Statues of Historical People

General question


What is the function/role/purpose of statues of historical people being place in parks, town squares etc? Note I am not talking about items like artworks created in the persons name, but actual statues that represent a person from history

Lord Tammerlain said:

General question


What is the function/role/purpose of statues of historical people being place in parks, town squares etc? Note I am not talking about items like artworks created in the persons name, but actual statues that represent a person from history

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When you look at a statue a resonant pattern is set in the mind connecting us to history,

Deities and more advanced personalities can communicate with the public by varying the impression of your glance.

When you look at the image of a thing some of the energy of that individual is there and thus we connect with our ancestors and get pleasure.

Exquisitor said:

When you look at a statue a resonant pattern is set in the mind connecting us to history,

Deities and more advanced personalities can communicate with the public by varying the impression of your glance.

When you look at the image of a thing some of the energy of that individual is there and thus we connect with our ancestors and get pleasure.

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Note I am more talking about actual historical figures rather than those of mythical aspects. So political military recent religious figures etc

We're visual people. Robert E. Lee is just a name. We can learn it, sure. But visuals are where are memory processing is really at. With visuals, a thing is eventually forgotten.

I would say it's a dedication to the memory of someone who dramatically shaped the future of a given area. Whether or not these people were good is largely irrelevant - history is composed primarily of people who were terrible people by modern standards, and many even by the standards of their time.

A statue memorializes an important person in history who should be remembered, even if their legend is a cautionary tale. Robert E. Lee was an outstanding general and a closet abolitionist who freed his father's slaves when he inherited them. He was an outstanding example of the southern ideal and as fine an example of what could go right with an informal aristocracy as I can think of. If the family genealogy is anything to go by, he's even an ancestor of mine.

Despite all of my praise for the man, I cannot pretend that his role in our history was a beneficial one. I am fully convinced that by standing by Virginia in the Civil War, he caused the war to stretch on several years longer than it would have without him, claiming far more lives than it should have. If Lee had chosen the Union over his state, he would have been able to bring the war to a swift end that would not have put the south into an economic abyss that it has yet to climb out of. He is but one of many of the Southern side of the Civil War who are to blame for untold suffering both during and after that bloody conflict.

Despite this, I cannot sympathize with the belief that his statue should be removed, for in most cases that I have seen, it is out of a desire to hide the most superficial of the scars our nation bears of from the Civil War. I cannot help but see similarities between the removal of memorials and book burnings. Both are a censorship of events and ideas that are inconvenient to the powers that be, and both are quite harmful to ourselves. The Civil War was a tragic, awful, and unnecessary mistake, and we need to remember it.

In the words of everyone who has ever wanted to sound far deeper than they actually were, "those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes." I cannot help but question the wisdom of tearing down monuments to the Civil War when our nation is more divided than at any other time in our history.

I have to admit, for the most part, I think statues are a waste of space except for the cases where they are also artistically beautiful. Statues that only serve to recognize a famous person just don't do anything for me. I love the Lincoln Memorial. It is freaking beautiful. When I lived in DC I used to take night walks down there and just stare at. But that was because it is a masterpiece. If it were just some bronze statue of Lincoln like every other statue out there I wouldn't give it a second thought. I don't need a statue to tell me what great things he did.

I don't think such statues are worth any outrage, whether it be over taking them down or leaving them up.

How about statues of say Staking or Lenin in the east European countries. Most of which have been removed

Lord Tammerlain said:

How about statues of say Staking or Lenin in the east European countries. Most of which have been removed

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This is just my personal, unsupported and impossible to prove theory, but I suspect that if there was still a big ass Stalin statue that people's grandparents could point at and tell them about the bread lines that wrapped around its base and their cousin who never came back from the gulag, Russia might not have a reporter-murdering, ex-KGB tyrant for their President.

Lord Tammerlain said:

How about statues of say Staking or Lenin in the east European countries. Most of which have been removed

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THose were to glorify the ideas that they pushed. Those ideas became out of fashion, because they just did not work, and were assoicated with a lot of misery.

So, the ideas and the glorifying of the hate they represented became out of fashion.

Jesse Booth said:

This is just my personal, unsupported and impossible to prove theory, but I suspect that if there was still a big ass Stalin statue that people's grandparents could point at and tell them about the bread lines that wrapped around its base and their cousin who never came back from the gulag, Russia might not have a reporter-murdering, ex-KGB tyrant for their President.

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I believe Russia still has statues of Lenin and Stalin. Estonia or one or the other Baltic countries removed them and had ethnic Russians protest it

Lord Tammerlain said:

I believe Russia still has statues of Lenin and Stalin. Estonia or one or the other Baltic countries removed them and had ethnic Russians protest it

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Well, there goes my nutty theory!

Lord Tammerlain said:

I believe Russia still has statues of Lenin and Stalin. Estonia or one or the other Baltic countries removed them and had ethnic Russians protest it

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I'm pretty sure Ukraine removed, or is in the process of removing their communist statues.

Eastern Europeans clearly have no respect for their history like good ol' boy Americans do.

Lord Tammerlain said:

I believe Russia still has statues of Lenin and Stalin. Estonia or one or the other Baltic countries removed them and had ethnic Russians protest it

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Statue of Lenin, Seattle

The guy bought it off a crumbling soviet union. It wasn't brought back as a sign of adulation either but I'm sure some will see it that way.

poweRob said:

Statue of Lenin, Seattle

The guy bought it off a crumbling soviet union. It wasn't brought back as a sign of adulation either but I'm sure some will see it that way.

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It is an impressive statue and some of the things done to it

A glowing red star and sometimes Christmas lights have been added to the statue for Christmas since 2004.[11] For the 2004 Solstice Parade, the statue was made to look like John Lennon. During Gay Pride Week, the statue is dressed in drag. Other appropriations of the statue have included painting it as a clown, painting the hands blood-red, and clothing it in a custom-fitted red dress by the Seattle Hash House Harriers for their annual Red Dress Run.[citation needed]

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do show that it is not for reverence of Lenin

Lord Tammerlain said:

It is an impressive statue and some of the things done to it do show that it is not for reverence of Lenin

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The hands are permantly red if I recall from the documentary I saw on it for the reason you mentioned.

Lord Tammerlain said:

General question


What is the function/role/purpose of statues of historical people being place in parks, town squares etc? Note I am not talking about items like artworks created in the persons name, but actual statues that represent a person from history

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It stops pigeons from landing on your head and ****ing all over it.