One supposed it sounded “harmless” enough. “Brilliant” even. Hank Willis Thomas certainly must have thought it was when he pitched the idea. An “emulation” (or rather, badly attempted emulation) of Martin Luther King Jr. embracing his wife, Coretta Scott King, after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. That was the photo Thomas took “inspiration” (ostensibly very loose inspiration) from in constructing the giant bronze statue that now sits in Boston Common (Boston being the site of the work due to King meeting Scott in that city, as well as it being the finishing point of a freedom march he led in 1965). At twenty feet tall, it would be an understatement to call the sculpture pornographic (made all the more so by its grotesque size). Yet there’s no other word to employ in order to paint the picture of what one views if and when they encounter it.
Like most artists, Thomas couldn’t seem to see his work objectively when he stated to The Boston Globe, “This work is really about the capacity for each of us to be enveloped in love, and I feel enveloped in love every time I hear the names and see the faces of Dr. King and Coretta Scott King.” Unfortunately, he seemed to be feeling the love a little too sexually while working on the project, and the result is a sculpture that appears positively obscene in different ways from different angles. For the most part, however, it looks like someone sticking their head in a woman’s crotch to eat her out. “Enveloped in love” indeed (a.k.a. “Smother my face”). Not exactly the “respectful” message Thomas might have been attempting to send, especially considering that this sexualized image only serves to spotlight, once more, the only thing the FBI had on King by spending years trying to discredit his work with reports of his infidelity.
Dedicated on January 13th, just three days before the official MLK holiday, those with eyes could immediately see that the statue didn’t exactly look like an embrace. Particularly from “the wrong side” (which is most of them). Offense was further taken over the fact that it was an opportunity to actually, oh, depict King and his wife, you know, fully. As in, with their entire bodies…instead of just what looks like a random set of arms (or “a pair of hands hugging a beefy penis,” as Seneca Scott described it). Rasheed N. Walters of The Boston Herald put it succinctly when he said, “Given that I am not white, I am safe from any charges of racism for saying the MLK embrace statue is aesthetically unpleasant. The famous photo should have been a FULL statue of the couple and their embrace. What a huge swing and miss in honoring Dr. and Mrs. King.” Seattle-based comedian Javann Jones added to that sentiment with the reminder, “Show me a white man that was honored with a statue with only two of his limbs.” Fair point.
So if Thomas was hoping to get some kind of “pass” on the botched depiction because he himself is Black, he was mistaken. For the contempt that the statue drew from all creeds and colors was hard to ignore. Markedly from someone with the last name Scott herself, with Coretta’s cousin, Seneca, responding to the statue via an article called “A Masturbatory ‘Homage’ to My Family” and proceeding to effectively rip Thomas and the “woke algorithm” a new asshole (side note: one might be able to actually detect an asshole if they stare at this statue from a certain angle). While the mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, said of “Embrace” that she hoped it would “open our eyes to the injustice of racism and bring more people into the movement for equity,” Scott had a more realistic response when she wrote, “Building expensive, stupid new statues with no faces on them—and tearing down others for no good reason—are part of the same performative altruism and purity pageants that are mainstays of the woke left.” And, yes, statues are often (read: always) a hotbed of controversy, particularly in the present climate, when political offenses can be stoked at the drop of a hat (or KKK hood). And it does beg the question of why money is spent (in this instance, ten million dollars) on such ultimately hollow symbols. Money that could instead be used to affect more profound change.
But instead, as Scott continued, “Now Boston has a big bronze penis statue that’s supposed to represent black love at its purest and most devotional. This is no accident. The woke algorithm is racist and classist. Therefore, its programming will always produce things that harm black and poor people.” Funnily enough, its “programming” did recently experience a glitch when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association thought it wise for their rebranding to hire Jerrod Carmichael as the host of the 2023 Golden Globe Awards. And if his monologue and other assorted digs at society and the industry reminded people of anything, it’s that not all Black people are entirely eager to decimate the white-run system, so much as continue to work within it (namely, the Black audience members who appeared as uncomfortable as the white folk listening to Carmichael). Appropriately, Carmichael actually made reference to King when he described calling his friend Avery (“who, for the sake of this monologue, represents every Black person in America”) and asking her if he should host the show despite its racist history and his awareness that they only wanted to use him as the host to attempt to backpedal from that history.
However, she wasn’t as concerned with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s racism as she was with how much Carmichael would be paid for the gig. When he answered, “$500,000” (therefore offering a rare instance of salary transparency in Hollywood), she responded, “Boy if you don’t put on a good suit and take them white people money…” Carmichael then expounded to the audience, “And I kind of forget that where I’m from, like, we all live by a strict ‘take the money’ mentality. I bet Black informants for the FBI in the 60s, like, their families were still proud of them. They were like, ‘You hear about Clarence new job? They paying him eight dollars an hour just to snitch on Dr. King. It’s a good government job.’”
Perhaps the same logic goes for Thomas taking the gig that would help further show white people that it’s okay to denigrate and “amend” Black history with a hyper-sexual pair of arms that could belong to anybody.
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