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Comment by q1w2 | Hacker News Reader

This interpretation is completely ignorant of the history of this statue, the museum, and Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was a long time champion for the Natural History Museum and the research it did in the natural world. He funded the museum heavily, and then himself led a huge expedition into the Amazon to discover and map one of the main tributaries to the Amazon river, deep in uncharted south american jungle.

This statue was commissioned to represent that specific expedition, and the people next to him represent the people that HELPED his expedition. The creator wanted to INCLUDE them in the historical narrative.

It was a peaceful expedition. They found the tributary and mapped it, despite all nearly dying and contracting malaria. It's actually a famous book describing the expedition called The River or Doubt.

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You're correct. A statue such as this one is difficult to interpret correctly unless you're actually standing before the statue, right where the viewer is supposed to be standing. A photo taken from a different angle skews the interpretation.

When we look at the photo, the American and African natives have a downcast glance, as if they're subservient. However, the statue was originally placed on high. The photo loses that. From the proper viewing angle, the two natives are meeting the gaze of the viewer. That conveys a completely different message.

They are on foot to make it clear that they are acting as guides, which wouldn't be clear if they were on horseback. Roosevelt is elevated on horseback because Roosevelt is the focus of the work. There is nothing wrong with that.

Roosevelt's gaze goes off to the horizon to convey the fact that he's the explorer here. There is nothing wrong with that.

The controversy is due to woke, self-righteousness, and anti-Western nihilism. If such sentiment is allowed to continue to metastasize, it will destroy civilization. Decent people need to push back.

No, the figures flanking Roosevelt are not meant to represent his guides on an Amazon expedition.

When it comes both to the American frontier west and the continent of Africa, the word “explore” is doing a lot of interesting work.

> No, the figures flanking Roosevelt are not meant to represent his guides on an Amazon expedition.

What is your basis for saying this? q1w2 gave their basis for saying that it was about the Amazon expedition; what is your basis for saying that it isn't? Just "no it's not" doesn't work well as a refutation of an argument that had more than that.

I cited downthread what the figures were intended to mean, along with a source. The Amazon expedition thing seems like a weird just-so story. The real answer doesn't seem as lurid as some of the statue's critics want it to be, but it's still a problematic way to honor Roosevelt.

Later

Someone even replied to that comment with a cite directly from Fraser. I don't think this is so much in contention. The figures are not Roosevelt's helpers on the Amazon expedition.

So do you feel the sculptor was lying when he said who/what those figures represent? That seems to be a bit of an assumption without much evidence. Perhaps you (and others) just disagree with the artist’s interpretation or find meaning where the artist intended something different. That happens a lot in works of art.

I guess my perspective is that if the actual guide’s names and likeness that Roosevelt used were lost to history but as a sculptor but you still wanted to honor them…why wouldn’t you generically represent the cultures and races of those that helped him if they were important to the expeditions? That somehow seems less offensive to me than representing them as culturally generic…or not at all.

I take the sculptor at their word that the figures represent the American frontier and the continent of Africa.

Again, you're trying to educate me about Roosevelt, but I'm not making any contentions about Roosevelt being unworthy of prominent sculpture. The problem is this sculpture, which does not in fact depict Roosevelt's Amazon expedition.

A good way to make a case in favor of the Equestrian Teddy is to cite artistic analysis that precedes the controversy over the sculpture's removal, when it became a culture war football. That way, you're less likely to accidentally retcon the work into something it isn't.

>which does not in fact depict Roosevelt's Amazon expedition

Prove it

For starters, the Native American and African men are metaphors, representing the continents of North America and Africa. You could have gotten this far just by going to the museum's web page.

Agreed, according to the sculptor himself, they are symbolic figures: “The two figures at [Roosevelt’s] side are guides symbolizing the continents of Africa and America, and if you choose may stand for Roosevelt’s friendliness to all races.” —Sculptor James Earle Fraser, 1940

The online exhibit is an interesting deeper look at the statue and controversy.

https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/addressing-the-theodore-roo...

Further, in the context that statement was made, Roosevelt's "friendliness to all races" was freighted with some icky stuff --- that, for instance, leading them out of the darkness of their indigenous culture was a great favor done for them by western civilization.

Yeah man, all cultures are valid and deserve to exist, even if they sacrifice thousands of children annually, regularly participate in cannibalism, etc.

Westerners should have just ignored this stuff when they encountered it. The world would definitely be a better, more equitable place.

You're making my argument for me.

I'm sure I am, with your unrealistic perspective of human progress and development and the uncomfortable truths of history you refuse to acknowledge.

I, for one, am glad we decided cultures like Nazism are not valid or worth preserving.

It's unfortunate that only Western cultures are allowed to be viewed with a critical eye.

>regularly participate in cannibalism

>Westerners should have just ignored this stuff when they encountered it.

That's odd because most of the cannabalism on the planet took place in Europe. The euro-anti-cannabalism stance is barely a century old.

Remember, food scarcity wasn't an issue in much of the rest of the world and unlike Europe, the non-European world had enough medical/scientific knowledge to understand human meat cured no illnesses.

So why dont we have many more Egyptain mummies? Because Europeans literally ate tens of thousands of them.

The savages aren't who you think they are.

