Controversial 9/11 Memorial
By Callimachus | Related entries in Ideas, In The News, The War On Terrorism
This one’s in Bayonne, across the river from Manhattan. You can see it sketched in the background, behind Putin, in this photo. And you can read about the controversial sculptor here.
All of which makes me wonder, what is an adequate memorial to the victims of terrorism? Should it be other than a war memorial or a memorial to the victims of some natural disaster? If so, how?
The spontaneous splurge of letters, pictures, candles, flowers, and flags that anonymous people leave at the sight of such attacks seems to me to be the truest memorial. Each offering has the small scale of one human life, yet the flood of them all in one place crests like a wave of love that even in sorrow drowns the terrorists’ hate.
But those cannot be permanent. Even memorial sites like Oklahoma City, or the Vietnam War memorial in D.C., or the Flight 93 memorial, which by design or accident are or will be natural repositories of such effusion, can’t maintain that for more than a generation. On May 30 we in the North ceremonially decorate Civil War graves, when we can find them. It’s not the same effect as it would have been in 1881, when groups of veterans went out to honor comrades whose laugh they still could hear if they closed their eyes and recalled it.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2005 and is filed under Ideas, In The News, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 15th, 2005 at 8:11 pm
I’m sorry Cal, what am I missing? The shape of the walkways in the memorial.
I appreciate your points here, and I’m not trying to discount. I too think that this will pass eventually. But we’re not talking about 20 years from now. We’re talking about a week after this design was picked, and we can actually do something to stop it.
And then there’s this:
Now, if they recommended this to avoid controversy, they probably also felt that the symbol itself could be seen as controversial. I just can’t square those two things. Perhaps that’s a personal fault of mine, but that’s just how it is right now for me.
September 15th, 2005 at 8:36 pm
I’m not trying to make a point, or even score one, here. Just pondering, opening up the floor for questions.
FYI, from what I read the objection to the monument is that it is “too tall, too somber and too simplistic.” That hardly seems “controversial” to me, but that’s the word the news stories are using.
Also FYI, as you’ve probably surmised, a lot of my blog friends totally agree with you on that Flight 93 business. Their reactions range from the brilliantly bombastic to the merely withering. My favorite example of the latter is Irish Elk, who writes just one sentence:
September 15th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
Fair enough. I appreciate the thoughts.
And as succinct as Irish Elk is, I still don’t agree with the point. The only point I’m interested in is that some (including some my of close liberal friends) think that the crescent is ill-advised. And I weigh that against the victims’ families and their approval. It’s an incredibly difficult position to be in, especially for a self-described liberal.
But all things being equal, I wish they’d change it. Anything less would be ignoring something that seems obvious to me.