Statues Of Limitations
The Age
Saturday November 22, 2008
Heroes cast in bronze suggest finer things about a society. Not here, says Anson Cameron.
A CITY'S statues should speak eloquently of its people and their history. One thinks of Nelson staring seaward, Lincoln seated in judgement, Lady Liberty with the flame of freedom thrust skyward that the people never forget their revolution, The Thinker eternally interred in Gallic conundrum.In Melbourne our bronzes snigger at us like glassy-eyed delinquents staggering home from a debauch.For they represent a grab bag of nobodies, ne'er-do-wells and plonkers, with a few big shots whose favour we have curried, thrown in.There are also a number of famous types with no relevance to Australia. The mightiest of these is Joan of Arc, who was branded a heretic and burnt by the church in 1431 for attempting to break its monopoly on God by saying He spoke directly to her. She believed the earth was flat and would have been surprised, I suppose, if God mentioned she would one day hang like a bat on horseback from the bottom of the world in the forecourt of our State Library accompanied by a stumpy-legged Saint George slaying a modest dragon that looks so like Steve Irwin noosing a rogue croc I can't walk into that library without hearing, "Crikey, what a beauty."Burke and Wills, currently on the corner of Collins and Swanston, were thought heroes on their deaths and 40,000 turned out for their funerals. They were brave men, no doubt, and a resonant tragedy attaches to them. But it seems with what we know of their ill-considered meanderings today, a little remorse riding the brow of one and a touch of humility shaping the lips of the other wouldn't go astray. Burke shouldn't be staring at a distant horizon so much as holding his hand out to beg some tucker from the blackfellas that lived fat around him while he died despising them.Then, further south, a marble Queen Victoria maintains a dwarfish reign just off St Kilda Road. We were named for her. But she never visited these shores and it is rumoured that after she signed the Proclamation of Royal Assent to the federation of the states of Australia, she flourished her pen and remarked, "Voila. In place of six knaves ... one."Given half a day a revisionist historian with a diamond-encrusted nail file could turn the old bird into either Joan Kirner or Christine Nixon, women who have visited and served the state. The transformation would not be a major project.In less democratic parts of the world much bronze is used to celebrate fearful despots and tribal henchmen. But we know these many idols are as despised as they are temporary and will be felled and melted down and rebirthed as a new dictator after the coup. Tommy Bent, sadly, will outlive them all. Tommy's statue stands on the Nepean Highway at Brighton. He was a town councillor and state premier so crooked his name was felt a euphemism. In Parliament, suffering advanced syphilis, he would stop suddenly mid-speech and cooee half a dozen times, sing Ben Bolt in falsetto, recite a few lines composed on a train, and make cutting remarks about the shape of his fellow parliamentarians' heads. It is said "he suffered less from ideas than from mental spasms". Lately forests of Mao and Saddam have been felled, while Tommy stands triumphant in his frock coat. Mao, though, as Tommy might have noted, had a head shaped like a macadamia, and Saddam's noggin resembled a beer box.But if these figures aren't sufficiently notable to be eulogised in bronze, then who? I see, as part of his ongoing skirmish with the Australian Taxation Office, Paul Hogan has declared they should erect a statue in his honour because he's worked so hard and paid so much tax over the years. It might be tempting for the ATO to whack up a bronze of Hoges, a man who's practically worn out the reverse gear on his Roller backing up to the Reserve Bank and unloading the required percentage. And, no doubt, a statue outside the ATO of Paul with a packet of Winnie Blues tucked in his sleeve giving a thumbs-up to the world would be a great example to the little people squirrelling away their black mite.But my advice to the ATO is: don't. Erecting a statue of a living Australian is as dangerous as owning a ferret. At some stage you will be bitten, likely low on the torso in the approximate area of your arse. Because famous, living Australians have a nasty tendency to get caught a) with their pants down, b) holding a smoking match at the scene of an insurance fire, or c) with a brown bag full of cash.It's a mighty risk, with bronze at 8000 a tonne, to raise a statue of someone who's as likely as the next man to disgrace himself with swine or Swiss banks. In the fullness of time I'd be happy if the ATO erected a statue of Hoges. All he has to do is die first.In general, our public statuary has a defective gene. A cartoonish flaw called hagiography that begets mighty thighs, huge biceps, fateful stares, benevolent smiles, square-jawed resolution, high-chinned profundity ... and giants belonging to a different species than the pear-shaped citizens boozing at their feet.Most great Australians aren't great enough to bear the weight of hagiography in the afterlife. They would stand more aptly bedecked with the wrinkled brow of confusion, the slump of defeat, sporting a rueful moue or a bemused pucker, a tincture of regret around the eyes. And if a statue wore these many humilities simultaneously it would be a mirror to the people and a joy to the town.
© 2008 The Age