Weird how the West progressed but many cultures hadn't even invented the wheel by the time of colonialism. Nice try with the pre-enlightenment & pre-colonialism whataboutism though.

Instances of cannibalism for reasons other than desperation or individual criminality are basically non existent in western culture after the 15th century, and were certainly not a staple of culture. This is even more true for things like human sacrifice. It's also completely false that cannibalism was more rampant in Europe than anywhere else. That's laughable. It was prolific in Africa, the Americas, Australia & New Zealand pre-colonialism, some parts of East Asia.

Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of human sacrifice annually were taking place among native Americans. Cannibalism was and is a regular part of many African cultures, and also was widespread among native Americans.

Some cultures are better than others. That's just a fact. And it's not just Nazis that are bad.

>Weird how the West progressed but many cultures hadn't even invented the wheel by the time of colonialism.

It's hard not to economically progress when one robs and sabotages all the largest economies in the world. Using deception and fraud in a time where honorable men were revered is an edge, I agree.

You are pointing out rituals in the rest of the world but those were occassional ceremonies. In Europe, eating humans was "just lunch" or "just a meat pie", not a once in a year religious event. Same for European human blood drinking, which was very popular as medicine and a thirst quencher for more than 1000 years.

>basically non existent in western culture after the 15th century

Wrong, European medicine was primitive at best until the mid 19th century, colonisation is how Europeans gathered most of the valid medical knowledge from the world (indegenous herb and plant medicine knoweledge plays an outsized role in what we consider modern pharma).

Europeans also ate most of the mummies in existence.

Are you claiming Europeans ate all of the mummies they did eat before the 15th century? Before the major European excavations in Egypt occurred? Nonsense, the trade started much later and continued well into the 1900s. This is historical fact.

---

"Mummy was still sold as medicine in a German medical catalog at the beginning of the 20th century. And in 1908, a last known attempt was made in Germany to swallow blood at the scaffold.

"Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians, reveal that for several hundred years, peaking in the 16th and 17th centuries, many Europeans, including royalty, priests and scientists, routinely ingested remedies containing human bones, blood and fat as medicine for everything from headaches to epilepsy"

“...the poor, who couldn’t always afford the processed compounds sold in apothecaries, could gain the benefits of cannibal medicine by standing by at executions, paying a small amount for a cup of the still-warm blood of the condemned.The executioner was considered a big healer in Germanic countries,” says Sugg. “He was a social leper with almost magical powers.” For those who preferred their blood cooked, a 1679 recipe from a Franciscan apothecary describes how to make it into marmalade."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-...

I repeat... >The savages arent who you think they are.

>It's hard not to economically progress when one robs and sabotages all the largest economies in the world.

You mean what literally every society and culture was doing for all of human history? Native tribes across the globe were in perpetual war. Why do you think it was called the Aztec Empire as just one example? Every primitive culture would have done the same thing if they had the technology. Deception is a recurring theme in The Art of War and similar strategic works across time. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome, China, Persia, Islamic empires, etc.

>You are pointing out rituals in the rest of the world but these were occassional ceremonies.

lol no they weren't, human sacrifice happened dozens of times a day every day in Mayan and Aztec civilization. Cannibalism was a regular staple in many native American and African tribes.

All your comments on cannibalism are complete bullshit. The mummy eating stuff was basically over by the 17th century, except in rare instances.

Eating mummies is also completely different from literally killing someone for the purpose of eating them, or decapitating/ripping the heart out of someone for human sacrifice.

For someone claiming objective facts you certainly don't have any.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_canniba...

>basically non existent in western culture after the 15th century

>basically over by the 17th century

It went from 15th century to 17th century? I like that you are admitting you dont know basic European history and based on your factually deficient response, you still have a lot to catch up on.

I will leave you to do that.

No it didn't, you'll notice I had very precise descriptors in each comment. I'm glad you accept that your perspective that Western colonials were uniquely bad is blatantly false.

>Eating mummies is also completely different from literally killing someone for the purpose of eating them...

Europeans did both. Everything I stated is factual and didnt require alteration or retraction. You on the other hand, have been proven wrong over and over again and that anecdata from a wikipedia page as a source is laughable.

Re-read the thread and quotes, perhaps you missed the part where you lost this argument. We need to argue using facts and citations, not feelings. You, for one, being off by 2-3 centuries is not trivial in a discussion of recent history.

Your hyper focused whataboutism on European cannibalism and refusal to acknowledge the myriad examples and counters regarding human sacrifice, war, technology enabled conquest, cultural norms across the globe, cannibalism, and particularly that Western societies didn't do anything everybody else wasn't already attempting, they just did it better and had more progressive cultures while doing so, doesn't do your argument any favors mate. My points stand on firm foundations in context.

Luckily, debate is for the observer, not bad faith historical revisionists with anti Western indoctrination.

>represent guides

According to the sculptor.

What may they represent guides for? Perhaps some prominent expeditions Roosevelt was famous for that were critical in establishing the museum?

I've read the River of Doubt and don't remember the part about the statue commission. Also, why is he on horseback and not in a canoe?

He was a soldier in the rough riders cavalry unit. The statue was meant to represent him both as the cavalry president, as well as the explorer.

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