While people worldwide (from Bristol to Boston) have collectively gotten off on the symbolic power of toppling statues as a means to feel like they’re in control of something that has long ago been completely out of control–racism and subjugation–another phenomenon has sprung from its wake: the desire to replace said statues with monuments to celebrities. A suggestion, it has to be said, that is peak American, and, once again, explains why the country has ended up saddled with its current president. Their fatal flaw, of course, is to be forever glamored by the effervescent frivolity of celebrities (no matter how D-rate) for reasons even Americans themselves can’t seem to explain–though maybe it has something to do with the fact that pop culture as we know it (oversaturated and shilled on a mass level) was begat in the U.S.
So it can come as no shock that the movement cropping up within the movement to deface, destroy or generally overturn statues depicting the likes of confederates, slave traders and/or known racists is to replace these likenesses with ones more “relevant” and less offensive to the modern citizen. Do suggestions like Angela Davis, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X or Ralph Ellison get thrown into the hat as options to replace nefarious white men part of perpetuating the now public emergency at hand? No. Instead, pop culture icons are the “solution” in many’s minds. After all, fun and froth is what Americans (particularly blancos) ultimately want out of everything (even in protest). In Tennessee, for instance, calls to replace every racist statue with effigies of Dolly Parton have been “jokingly” bandied (even though specifically called out as an option by Democrat House Representative G.A. Hardaway to substitute Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest). Surely, Taylor Swift can’t be far behind Dolly either, this fellow Tennesseean also recently going off on the racist statues in her state, decrying Edward Carmack and Nathan Bedford Forrest as “DESPICABLE figures in our state history.”
In Louisiana, it’s Britney Spears being touted as the perfect figure to usurp any Confederate representation rendered in literal stone. It’s a slightly more serious proposition than the Dolly Parton one, too, as the online petition entitled “Replace Confederate Statues in New Orleans with Statues of Louisiana Hero Britney Spears” has garnered thousands upon thousands of signatures on change.org. Let us note, of course, that the women being touted to oust Confederate racists are white, which rather defeats the purpose of re-training the Caucasian brain as the masses continue to reconcile that many have yet to see a black figure as “worthy” of garnering a historical monument.
Drafted by Kassie Thibodeaux in 2017, back when a statue of Robert E. Lee was being removed in New Orleans, the Britney petition has been resuscitated in the wake of the Statue Decapitation Fever that has swept the nation. Citing Britney’s achievements and worthiness as a person who warrants this level of immortalization (though, as we’ve seen, it doesn’t make one that immortal), Thibodeaux wrote, “She has inspired and continues to inspire so many lives, and means more to us than most of the historic figures we’ve learned about in history class. Because unlike members of the Confederacy, Britney’s impact has been one of inclusion and positivity.” Be that as it may (and no one is questioning the influence of “Godney” here), the depressing reality that, in the twenty-first century, celebrities have outshined the likes of actual thinkers— philosophers, writers, painters (perhaps because there is no one to look to anymore within these three aforementioned categories) and even politicians–in terms of their influence and hold over a malleable, easily aggravated public should be telling that a “commitment” to anything or anyone is whimsical at best and tenuous at worst. Soon, calls for a Beyonce statue in Houston, a Jennifer Lopez statue in the Bronx and an Ariana Grande one in Boca Raton will be heard throughout the land. On the plus side, at least no men have really been brought up as being deserving of canonization.
And as noble as it might seem to try one’s best to capsize racism in every incarnation, why are people fixating on something so big picture inane at this moment in time? The answer, likely, is it is the most immediate result anyone can seem to get right now. The most instant sense of satisfaction. Yet it doesn’t change what has happened in history, even if one believes it’s a small step toward progress by, no pun intended, whitewashing over what has occurred. In France, President Emmanuel Macron was quick to assert in an address to the nation, “I will be very clear tonight, compatriots: the Republic won’t erase any name from its history. It will forget none of its artworks, it won’t take down statues.” Adding that it is essentially useless to deny what has happened by way of defacing statues (some of them, let’s be honest, really fucking expensive and in the expected style of French grandiosity that makes them nonpartisan objects of beauty). He instead proffered the notion that attempting to rewrite history with “hateful” destruction would do little for the cause at hand. At the same time, the French are far more accustomed to the revolutions that have led to numerous statue and monument pillagings in the past, so who’s to say Macron’s advisement will be adhered to if another revolution in France escalates (as it seems to be in Place de la République)?
And yet, a statue cannot “be” racist anymore than, say, a purported former animal of Hitler’s. Inanimate objects only really have as much power and meaning as the public is willing to give to them. Of late, however, it appears as though these statues might come back to life at any minute (Night at the Museum-style) from the way protesters are tearing them down to prevent the further spread and tolerance of racism in any form.
What’s more, the joys of statue destruction are too great at this moment in time, and once the public pops, it can’t stop. Yet with the world being increasingly reactionary in its cancel culture tactics, is it even wise to put up new statues of anyone at all when they’re sure to somehow offend in the coming months or years enough to warrant public outrage once again? So effortlessly stoked are the “passions” of the people–the mob–that it wouldn’t be surprising if a video of Britney using the N-word at some point while on meth in the 00s surfaced and the statue erectors had to go back to the drawing board.
