Thus Spake Russ

Posted By Russ Emerson on September 15, 2005 at 9:56 am

Ace opines on the proposed Flight 93 Memorial “Crescent of Embrace” as a work of alleged “art.”

But can the heroism of a group of strangers — of Americans — coming together to save the lives of their fellow human beings dare be expressed in something less symbolic, and perhaps more vigorous, than red trees and lilting windchimes?
And on that– why is always our assumptions which need to be provoked?
Can we have a monument to the brave dead of Flight 93 which shows them in cool reflection as they decide to make their attack? Huddled together as they collectively decide to give their lives to spare others? And just before they mount the first battle in the war on terrorism?
And yes, engraved at the base of the statue, the rallying cry: “Let’s roll.”
Ahhhh… but such a tribute would “provoke” and “challenge” the wrong people– the tastemaking elites who presume to rule us. Their beliefs and assumptions are never to be provoked or challenged, always to be reassured and reinforced by their preferred sorts of meaningless symbolic nothingnesses. It is we who need to be shaped and scolded like schoolchildren; it is they who wield the rulers.

So that I don’t forget or lose it, I reproduce here the comment I posted:

A statue could have been good.
A handful of men and women huddled banded together, in the midst of plotting their counterattack; one looking over his shoulder, keeping an eye on the unseen jihadists; another with cellphone in hand; and perhaps another pair actually praying (!) before their desperate attack.
Something simple. Something inspiring. Something that actually memorializes those who fell that day in the first defeat of those who would kill or enslave every single one of us who remain.
Something everyone can look at and say “Thank God it wasn’t me up there… but if it had been me, would that I had the courage of those men and women to face the evil that showed itself that day.”
That’s my idea of a memorial.

It is my idea of a memorial. Something people can look at and know precisely what it stands for.
No one has to wonder about the meaning of the Marine Corps Memorial. The six men raising the flag on Mount Suribachi is an enduring image, with meaning that no abstract geometrical construct could ever by any stretch of the imagination hope to convey.
If a work of Art isn’t meant to convey meaning, then in exactly what aesthetical way does it differ from, say, interior decorating?

Categories: History, Terrorism
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