Smashing effigies is nothing new
The felling of Edward Colston is the latest example of an ancient ritual, says
In recent years, a chilling phenomenon has emerged in the virtue-signalling world of social media. Known as “cancel culture”, it typically involves a backlash against a blundering celebrity who has said something stupid or offensive. As punishment, their followers collectively decide to boycott that figure’s feed or products. Thus, to use the frightening vernacular of the virtual sphere (with all its totalitarian overtones), the sinner is “cancelled”, or cast out. Think of it as a nasty online version of the court of public opinion.
On the face of it, the toppling of the bronze statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol on Sunday is a worrying extension of contemporary “cancel culture” – albeit, thankfully, with an inanimate bronze sculpture as the target, rather than flesh and blood. The briefest of glances at the history of sculpture, though, reveals that – whatever you make of the actions of the anti-racism protesters – there is time-honoured precedent for such cathartic rituals, stretching back to the ancient world.
Indeed, the practice of erasing deposed tyrants or abhorred public officials and traitors from collective memory, by scratching off or smashing up their names and likenesses on everything from grand public statuary to inscriptions and humble coins, was so common in the Roman era that later historians gave it
a Latin name: damnatio memoriae (“condemnation of memory”). In AD31, for instance, following the downfall and execution of Sejanus, the detested, power-hungry commander of Tiberius’s Praetorian Guard, his statues were destroyed and name obliterated from public records. In short, Sejanus was “cancelled” – or should that be
“deletus est”?
A similar fate befell the debauched emperor Commodus, following his assassination in AD192. Meanwhile, after murdering his brother, and co-emperor, Geta, in AD211, Caracalla went to extremes to wipe out his sibling’s memory. As well as demolishing his statues, he even banned Geta’s name.
Iconoclasm enacted for political rather than religious reasons wasn’t exclusive to the Roman Empire. The New-york Historical Society owns a 19th-century painting that depicts the destruction by American soldiers and sailors of a gilded-lead equestrian statue of King George III in 1776. (It was melted down to make musket balls.) Black-and-white photography documents the moment a gargantuan monument to Stalin was pulled down in Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956: in one unforgettable shot, passers-by inspect his damaged, decapitated head on the city’s Grand Boulevard. Then, there is the famous footage of a colossal statue of Saddam Hussein flattened in a public square in Baghdad in 2003, which provides a vivid recent reminder that the practice never went away.
The British sculptor Anthony Caro once told me that making sculptures was as natural as dancing or making music. Well, if that is true (and archaeologists have discovered statuettes up to 40,000 years old), then the same applies to the inverse impulse to tear them down. Human beings are a creative species. But we’re hard-wired for destruction, too.
The point about the Colston episode is that tossing his statue into the harbour wasn’t mindless vandalism; it was a political act. Politicians often talk about “optics” because they know that the public’s perception of events can differ from, even supersede, reality. Well, the protesters in Bristol knew that the optics of pulling down Colston’s statue would be extremely powerful. That’s why they did it. Indeed, it’s why people have been attacking statues for thousands of years. And, sure as hell, those protesters have now been heard.
We tend to ignore much of our public statuary, which often commemorates forgotten historical figures who, cast in bronze, may as well be wearing invisibility cloaks. But the Bristol incident reminds us that statues are still potent things – as every religious leader railing against idolatry over the centuries has known. Commemorating someone with a statue elevates them, in the eyes of society, above the hoi polloi. So, who we commemorate, and how we go about memorialising them, matters. I am no historian of the slave trade, and cannot tell you if Colston was as vicious or culpable as his detractors claim, though I have no reason to doubt them. It’s possible his name became a rallying cry. But isn’t it better that a statue rather than a living official should function as a lightning rod for grievance and civil unrest?
Society requires safety valves, and that is the part Colston’s statue inadvertently played this weekend. Think of it, if you like, as an unintended posthumous act of philanthropy by a man who used some of his ill-gotten fortune to benefit the city of Bristol. Moreover, to me, it feels right that, once dredged from the harbour floor, Colston’s effigy should be resurrected not on its original stone plinth but inside a museum – where it can be properly contextualised, its toxicity assuaged.
After killing his brother Geta, in AD211, Caracalla went to extremes to wipe out his memory