a way of not going quietly.

  

                                            

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Famously Toppled - Captain Cook & Company

What do these people have in common?

Presidents Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ulysses Grant (also General, who defeated the Confederate Army), Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt (also famed conservationist), royals Queen Victoria, Queen Isabella, King Leopold II and James II, the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill, Cecil Rhodes, writer Miguel Cervantes, and in Canada PM John A Macdonald, Captain James Cook, journalist Egerton Ryerson ...

All have had their statues torn down or defaced over recent months. This partial list does not include slave traders, but rather presidents, royals, explorers, entrepreneurs, writers, priests -- even Jesus had his statue beheaded in a church. (But that's not as bad as the way he is said to have met his real end.) Even a tribute to elk herds of Oregon was attacked! Even one for “pioneer women” of the U.S. No one is safe from some ideologue's wrath (there will always be one … possibly on a City Council near you.)

Some recipients of the topple-treatment are relatively obscure. Do most people have a clue who Alexander Baranov, Junipero Serra, Matthew Maury or Robert Milligan were? Ironically, they have become better known after de-platforming than they were before. Being knocked down gave them a new platform. 

So now we know: Alexander Baranov was a Russian merchant who led settlements in what became Alaska, and fought  the Tlingit tribes who massacred the Russian settlers. (His statue was in Sitka, Alaska.) Matthew F. Maury was an oceanographer, astronomer and officer in the Confederate Navy. Junipero Serra, Spanish Roman Catholic priest, founded missions in California, and Robert Milligan was a West Indian trader and sugar producer who founded London's international trading hub, the West India Docks on the Thames. Having their statues toppled brought these folks renewed recognition.

The winner though of anti-popularity-that-brings-fame, is Christopher Columbus, who receives the “Most Statues Toppled” prize. Scrawling on one, someone helpfully assured us that “all colonizers must die”. Die?? So much for the peace movement. Remember the "Peace & Love" 1960s, when peace and civil rights seemed to go together? (Silly '60s folk -- so un-woke.) 

The owner of a sports team, the Carolina Panthers (Jerry Richardson), was attacked because he “allegedly made sexist and racist remarks” (The Federalist). So he's possibly unpleasant -- but hopefully he doesn't have to die.  

De-platforming can be intersectional though. A Cherokee general in the Confederate Army was included, as was the conquistador who founded the State of New Mexico despite opposition to his toppling from the American Hispanic community.  Certain contemporary artists who create the memorials also have a problem with the toppling fad.

Everybody is hated by somebody. It's interesting though that if you've done something notable you get a statue, but it's only when the statue's knocked down that you know you've really "arrived".

Captain James Cook holding exploration and navigation tools -- implements of crime? Included on his ship Endeavour were great artists and scientist Joseph Banks, who collected 17,000 plant specimens for scientific study (1771)

Some stats from thefederalist.com: of 183 statue vandalizing incidents 177 led to no arrests; most monuments taken down have been removed by city officials after threats from protesters, some for their safety; the whereabouts of most of the rescued sculptures are now unknown.  

Where has the City of Victoria put John A. Macdonald?!

Toppling Statues of Privileged White Guys -- Civic Bylaw is in the Works

VICTORIA CITY COUNCIL EXPECTED TO HAVE 

BYLAW IN PLACE THIS WINTER

In case we're to be cursed by a snowy white winter this year, Victoria is introducing a bylaw forbidding Frosty the Snowman figures in private yards and public parks. Families are asked to respect the multi-cultural sensitivities of their neighbourhood.

"Frosty is a snow-white icon of privilege. The sight of him triggers PTSD in some members of the community when they walk by," say councillors. "This symbol of oppression has no place in our parks and gardens."  

"And why is he always male?" ask #metoo supporters.

"And why does he get a scarf when our homeless population is experiencing coldness?" ask activists.

"And why, what with the CRD smoking ban, is he smoking a pipe?" ask health officials.

Pro-Council journalists ask and answer the classic journalists' questions:

Who?      White male

What?     Middle-class throw-back

When?    Colonial dark ages

Where?   Gardens of single family dwellings

"The detached house and garden harbour negative anti-social elements," declares Council. "Housing should be crowded, inclusive and multi-use."

A local university History prof agrees: "Frosty snow-statues are a dangerous symbol of privileged white-guy supremacy. Topple them!"

"With that top-hat, Frosty even looks like John A. Macdonald, whose statue was fortunately removed from public view outside City Hall to spare passers-by the obscenity of its presence," added the prof's colleague.

"If you build a Snow-White-Man and someone throws red paint on it, don't come to us with complaints," say Councillors. "We will begin with public education, but continued non-compliance with the Frosty Ban will result in fines."

The more John A. Macdonald gets knocked down the more newly-famous he becomes

In the fame-game, the more your statue gets pulled down the more important you must have been, and the more famous you become again -- as a de-platformed statue.

Historic figures were given statue-status ("standing") because contemporaries or descendants wanted to com-memorate ("remember together") their heroes.

You'd think remembering together would be something any group would be free to do, in a free society. We're also free to forget, but paradoxically the more publicity the statue-destruction causes, the less forgotten a historic figure will be. John A. Macdonald has more in the Victoria BC news this week than he has for years -- given the scarcity of History classes in today's schools.

Indeed, if a statue hasn't been pushed over or had paint thrown on it, the person it represented, were s/he alive to know it, might feel quite rejected. Enemies confer significance; only the most banal non-doer never made any. There's something to be said though for anonymity, and probably more than a few of the commemorated wish they'd never become so famous. (see John A. Macdonald's imagined reaction to his statue-removal here: https://satiroceneage.blogspot.com/2020/02/what-john-macdonald-thinks-about.html )

Some of those newly reviled by ideologues would probably be happy to Rest In Peace  (obscurity) but they're paradoxically being revived. When they lower your memorial stone they raise your profile. Maybe the long-forgotten deceased are guffawing in their graves. Others might think, like the poet Alexander Pope:

Blest, who can unconcernedly find

Hours, day and years slide soft away

In health of body, peace of mind,

Quiet by day

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lay

We could think of statue-tackle sport this way:

Manufacturing new consent,

new ideologies have their say,

other figures from the past today

are the ones raised high, to stand (to "stare")

from an unaccustomed height

These icons make a gaudy sight

but don't take them for granite,

they too will stand on feet of clay

and topple like last year's heroes,

media darlings and falling starlets ...

The new leading men are placed on sand

as shifty as the ground of Ozymand

                 (NOT by Alexander Pope)

SBJ

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